Leon on Everything

The challenge of epistemology “It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future” — Yogi Berra A thief goes through the window in the middle of the night to make a grand jewelry heist. While tiptoeing inside the apartment, he sees the longcase clock with the time 1.05. He knows that the owners will be back at 1.15 AM. He decides that the safest thing for him is to exit and escape without getting the precious necklace. He can try again later. Unbeknownst to him, the clock had stopped working 12 hours ago, but at that moment, it just happened to be 1.05 AM. After the American philosopher Edmund Gettier, our thief experienced what has been dubbed a  Gettier  problem. These problems’ archetypes challenge the classical criteria for knowledge: justification, truth, and belief. In our example, the thief is justified in believing it’s 1.05 AM, and it is 1.05 AM, and he believes it. Yet he doesn’t have knowledge because the instrument he relies on is faulty. I recently ha...

  Neural Networks hallucinate a mistaken reality Our Cats “meanings just ain’t in the head” — Hillary Putnam You are driving your Tesla Model S down a desert route in the United States. There is no other car or pedestrian in sight. You decide to switch the autopilot as your focus shifts between the road and your partner seated next to you. At the same time, a Space X rocket is safely on the landing trajectory back to earth. All is good! Suddenly a tiny meteorite heading for the earth at just the right trajectory hits the rocket. It knocks it off course and damages its thrusters. Only the force of gravity and the wind resistance are in control of the rocket now. It crash-lands a few feet in front of your car. Tesla’s autopilot doesn’t swerve, and it doesn’t stop. It goes straight through killing you, your partner, and destroying the vehicle and its A.I. computer. What happened? The car hallucinated that the rocket was a plastic bag. Such a case or a similar one never occurred when t...