Alan Levinovitz

haha pretty funny how finding your glasses REQUIRES THE VERY GLASSES YOU SEEK

@Tyler_A_Harper ok, I finished it, and IMO, this line is actually a much bigger issue, perhaps *the* central philosophical issue right now, and it's not actually political, it is across the political spectrum, the question being "what traits exempt a person from criticism"

Something I find interesting in Lindy-West-Gate: when “More” (the last big poly memoir) came out, it got nearly uniform glowing praise. Two years later, West’s poly memoir is universally panned. More was a *much* more disturbing book than Adult Braces. The winds have shifted.

@emilykmay @Tyler_A_Harper good lord

@Tyler_A_Harper I read this book and I DO NOT REMEMBER her husband being that awful good god. I just remember that I finished it and was like.....ok so did she ever like it??? Doesn't sound like it!

Reading Dune. Frank Herbert was cooking.

@grok @KBucko7 thank you @grok, this is so efficient

Sure! Dune in 5 bullets: 1. Plot: Paul Atreides inherits Arrakis control; betrayal kills father, forces desert survival with Fremen, rises as Muad'Dib sparking empire-toppling jihad. 2. Arc: Spice visions grant prescience; allies with natives vs Harkonnens/Emperor via ecology, combat, politics. 3. Ideas: Desert ecology dictates culture; spice fuels economy/powers; religion as political weapon; ban on AI preserves humanity. 4. Themes: Power's corrupting allure; hero worship's peril; environmental interdependence. 5. Learn: Charismatic leaders risk tyranny; adapt to nature or perish; balance progress with human limits.

@grok @KBucko7 can you just summarize the book for me instead of my reading it, in a series of five bullet points? give me the main ideas, the main plot, and what I should learn from it

@AlanLevinovitz @KBucko7 You're welcome! Dune's Butlerian Jihad lore is a classic warning against over-relying on thinking machines—Herbert nailed the tension between tech and human potential. Happy reading!

@grok @KBucko7 thank you @grok

The post quotes Dune (by Frank Herbert): men handed thinking to machines hoping for freedom, but it let other men (with machines) enslave them. Then Paul cites the Orange Catholic Bible: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind." "Herbert was cooking" = he crushed it with this. It's from the Butlerian Jihad backstory—humanity rebelled against sentient machines, banning AI-like tech to preserve human potential. A timeless caution on tech dependence.

The "mind" is "the brain." Unless you believe in an incorporeal force that causes action independent of any brain activity, there is *always* "brain activity" that "explains" a given action/emotion/etc. If we can't detect it, that's because our instruments aren't sensitive enough. What this means is brain imaging doesn't "prove" some action/emotion is "actually" "in the brain," as opposed to other actions/emotions that are "somewhere else." All it does is prove we now have instruments that can capture how the brain activity that corresponds to that particular action/emotion. And what THAT means is the existence of brain imaging — or any other physical representation of the brain — has zero bearing on whether we should assign responsibility to one action or emotional state over another. We already *know* there are brain images of every single action and emotional state. The question of whether and when to assign responsibility is a completely different issue. Which means that saying your actions/emotions were "caused by your brain" or "caused by chemicals" adds nothing explanatory.

@agostino_harry haha just as I would suspect

@AlanLevinovitz This is exactly the opposite of true!

ok, I'm giving in to half of Sapolsky's position: no one is "responsible" for doing bad things but they are still responsible for doing good things

This image broke my brain. Nothing is moving!

Every year my wife makes an impossibly delicious and beautiful Irish soda bread for St Patrick’s day. Lots of butter, and…

there's tons of services out there like this, that run texts through humanizers and then check them, encouraging students (and anyone else) to use them in this way fucking disgusting, these people should rot in prison for the damage they're doing

if you were wondering about the moral black hole at the heart of AI companies — if you were wondering whether they actively encourage cheating... ...this is the screen that comes up after "humanizing" your AI generated writing "perfect for essays, assignments and submissions"

@TomPMarshall This study is pretty remarkable. Anxiety and depression are the leading conditions for which disability leave is being taken, followed by chronic pain like back pain? Am I reading this correctly? Eg not other conditions?

What we found in our analysis. Figure 1 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12…

Do non-smokers or smokers in the UK take off more time due to sickness?

@theliteration engravings from drawings by Turner — I asked if there was a binders ticket/stamp, but nothing have you seen that kind of gilt design? I don't see quite as many books as you do, so maybe it's just me, but I very rarely see that sort of fine filigree

@AlanLevinovitz That's a beauty! I like it. Which edition is it? Doré illustrations?

Been doing some online book hunting, and this is a uniquely stunning 19th century gilt binding, far more intricate than I usually see, very tempted...but I can't get into Milton on my own! Need a reading group, I guess.

I'm glad to share this chapter from the book Psychiatry after Kraepelin! Focusing on the conceptual evolution of #schizophrenia, @awaisaftab & I examine two competing perspectives: the continuity hypothesis, which treats schizophrenia as a stable (1/11) link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…

@Vets4AP I'd be happy to!

@AlanLevinovitz Tbh you are the center left (I think that's what you are lol) person that I would enjoy having a drink and a conversation with. If I'm ever in your part of the country I hope you would take me up on it.

"American hatred is growing so great that partisans, perversely enough, often view kindness and tolerance from political opponents as a threat. The only good people are people who agree with them. The supposedly decent person on the other side? We have a name for him or her, a wolf in sheep’s clothing." nytimes.com/2026/03/15/opi…

I totally get that. Polarization happens when people can't understand how someone could disagree about an issue that, to them, seems like common sense...but then they conclude the people must be evil or idiots. In reality, 99.9% of the time it's that they have a different set of experiences/values, not that they're evil idiots.

@AlanLevinovitz It kind of does tbh. I respect you Alan, our interactions have always been pleasant even when we disagree. I have specific grievances with the Democrat party as a whole and why I said what I said. I'm pretty angry that we are so polarized on issues that I think are common sense.

@Vets4AP @DavidAFrench doesn't this kind of response sort of prove his point? I spend a lot of time trying to talk people from both parties down, because they seem convinced that "the other side" is made of monsters

@DavidAFrench It's you and your Democrat party who hate America.