David Spurrett
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doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett
@doctorspurt.bsky.social
2K followers 1.4K following 750 posts

Philosopher, working on evolution of mechanisms of action selection, and their variously situated subversion. https://davidspurrett.com/

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doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · Oct 20
Hello new followers. I'm a philosopher of cognitive science working on a book called 'Engines of Hostility'. Recent papers that inform the book are:
(1) "Hostile Scaffolding" (Timms & Spurrett)
(2) "Fashioning Affordances" (Spurrett & Brancazio)
(3) "On Hostile and Oppressive Affective Technology."

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 1d
I have sometimes recommended accept without revisions as a reviewer. I can't remember any as author...

Reposted by Ian Hall, Alan Richardson, Aurélien Mondon , and 2 more

lastpositivist.bsky.social
lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1d
Again it is something that people in previous eras have commented on but I still find it just astonishing to witness in my own: fascism is somehow the natural ideology of loser men, just all of our most pathetic and contemptible instincts rendered into a worldview.

Reposted by Ian Hall, David Spurrett

olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 1d
imagine letting these people run anything more consequential than a lemonade stand

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Elon Musk admits cheating at video games, chat transcript appears to show
Video posted by top gamer shows what he says is X conversation in which billionaire admits ‘account boosting’
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, John Fasullo, Jonathan M. Gilligan , and 4 more

petergleick.bsky.social
Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 1d
Senator Susan Collins killed the amendment to protect the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) -- perhaps the world's premier research center for work on #weather, #climate, models, and remote sensing. Remember that.

Reposted by David Spurrett

portlandken.bsky.social
Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 3d
ICE officers are publicly stating that Renee Good was killed not because an officer was threatened but because they were made at her for not instantly following every order issued.

The new ICE threat to protestors is:

"Have you not learned? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch."
“We Killed That Lesbian B*tch”: ICE Uses Renee Good’s Death as Threat
Protesters are recounting federal agents using Good’s death to warn them off.
newrepublic.com

Reposted by David Spurrett

nrdc.org
NRDC @nrdc.org · 4d
Trump’s EPA just announced they are no longer going to factor in the economic benefit of saving lives when setting air pollution standards—only the cost to industry. This goes directly against their own mandate to protect public health.
E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution
www.nytimes.com

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 5d
Good to hear it. 👏

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Michael A. Clemens, Brian Weatherson , and 2 more

thebjps.bsky.social
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science @thebjps.bsky.social · 5d
We're no longer posting on twitter. Since we wanted to ensure our authors continue to receive as much coverage as possible for their work, we can now also be found on linkedin:
www.linkedin.com/company/brit...
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | LinkedIn
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | 4 followers on LinkedIn. Journal of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, published by University of Chicago Press | Founded in 1950, the B...
www.linkedin.com

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 5d
No, I don't. (Same goes for "Get Out", etc.) But they may be trying to optimise something other than rigor.

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 5d
Full disclosure - I'm pretty sure I laughed a lot more than anyone else in the cinema at "One Battle After Another".

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 5d
It was regularly hilarious, but also often scary and thrilling. The category itself is an oddity. ("Get Out" was nominated in the same category, BTW. Looking at a list, I see that "The Apartment" won it in 1960, and "The Graduate" in '67. All had humour, none 'merely' comedy...)

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 6d
This is why philosophers get paid so much.

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 7d
Thank you - I wasn't aware of that!

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 7d
Those conversations were so useful to me too! You'll hopefully see some of the impact of them in the discussion of interests in my final chapter.

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
I agree.

Reposted by Steve Peers, Beatriz Gallardo Paúls, Henrik Skaug Sætra , and 3 more

ec.europa.eu
European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 8d
"We are very well aware of the fact that X for Grok is now offering a spicy mode showing explicit sexual content.

This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting.

I can confirm we are very seriously looking into this matter."

— Spokesperson @thomasregnier.ec.europa.eu

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
I'm no expert but my understanding is his political thought is largely in other texts. He was political editor of 'Les Temps Modernes' for c7 years, regular political essays, and the books 'Humanism and Terror' and 'Adventures of the Dialectic'. (He was just the first example that came to mind.)

Reposted by David Spurrett

zacklabe.com
Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 8d
Modeled reconstruction of December #Arctic sea ice volume since the year 1901 - comparison between PIOMAS-20C and PIOMAS data sets now updated through 2025 (new record low)...

Data information available at doi.org/10.1175/JCLI...
Line graph time series for Arctic sea ice volume in every December from 1901 through 2025. Two datasets are compared between PIOMAS-20C (a blue line) and PIOMAS v2.1 (a dashed red line). There is large interannual variability, but a long-term decreasing trend since 1990.

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
I'm in no way disagreeing with the (absolutely correct) point that switching to selling harassment, hate and child porn is not an improvement, but a move to monetize. (Or the one made elsewhere that harassing women out of public forums is a feature not a bug.)

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
I'm guessing part of the plan is to be able to throw individual subscribers under the bus on a case by case basis if there are charges and lawsuits. (Hence the move to a 'users own their prompts and the outputs responding to them' TOS.) If I'm right, then maybe platform-premium user conflict looms?

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
e.g. Merleau-Ponty was seriously politically engaged, and (inter alia) argued phenomenologically against authoritarianism. But the textbook Merleau-Ponty of the 4E canon is often curiously apolitical. I like the idea that translational work enlarges discussion by including more colleagues. /6-fin

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
Not only that, it is sometimes *ahead* of the canon it was outside. Liao and Brinner describe the 'translational' work as "expressing insights from one in the language
familiar to the other." This can include being less procrustean about important founding texts and thinkers. /5

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
feminists on the effects of restrictive clothing, and asked myself something like 'how does this related to embodied cognitive science' as though some further step was needed. Then I switched to realising/accepting that the work (already) WAS embodied cogsci, just outside the canon. /4

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
... sense that it expresses insights from people centrally concerned with cognition, yet outside cogsci (notably feminists, critical race theorists, disability theorists...). I wrestled with this myself for a while, often with the question posed in an unhelpful way. For example, I read early ... /3

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
Worth reading for pros and curious outsiders/adjacents. It was fun discussing an early version at the Scaffolding Bad Working Group last year, and cool to see the text. I like the whole paper, but single out for now the insight that (most?) Critical 4E CogSci is 'translational' in the ... /2

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Brian Weatherson

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
"Critical 4E Cognitive Science" by @liao.shen-yi.org and Zoe Brinner is forthcoming in 'Philosophy Compass' and up as a preprint at Phil Archive. This is a *really* useful and lucid overview of recent work on downsides/bad-sides of 4E cognition. /1
philpapers.org/rec/LIACEC-2
Shen-yi Liao & Zoe Brinner, Critical 4E Cognitive Science - PhilPapers
According to 4E cognitive science, our cognitive capacities depend on, and have been transformed by, the environments we have made. Most early works of 4E cognitive science tend to focus on ...
philpapers.org

Reposted by Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Colin Murray , and 7 more

eliothiggins.bsky.social
Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 8d
Now only paying subscribers can make violent non-consenual sexual imagery of women and children -
Grok turns off image generator for most users after outcry over sexualised AI imagery www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Grok turns off image generator for most users after outcry over sexualised AI imagery
X to limit editing function to paying subscribers after platform threatened with fines and regulatory action
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by David Spurrett

ebharrington.bsky.social
Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 8d
This use of Grok isn't personal perversion but political terrorism: it's designed to silence women, make us retreat from public life.

Exemplified by the digital desecration of the body of Renee Good: someone prompted Grok to deepfake a bikini on her corpse.

"You're next" is the message to women.
Excerpt from "Mother Jones" magazine article reading: "Grok, the AI chatbot launched by Elon Musk after his takeover of X, unhesitatingly fulfilled a user’s request on Wednesday to generate an image of Renee Nicole Good in a bikini—the woman who was shot and killed by an ICE agent that morning in Minneapolis, as noted by CNN correspondent Hadas Gold and confirmed by the chatbot itself. “I just saw someone request Grok on X put the image of the woman shot by ICE in MN, slumped over in her car, in a bikini. It complied,” Gold wrote on the social media platform on Thursday. “This is where we’re at.”

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 8d
Update: Sent the letter in this morning. 20+ colleagues signed. (As far as I can tell, that is basically everyone who opened the email, plus a few more who got it forwarded.)

Reposted by Kimberly A. Prather, Juan Cole, Valerie Mueller , and 8 more

elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 8d
Amanda Gorman wrote this poem for Renee Good and that’s it for me tonight.
Post from Amanda Gorman’s Instagram that says amandascgorman Minneapolis, Minnesota For Renee Nicole Good Killed by ICE. on January 7, 2026 by Amanda Gorman They say she is no more, That there her absence roars, Blood-blown like a rose. Iced wheels flinched & froze. Now, bare riot of candles, Dark fury of flowers, Pure howling of hymns. If for us she arose, Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief, Crouches our power, The howl where we begin, Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater Of the worst of what we've been. Change is only possible, & all the greater, When the labour & bitter anger of our neighbors Is moved by the love * better angels of our nature.