I've been reading a bunch of academic philosophy papers (I'm thinking about both the relationship between education/learning and games, and ethics for software and design) and I've realized that one of the basic moves in philosophy is basically a version control bisect.

A VCS bisect -- "git bisect" and its ilk -- starts with two commits, one with a bug or behavior, another without, and works out which commit between those introduced the bug.

In philosophy, one of the key things you do is interrogate and sharpen your theory or understanding or belief. A typical example is a kind of classification: let's say you're thinking of some topic in ethics, and with your current understanding, you feel quite certain that Thing A is ethical, but Thing B is not.

How good is this particular theory of ethics? Where are its boundaries? How consistent, insightful is it? For philosophers (as I understand), you start with the above things A and B, and find a new example that is somehow between them for which you are uncertain whether it's ethical or not. You carefully think about your new example in the context of this particular theory or framework, and in doing so you learn more about how that theory works.

That's basically a bisect, with the notion of the first commit to introduce a bug replaced with then notion of a situation that productively exercises your theory. Programmers want to know when the bug appeared so they can improve their code; philosophers want an example so they can improve their understanding of their theory.

I don't claim this is any kind of brilliant insight, I'm just pleased to see how "doing philosophy" is so much like software development.

#philosophy #programming #showerthought

#ShowerThought of the day: Apart from the obvious appeal to business of doing more with fewer/cheaper staff, I suspect #AI / #VibeCoding is popular with management as it turns coding into much more of a managerial task - supervising and reviewing the process rather than doing the creation. So they¹ like it because it turns your job into a job *they* are good at.

Related, the technical people who I see getting on well with such things seem to regard it as a management rather than creative process - using it for review of their code and/or giving smaller tasks as if to a junior.

¹On here, I assume any audience is mostly the coders.

Another #showerthought -- long shower, today 😉

In the UK, many government departments are named "HM something-or-other"; that is, "His Majesty's". For example, HMRC = His Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

When I was a kid -- yes, I was a strange child -- and it was "_Her_ Majesty's", it occurred to me that it was a remarkable coincidence that the third person genitive pronouns both start with an "H" in English. Think of the tax-savings from the signage not needing to change with the gender of the monarch!

Sweet summer child.

Nowadays, think of the Daily Mail headlines when we get our first non-binary monarch:

"FROM HMRC TO TMRC: The one-letter woke change that will cost EVERY family £847"

I hope I live to see the day!

Here's a #showerthought conspiracy theory for you 🙊

The closure of the #StraitOfHormuz was actually the intended consequence of the war with Iran. The US buddied up with Israel to use regime change and denuclearisation as a pretext for its actual objective of causing a serious energy supply problem in Asia and thus weakening their economies...particularly China. The global effect was either seen as a reasonable trade-off, or simply not cared about (given this came as something of a surprise to Western heads of states).

From what I've read, the closure of the strait has been wargamed extensively -- and it was even attempted before by Iran in the '80s -- so that was inevitable. The gamble, I suppose, was whether Asian countries' relationships with Russia is good enough for them to pivot to Russia as an energy supplier. Given the continued furore reported in the press, perhaps that gamble paid off.

Just to be clear: this is a thought. I have no evidence for this whatsoever and my knowledge of geopolitics and energy markets is pretty limited! (I don't approve, either, if it turns out to be true.) Moreover, I couldn't for a second "credit" -- if that's the right word -- Trump for such a plan...but I don't underestimate US military strategists in general.

The not so famous Mug of war, where two contenders fight for the last mug full of coffee.

#ShowerThought