Pinned“Scum”, “Clown”, “Hitler”: Russian media on ZelenskyPolitical propaganda surely plays an important causal role in the world as we find it. But propaganda is often unfortunately akin to pornography as being something we know when we see it, but something that kind of resists theorizing. It would be nice to make discoveries about propaganda, to predict…Propaganda10 min readPropaganda10 min read
17 hours agoTanks to Ukraine: different languages, different view.The decision by Germany to give offensive tanks to Ukraine has prompted many to say that a new phase of the conflict has started. When I say ‘many’, though, I really mean, at least for me, mostly anglophone sources. I thought it was worth seeing what sort of unanimity or…Russia Ukraine War7 min readRussia Ukraine War7 min read
Jan 20Kadyrov in ChinaClick through and watch the very strange embedded video, a video posted both to Ramzan Kadyrov’s Telegram channel and later to the Chinese language RT Weibo, on both of which it received a lot of positive reactions: Kadyrov_95 在过去的一百年里，美国和欧洲在世界各地组织了数十次战争、军事政变和入侵。 数百万平民成为他们的受害者。 然而，现在他们带来了更可怕的威胁，即摧毁人类存在期间各国人民形成的所有道德价值观。 他们想把我们变成容易被操纵的动物。…t.me If you didn’t click through, I’ll spoil it: perhaps the only video to…Russian Invasion5 min readRussian Invasion5 min read
Jan 11How Russia appears in China: a look at WeiboA couple of days ago I took a look at what English RT is talking about recently. One thing that popped up was an attention on China. A natural question to ask in light of that was whether China similarly paid attention to Russia. So I had a look, by…Russia Ukraine War5 min readRussia Ukraine War5 min read
Jan 8Sinophilia in recent Russian mediaPer wiki: “RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy. Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation and conspiracy theories.” Here’s a question: can we discern that…Russia Ukraine War11 min readRussia Ukraine War11 min read
Jan 5Measuring the impact of Russian social media propagandaHere’s a question: what is the causal impact of political propaganda? What difference does it make? One thing is clear: it’s thought to make a big impact. If we allow that political ads, newspaper articles, and art can at least sometimes contain propaganda then the fact that all through history…Russia Ukraine War6 min readRussia Ukraine War6 min read
Dec 10, 2022LLMs for philosophers (and philosophy for LLMs)With the release of ChatGPT it feels like public awareness of the potential of large language models (LLMs) has reached a new high. And interacting with it naturally raises old and deep questions about what we’re actually seeing when we ask for a biblical verse explaining how to remove a…Philosophy21 min readPhilosophy21 min read
Nov 17, 2022Buterin’s Proof Of Stake and the political philosophy of crypto(This was going to be a review of Vitalik Buterin’s book Proof Of Stake but reality kept getting in the way of my writing it so rather than nothing I just wrote this up which is what I took from the book. I certainly think anyone interested in the problem…Cryptocurrency13 min readCryptocurrency13 min read
Nov 13, 2022Ineffective effective altruists and fake accounts in fiction— So when did you realize that philanthropy was for you? Jules was working on micromicrotransactions. Microtransactions are small payments for small things; instead of subscribing to an online paper, you pay a small amount, say 25 cents, for each article you want to read. Similarly, you buy songs instead of albums, episodes instead…Philosophical Fiction6 min readPhilosophical Fiction6 min read
Oct 29, 2022Putin as Facebook Uncle: A TheoryFor many years Putin was a sort of blank canvas, and imposing competence and rationality seemed like the natural thing to do. Early commentators constantly talk about his non-descriptness, apart from a few surprising word choices, and an image one gets of him is as a sort of political martial…Politics7 min readPolitics7 min read
