Joanna Bryson
@j2bryson.bsky.social
Professor of Ethics & Technology @ Hertie School, Berlin. Interests: Artificial & Natural Intelligence; Behavioural Ecology; Cooperation; Digital Governance. Social media policy: https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2024/10/guidance-to-my-social-media.html
Why pardon him anyway? Is there even a conspiracy theory on this?
November 29, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Why pardon him anyway? Is there even a conspiracy theory on this?
Reposted by Joanna Bryson
Here's a note I sent to our members about what we did with their money, and why we expect the Onion to outgrow the Washington Post.
We keep doing weird, hard shit — taunting ICE, yelling at Congress for not taunting ICE, buying bad websites — when nobody else does.
Our members keep getting papers.
We keep doing weird, hard shit — taunting ICE, yelling at Congress for not taunting ICE, buying bad websites — when nobody else does.
Our members keep getting papers.
November 28, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Here's a note I sent to our members about what we did with their money, and why we expect the Onion to outgrow the Washington Post.
We keep doing weird, hard shit — taunting ICE, yelling at Congress for not taunting ICE, buying bad websites — when nobody else does.
Our members keep getting papers.
We keep doing weird, hard shit — taunting ICE, yelling at Congress for not taunting ICE, buying bad websites — when nobody else does.
Our members keep getting papers.
What I saw reminded me more of my sole trip so far to IL—Jerusalem in ~2015. An entirely evident low-grade war to push out history—& in IL a people. Or 1992 St Petersburg, where museums were rapidly being updated to reflect Russian Orthodoxy instead of communism’s atheism, using US evangelical $$.
November 29, 2025 at 3:18 AM
What I saw reminded me more of my sole trip so far to IL—Jerusalem in ~2015. An entirely evident low-grade war to push out history—& in IL a people. Or 1992 St Petersburg, where museums were rapidly being updated to reflect Russian Orthodoxy instead of communism’s atheism, using US evangelical $$.
Dangerous but common greed is why we pay for government — to protect ourselves from practices we know are harmful. But China’s government is trying to use this tragedy to stamp out a recognisable, safe and sustainable indicator that #hongkong holds of their shared history. The bamboo didn’t burn.
November 29, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Dangerous but common greed is why we pay for government — to protect ourselves from practices we know are harmful. But China’s government is trying to use this tragedy to stamp out a recognisable, safe and sustainable indicator that #hongkong holds of their shared history. The bamboo didn’t burn.
A lot of animals are conscious if you mean "have explicit memory of the type humans describe as conscious." Only humans are known to have language, which is also interesting but I think likely getting understood and could be replicated here or elsewhere joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-t...
My theory of the origins of human uniqueness
artificial and natural intelligence, including politics, policy, ethics and security
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:22 PM
A lot of animals are conscious if you mean "have explicit memory of the type humans describe as conscious." Only humans are known to have language, which is also interesting but I think likely getting understood and could be replicated here or elsewhere joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-t...
Finally reading that was literally on my todo list for 20 November (flight to Hong Kong) but I wound up writing all three talks right up to the last minute because so many other things happened the previous week... some day soon I'll read it!
November 28, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Finally reading that was literally on my todo list for 20 November (flight to Hong Kong) but I wound up writing all three talks right up to the last minute because so many other things happened the previous week... some day soon I'll read it!
nope, never seen one in the wild, at least not since a small child being pointed it out by my mother.
November 28, 2025 at 1:35 PM
nope, never seen one in the wild, at least not since a small child being pointed it out by my mother.
We're super resistant to demystifying our lives, which this book is reminding me what a problem that is even among a lot of the super smart and powerful. We can have the answers in front of our faces, and yet refuse to see. bsky.app/profile/j2br...
How did I not know this is where #transhumanism as a term came from? I’m sure I’m showing that I’m not reading my friends enough.
![the galaxy.
The core idea stems back to the 1940s and 1960s when an
tionises,
evolutionary biologist named Julian Huxley joined and ran the British Eugenics Society. The eugenics movement proposed that
mues posthuman hit in their lifet
humans should improve themselves through selective breeding,
1Is developmen
and it flourished in British universities and among the countrys intellectual and upper classes. Huxley himself came from an aris-
mandor cha
gin out of col
tocratic family (his brother Aldous wrote Brave New World), and he believed society's upper crust was genetically superior.
Lower-class people needed to be weeded out like a bad crop and subjected to forced sterilization. "[They] are reproducing too
hoped as
fast," Huxley wrote.
in that 1
When the Nazis latched on to the eugenics movement, Hux-
mentur
ley decided it needed a rebrand. He coined a new term, trans-humanism, in an essay saying that alongside proper breeding, humanity could also "transcend itself" through science and technology.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tkbweudpy6tvzjqdiza4z3p5/bafkreiaqj6n7hpyg33rx33lywwpseemrl7bjzpsskaagbxrdj3zbizsub4@jpeg)
November 28, 2025 at 1:33 PM
We're super resistant to demystifying our lives, which this book is reminding me what a problem that is even among a lot of the super smart and powerful. We can have the answers in front of our faces, and yet refuse to see. bsky.app/profile/j2br...
By biochemists? And consciousness (life choosing actions through abstraction it can de/re-reference for communication and agile planning) isn't THAT unlikely after that. Assuming we can get over our excitement about our own phenomenology, which again makes sense in light of evolution.
November 28, 2025 at 1:30 PM
By biochemists? And consciousness (life choosing actions through abstraction it can de/re-reference for communication and agile planning) isn't THAT unlikely after that. Assuming we can get over our excitement about our own phenomenology, which again makes sense in light of evolution.
November 28, 2025 at 10:37 AM
That page doesn’t mention eugenics? @rebeccasear.bsky.social is it true that the first head of UNESCO was a eugenicist who openly rebranded post Hitler?
November 28, 2025 at 8:10 AM
That page doesn’t mention eugenics? @rebeccasear.bsky.social is it true that the first head of UNESCO was a eugenicist who openly rebranded post Hitler?
It wouldn’t be the only oversimplification in the book, but the book doesn’t seem terrible.
November 28, 2025 at 6:45 AM
It wouldn’t be the only oversimplification in the book, but the book doesn’t seem terrible.
Reposted by Joanna Bryson
Hmmm well... Some disagree tbh
November 28, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Hmmm well... Some disagree tbh