tom flemming

@flemn8r

There's very little we know about how people would have voted if things had been different Recovering philosopher West Riding the A63 East *Bring back the Internet*

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tom flemming@flemn8r· 5d

From 16 in a British maths curriculum you could get a little fun at least... www.ocr.org.uk/Images/30875...

Extract of part of the OCR further maths A level syllabus spec for discrete maths - group theory

tom flemming@flemn8r· 24d

I sink today, we can truly say, for zeese two teams, it *is* the final. images.immediate.co.uk/production/v...

Eric Van de Puytrens, Director of Something Important in BBC World C*p comedy 2026

tom flemming@flemn8r· Jul 3

I'm quite surprised by their approach and I really can't see how it complies with the (very big deal) Consumer Duty - outcome 3 ( from www.fca.org.uk/firms/consum... ) - maybe worth mentioning if it happens again?

Outcome 3: Consumer understanding
Outcome we want

We want consumers to understand the information they are given and make timely and informed decisions. To do this, information should be clear, timely, and accessible – without jargon or misleading terms.
What we expect

We see harm occur when consumers do not understand the information they are given, or are not provided with it at the right time to make an informed decision. Firms should support their customers by giving them the information they need, at the right time, and presented in a way they can understand. This includes tailoring communications to their customer’s level of financial literacy. This ought to be coupled with testing, to ensure consumers have understood key information.

You can find more information, including examples, as part of our Consumer Duty implementation review.

tom flemming@flemn8r· Jul 3

There's a hare, Over there!

A blue roan cocker spaniel looks down a stubble field at a hare 40 yards away next to the hedge. Trees in the background and blue sky beyond...

tom flemming@flemn8r· May 29

From the paper you linked... it's not a systematic view, but I can see just about all of the ecosystem elements they mention between the station and my office (just round the corner from UKIB) in Leeds *except* PE/VC. But as they suggest perhaps you really need the whole set.

Article reads: Accounting, consulting and law firms are required to provide the advice, expertise and knowledge that both investors and firms need, and those too are in serious short supply in many of the regions of Britain.

In other words, what is required to connect the City of London with the regions are local ecosystems of banks, business angels, private equity, venture capital and professional service firms working in conjunction and supporting each other in funding and growing local businesses. The absence of one part of that ecosystem can undermine the function of the remainder because lenders and the providers of debt finance depend on firms having access to equity capital, and vice versa, and all depend on a full range of advisory services.

tom flemming@flemn8r· May 1

May

View of Magdalen Tower, Oxford at dawn on May day from the botanical gardens

tom flemming@flemn8r· Apr 24

Pint and menu on pub table - "Brew York, Beers with character"

tom flemming@flemn8r· Mar 23

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS ATTA

tom flemming@flemn8r· Mar 13

In a seaside town I can spend upwards of 50p on this! But that's about all i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1d...

2p "push penny" arcade machine, a lot of tuppence pieces on a slider with a few toy "prizes"

tom flemming@flemn8r· Mar 12

I feel a strong Cynefin "drifting southwest" current here? thecynefin.co/wp-content/u...

Cynefin Quadrant - Chaotic (SW), Complex (NW), Complicated (NE), Clear (SE). Full description at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework#Domains

tom flemming@flemn8r· Mar 8

OK it's a pavement, but not bad?

View along Woodstock Road in Oxford, trees overhanging pavement, divided between Cycle and Pedestrian sections...

tom flemming@flemn8r· Mar 8

I think the LLM explosion has exposed just how *parochial* our theories of cognition still are, and how much they rely on language as the bulwark between the Real (ie. human) thing and casual/metaphorical uses. So this is from 5 years ago, before the storm: now.tufts.edu/2020/09/02/o...

Tufts Now: How do you define consciousness?

Daniel Dennett: One of the problems with defining consciousness is that it’s several different things—and it means different things to different people. There is a sense of consciousness in which starfish are conscious. Worms are conscious. Even trees, even bacteria are conscious. But there’s one dividing line between the amoeba and the professor in the consciousness department, which really marks off a huge difference: language.

It’s language that enables us to ask ourselves questions and reflect on our own experience. Frogs notice all kinds of things in their world, but I don’t think they can notice their noticings. I don’t think they can dwell on them. That whole sort of stairway of curiosity that we have built-in doesn’t exist for any species but us, and that makes a huge difference. Human consciousness is to animal consciousness roughly as language is to bird song. Birdsong communicates, but not much.

tom flemming@flemn8r· Mar 8

With the caveat that I've been away ~25years, a lot of debate revolved around Zombies - which are Just Like You and Me but not conscious. I don't think that's changed, and the Surprising Fluency of LLMs doesn't seem to offer any leverage. plato.stanford.edu/entries/zomb...

A metaphor of Saul Kripke’s helps to show how the zombie idea threatens physicalism (Kripke 1972/80, 153f.). Imagine God creating the world and deciding to bring into existence the whole of the purely physical universe. Having created this physical universe, did he have to do any more work to provide for consciousness? Answering yes to this question implies there is more to consciousness than the physical facts alone can supply. If nothing else, it implies that consciousness depends at least partly on nonphysical properties, ones that would not exist in a purely physical world; it would be a zombie world.

tom flemming@flemn8r· Feb 21

No cheating your last saved picture of a celebrity is your therapist (Ouch)

A stock photo of Rory Stewart in jeans and a jacket, unaccountably legs akimbo sat on some railings

tom flemming@flemn8r· Feb 21

Or York? Butcher and chippie in this run, was a baker until a few years back and still is just over the road. All the shops have doors though... little-vikings.co.uk/wp-content/u... Some history... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

View of Bishopthorpe road, shopping street in York, delicatessen and chemist in foreground

tom flemming@flemn8r· Feb 19

Couldn't resist taking a look (in the inherited section)... Don't think even this will wash?

Book: THE THEORY OF PROTECTION
W.M Corden (aka Max...)

tom flemming@flemn8r· Feb 16

"Everything that exists, apart from God (if he exists) has a specific nature and a mode of individuation of that nature." Wot, even Brexit?

Why, then, do we speak fo *res* as well as *ens*, or of thing as well as being? Everything that exists, apart from God (if he exists) has a specific nature and a mode of individuation of that nature. This is usually described as the form of a thing...

tom flemming@flemn8r· Feb 8

"We hear you!"

tom flemming@flemn8r· Feb 5

I was going to go with Uncle Ludwig... (assuming you don't want to deny there *is* an economy?)

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations translated by G E M Anscombe: "308. How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states and about behaviourism arise?——The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice. We talk of processes and states and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know
more about them—we think. But that is just what commits us to a
particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a definite concept
of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive
movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very
one that we thought quite innocent.)—And now the analogy which
was to make us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to
deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium.
And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally
we don't want to deny them."

tom flemming@flemn8r· Jan 23

This from her statement before the Standards asvisor's report bothered me a lot. Seems very short on candour about the explicit caveats in the advice she took. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...