Greg Gates
@gregat.es
philosopher-turned-software-engineer
currently working on databricks's recently acquired spreadsheet product
data & technology manager for WA's 36th LD Democrats
my little blog: https://gregat.es
currently working on databricks's recently acquired spreadsheet product
data & technology manager for WA's 36th LD Democrats
my little blog: https://gregat.es
Thinking about the bewilderment expressed in this column about why some long-termist, effective altruist folks have prestigious academic appointments in philosophy. There's a cynical answer (rich people like their ideas, roughly) and a non-cynical one. I want to try to express the latter.
Who Is Behind the AI/Existential Risk Scare? talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-i...
Who Is Behind the AI/Existential Risk Scare?
For years, and especially in the last month or so, we’ve been...
talkingpointsmemo.com
October 7, 2026 at 10:18 PM
Thinking about the bewilderment expressed in this column about why some long-termist, effective altruist folks have prestigious academic appointments in philosophy. There's a cynical answer (rich people like their ideas, roughly) and a non-cynical one. I want to try to express the latter.
in the 20th century, liberals and communists teamed up to defeat fascism. then they had a cold war which was suboptimal but killed a lot less people than fascism. let's do at least the first part again.
October 7, 2026 at 8:35 AM
in the 20th century, liberals and communists teamed up to defeat fascism. then they had a cold war which was suboptimal but killed a lot less people than fascism. let's do at least the first part again.
just discovered there exist 🚳 and 🚷 emojis but there is no no-cars emoji!
apparently there were two proposals to add a no cars emoji in 2022 but they were both declined! 😡
unicode.org/emoji/emoji-...
apparently there were two proposals to add a no cars emoji in 2022 but they were both declined! 😡
unicode.org/emoji/emoji-...
Emoji Proposals Status
unicode.org
October 6, 2026 at 5:55 PM
just discovered there exist 🚳 and 🚷 emojis but there is no no-cars emoji!
apparently there were two proposals to add a no cars emoji in 2022 but they were both declined! 😡
unicode.org/emoji/emoji-...
apparently there were two proposals to add a no cars emoji in 2022 but they were both declined! 😡
unicode.org/emoji/emoji-...
Thinking back on "TV will rot your brain" from my own childhood and how it compares to worries about tablets and phones for kids today.
This was prompted by reading that Seattle has only just moved away from a policy where every kindergartner was given their own iPad!
This was prompted by reading that Seattle has only just moved away from a policy where every kindergartner was given their own iPad!
October 4, 2026 at 5:47 PM
Thinking back on "TV will rot your brain" from my own childhood and how it compares to worries about tablets and phones for kids today.
This was prompted by reading that Seattle has only just moved away from a policy where every kindergartner was given their own iPad!
This was prompted by reading that Seattle has only just moved away from a policy where every kindergartner was given their own iPad!
gonna start pounding on the keyboard in posts just to make people wonder what acronym they don't understand ndjf
October 1, 2026 at 12:31 AM
gonna start pounding on the keyboard in posts just to make people wonder what acronym they don't understand ndjf
Pretty hard to deny that for this sort of use case, "AI" really is a vast improvement over what we had before
September 28, 2026 at 11:34 PM
Pretty hard to deny that for this sort of use case, "AI" really is a vast improvement over what we had before
If this is a hot take what does that make me? nothing could be more obvious to the sadly small cohort that has watched deadwood
My semi-hot take is that DEADWOOD is the best thing HBO ever did
September 22, 2026 at 4:15 AM
If this is a hot take what does that make me? nothing could be more obvious to the sadly small cohort that has watched deadwood
Reposted by Greg Gates
People just think there is no such thing as expertise in philosophy. "There's this feeling that you can only talk about the mechanics of cancer cells if you are a Professor of Physiology" I mean probably, yeah
September 21, 2026 at 5:40 PM
People just think there is no such thing as expertise in philosophy. "There's this feeling that you can only talk about the mechanics of cancer cells if you are a Professor of Physiology" I mean probably, yeah
tough time to be named Al
September 22, 2026 at 4:07 AM
tough time to be named Al
Lots of axiomatic commitment to functional reductionism on blue sky, I am learning.
September 20, 2026 at 4:55 AM
Lots of axiomatic commitment to functional reductionism on blue sky, I am learning.
I'd put this differently: LLMs are still just outputting the most likely completion of a prompt based on their weights ("intuition"). But most products marketed as AI, such as ChatGPT and Claude, are doing a lot more than that, by orchestrating repeated calls to LLMs and other tools.
Bluesky seems broadly unaware of this but this is only true of the very first LLMs. Their outputs were essentially their “intuition” - basically outputs that popped into their heads fully formed. But more recent models string those ideas together to work towards a solution.
An LLM isn't reasoning though. It's mimicking reasoning via text regurgitation.
September 15, 2026 at 4:48 PM
I'd put this differently: LLMs are still just outputting the most likely completion of a prompt based on their weights ("intuition"). But most products marketed as AI, such as ChatGPT and Claude, are doing a lot more than that, by orchestrating repeated calls to LLMs and other tools.
The thing that really gets me about the current anti-Stancil pile-on is the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit "the only leverage we have is our vote (in general elections for the federal legislature, once every two years)."
That's not how politics works!
That's not how politics works!
September 13, 2026 at 9:02 AM
The thing that really gets me about the current anti-Stancil pile-on is the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit "the only leverage we have is our vote (in general elections for the federal legislature, once every two years)."
That's not how politics works!
That's not how politics works!
When I was 12 years old I spent a grueling summer tearing the reproductive bits off of corn stalks.
Happy labor day (USA). What's one of the oddest paid job you've had? Mine was probably as a reader for a medical professor at Rutgers, whose eyes were failing. I read him many academic texts, as well as Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh."
September 8, 2026 at 1:18 AM
When I was 12 years old I spent a grueling summer tearing the reproductive bits off of corn stalks.
Reposted by Greg Gates
Force the entire Republican Party to die on the hill of “The president is a king and should be allowed to defy the law to build himself a golden palace.” Talk about it nonstop.
No issue so succinctly captures the battle lines: on one side, an authoritarian personalist cult, on the other, democracy.
No issue so succinctly captures the battle lines: on one side, an authoritarian personalist cult, on the other, democracy.
August 21, 2026 at 3:01 PM
Force the entire Republican Party to die on the hill of “The president is a king and should be allowed to defy the law to build himself a golden palace.” Talk about it nonstop.
No issue so succinctly captures the battle lines: on one side, an authoritarian personalist cult, on the other, democracy.
No issue so succinctly captures the battle lines: on one side, an authoritarian personalist cult, on the other, democracy.
At Row Zero, we had a scientist upload a whole genome to a spreadsheet! I couldn't imagine why, laughed at the idea of ctrl-Fing for "T" or something. But I am sure they had a good reason.
Assuming "spreadsheet people" only refers to like, parasitic MBAs is ironclad proof you've never worked a real white collar job and know ~nothing about what working scientists actually do tbh
August 20, 2026 at 2:52 PM
At Row Zero, we had a scientist upload a whole genome to a spreadsheet! I couldn't imagine why, laughed at the idea of ctrl-Fing for "T" or something. But I am sure they had a good reason.
I agree the bad answer is bad. But isn't it bad because the correct one is "The Democratic party welcomes everyone! We believe in democracy. Don't like the platform? Join the party and work to change it. We're the only major party left in America that believes the people should have a voice."
August 17, 2026 at 3:36 AM
I agree the bad answer is bad. But isn't it bad because the correct one is "The Democratic party welcomes everyone! We believe in democracy. Don't like the platform? Join the party and work to change it. We're the only major party left in America that believes the people should have a voice."
Counterpoint: many of us have done the work, we've read Hegel, and just concluded it wasn't worth the effort.
(This is a friendly counterpoint, I am broadly sympathetic, but I am partial to analytic philosophy.)
(This is a friendly counterpoint, I am broadly sympathetic, but I am partial to analytic philosophy.)
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, ...
defector.com
August 13, 2026 at 4:13 PM
Counterpoint: many of us have done the work, we've read Hegel, and just concluded it wasn't worth the effort.
(This is a friendly counterpoint, I am broadly sympathetic, but I am partial to analytic philosophy.)
(This is a friendly counterpoint, I am broadly sympathetic, but I am partial to analytic philosophy.)
Really drives home how badly the Stranger has failed as a guide for progressive voters. No one should rely on it.
No single organization makes perfect endorsements. Our approach is to show voters how a collection of member-driven, lefty organizations have endorsed and to put the voter one tap away from more detail and context.
leftycheatsheet.org#race=ld43_sen
leftycheatsheet.org#race=ld43_sen
August 10, 2026 at 5:54 PM
Really drives home how badly the Stranger has failed as a guide for progressive voters. No one should rely on it.
Reposted by Greg Gates
not to take anything away from Kelabe, who is a phenomenal candidate & has run a great campaign, but this result does show the influence of The Stranger when you look at the 43rd and 46th LDs. The results in those races could have been very different if they had followed their progressive reputation
ICYMI: Friday ballot drop, August 2026: Kelabe Tewolde now leads Sharon Tomiko Santos in 37th LD House race
Here's what's happening in some of the…
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2026/08/friday-ballot-drop-august-2026-kelabe-tewolde-now-leads-sharon-tomiko-santos-in-37th-ld-house-race.html
Here's what's happening in some of the…
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2026/08/friday-ballot-drop-august-2026-kelabe-tewolde-now-leads-sharon-tomiko-santos-in-37th-ld-house-race.html
Friday ballot drop, August 2026: Kelabe Tewolde now leads Sharon Tomiko Santos in 37th LD House race
Here's what's happening in some of the close races that we're watching in the 2026 Top Two election as of the Friday after Election Day.
www.nwprogressive.org
August 10, 2026 at 4:37 PM
not to take anything away from Kelabe, who is a phenomenal candidate & has run a great campaign, but this result does show the influence of The Stranger when you look at the 43rd and 46th LDs. The results in those races could have been very different if they had followed their progressive reputation
The first rule of Socratic dialogue is "say what you believe." It sounds simple, but it's actually somewhat radical.
Distinguishing what you believe from what you're supposed to say or your audience wants to hear is hard and is the beginning of wisdom.
Distinguishing what you believe from what you're supposed to say or your audience wants to hear is hard and is the beginning of wisdom.
August 10, 2026 at 4:01 PM
The first rule of Socratic dialogue is "say what you believe." It sounds simple, but it's actually somewhat radical.
Distinguishing what you believe from what you're supposed to say or your audience wants to hear is hard and is the beginning of wisdom.
Distinguishing what you believe from what you're supposed to say or your audience wants to hear is hard and is the beginning of wisdom.
oh this is just how todo lists work for me
I have started a new todo list system where each week if something fills me with a sense of immense dread and guilt it goes on a separate Shame List and as soon as I've done one thing from the Shame List each week I don't have to look at it or think about it again until the following Monday
August 10, 2026 at 3:41 PM
oh this is just how todo lists work for me
historical rationalist vs empiricist dichotomy still holding up today
if you devote your life to the concept of being rational I feel that you should have acquired by now some vague sense of the empirical reality of who donald trump is as a person
see this is what I find confusing about the rationalists. no, Donald Trump, a president who invested the US in Nvidia and who is singularly devoted to the stock market, will not broker a no-more-AI treaty with China, a country with probably very little interest in such a thing. it feels like cope
August 9, 2026 at 5:51 PM
historical rationalist vs empiricist dichotomy still holding up today
for the good of Seattle, we must tell everyone we know that the Stranger can no longer be trusted
The two main differences between Tewolde's race and Sabio-Howell's: Tewolde got the Stranger endorsement, and Sabio-Howell's opponent actually campaigned.
Will be interesting to see how this result wakes up the Tomiko-Santos campaign.
Will be interesting to see how this result wakes up the Tomiko-Santos campaign.
Notably, Wilson had not joined King County Executive Girmay Zahilay in endorsing Kelabe Tewolde, who is giving Sharon Tomiko-Santos a real challenge in the 37th.
August 5, 2026 at 8:44 AM
for the good of Seattle, we must tell everyone we know that the Stranger can no longer be trusted
This is such a shame. The Stranger's endorsements are trash now (if you're a progressive voter), but way too many people still trust them.
Ron Davis, no surprise, will not make it through the primary against 46th D state legislator Gerry Pollet; Will Dreher, endorsed by the Stranger in what turned out to be a controversial pick, will. Davis' campaign focused heavily on the Stranger at the end, which probably raised Dreher's profile.
August 5, 2026 at 4:19 AM
This is such a shame. The Stranger's endorsements are trash now (if you're a progressive voter), but way too many people still trust them.