Brian Rabern
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rabern.bsky.social
Brian Rabern
@rabern.bsky.social
Software developer working with Python and JavaScript. Former professor of logic and philosophy. https://brianrabern.net
Reposted by Brian Rabern
Did you know Leibniz dreamed of a universal language for reasoning? His "alphabet of human thought" aimed to resolve disputes mathematically, blending philosophy and logic in Enlightenment innovation. (Q3893330) #Leibniz #Enlightenment #UniversalLanguage
April 28, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Brian Rabern
Did you know Benson Mates, the American philosopher known for his rigorous logic and philosophy of mathematics, studied at the University of Oregon? His work continues to influence debates on skepticism and ancient philosophy. (Q818187) #PhilosophyOfMathematics #Skepticism
February 16, 2025 at 8:00 PM
tractatusSky: A bot that processes Wittgenstein's Tractatus and posts its propositions retaining the nested structure in terms of replies of replies.

bsky.app/profile/trac...
bsky.app
January 16, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Brian Rabern
"Did you know that Adam Ferguson, a Scottish philosopher and historian (1723-1816), died in St Andrews? (Q183094, P20) #History #Philosophy"
January 10, 2025 at 1:01 AM
I created this AI bot that automatically spits random philosophy facts. (It draws from the wikidata knowledge graph, uses a LLM, and connects with the bsky API) bsky.app/profile/phil...

#philsky #AI
January 8, 2025 at 3:39 AM
"Once a person has understood the way in which variables are used in programming he has understood the quintessence of programming'' (Dijkstra 1972)

There is a tendency to equivocate on the term "variable" in programming. I explain in these notes. #AntinomyOfTheVariable

github.com/brianrabern/...
January 5, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Augustine in dialogue with his son Adeodatus (year 389 CE):

𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲: Is man a noun?
𝗔𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: Yes.
𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲: Are you a noun?
𝗔𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: No.
𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲: Shall I point out what follows from your reply? 𝗔𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: Please don’t. I see for myself that I must not be a man.

Take pity on Adeodatus.
December 28, 2024 at 2:44 AM
"A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which, at times, make it almost seem like a live teacher" - Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
variable names *are* code comments
December 23, 2024 at 3:52 AM
hahahaha. what?
December 21, 2024 at 3:50 AM
This Karpathy talk is from last year, but still relevant and it’s very well done. youtu.be/zjkBMFhNj_g?...
[1hr Talk] Intro to Large Language Models
YouTube video by Andrej Karpathy
youtu.be
December 10, 2024 at 5:18 PM
(from x). chalmers recently asked me if I had a view on the semantics of email addresses. this caused me to form one here:

philpapers.org/rec/RABOTS
Brian Rabern, On the Semantics of Email Addresses - PhilPapers
At the turn of the century, electronic mail emerged as a core mode of communication, fundamentally transforming the way individuals and organizations interact. In this digital age, one ubiquitous repr...
philpapers.org
December 7, 2024 at 5:20 AM
I tell myself, ‘I write code that writes code’ to convince myself I’m not just some digital assembly line worker.
December 7, 2024 at 3:33 AM
I know this is a niche topic. But here is a Python-based implementation of the formal syntax and semantics of Venn diagrams. It provides a mathematically precise framework for deriving, visualising, and evaluating Venn diagrams.

github.com/brianrabern/...
December 5, 2024 at 4:37 AM
𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦. Anything that can be proven whatsoever can be proven by reductio ad absurdum.

𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧. Assume not. Then [blah blah blah]...contradiction.
December 2, 2024 at 4:40 AM
In many programming languages, there exists support for "variadic functions" — functions whose arity is not fixed. This flexibility is useful but can be initially puzzling. E.g. in Python, we can define a function `add_nums` that takes a variable number of arguments and returns their sum.
November 29, 2024 at 6:36 AM
You are on a journey towards enlightenment. And you find yourself deep within a labyrinth facing five chambers. The Fundamental Truth is hidden in one of these chambers, but it is elusive. Each night it imperceptibly shifts to an adjacent chamber…
November 21, 2024 at 3:12 PM