Victor Gijsbers

Philosopher (Leiden University) and interactive fiction writer; author of Turandot, The Baron and Kerkerkruip; Philosophy Videos @ http://bit.ly/2SFEtC2

#philosophy #InteractiveFiction #metaphysics #Kant #literature #EmilyDickinson #ttrpgs

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Last Notes

2026-05-15 15:07:13 UTC

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@nprofile…ryua This is precisely the kind of human-sounding post that an AI Mastodon bot would generate in order to disguise itself.

2026-04-30 19:33:06 UTC

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@nprofile…5y0h With 'the Germans' I meant 'the German state apparatus'. I know full well this policy isn't universally approved. Indeed, I know it was deemed illegal by a German judge just a few days ago, but the government will continue to do it anyway ...

2026-04-30 09:40:06 UTC

Everywhere along their borders, the Germans have recently built checkpoints. Even apart from the traffic jams and fatal accidents to which this has led, I resent this betrayal of Europe.

2026-04-21 20:08:40 UTC

Today I realised that although everyone would translate English 'butterfly' as Dutch 'vlinder', this is in fact a nice case of language mismatch. In Dutch, we differentiate between 'dagvlinder' and 'nachtvlinder', day butterfly and night butterfly. But only the first are called butterflies in English, the second are called moths, and there's no lay term in English that translates 'vlinder' -- you have to go for Lepidoptera!

2026-04-19 18:54:13 UTC

It's hard to overstate how much better OpenStreetMap is than Google Maps, especially when it comes to walking/hiking. It's the difference between the unusable and the nearly perfect. (Showing Google Maps app and Organic Maps app.)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/432/868/762/967/484/original/d41dad4dd6c87bcf.jpg
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/432/869/186/237/436/original/5d8f5ee1fc45bce0.jpg

2026-04-17 08:19:28 UTC

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@nprofile…ryua In the Netherlands this is illegal, and every website I've seen claims that it's very dangerous for the animal if you were to get into an accident or even just need to brake suddenly. Which makes sense.

2026-04-08 11:33:01 UTC

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@nprofile…ryua Jar. Talking about brain power, it took me until this reply to realise that 'paprika' in the UK is not the same as 'paprika' in the Netherlands! (Even though I should have realised that the green, red, and yellow vegetables we call paprika and you probably call 'pepper' don't come in 100g packages.)

2026-03-25 07:32:55 UTC

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@nprofile…wdzu Good luck with it!

2026-02-24 12:47:15 UTC

I just sent in a paper to a very high-ranking philosophy journal. Prepare to be disappointed, I say to myself! 😅

2026-02-08 21:52:52 UTC

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@nprofile…ryua Gotta say, I loved every second of it, though maybe it helped that I was sitting in the cinema where it is easier to focus.

2026-01-20 17:18:05 UTC

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@nprofile…4hp5 I've heard from insider sources that this technology will need to be adopted a lot for there to be widespread adoption.

2025-12-15 08:17:37 UTC

It's Monday morning. Are we ready? Are we pumped up? Are we eager to be the best-oiled cogs in the machine that we can? Yeah!!!

2025-10-10 16:08:31 UTC

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@nprofile…32va Is een risicofactor puur een correlatie, of een oorzaak?

2025-10-06 11:21:26 UTC

I finally got to the secret message that was hidden in my little paper umbrella, but now I don't know what it means! 😕 (Although Google Lens thinks it might have something to do with a roller skate center.)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/326/947/939/667/881/original/d7151a3cb004c20b.jpg

2025-08-15 06:29:22 UTC

In the Netherlands, the supermarkets stay open even on Christmas Day.
In France, they close for the Assumption of Mary, a Catholic holiday I didn't even know existed.
Obviously I learned this the hard way, by standing in front of a sequence of closed shops this morning. 🙈

2025-07-10 15:25:43 UTC

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@nprofile…n8ju How's that book? I tried to read his chapter in Conant's The Logical Alien, and I found it long, badly written, and to be honest too boring to get through. 😅 (Though maybe it's more fun for people who are already Frege experts and I just wasn't the intended audience!)

2025-07-10 10:09:21 UTC

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@nprofile…0tj7 @nprofile…fa4k But that's biomass. I suspect that the *number* of mice, rats, and other small rodents might equal or surpass that of humans and livestock? Not sure, but it doesn't seem unlikely.

2025-06-26 13:44:32 UTC

I'm really enjoying @nprofile…ypzn as an app with unlimited OpenStreetMap usage and great GPX import of hiking routes. But I can't find a manual! So just in case there are any users here who can help me out:
1. When you are recording a route, is there a way to show how many kilometers you have already walked? This would be very useful.
2. Does anybody understand how to order tracks into lists? Every imported route becomes a list, but I don't know how to order several of them in a single list.

2025-06-11 17:11:49 UTC

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@nprofile…lpzz Chess is a great example to explain LLMs though. Recently, I played ChatGPT -- it produced plausible, even very good, moves for 30 moves, and after that point it no longer understood the most basic rules about piece movement. I've found that recounting this episode helps me explain the nature of such AI systems to people.

2025-04-07 08:59:12 UTC

In protestant doctrine, life on Earth seems like a meaningless charade. Its value is infinitesimal compared to that of the afterlife, and whether we end up in Heaven or Hell is already predestined. So why doesn't God just immediately create us in the afterlife?
This question *must* be a commonly discussed one in #theology, but I'm not a theologian and I don't know where to look. Any ideas?

2025-04-01 20:07:38 UTC

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@nprofile…n8ju Not really! This semester, my usual teaching schedule on Thursday is philosophy of science from 13 to 15, then philosophy of the infinite from 15 to 18. 😅 (A bit much, but I prefer it to having my teaching more spread out.)

2025-04-01 20:00:06 UTC

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@nprofile…n8ju Your Amsterdam talk sounds very interesting, but unfortunately I'll be teaching that afternoon until quite late!

2025-03-29 21:13:53 UTC

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@nprofile…lwgl At 49%, you'd be thinking about charging your phone, right? 😄

2025-03-18 07:50:14 UTC

3:40 am: pear lies chilling in the fruit bowl, hard as stone
3:46 am: pear becomes ripe
3:53 am: pear becomes mushy and brown

2025-03-15 22:47:14 UTC

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@nprofile…eznj English is not my first language, but isn't 'hustle' a word for prostitution? 🧐

2025-03-05 06:16:50 UTC

Well, that's fast. (Source: 538.)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/108/356/825/490/411/original/a58e46cc2b40c6c8.jpg

2025-03-02 17:48:25 UTC

Ik leef nu nog heel even in de hoop dat Schoof straks voor de camera's staat en zegt: "Wij gaan ook militairen naar Oekraïne sturen om de vrede te bewaken." Dat hij gewoon lef toont en Geert uitdaagt om het kabinet daarop te laten vallen. Dat hij op het cruciale moment tóch moed blijkt te hebben.

2024-10-09 17:06:10 UTC

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@npub1y5h…7m3c Okay! 🙂

2024-10-09 16:42:43 UTC

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@npub1y5h…7m3c Maybe giving voting advice isn't entirely in the spirit of the competition? (I agree with the recommendation to play this game, of course!)

2024-03-14 19:01:10 UTC

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@npub1x0f…xzau Isn't he just using the phrase to emphatically deny the traditional theory according to which we ought to subject our passions to reason?

2023-11-28 21:42:28 UTC

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@npub18r2…px49 Wait, doesn't modal realism mean that possible worlds are real, without saying anything about their content; and isn't it only the Principle of Recombination + some dubious ideas about the essence of donkeys that lead to the claim that there are talking donkeys?

2023-08-09 20:19:23 UTC

Please participate in the 2023 edition of the Interactive Fiction Top 50! Full rules in the forum post, but the basic idea is:
* Make a list of what you consider the best pieces of interactive fiction (parser, choice, whatever).
* Between one and twenty titles.
* Order doesn't matter: one title = one vote.
* Post it in the forum or e-mail me, victor@lilith.cc
* Optional: share your list on Mastodon!
* Deadline: September 3.
Please share widely!
#InteractiveFiction
https://intfiction.org/t/participate-in-the-2023-interactive-fiction-top-50/63769