Nathanael Sheehan

Obituary: Farewell to robots.txt (1994-2025) The voluntary compliance protocol that civilized the internet has departed, bids Henning Fries farewell.

"The protocol taught us that technology can be based on human values like ethics and morality. It showed that voluntary compliance works when all parties benefit."

On robots.txt.

www.heise.de/en/backgroun...

If you’re interested in practicing the philosophy of science in practice why not come along to an online workshop “the philosophy of science in practice - in practice”? #philsci

‘At Meta I found myself wrestling my deputy in an MMA gym’: Nick Clegg on the culture shock of Silicon Valley In an exclusive extract from his new book, the former Meta number two recalls the mindset, the mantras and the man at the top

a grifter who left a political career (former UK Deputy Prime Minister) to serve as Zucks lapdog, now says the most evil company is indeed 'evil' having
actively created a hostile/anti-regulation culture & making millions doing it. cry me a fucking river

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge This week I was looking for info on what cognitive scientists mean when they speak of ‘domain-general’ cognition. I was curious, because the nuances are relevant for something I am researching at t…

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

These Billionaires need you to believe that they are super smart like their friends from high school, not just rich. Its not enough for them to be richer, they have to be richer because they are smarter.

Likening PhD holders to a (non-functional) algorithm is a form of dehumanisation & anti-intellectualism that is a bellwether for contemporary fascism. Essentially it's a typical — if not the archetypal — first step towards fascism: to dehumanise, deskill, defund, and, ultimately, fire the academics.

Very excited for this to finally be published!! As someone who will soon graduate with a PhD in Environmental Intelligence (EI), it has always been difficult to explain what EI is. Sabina's new paper answers these questions and provides a roadmap for future EI research 🌿🐝👩🏻‍💻 🦠🎋

Methods in the Philosophy of Science The last twenty years have seen multiple methodological revolutions in the philosophy of science: There has been increased diversity concerning the questions...

Just out / 1: “methods in philosophy of science”, #OA heroically assembled by Adrian Currie & Sophie Veigl. Comments welcome on mine & @Rachel Ankeny’s “Research design for philosophy of science in practice”, topic close to our hearts & constant source of questions! mitpress.mit.edu/978026255224...

AI and Fraternity, Abeba Birhane, AI Accountability Lab I envision a future where human dignity, justice, peace, kindness, care, respect, accountability, and rights and freedoms serve as the north stars that guide AI development and use. Realising these ideals can’t happen without intentional tireless work, dialogues, and confrontations of ugly realities – even if they are uncomfortable to deal with. This starts with deciphering hype from reality. Pervasive narratives portray AI as a magical, fully autonomous entity approaching a God-like omnipotence and omniscience. In reality, audits of AI systems reveal a consistent failure to deliver on grandiose promises and suffer from all kinds of shortcomings, issues often swept under the rug. AI in general, and GenAI in particular, encodes and exacerbates historical stereotypes, entrenches harmful societal norms, and amplifies injustice. A robust body of evidence demonstrates that — from hiring, welfare allocation, medical care allocation to anything in between — deployment of AI is widening inequity, disproportionately impacting people at the margins of society and concentrating power and influence in the hands of few. Major actors—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI—have willingly aligned with authoritarian regimes and proactively abandoned their pledges to fact-check, prevent misinformation, respect diversity and equity, refrain from using AI for weapons development, while retaliating against critique. The aforementioned vision can’t and won’t happen without confrontation of these uncomfortable facts. This is precisely why we need active resistance and refusal of unreliable and harmful AI systems; clearly laid out regulation and enforcement; and shepherding of the AI industry towards transparency and accountability of responsible bodies. "Machine agency" must be in service of human agency and empowerment, a coexistence that isn't a continuation of modern tech corporations’ inequality-widening,

so I am one of the 12 people (including the “god-fathers of AI”) that will be at the Vatican this September for a two full-day working group on the Future of AI

here is my Vatican approved short provocation on 'AI and Fraternity' for the working group

Methods in the Philosophy of Science The last twenty years have seen multiple methodological revolutions in the philosophy of science: There has been increased diversity concerning the questions...

Methods in the Philosophy of Science: A User's Guide is now a real, live book. My chapter offers an appraisal of philosophy of science in its engagement with applied mathematics. With immense gratitude for the vision and execution of @phieveigl.bsky.social and @adrian-currie.bsky.social sky.social.

all microsoft products are shit. my working days would be much more productive if I didn't have to use them

Should we expect AI to be explainable?

Read the new Ethical Data Blog post by Laura Gorrieri, EDI Affiliate from the University of Turin. A thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the ethical implications of AI.

👉 ethicaldatainitiative.org/2025/06/04/s...

Congrats 🎉👏🥳

A digital scan of the first page of a journal article titled “Should Public Communication of Vaccination Rates Assume Rationality, Normativity or Reasonableness? Insights from Three Preregistered Experiments.” The title is in bold black text. Authors are Aleksandra Lazić and Iris Žeželj, affiliated with the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Philosophy. The article is published in Psychological Reports (2025, Vol. 0(0), pages 1–26). A Creative Commons license and DOI link are included.

Violin Plot Comparing Vaccination Intention by Message Type (Figure 1)

Four Violin Plots Comparing Vaccination Intention Pre- and Post-Message Intervention (Figure 2)

Just published: my 3rd & final PhD paper! (with @iriszez.bsky.social)

🧪📢 How should we talk about vaccination rates?

Assuming rationality, normativity, or reasonableness leads to very different outcomes.

Findings from 3 experiments:

🔓 doi.org/10.1177/0033...

#PsychSky #AcademicSky #Psychology

Shaping the Future of Data Ethics: EDI Town Hall 2025 - The Ethical Data Initiative It has now been little over one month since the Ethical Data Initiative (EDI) hosted its first annual multi-stakeholder town hall meeting titled "Shaping the Future of Data Ethics”. From early in the ...

I recently wrote a blog post for the @edinitiative.bsky.social summarising the EDI's first town hall! The blog post covers all of the talks and activities from the day!

Check it out on the EDI website: ethicaldatainitiative.org/2025/05/02/s...

“is my calculator horny?“ our tech columnist asks. “i entered 5318008 into it and turned it upside down. what i saw surprised me”

He could, for instance, have written about any number of topics. Here are some ideas for free.

1. What cults are the Anthropic crew in, and what is the ideological ancestry of these cults? (We've done the work for him here, hint hint, its eugenics: firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...).

Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19 THE ORIGIN “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak

So, covid.gov now redirects to, uh, this... www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-tru...

How not to build an AI Institute What went wrong with the Alan Turing Institute?

This was interesting! As I understand it the claim is: in the UK the only research at scale is done by big universities. This meant the ATI was immediately captured by a clique thereof, who just wanted to use it to shuffle government money back to themselves...

www.chalmermagne.com/p/how-not-to...

The only thing spurs can defend is their decade long run without a trophy 🏆

➡️ Find our work thus far on www.dair-institute.org/tigray-genoc....

➡️ More importantly, we have a statement describing the unbridled war mongering currently spreading on ALL social media platforms, setting the stage for all out war between Ethiopia & Eritrea:
www.dair-institute.org/blog/tigray-...

I have long complained about gemini overview being embedded, non-optionally, in web search. However, I wish to revise my opinion. I think it can, in fact, serve a function, namely, as evidence of the extent to which folk knowledge of a given subject is confused or contradictory.

we made a critical error allowing reactionaries to make-up concepts like “biological sex” and frame them as non-ideological when it’s the exact opposite: people who undergo HRT *are literally changing their biological sex.* this is not some philosophical distinction, it is actual biological reality.

If you're not aware of forum.safeguar.de and other efforts to save data/tools from government destruction, now is the time to learn about them. You can even help!

Screenshot of a Nature article titled "How a ‘boring administrative task’ transformed my PhD career," published on 14 April 2025 in the Career Column section. The subtitle reads, "Good ideas — and impactful tools — don’t just come from rich, Western nations, says Aleksandra Lazić, a social scientist in Serbia." The article is written by Aleksandra Lazić, whose name appears as a clickable link.

Open science isn't just for the rich.

I wrote about building #REPOPSI – a repository of psychological instruments in Serbian – and what it taught me about doing #OpenScience with limited resources and lots of persistence. #PhDSky

doi.org/10.1038/d415...

Today in the reading group I run with @nathanaelsheehan.bsky.social, we discussed how undersea internet cables track and replicate colonialism, based on this paper: Mwema & Birhane, A. (2024). First Monday, 29(4). doi.org/10.5210/fm.v...

A booklet: Publishing Activism with/without a Toxic University on top of a laptop with many stickers, among them one that says: be radical, read books. And a white goose holding a heart with the trans flag colours.

A slide with the logo of University of Cambridge and the title: Radical Open Access III: From Openeess to Social Justice Acrivism

#Radical #OpenAccess III conference at Cambridge. Super excited to be here. Will try to post about some of the talks.
"To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair in convincing."

To Improve Literacy, Improve Equality in Education, Not Large Language Models Huettig and Christiansen in an earlier issue argue that large language models (LLMs) are beneficial to address declining cognitive skills, such as literacy, through combating imbalances in educationa...

Out this week @cogscisociety.bsky.social! @samhforbes.bsky.social & I ”urge extreme caution in the use of LLMs in classrooms lest we further normalize: pupils losing their privacy, reducing contact between learner and educator, deskilling teachers & polluting the environment”
doi.org/10.1111/cogs...

Calling all RDA newcomers!

Join our Newcomers Sessions during #VP24 to learn more about what the RDA can do for you.

Sessions will be structured around your questions - so let us know what you would like to hear through our Whova poll: (registered attendees only): rdavp24.events.whova...

Ethics of AI post-doc opportunity with an experimental angle, w/ my colleague Ophelia Deroy & her team (@opheliaderoy.bsky.social). Please share w/ anybody who might be interested: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/d... #aiethics #postdoc #xphi (Ping @xphilosopher.bsky.social perhaps you know someone?)