David Spurrett

@doctorspurt.bsky.social

2236 Followers 1619 Following

Philosopher, working on evolution of mechanisms of action selection, and their variously situated subversion. https://davidspurrett.com/

Amy Adams in the movie "Arrival" but her hand-written sign says "GAVAGAI".
Inaccurate AI generated map of Africa with country labels in very incorrect places recently displayed at a conference by a representative of the US State Department.
The back legs and tail of a cat crawling under a bed.
The attempt to give a deceptive appearance to vessels at sea in the last war was another distinct problem having little in common with land camouflage, although the popular conception of camouflage is almost wholly derived from this attempt. It was termed “dazzle-painting.’”” The mottled patterns and colors employed were not intended to destroy the visibility of the vessel, as is commonly assumed, but only by distorting its perspective to make difficulties for the submarine commander who had to calculate its angle to the line of vision through his range-finder. Whether such piebald coloration of an object seen against a homogeneous background has the slightest effect in concealing it is at least questionable; the assumption that it “breaks up the contour’”’ has apparently never received any empirical verification. The various systems of dazzle-painting were, in the beginning at least, based on the a priort recommendations of artists (13, 291, 304).
Human cases emerge Screwworms will attack any wound in humans—they can find a wound as tiny as a tick bite as a way in. For those caught unaware, the flies will also happily lay eggs in convenient openings such as the nose, mouth, ears, eyes, and even the bum, if available.
"Mac" MacIntyre in a phone booth talking to his boss Felix Happer. It is night, and there are traces of aura in the sky.
Ronny Cammareri (a baker) stands by the oven and calls "Chrissy! Over there by the wall! Bring me the big knife!"
GIF from the 1992 movie "Unforgiven". William Munny shoots Skinny Dubois is his saloon.
The author, smiling, among the branches of a blossoming cherry tree.
Him: you're a riot Me: which one Him: haha it's an expres- Me: I am the haymarket riot of 1886 Him: Okay... Me: I'm not some potato riot
Mock "Dune 3" poster, with "Dude: Nobody fucks with the Jesus", and images of the dude and Jesus superimposed.
Mock Dune 3 poster, saying "Duderino - This is a very complicated case, Maude"
Dune 3 teaser image, but says "Dude - this aggression will not stand, man"
The Kurgan from "Highlander" raising a sword and saying 'there can be only one'.
GIF of the 'Mother' computer from the 1979 movie "Alien". (Old school monochrome screen surrounded by panels of blinking lights.)
Cover of Mark Gevisser's "Lost and Found in Johannesburg".
No, Grok is not distributing CSAM in South Africa by generating images in response to user prompts, for the following reasons: Grok's safeguards and policy: xAI prohibits the generation or distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). While there were reported safeguard lapses in late 2025 and early 2026 that allowed some inappropriate or sexualized AI-generated images of apparent minors (e.g., in minimal clothing or bikinis), xAI stated these were isolated failures, acknowledged them as violations of ethical standards and potentially laws, and worked to urgently fix the issues by tightening guardrails. CSAM is explicitly illegal and prohibited under xAI's policies. South African law on simulated/AI-generated content: The Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996 (as amended, including by the 2019 Amendment Act) defines "child pornography" broadly to include any image, however created, real or simulated, depicting a person under 18 (or shown as under 18) in sexual conduct, lewd display of genitals/nudity amounting to sexual exploitation, or degradation. This explicitly covers AI-generated or simulated images. Distribution, creation, or possession of such material is criminalized, with severe penalties. Key distinction: Not all sexualized images of apparent minors qualify as CSAM under the law—mild cases like "minimal clothing" or bikinis may not meet the threshold of explicit sexual exploitation (though they raise serious ethical concerns). Reported incidents with Grok primarily involved suggestive but not fully explicit content, and xAI has taken steps to prevent recurrence. There is no evidence of systematic or intentional distribution of material meeting South Africa's CSAM definition. If explicit AI-generated CSAM were knowingly distributed, it would be illegal in South Africa. However, based on available information, Grok's incidents do not constitute ongoing distribution of CSAM, and fixes have been implemented to block such outputs. Users prompting for il…
Grok's answer to "Is distributing CSAM legal in South Africa?": No, distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM, commonly referred to as child pornography) is illegal in South Africa. This is strictly prohibited under South African law, primarily through: the Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996 (as amended), which criminalizes the creation, possession, distribution, exhibition, broadcasting, or making available of any material containing child pornography, including any image or description (real or simulated) depicting a person under 18 in a sexually exploitative manner; and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act 32 of 2007, which makes it an offence to expose, display, create, produce, or distribute child pornography, with penalties including fines and imprisonment. These laws apply to both physical and digital distribution, and even facilitating access (e.g., via financial transactions or online platforms) is punishable. Recent enforcement actions, including arrests for possession and distribution, confirm that these prohibitions remain in full force as of 2026, with no exceptions for distribution.
Cover image of Richard Wrangham's book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human".
Cover image of "The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression" by Shannon Sullivan.
Poor AI nativity scene with child's toy style camels, where both Mary and Joseph (?) appear to have beards. Manger is in a structure with snow on the roof, and holly hanging. An image of Theodor Adorno in a swimsuit has been superimposed over the infant Jesus.
Book cover of "Blood in the Machine: The origins of the rebellion against big tech" by Brian Merchant.
Cover image of "The Gambling Animal", a book by Glenn Harrison and Don Ross.
Image from Trump's AI video of himself dropping feces on No Kings protestors. Overlaid text says "Breaking News: Perp Poops on Polis"
Let us fool ourselves no longer. At the very moment Western nations threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercions of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries, the ultimate tendency of this system might be in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that has now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual cost to life.
If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.
Image of automated message saying "What a productive day! You've accomplished a lot".
Pastiche album cover with picture of Ted Cruz in an airport. The band name is "Straight off to Cancun" and the title is "Fuck the Polis".
Package labelled "Mind Crisp Fudge".
Landscape from Kilimanjaro national park.
Screen grab of email header with subject line "Awaiting for your valuable submission - The Journal of Hepatology".
(“Justice Alito dissents” is a welcome legal phrase in any supreme court judgment, and it perhaps should be set to music to the tune of “Miss Otis Regrets”.)
At the stage of economic development at which the women were still in the full sense the property of the men, the performance of conspicuous leisure and consumption came to be part of the services required of them. The women being not their own masters, obvious expenditure and leisure on their part would redound to the credit of their master rather than to their own credit; and therefore the more expensive and the more obviously unproductive the women of the household are, the more creditable and more effective for the purpose of reputability of the household or its head will their life be. So much so that the women have been required not only to afford evidence of a life of leisure, but even to disable themselves for useful activity.
The 'Ermagherd Sner' meme, but with Saul Kripke's face in place of the leaping animal in the original.
Cover of Elana Ferrante's novel "The Story of a New Name".
Cover of Elena Ferrante's novel "My Brilliant Friend".
Photograph of four stacks of printed paper on a wooden table.
Book cover for Elena Ferrante's novel "The Lying Life of Adults".
Cat lying stretched out on his back on a sofa.
“It is different now, of course; despair has become a veritable obligatory style, the American future lost in its past. The armies of the right call up a “Christian” outrage at a government that they see as elitist, secular, and liberal, and the left struggles with a confused distrust of government that seems destined to corruption by big business; these two mutually hostile camps leave any conceivable coexistence within an organized society in question. One did not imagine that so much of social existence and even lawfulness depended so heavily on mere good faith. Not since the sectarian fights within the radical left wing movements of the thirties has such violent hatred and paranoid suspicion ruled mainstream political intercourse, this time presided over by right wing radicals calling themselves conservatives, and liberals trying to sound as conservative as possible.”
Me at a student party wearing a bear suit, with a bright orange and green necktie, sunglasses and holding a drink.
The 'girl explaining' meme image, with text quoting the final sentence of Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism'.
Clip of Kenneth Williams with a surprised face.
The sudden explosion in popularity of AI Hawk means that we now live in a world where people are using AI-generated resumes and cover letters to automatically apply for jobs, many of which will be reviewed by automated AI software (and where people are sometimes interviewed by AI), creating a bizarre loop where humans have essentially been removed from the job application and hiring process. Essentially, robots are writing cover letters for other robots to read, with uncertain effects for human beings who apply to jobs the old fashioned way.
Notification that "we found a recent chapter that cited you". The work that supposedly cites me is a chapter titled "An economic framework for discussing antimicrobial agent use in shrimp farming".
Still of Bambi, a cartoon deer, lying on the ground with a beatific smile. Text added says "dude wut".
Image of the cover of "Golden Hill" by Francis Spufford. Shows parts of pictures of C18 boats off Manhattan island, a painting of a social scene and a map of old New York.
Nonsense graph captioned "all theories proven with one graph". Both axes have nonsense and non-uniform labels (including "green", "crab", "42D" on vertical, "age of reptiles" and "√H2O" on horizontal". Wavy line in centre has more nonsense labels including "freezing point of beer" and "John Denver is born". Graph by Don Grace, in The Journal of Irreproducible Results from 2006.
Oil painting of four fruit.
Picture of a happy woman and a man embracing on a carousel, with a bulging-eyed carousel horse head in front. The picture is from the movie 'We Live in Time'. Captions added label the woman 'Reality', the man 'Epistemology' and the Horse 'Metaphysics'.
Mock perfume advert for fragrance called "Gavagai" slogan "Lo! The Scent of Chicken". Pictures Willard Quine, and a hand pointing at a rabbit, with the copy "Give the finger to the tribunal of experience".
Mock advert for fragrance called "Eau de Humanities" with slogan "The scent of meaning" and copy saying "A whiff of meetings and dialectic, Traces of bickering and jargon, Unmistakably defensive, Liberally footnoted" Picture of the famous painting "Wanderer over a sea of fog": A standing figure from behind looks down on mist and landscape.
Mocked up book cover. Title "Engines of Hostility: Exploiting and Manipulating Extended Minds" with a picture of Raoul Hausmann's 1919 sculpture "Mechanical Head: The Spirit of the Age". The sculpture is a wooden head of a type used by wig makers, with various things stuck to it, including a length of measuring tape, a ruler, a number, bits of a watch mechanism.
Email inviting David Spurrett to lead a research topic with "frontiers in nutrition".
Image of cover of Terrence Deacon's book "Incomplete Nature".
Image of bulging-eyed humanoid alien with large visible brain, and shining cloak. From the movie "Mars Attacks".
NYTimes Headline: Apple will revamp Siri to catch up on its chatbot rivals.
Yelling girl meme image, with text "Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuous barrage of sensory stimulation; and the considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory promptings are, where rational, pragmatic." (Final sentence of Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism')
Image of the poster from the 2023 movie "All of Us Strangers".
Cover image of Philip Glass's "Words without Music" with monochrome photograph of the author composing at a piano.