Jonathan Birch

@birchlse.bsky.social

6K followers 310 following 720 posts

Professor, LSE. Philosophy of science, animal consciousness, animal ethics. Director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience.

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Jonathan Birch is a British philosopher and professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work addresses the philosophy of biology and behavioural sciences, especially questions concerning sentience, bioethics, animal welfare, and the evolution of social behaviour and social norms. .. more

Neuroscience 26%

Psychology 15%

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · Mar 25

An emotional day - I can announce I'll be the first director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE, supported by a £4m grant from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Our mission: to develop better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (1/2)
www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-...

LSE announces new centre to study animal sentience

The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE will develop new approaches to studying the feelings of other animals scientifically.

www.lse.ac.uk

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 18h

Rachel Reeves has done technocracy so badly it will be used as a case study in how not to manage uncertainty. Yes, forecast long-term consequences of choices. But don't set crude "iron rules" that make govt spending absurdly sensitive to small fluctuations in those long-term forecasts.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

David Bather Woods @davidbatherwoods.bsky.social · 18h

Lovely review of my new book @engelsbergideas.bsky.social

Schopenhauer's philosophy of hope

A new biography shows how Schopenhauer’s philosophy of universal suffering might offer surprising grounds for hope.

engelsbergideas.com

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 21h

Is there any correlation with gender?

Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell , and 70 more Jonathan Portes, Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell, Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, David M. Farrell, Will Jennings, Stefan Rahmstorf, David N. Thomas, Gavin A. Schmidt, Patrick A. Jansen, John Horgan, Steve Peers, Andrew Scott, Colin Murray, Mark D. White, Huw Price, Rosemary A. Joyce, Dirk Pilat, Charles West, Martijn W. Hesselink, Chris Hanretty, Simon Wren‐Lewis, Alison Phipps, Mary Corcoran, Anand Menon, Michelle Everson, Jo Barraket, Rebecca Tushnet, Ben Worthy, David R. Miller, Robert Wolfe, Gary D. Rawnsley, Aileen McHarg, Jacob T. Levy, Simon Glendinning, Scott A. Imberman, Julie Cupples, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Stephen Ryan, Samantha Brennan, Jonathan Birch, Anne Norton, Hubert Zimmermann, Leo McCann, Manuel Puppis, Graeme Warren, David Bartram, Lisa Diedrich, Brian Doucet, Ann Bartow, Stuart White, Pauline Stafford, Clayton Littlejohn, Rense Corten, Greg Linden, Jack Stilgoe, Lukas Graf, Jon Dean, Klaus Oschema, Christina Pagel, Daxton R. Stewart, Rune Møller Stahl, Olivier Mannoni, Camille Lefebvre, Aviel Roshwald, Colin Talbot, Tarik Abou‐Chadi, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Jeroen Van Bouwel, David Spurrett, François Guesnet, Speranţa Dumitru

Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 1d

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 1d

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d

There was a 50yr window in which it made economic sense to teach coding in schools and the British education system missed all of it.

Reposted by Michael Barnett, Brian A. Nosek, David McKenzie , and 7 more Michael Barnett, Brian A. Nosek, David McKenzie, Stefano DellaVigna, Caroline Krafft, Samuel Bentolila, Jonathan Birch, Simon Wiederhold, Georg Weizsäcker, Tom Louwerse

Eva Vivalt @evavivalt.bsky.social · 1d

🚨 New working paper!

How well do people predict the results of studies?

@sdellavi.bsky.social and I leverage data from the first 100 studies to have been posted on the SSPP, containing 1,482 key questions, on which over 50,000 forecasts were placed. Some surprising results below.... 🧵👇

Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 1d

Still reeling from the Stanford report on Brexit. Reduced GDP by up to 8% and investment by as much as 18%. The UK Treasury would have £40 billion more each year if Britain had remained in the EU. Devastating self-immolation.

The Economic Impact of Brexit

Other

siepr.stanford.edu

Reposted by Holger Nehring, Jonathan Birch, Catriona Seth

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2d

'Ahead of the autumn budget on 26 November, Universities UK (UUK) has calculated that funding per student for teaching in 2025-26 is at 64 per cent of the level it was in 2015-16.' 1/3

University teaching income ‘£6.4 billon less’ than 10 years ago

UUK says shortfall in teaching money is ‘baked in’ to higher education funding system as institutions brace for new tax in upcoming budget

www.timeshighereducation.com

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Arvid Ågren @arvidagren.bsky.social · 2d

How to make sense of a disagreement like that between Dawkins and Noble?

Here, I think @birchlse.bsky.social comment of sub-field competition (originally made in a different context) is helpful

(9/n)

Screenshot reading:

“My suspicion is that ‘defining the organism’ is often a means by which biologists hope to extend the explanatory reach of their subfield. In other words, it’s a subtle attempt to assert that one’s subfield occupies a special, privileged, fundamental position in relation to the rest of biology. If the organism is defined in terms of evolutionary theory, then other biologists cannot afford to be ignorant of evolutionary theory (cf. Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype, 1982). Likewise, if the organism is defined in terms of physiology, then other biologists cannot afford to ignore physiology (cf. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism, 2000) … and so on.”

Reposted by Steve Peers, Jonathan Birch

Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 3d

A grim story

The life and limbo of a UK asylum seeker: one man’s harrowing 17-year wait for leave to remain

Ussu fled imprisonment and torture, only to find himself treated like a liar and outcast in the UK. Here’s how he survived homelessness and horrific injury in almost two decades without a decision

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 3d

I think Claude Code has achieved AGI

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Chris Grumpy & Getting Grumpier @fusewiretheloud.bsky.social · 3d

There’s been a devastating loss of insects across the uk since 1960! Can remember long car journeys in the 60s & 70s resulting in the windscreen of the family car being covered in insect strikes (splats), but the same journey nowadays, nothing! Not a single insect! No insects, no birds! No birds…

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 3d

Zelenskyy talks of Ukraine's dignity - but what's left of Britain's dignity if we spend 3 years pledging "unwavering support" in countless photo ops and then waver the moment Trump says "waver"?

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 4d

Good to see some people are keeping the old ways alive!

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 4d

The major stock photo libraries are now packed with AI frauds, all labelled as "not AI". Gullible staffers at news agencies pay for use of the images.