Elisa Freschi | Lightnews

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 3h

This was a particularly good one, that I am going to assign to students while we discuss Pascal.

Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h

First #HoPWaG of the year on early modern philosophy. It's a fun one: what contemporary philosophers have made of Pascal's wager! Would it make sense to bet on the existence of God just because the payoffs are better?

www.historyofphilosophy.net/pascals-wager

#philsky #philosophy #podcasts

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 5h

not Francis Bacon?

Barthes Studies @barthesstudies.bsky.social · 7h

The collected writings of Michel Foucault are now available in abridged form in fortune cookies:

Fortune cookie in green wrapper. Below it is the little white slip of paper from within. It reads, ‘Knowledge is power.’

Close-up of the slip from the fortune cookie shown in the previous image. It reads, ‘Knowldge is power’.

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 6h

I have already encountered two recommendation letters from a prof. who declares to only write 2 letters per year… mmmh… suspicious?

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 7h

New low: recommendation letters praising students because they gave good avice about a certain city. I understand that you want to praise the student's generosity and helpfulness, but could you stay on topic, please?

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 7h

I agree, but grades are uniformly inflated and writing samples might have been nearly co-authored by professors (not even starting with gen-AI). So, what do we have, especially when it comes to getting an idea of the student as a person (honest Q, would appreciate advice)?

Barthes Studies @barthesstudies.bsky.social · 7h

The collected writings of Michel Foucault are now available in abridged form in fortune cookies:

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 8h

Reading recommendation letters is at times surprising, since some appear to be praising themselves more than the student, e.g., by explaining how tough their book is (which the class the student attended was focusing on).

Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 12h

First #HoPWaG of the year on early modern philosophy. It's a fun one: what contemporary philosophers have made of Pascal's wager! Would it make sense to bet on the existence of God just because the payoffs are better?

www.historyofphilosophy.net/pascals-wager

#philsky #philosophy #podcasts

Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · 1d

The Barcelona Principles propose some simple actions to create a less unequal play field between native speakers and non native speakers of English in philosophy. First among them: reviewers should not assess papers based on style. contesi.info/bp/

BARCELONA PRINCIPLES FOR A GLOBALLY INCLUSIVE PHILOSOPHY

We acknowledge that English is the common vehicular language of much contemporary philosophy, especially in the tradition of so-called “analytic” or “Anglo-American” philosophy. This tradition is i…

contesi.info

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you, this works!

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 2d

Still "this content is only for subscribers"…

Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 3d

Noli me tangere: do not touch, for I have not yet risen to my father. Intense & unsettling moment in the Arena Chapel by Giotto, who died this day in 1337.

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 3d

tvam evāttha (with āttha being a perfect from āh-). But since AI is just a statistical device and not enough people have looked for it, it just gave me two similarly sounding (but completely unrelated) results, with absolute confidence.

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 3d

Sure, let's use AI to translate Sanskrit:
""Tvam evāttha" (तुम एवार्थ) ist eine verkürzte Form oder ein Teil des berühmten Sanskrit-Mantra-Verses, der mit "Tvam eva mata ca pita tvam eva" beginnt, was bedeutet: "Du bist die Mutter, Du bist der Vater" und "Du bist mein Alles" […]."

Mark Dingemanse @dingemansemark.bsky.social · 3d

Re: the AI slop paper shared by @thomaspellard.bsky.social and @lameensouag.bsky.social, I wrote to the editors — will update when I get a reply, and will be following closely what they do.

Key point is that we should hold the *journal* accountable for this mess

I have a few predictions...

1/n

AI slop published on your watch: very bad look for HSSComms and Springer/Nature

Dear editors,

I have failed to locate contact information for most of the academic editors for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; I trust that you will forward this message to them.

I want to note that AI slop is being published on your watch in the journal you edit. This paper, out last week (Al-Jarrah 2026), is full of inaccurate claims and includes countless hallucinated references. Even a cursory look at the bibliography shows that at least 10 and probably many more references are bullshit pure and simple; the simplest explanation is that they are confabulated by generative AI, which sheds doubt on the quality of the manuscript as a whole and on the review and editorial processes at your journal.

It is a great lapse of editorial judgement to let this kind of obvious drivel pass and I am warning my colleagues at MPI and Radboud to avoid your journal until clear and unambiguous action is taken. You may also want to take note that many people are finding out about this and the online discussion of this paper and of the journal's failing standards is something I hope that Springer Nature cares about.

In my opinion the paper does not pass even the most minimal quality assurance checks and is fully against the COPE guidelines on publication ethics. You may want to hold the author accountable for this; I think the only reasonable course is retraction.

But the scholarly community also holds the journal accountable. By letting AI slop through, your journal is polluting the information ecology of scientific publishing. Amidst a rising tide of synthetic text, scholarly publishing, with its tradition of human oversight and strong peer revidew, should be one of the last stalwarts to defend the integrity of our research. I look forward to your response and to find out what decisive action you are taking.

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 3d

The following postdoc positions in digital philology are open to Sanskritists:

uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

#SanskritJobs

Postdoctoral positions in digital philology

The Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University conducts teaching and research in several classical and contemporary languages and cultures, as well as linguistics and language technology. This diversi

uu.varbi.com

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 6d

#OtherMinds #AnimalMinds

Josh Milburn @joshmilburn.bsky.social · 6d

On the latest episode of Knowing Animals, I interview Walter Veit (@walterveit.bsky.social) about his 2023 Routledge book A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness. The episode is available free below, or in all the usual podcast places.

knowinganimals.libsyn.com/episode-245-...

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 6d

@perusall.com : I am not sure that the new version is an improvement. It no longer works on Safari and even on Chrome I can no longer create a "Test Student".

wendy norris @wendynorris.bsky.social · 6d

Pulling no punches in the syllabus. I am so tired.

Course policy on Generative AI

Generative AI apps (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, MidJourney, Sora, Dall-E, etc.) are prohibited in this course. You may NOT submit any ideas, outlines, text, multimedia, images, programming code, and/or citations generated by an AI application as any part of your own work. Any plagiarism or other form of cheating using Generative AI apps will be considered a violation of Nazareth University's Academic Integrity policy.

I am interested in your ideas, creativity, and insights. This course is designed to strengthen your thought process and ability to reason — skills that are crucial to both your academic success and future career since companies are increasingly abandoning Gen AI apps in droves and acknowledging the productivity myth. Your ability to think and communicate are superpowers!

AI and Generative AI are different technologies. Rigorous, peer-reviewed research has found that LLM-based chatbots/multimedia apps have substantial negative impacts on learning (that thing you’re spending $120K+ for), privacy, the environment, and working toward a fair and just society for everyone. There is overwhelming evidence in research, investigative reporting, and multiple lawsuits that AI agents flood social media with manipulative slop and chatbot use contributes to serious personal harm, including destabilizing mental health, inducing “AI psychosis”, providing information about self-harm to vulnerable people, and promoting delusional thinking. As they famously warned in Star Wars: “It’s a trap!”

I care about you and your future. Think critically about how “black box” technology companies use deception and wildly unsupported claims to lure you in, track your interactions in the app, and manipulate information presented to you by the chatbot. Gen AI is not the product, you are.

Josh Milburn @joshmilburn.bsky.social · 6d

On the latest episode of Knowing Animals, I interview Walter Veit (@walterveit.bsky.social) about his 2023 Routledge book A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness. The episode is available free below, or in all the usual podcast places.

knowinganimals.libsyn.com/episode-245-...

Magnus Lehnsherr @i-magnus.bsky.social · 6d

A 19 year old asked ChatGPT for advice on taking recreational drugs.

Over a period of 18 months, ChatGPT advised him which drugs to take, how much to ingest and even curated playlists for his trips.

He died from an overdose recommended by the chatbot

#chatgpt #chatbots #AI

A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT for drug advice. He died from an overdose.

"Who on earth gives that advice?"

www.sfgate.com

Futurism @futurism.com · 7d

He put his complete trust in a chat bot that turned him into a savage murderer.

Disturbing Messages Show ChatGPT Encouraging a Murder, Lawsuit Alleges

A lawsuit against OpenAI reveals the chilling ChatGPT messages that drove a middle aged man to kill his 83-year-old mother.

trib.al

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 9d

I know that this is for fun & I am yet to listen to the podcast, but it still raises an interesting point. Imho, whenever we (=scholars dealing w philosophy outside of NA-EU) are asked to summarise a whole field within a few minutes episode we should start by warning the audience abt its immensity

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

What could go wrong?

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

(correction in the alt-text: Read "Harvard" instead of "the Hamilton school")

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

Short and non-polemical Q: is Hankins implying that "civilisation" is = "Western civilisation", so that teaching world history *necessarily* means creating uncivilised students? Pls notice that I am not claiming that this cannot happen, I'm wondering whether acc to him it *happens necessarily*

Extract from Hankins' article "Why I'm leaving Harvard" where he complains that the Hamilton school is no longer teaching Western civilisation but rather global history and that this produces "serious harm to young Americans" who "become uncivilised"

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

exactly! We need to start each class telling them the immensity of what is left out of them!

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

Some people have been fed a diet of extreme diversity within the Euro-American canon and nearly no diversity elsewhere. It is also convenient because it reinforces existent hiring policies.

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

They clearly think that by "love-bombing" hundreds of professors they will get at least a few positive answers. I would recommend tailoring their emails and only writing to the profs they are really interested in working with.
(I get many of them too).

elisa freschi @elisafreschi.bsky.social · 12d

Inspired by a recent interaction on bluesky:
elisafreschi.com/2025/12/29/s...
#GlobalPhilosophy #Philosophy #philsky

So, you think that Western thought is more diverse and interesting than “non-Western thought”?

So, you think that Western thought is more diverse and interesting than “non-Western thought”? I have a non-polemical question: What did you read within what you call “non-Western thought”? If the lis...

elisafreschi.com

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