Rapid Fire

Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.

Oct 18

Pleasantly Simple Myths

“When pleasantly simple myths are discarded, the result is a mess. Endless problems need to be addressed.” —Ian Hacking, The Social...

Oct 11

Value Complacency

This week, I sat in on a graduate-level computer science class. The instructor asked under what conditions humans and AI would be...

Oct 4

Quick Hitter: How do you understand Confusion?

There are lots of buzzwords in the AI space—fairness, transparency, safety, bias, privacy, trustworthiness, I could go on and on. And...

Sep 13

Something I HATE about Averages

If you had to summarize a statistical distribution with one number…well, I guess you could do worse than taking an average. Even so,...

Aug 16

How Coffees Get Scored

Do you know how coffees get scored? Here’s a sample espresso cupping form: Let’s talk survey methodology . This form is part of a...

Jun 28

Devotion & Meaning

I wanted to let you behind the curtain to see how philosophical papers are born, so Kjell and I pulled up a Call for Papers on Meaning...

May 24

Jazz bends Music like a Gaudí Building

I recently got to listen to a jazz concert on the roof of Antoni Gaudí’s magnificent La Pedrera. Meet the building that teaches you how...

Feb 9

Sports as Politics?

If politics were more like sports, would that be an unmitigated disaster? Or could the comparison be helpful, in at least some ways? We...

Dec 15, 2023

3 things I learned Writing the Rules

Next month, I’m giving a talk at the University of Kentucky Esports Lounge (yes, really) about rethinking the place of rules in the...

Sep 8, 2023

Game Values vs. Real-Life Values

My friend Kjell and I noticed there just aren’t enough podcasts, so we decided to help. Our first episode takes an early look at some of...

Aug 25, 2023

The Politics of Age of Empires II

I’ve been playing a lot of Stellaris lately, but as a kid, the only computer game I really played much was Age of Empires II (AoE2, as in...

Ricky Mouser