David Thorstad (@DavidThorstad) header
David Thorstad (@DavidThorstad) profile picture

Philosopher (Vanderbilt). I like bounded rationality, inquiry, and dogs. Seriously, DM me your dogs.

Oxford, UK
Joined October 2018
Today's the day! Inquiry under bounds is out (open access) from OUP: academic.oup.com/book/57345
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David Thorstad retweeted
Announcing the Call for Papers for Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing! Rapid AI progress is raising *so many* philosophical questions; but philosophers aren't as involved in the conversation as they should be, for many different reasons. One is that, aside from some work in logic and philosophy of mind, philosophy of AI and computing has often sat on the margins of the discipline. One reason for *that* is that so many philosophers working on AI have had to do so basically on their own, figuring things out for themselves as they go along, without a real community around them. OSPAIC is going to help fix this! We're going to have an annual conference and volume. The conference (in DC! where much of the future of AI will be decided) is especially important as we think about the nature of intellectual life in a world where AI systems can one-shot a superficially-plausible philosophy paper. OSPAIC sees philosophical progress as being about more than just the accumulation of true claims. The conference is a big part of our vision for how we contribute to philosophical progress. And our aim is also to help philosophers be part of the broader public conversation! To that end we're also going to be launching, soon, a subcode on arXiv for philosophical foundations of AI (cs.pfai), and encouraging everyone who submits to OSPAIC to also upload their draft to arXiv (at present, use keyword PFAI). We're also partnering with @cosmos_inst, who will be sponsoring an annual prize for the best paper on philosophy and AI, as well as helping fund the first round of the conference and Open Access publication for the volume. And with Cosmos we'll be highlighting some of the most interesting submissions to cs.pfai as they come in. I'm the executive editor; Jeff Howard (UCL) and Rachael Sterken (University of Hong Kong) are associate editors; Ned Howells-Whitaker (JHU and Pittsburgh) is the assistant editor. We're grateful for the support of a wonderful advisory editorial board, including brilliant philosophers and computer scientists from academia, industry, and civil society. The deadline for submissions is 11.59pm Feb 14, 2027, anywhere on earth. All details are at ospaic.org.
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David Thorstad retweeted
I've teased this before, but it's coming soon: Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing. Call for papers out in a couple of weeks. It's going to be awesome. Tell your (philosophy) friends.
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Ecological rationality can help us to improve cognitive bias benchmarks in LLMs. Now forthcoming in Proceedings of NeurIPS. philpapers.org/rec/THOCBB-2
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Just recommended accepting a paper without revisions. I was reviewer 2.
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Attentionally-limited agents may rationally neglect cost-free evidence. Now forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. philpapers.org/rec/THOAAE-12
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New symposium on my book Inquiry under Bounds at Syndicate Philosophy: syndicate.network/symposia/p…
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Pangram scores of submitted NeurIPS position papers this year: 70.5% of papers above 50%, 28.2% at 100%. Please do better people. blog.neurips.cc/2026/06/02/a…
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Framing effects are often taken as paradigmatic examples of human irrationality. In this new paper (forthcoming in Phil Imprint) I show how framing effects can be in an important sense fully rational. philpapers.org/rec/THOPRF
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Drawing on Herbert Simon's notion of procedural rationality, I show how rational processes of category-based choice, salience-driven decisionmaking, and decisionmaking in finite automaton models can produce framing effects.
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I draw on these findings to cause trouble for recent attempts to use framing effects to debunk moral intuitions. If framing effects can come from rational processes, then we shouldn't always be ashamed of moral judgment-forming processes that show framing effects.
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I'm working on a new paper explaining why Yudkowsky was right about everything.
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