Clayton Littlejohn

You can guess my answer from the above and a useful test might be to ask if I'd shoot you if I were your supervisor in the Dezinformburo for your decision

Disinformation is for degrading the value of information, not confirming falsehoods - Philosophical Studies According to a recent account of disinformation, disinformation is content that “generates ignorance” (Simion in Eur Rev 32(4):321–34, 2024a; Episteme 21(4):1208–1219, 2024b). The view improves upon p...

Which one feels more disinformation-y, swapping out the accurate map of Boston w one that contains some errors that will lead you to form some practically irrelevant false beliefs or swapping out the Boston map for an Austin map that leaves you lost?
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In your briefcase is a map of Boston. In my hands are (a) a map of Boston with a few details wrong that you might commit to memory but that won't really alter the way you navigate the city and (b) a map of Austin that would be utterly useless to you and leave you lost.

I’m glad you did

Peak analytic phil would be demanding an account first before we put on albums

It is not! (but I was happy it predicted MF DOOM bc I reckon he’s most on brand for analytic phils)

I have such mixed feelings about the Beastie Boys. Loved them as a little kid. Think that the tracks are strong if you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics, but I feel like I have to work to not notice how the writing does nothing for me

And Fela Soul is one of my favourite albums of all time so De La Soul will sort of float in and out of the top 5

Yeah, Wu Tang is definitely in my final five (and I get to see them in 4 weeks)

Claude's list, btw, was Kendrick, Jay Z, Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, and MF DOOM.

I would certainly have swapped Public Enemy in and moved MF DOOM to the front, but was very pleased that Claude didn't think Eminem would make the cut ... it thinks better of us than I expected

Also not predicted by Claude

You are dangerously close to one. Rage wasn’t mentioned. You be you, though. Public Enemy was also not on C’s list but was on mine

I won't block you if you say Eminem, but I can't promise I won't judge you

I know(ish) the answer because I've asked Claude and the predictions seemed plausible in 4/5ths of the slots

What would you say are your top 5 favourite hip-hop artists if you're an analytic philosopher (and listen to hip-hop intentionally at least once in a while)?

Time to start asking our students whether we'd prefer Anthrophic to carry out the unapproved killings of humans if the alternative is that Grok does it

People are always like what’s something you miss from the past and one of mine is antitrust laws

Thank you—I’m enjoying it but it’s very hard (for me, given my limited skillset)

The algorithm is getting very niche—it keeps sending me clips of Norm McDonald using Moore’s Paradox and counterprivate thoughts to make interviewers confused and uncomfortable. That‘s a level of specificity that you don’t really expect

even if people want to get into a fight about the semantics of "disinformation" or accuse us of conceptual engineering (don't you dare), we're giving a framework for thinking of the strategic use of content to suppress or manipulate adversaries and that's valuable

So the challenge that I find interesting and that this team is ideal for exploring is thinking about the ways that malignant agents might change the content to alter the antecedents of choice without using just plans to instil false belief. What we'll study, I think, are forms of disinformation

But I think we have the tools we need for these accounts by thinking about the strategic interactions between agents who need to process information or evidence and the agents who can help determine what content is available to them. The tools just come from outside of epistemology.

The taxonomy seems to exclude things like constructive fraud (i.e., fraud without deceptive intent) and seem to exclude things like industrial distraction. I don't think we can remedy these problems by sticking with epistemic accounts, so we either need new concepts or new accounts.

undermines education and hampers our efforts at identification and mitigation. Here's one striking example. There's a vast literature on financial disinformation. I stumbled upon this paper today. scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/01a532...

Why does this project matter? In my view, disinformation often takes forms that don't fit the standard theoretical frameworks because they use pretty standard epistemic criteria for identifying disinformation or describing its function. The lack of conceptual framework

I don't know the non-nicknamed people well enough to take that liberty.

Our team is incredible: Katie Steele, Neil Levy, Cailin O'Connor, Paul "The Politics Guy" Kenny, Sam "Mind" Carter, and Kyle "One Shy of the Cycle" Blumberg. Excited at the prospect of getting some of the Dianoia team back together and work with people I've long admired.

Excited that this ARC Discovery EOI has been shortlisted. The project is on disinformation and on why we should see it as an instrument that agents use to influence choice when there are conflicts of interest.

In my mind, there's some person with their finger hovering over the send button watching the clock count down towards the end of business who delights in the fact that we're checking inboxes every 27 seconds to see if there's any news from the ARC.

Interesting! I wrote a thing with a friend years ago about how evidence might not be true (e.g., because it could be a fingerprint, a burst of perceptual consciousness) but could not be false and one of the referees was scandalised by the thought because it had to be one or the other.