The Curious Engineer

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Conspicuous Cognition

conspicuouscognition.com

Writer. Academic philosopher. Writing about philosophy, psychology, evolution, politics, artificial intelligence, and more. Click to read Conspicuous Cognition, by Dan Williams, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

Essays / personalSociety / politics / economyAI / ML

’24’25’26
Posts
136 from 1 Jan 2024 to 18 Oct 2026
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weekly (44 in the last year)
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personal blog
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https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/feed

2026 36

  1. On Believing What We Want Others to Believe
  2. Steven Pinker on AI Doom and Consciousness
  3. The Crooked Timber of Humanitarians of Tinder
  4. New Podcast: Is AI Really Going To Kill Us All?
  5. Woke 1 Was Lazy
  6. Wishful Thinking Is (Mostly) A Myth - Unpaywalled
  7. GPT-6 Astra Reviews ‘The Social Roots of Delusions’
  8. Most Questions About AI Aren’t About AI
  9. Navigating the Intelligence Explosion (with Fin Moorhouse)
  10. The Social Roots of Delusions
  11. We Are Stuck With Human Nature, Not Human Ignorance
  12. Who Will Control Europe’s AI Future? (with Judith Dada)
  13. Highbrow Propaganda
  14. Can Humanity Survive Superintelligence? (with Robert Wright)
  15. How Tribes Construct Rival Realities
  16. What If Artificial Intelligence Progress Explodes? (with Benjamin Todd)
  17. The Most Important Decision For Animals in American History
  18. Academics Must Wake Up on AI (with Alexander Kustov)
  19. In Europe, There Is No Simple Immigration-Crime Story
  20. Are We Building Conscious AI Servants?
  21. "Speaking Truth to Power" Is Bad Epistemology
  22. Aliens, Superintelligence, and the Future of Science (with David Kipping)
  23. How Brexit Created Britain’s New Political Tribes
  24. Should We Care About AI Welfare? (with Robert Long)
  25. On Becoming Less Left-Wing (Part 3)
  26. Wishful Thinking Is A Myth
  27. Time To Start Panicking About AI?
  28. How AI Will Reshape Public Opinion
  29. AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth)
  30. What Kind Of Apes Are We?
  31. Why Have Academics Failed To Study Social Justice Ideology?
  32. We Are Confused, Maladapted Apes Who Need Enlightenment
  33. AI Sessions #8: Misinformation, Social Media, and Deepfakes (with Sacha Altay)
  34. The harder it is to find the truth, the easier it is to lie to ourselves
  35. AI Sessions #7: How Close is "AGI"?
  36. 2025: Review and Recommendations

2025 46

  1. Tribalism Corrupts Politics (Even When One Side Is Worse)
  2. AI Sessions #6: AI Companions and Consciousness
  3. America's epistemological crisis (reprise)
  4. AI Sessions #5: How AI Broke Education
  5. Let's Not Bring Back The Gatekeepers
  6. AI Sessions #4: The Social AI Revolution - Friendship, Romance, and the Future of Human Connection
  7. On Becoming Less Left-Wing (Part 1) (unpaywalled)
  8. AI Sessions #3: The Truth About AI and the Environment
  9. On Highbrow Misinformation
  10. Should We Blame Institutional Failures For MAGA Insanity?
  11. AI Sessions #2: Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness - A Deep Dive
  12. Superintelligence and the Decline of Human Interdependence
  13. Is Social Media Destroying Democracy—Or Giving It To Us Good And Hard?
  14. Evolutionary Psychology, Politics, and the Humanities
  15. AI Sessions #1: AI - A Normal Technology or a Superintelligent Alien Species?
  16. Against Bluesky (and Blueskyism)
  17. Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: 10-Week Syllabus & Readings
  18. Against Political Chmess
  19. Domination and Reputation Management
  20. Will AI Change Everything?
  21. The Stench of Propaganda Clings to Everything
  22. The Case Against Social Media is Weaker Than You Think
  23. Thinking Beyond the Misinformation Wars
  24. The Standpoint of the Oppressed Doesn't Lead to Truth
  25. The Decline of Legacy Media, Rise of Vodcasters, and X's Staying Power
  26. Stupidity, gullibility, and other adaptive strategies
  27. Status, class, and the crisis of expertise
  28. Criticising misinformation research doesn't make you a Trump supporter
  29. On becoming less left-wing (Part 2)
  30. Advice for bloggers
  31. Contra critical theory
  32. The puzzle of populist devotion: How alliances and propaganda explain right-wing populism
  33. People embrace beliefs that signal their traits and loyalties
  34. What if the truth about AI is more boring than we'd like?
  35. Social media isn't destroying society
  36. Misinformation isn't a contagious virus you can be inoculated against
  37. The "everyone is biased" bias
  38. Conversations about misinformation
  39. Against Bluesky
  40. On conspiracy theories of ignorance
  41. False consciousness and the dominant ideology thesis
  42. The world outside and the pictures in our heads
  43. Citizens, experts, and democracy
  44. Politics, truth, and ideology: A syllabus
  45. Is the internet worse than a brainwashing machine?
  46. One year on Substack

2024 54

  1. My favourite books this year
  2. Elite failures and populist backlash
  3. Free speech in the age of social media
  4. The deep and unavoidable roots of political bias
  5. What is misinformation, anyway?
  6. Strategic paranoia: When irrational fears serve rational ends
  7. The evolutionary roots of paranoia
  8. On becoming less left-wing (Part 1)
  9. There is no "censorship industrial complex"
  10. Reflections on conversations with Jesse Singal and Fin Moorhouse
  11. The confused crusade against online misinformation
  12. For the love of God, stop talking about "post-truth"
  13. Can experts save the public from error?
  14. Tenet Media and the limited reach and impact of Russian disinformation
  15. Political animals
  16. America's epistemological crisis
  17. Note on paid subscriptions
  18. There is no "woke mind virus"
  19. Contra critical theory
  20. Debunking Disinformation Myths, Part 3: The Prevalence and Impact of Fake News
  21. The social construction of bespoke realities
  22. Did online misinformation fuel the UK riots?
  23. Fashionable ideas
  24. Why do people believe true things?
  25. The marketplace of misleading ideas
  26. Are people too flawed, ignorant, and tribal for open societies?
  27. Six months on Substack
  28. Biden's age and the problem with the misinformation cope
  29. Thoughts on ideology
  30. Socialism, self-deception, and spontaneous order
  31. Misinformation poses a smaller threat to democracy than you might think
  32. How Dangerous is Misinformation?
  33. Cynicism for thee but not for me
  34. Strategic Altruism: The Machiavellian Roots of Human Kindness
  35. Debunking Disinformation Myths, Part 2: The Politics of Big Disinfo
  36. The misinformation wars - a reading list
  37. Rational Persuasion vs Cancel Culture
  38. Demonizing narratives
  39. The media very rarely makes things up
  40. People are persuaded by rational arguments. Is that a good thing?
  41. The marketplace of good and bad ideas
  42. In politics, the truth is not self-evident. So why do we act as if it is?
  43. Can democracy work?
  44. Debunking Disinformation Myths, Part 1: This is Not the "Disinformation Age"
  45. The Survival of the Friendliest?
  46. My five favourite academic articles from 2023
  47. Misinformation is often the symptom, not the disease
  48. Should we trust misinformation experts to decide what counts as misinformation?
  49. People embrace beliefs that signal their traits and loyalties
  50. Hawking was wrong: Philosophy is not dead, and it has kept up with modern science
  51. AI-based disinformation is probably not a major threat to democracy
  52. Misinformation and disinformation are not the top global threats over the next two years
  53. Misinformation researchers are wrong: There can't be a science of misleading content.
  54. Conspicuous cognition