Jon Cogburn's Blog

youtube recursivity

Youtube has started doing this thing where they automatically set up a page of all the youtube videos to which you linked. I'm actually getting hits from the one for me now.

Another cool thing about it is that it somehow collates similar sources, and I can't for the life of me figure out how the algorithm works. These are five suggested by youtube:

• Larval Subjects .
• Feminist Philosophers
• An und für sich
• New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science
• Crooked Timber

I'm friends with the author of the first, some of the authors of the second, and all of the authors for the fourth. But how could youtube know that? The only one to which I link or have been linked a lot is the fourth.

 

brief meditation on Leitericity Ranking

A few months ago Roy Cook did an interesting M-Phi post on Erdos numbers (full disclosure: my Erdos number is equal to my Cook/Erdos number minus one), that sensitized me to statistical linkages, and in this spirit I want to propose a blog tracking measure known as Leitericity Ranking, which is determined by taking the number of links on your blog divided by the number of times on which those links are clicked.

From personal experience I'd say that Leiter Reports has a Leitericity Ranking of around 9,000, which is pretty remarkable for a philosophy blog. The fist day one gets on average 6,000 hits if Leiter links to one of your posts, with a drop off of slightly over half that on the second day, and then a more significant drop the day after that.

Also from personal experience I know that if Brian Leiter links to a blog post that links to one of your own posts, then you will get about 800 more hits over three days than you would have otherwise. This ranking would be much harder to measure though, since there is no automatic way to measure how many hits you would have gotten otherwise.

Siri philosophizes!

This made my day.

Just wait for the thirty eight second mark, when the interviewer asks Siri about the inverted spectrum.

I don't know if the answer would pass the Turing Test. Certainly we've all had students in our offices who don't do much better, but I'm honestly not sure they pass the Turing Test either. . . Whoah, Dude! Like what if all our students are robots and stuff.

In any case, I know that much of the answer is just plain weird, but we should still all be happy that the liar paradox got in there somewhere.