Top all-time · #1847
The Splintered Mind
Personal blog · schwitzsplinters.blogspot.comphilosophy
The Splintered Mind is a personal blog at schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com about philosophy. Since 2009, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 48 times, most often “Computerized Philosopher: Can You Distinguish Daniel Dennett from a Computer?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Eric Schwitzgebel's philosophy blog, covering consciousness, introspection, thought experiments such as whether the US is conscious, and the Dust hypothesis. HN readers also cite its GPT-3 Dennett quiz.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter says everything the author writes is worth reading, citing the consciousness and introspection posts; another lists the blog among favourite blogs
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Computerized Philosopher: Can You Distinguish Daniel Dennett from a Computer?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-07-26
- /2022/07/results-computerized-philosopher-can.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-19
- Review Drift (2021)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-08
- /2011/10/is-united-states-conscious.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-12-27
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-27
- The Splintered Mind: GPT-3 Can Talk Like the Philosopher Daniel Dennett2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-04
What Hacker News says?
In 2022, a GPT-3 model fine-tuned on Dennett's writing was good enough that "Dennett experts" could only pick a real Dennett quote from a list of 5 quotes about 50% of the time. I don't know that anyone's tried on newer models. He's gone, but I wonder if we could continue to get insights from him for a while longer. https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/07/results-comput...
Comment linking /2022/07/results-computerized-philosopher-can.html
on “Daniel Dennett has died”Submitted The disunity of consciousness in everyday experience as a story · 159 points
HN discussionSome of the blogs I like, but don’t read enough (I almost ceased reading blogs at all lately): - https://jacobian.org/posts/ - https://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ (classic) - https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Grade inflation at UC Riverside, and institutional pressures for easier grading as a story · 103 points
HN discussionhttp://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2013/04/adam-and-eve-in...
Comment linking /2013/04/adam-and-eve-in-happiness-pod.html
on “HTML5 Genetic Cars”Submitted The most cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a story · 82 points
HN discussionhttps://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/07/results-comput... Schwitzgebel, Strasser, and Crosby fine-tuned GPT-3 on Dennett's corpus and asked whether readers could pick Dennett's real answers to ten philosophical questions from four machine-generated alternatives, with no cherry-picking beyond mechanical length filters. Even Dennett experts averaged only 5.1 out of 10 (well below the 80% the authors predicted),…
Comment linking /2022/07/results-computerized-philosopher-can.html
on “The revolt of the reader”Submitted Mind Constituted by a Rabbit Reading and Writing on Long Strips of Turing Tape? as a story · 9 points
HN discussionDown that road lies Greg Egan's Dust hypothesis; it is a slippery slope. http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2009/01/dust-hypothesis... http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ...
Comment linking /2009/01/dust-hypothesis.html
on “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?”Submitted Will Your Driverless Car Kill You So That Others May Live? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHere is a (professional) philosophical perspective on the problem, with an interesting discussion in the comments http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2012/02/egg-came-first....
Comment linking /2012/02/egg-came-first.html
on “The egg or the chicken? An ancient unicellular says egg”Submitted AI Slop: Why Philosophy Journals Should Reject AI-Written Prose as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAlso worth considering is Dust Theory, from the inventive mind of Greg Egan, which adds a simulation layer and time/space independence to the Boltzmann paradox. http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2009/01/dust-hypothesis... And the FAQ for those who have read Permutation City: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ...
Comment linking /2009/01/dust-hypothesis.html
on “Boltzmann brain”Submitted The Splintered Mind: A Theory of Hypocrisy as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYou can take the quiz yourself on Prof. Schwitzgebel's blog. I got 5/10. http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/07/results-compute...
Comment linking /2022/07/results-computerized-philosopher-can.html
on “In experiment, AI successfully impersonates famous philosopher”Submitted Superficialism about Belief as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBetter link: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/07/results-compute...
Comment linking /2022/07/results-computerized-philosopher-can.html
on “In experiment, AI successfully impersonates famous philosopher”Submitted Most-Cited Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA slightly more interesting question, in my opinion: is the United States conscious? http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/05/group-conscious... http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/10/is-united-state...
Comment linking /2011/10/is-united-states-conscious.html
on “The Chinese Room Argument”Submitted The Black Hole Objection to Longtermism and Consequentialism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEverything Schwitzgebel writes is worth reading: http://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/ including his blog, The Splintered Mind : https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/ I got into him because of his thoughts on conscious experience and introspection, such as Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White? and How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience: The Case of Human Echolocation. He ended up getting me (indirec…
Comment linking /
on “Ethicists’ Courtesy at Philosophy Conferences (2011)”Submitted The Splintered Mind: GPT-3 Can Talk Like the Philosopher Daniel Dennett as a story · 2 points
HN discussionReminds me of Eric Schwitzgebel's question: is the United States conscious? http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/10/is-united-state... (and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbQi0tVNsdo )
Comment linking /2011/10/is-united-states-conscious.html
on “Natural Language Processing and the human brain ”Submitted GPT-3 Can Talk Like the Philosopher Daniel Dennett Without Parroting His Words as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Review Drift (2021) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Computerized Philosopher: Can You Distinguish Daniel Dennett from a Computer? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reflections on Science Fiction as Philosophy, Plus Zombie Robots as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Almost Everything You Do Causes Almost Everything as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Realities ≤ Universes ≤ Worlds ≤ Cosmos as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Self-Knowledge by Looking at Others as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
