Conspicuous Cognition

Are We Building Conscious AI Servants?

Was Richard Dawkins right to attribute consciousness to Claude? Can we turn to consciousness "experts" to settle such questions? Is it ethical to design…

May 21 • Dan Williams and Henry Shevlin

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"Speaking Truth to Power" Is Bad Epistemology

If intellectuals want to hold power accountable, they should focus less on power and more on truth.

May 17 • Dan Williams

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Aliens, Superintelligence, and the Future of Science (with David Kipping)

What the search for alien life can teach us about AI — and vice versa

May 4 • Dan Williams and Henry Shevlin

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April 2026

How Brexit Created Britain’s New Political Tribes

This is a guest post by James Tilley, a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, about his excellent new book with Sara Hobolt, Tribal…

Apr 24

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Should We Care About AI Welfare? (with Robert Long)

We spend a lot of time worrying about what AI might do to us. What about what we might be doing to it?

Apr 18 • Dan Williams, Henry Shevlin, and Robert Long

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1:28:36

On Becoming Less Left-Wing (Part 3)

The reality of progress, the fragility of civilisation, the left’s role in making the world both better and worse, the case for capitalism, and how to…

Apr 2 • Dan Williams

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March 2026

Wishful Thinking Is A Myth

How social games, not comforting falsehoods, distort what we believe.

Mar 16 • Dan Williams

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Time To Start Panicking About AI?

Watch now | In this episode, Henry and I finally do something we probably should have done in the first episode: introduce ourselves.

Mar 10 • Dan Williams

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How AI Will Reshape Public Opinion

Social media democratised public opinion, shifting influence away from elites and experts to ordinary people. LLMs will partly reverse this trend. They…

Mar 3 • Dan Williams

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February 2026

AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth)

Watch now | What is it like to be a ChatGPT?

Feb 17 • Dan Williams

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What Kind Of Apes Are We?

This is a guest post by David Pinsof, who writes the excellent ‘Everything is Bullshit’ Substack.

Feb 16 • David Pinsof

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Why Have Academics Failed To Study Social Justice Ideology?

This is a guest post by Thomas Prosser (who writes at The Path Not Taken) and Edmund King (who writes at Paroxysms) about their very interesting new…

Feb 11 • Thomas Prosser and Edmund King

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