Morgan Thompson

More press about our BBS paper on metabolism and cognition:

aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2025/11/24/t...

#neuroskyence #cogsky #philsci

🚨We're hiring! A tenure track position at McGill University in the area of #bioethics and / or philosophy of science, with a special focus on the ethics of medical technologies. Please share widely. #philsky #ethics #philsci philjobs.org/job/show/30402

YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley Howard University AI Panel

You think LLM-based chatbots can help students learn? Think again.

Take a few minutes to listen to Dr. @drtanksley.bsky.social clear explanation why this is very bad, harmful idea, especially for Black students.

#Critical_AI_Literacy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mtc...

hope you had a big lunch!

Exclusive: CDC to end all monkey research Studies related to HIV and other infectious diseases will be phased out, sources say; fate of the agency's animals remains unclear

EXCLUSIVE: CDC to end all monkey studies. Decision handed down by recent college grad and former DOGE employee who is now deputy chief of staff at the agency. Animals were being used in studies of HIV prevention. Some may be euthanized. My latest for @science.org

The anatomy courses in question:

The extremely rad editors of @being.transinphilosophy.org have put out a call for pitches for the next edition of their zine! They are also hosting cool events at the Eastern and Pacific meetings of the APA (details on the website). being.transinphilosophy.org/cfp/

COWEN: Let’s say I run a science lab, and I know GPT-6 is coming. What should I be doing now to prepare for that? ALTMAN: It’s always a very hard question. Even if you know this thing is coming, if you adapt your — COWEN: Let’s say I even had it now, right? What exactly would I do the next morning? ALTMAN: I guess the first thing you would do is just type in the current research questions you’re struggling with, and maybe it’ll say, “Here’s an idea,” or “Run this experiment,” or “Go do this other thing.”

This is a frustrating misconception of what doing science is like. All that's needed to break through is someone else to tell you to just "run THIS experiment". Oh that's so easy, thanks, why didn't I think of that?

Folks who work on measurement: this society and conference is a lovely interdisciplinary space. It includes philosophers, education researchers, historians, psychologists, psychometricians, etc. Consider submitting and taking a trip to Edinburgh!

Oh I’m very interested in joining. Thanks for sharing! I’ve requested to join the google group.

Folks who work on measurement: this society and conference is a lovely interdisciplinary space. It includes philosophers, education researchers, historians, psychologists, psychometricians, etc. Consider submitting and taking a trip to Edinburgh!

When you are using the "AI" framing, does the way you talk about "AI" carry water for the Sam Altmans of the world? That is, are you helping to paint a picture of their tech as inevitable, all powerful, and/or anything other than commercial products?

>>

Once again, @yaelrice.bsky.social and I published this article in 2020 so that no one ever has to debunk this vile nonsense point-by-point ever again. As we write (see the next post in this thread)...

hyperallergic.com/604897/how-s...

Here comes the PSA! With @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social we'll talk about the invisibility of East-European migrants in German health data. We've published on how the lack of data on racialisation maintains white ignorance about racism and next we'll look at the Western dimensions of white ignorance

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out o...

PSA from 404 Media: you can opt-out of a data broker selling your flight travel data to the government to be searched without a warrant. Here's how I did it. This is ARC, the data broker owned by major U.S. airlines like United, Delta, American, etc

www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting

I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

Northwestern Faculty Assembly passes resolution against compact At the Northwestern Faculty Assembly on Wednesday, faculty passed two resolutions, one to amend the assembly bylaws and one to oppose the University’s agreeing to the federal government compact.  This...

Northwestern faculty oppose the higher education compact too.

dailynorthwestern.com/2025/10/20/c...

Here’s How the AI Crash Happens The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.

so @matteowong.bsky.social & I wrote on data centers: arguably the most important buildings in the world & are, in a way, holding the economy hostage. Byzantine financial instruments, private equity, depreciating tech, hype, $trillion valuations. it’s all there. an ai crash prob starts here.

I completely agree with @lastpositivist.bsky.social that this paper is a banger! The narrative Ferry-Danini presents about the history of Spasfon and the current lack of action by French medical institutions is fascinating and horrifying. Well researched too!

Lady Parts and Baby Parts: What Is a Fetus? A common-sense view of mammalian pregnancy treats the fetus as (a) an organism and (b) co-extensive with the approximately baby-shaped entity developing in the uterus. In this paper, I draw on metabo...

More than five years in the making, my paper about the metaphysics of pregnancy is out today, open-access in PPR 🧵1/7

doi.org/10.1111/phpr...

I have a number of colleagues who think that LLMs will be very useful as individualized tutors.

One of their arguments is that unlike previous generations of AI tutors, LLMs have the full context window of the conversation and that’s better understand what a student knows and doesn’t know.

What I find interesting is the comparison of medication to address women’s pain. In France, very low quality evidence of efficacy is permitted, if it is safe. In the US, the evidence needed for efficacy is extremely high, which means many patients remain in pain (incl those in RCT control cond).

I completely agree with @lastpositivist.bsky.social that this paper is a banger! The narrative Ferry-Danini presents about the history of Spasfon and the current lack of action by French medical institutions is fascinating and horrifying. Well researched too!

It's up www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Citing Trump Order on “Biological Truth,” VA Makes It Harder for Male Veterans With Breast Cancer to Get Coverage A Department of Veterans Affairs memo obtained by ProPublica erects new roadblocks to care for veterans with the rare but deadly cancer. The agency cites no new science but relies on an executive orde...

In the quest for "biological truth," the Trump admin discounts the very real biological truth that some men do get breast cancer

Now it'll be harder for male veterans diagnosed w/the rare but deadly cancer to get VA coverage

always read @ericumansky.bsky.social
www.propublica.org/article/vete...

Via @rachelankeny.bsky.social:
Next Society for #PhilSci in Practice conference #SPSP2026 will be in Cambridge UK hosted by HPS Dept @ Cambridge University & SPSP co-founder Hasok Chang. Keep eye out for call next year ⬇️
philosophy-science-practice.org

The Republican Plan to Reform the Census Could Put Everyone’s Privacy at Risk A little-known algorithmic process called “differential privacy” helps keep census data anonymous. Conservatives want it gone.

US census data is carefully anonymized for good reason. Now Republicans want to change that -- and their plan could put the data of every person living in the US at risk.

Important reporting from @telliotter.bsky.social

This person is one hundred percent correct and it’s scary af. We will never “media literacy” our way out of this as a society. We are about to reap the whirlwind when it comes to misinformation, disinformation, and informational warfare.

Cristian Larroulet Philippi, Values and Measurement - PhilPapers At first sight, measurement might appear to be a natural candidate for a scientific practice that is value-free. This chapter reviews prominent arguments supporting the opposite view, i.e., that value...

I’ve just uploaded to philpapers my (preprint) chapter titled “Values and Measurement” forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Values in Science.
It’s an overview of arguments for values playing significant roles in measurement practices.

Comments welcome!

philpapers.org/rec/LARVAM-2