Simon Friederich
Biographic Data
| ID | 3943663 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simon Friederich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simon |
| FAMILY NAME | Friederich |
| SIGNATURE | FRIEDERICH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4372-5995 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Against the Manhattan project framing of AI alignment
In response to the worry that autonomous generally intelligent artificial agents may at some point take over control of human affairs a common suggestion is that we should “solve the alignment problem” for such agents. We show that current discourse around this suggestion often uses a particular framing of artificial intelligence (AI) alignment as binary, a natural kind, mainly a technical‐scientific problem, realistically achievable, or clearly …
Causation, Cluelessness, and the Long Term
Agents are said to be “clueless” if they are unable to predict some ethically important consequences of their actions. Some philosophers have argued that such “cluelessness'' is widespread and creates problems for certain approaches to ethics. According to Hilary Greaves, a particularly problematic type of cluelessness, namely, “complex” cluelessness, affects attempts to do good as effectively as possible, as suggested by proponents of “Effective…
Book Symposium
The selfish machine? On the power and limitation of natural selection to understand the development of advanced AI
Introducing the Q-Based Interpretation of Quantum Theory
This article outlines a novel interpretation of quantum theory: the Q-based interpretation. The core idea underlying this interpretation, recently suggested for quantum field theories by Drummond and Reid [2020], is to interpret the phase space function Q -- a transform of the better known Wigner function -- as a proper probability distribution, roughly analogous to the probability distribution ρin classical statistical mechanics. Here I motivate…
Operationalising sustainability? Why sustainability fails as an investment criterion for safeguarding the future
Policy instruments promoting sustainability, such as investment taxonomies, are playing an increasing role in guiding the allocation of financial resources internationally. But can policy instruments define sustainability in ways that are both operational (i.e. assessable via replicable procedures) and which specify practices that can reliably be expected to enhance future generations' welfare? This paper analyses candidate definitions of sustain…
Ethics of Nuclear Energy in Times of Climate Change: Escaping the Collective Action Problem
In recent years, there has been an intense public debate about whether and, if so, to what extent investments in nuclear energy should be part of strategies to mitigate climate change. Here, we address this question from an ethical perspective, evaluating different strategies of energy system development in terms of three ethical criteria, which will differentially appeal to proponents of different normative ethical frameworks. Starting from a st…
Epistemic Separability and Everettian Branches: A Critique of Sebens and Carroll
We discuss the proposal by Sebens and Carroll to derive the Born rule in Everettian quantum mechanics from a principle they call ‘ESP-QM’. We argue that the proposal fails: ESP-QM is not, as Sebens and Carroll argue, a ‘less general version’ of an independently plausible principle, ESP, and can only be motivated by the empirical success of quantum mechanics, including use of the Born rule. Therefore, ESP-QM cannot have the status of a meta-theore…
The asymptotic safety scenario for quantum gravity – An appraisal
The paper has three main aims: first, to make the asymptotic safety-based approach to quantum gravity better known to the community of researchers in the history and philosophy of modern physics by outlining its motivation, core tenets, and achievements so far; second, to preliminarily elucidate the finding that, according to the asymptotic safety scenario, space-time has fractal dimension 2 at short length scales; and, third, to provide the basi…
Particle physics after the Higgs discovery: Philosophical perspectives
Re-thinking local causality
Symmetry, Empirical Equivalence, and Identity
The article proposes a novel approach to the much discussed question of which symmetries have ‘direct empirical significance’ and which do not. The approach is based on a development of a recently proposed framework by Hilary Greaves and David Wallace, who claim that, contrary to the standard folklore among philosophers of physics, ‘local’ symmetries may have direct empirical significance no less than ‘global’ ones. Partly vindicating the standar…
Philosophical perspectives on ad hoc hypotheses and the Higgs mechanism
In defence of non-ontic accounts of quantum states
How to spell out the epistemic conception of quantum states
Symmetry, Empirical Equivalence, and Identity
The article proposes a novel approach to the much discussed question of which symmetries have ‘direct empirical significance’ and which do not. The approach is based on a development of a recently proposed framework by Hilary Greaves and David Wallace, who claim that, contrary to the standard folklore among philosophers of physics, ‘local’ symmetries may have direct empirical significance no less than ‘global’ ones. Partly vindicating the standar…
Philosophical perspectives on ad hoc hypotheses and the Higgs mechanism
Re-thinking local causality
How to spell out the epistemic conception of quantum states
In defence of non-ontic accounts of quantum states
Philosophical perspectives on ad hoc hypotheses and the Higgs mechanism
Particle physics after the Higgs discovery: Philosophical perspectives
Re-thinking local causality
Symmetry, Empirical Equivalence, and Identity
The article proposes a novel approach to the much discussed question of which symmetries have ‘direct empirical significance’ and which do not. The approach is based on a development of a recently proposed framework by Hilary Greaves and David Wallace, who claim that, contrary to the standard folklore among philosophers of physics, ‘local’ symmetries may have direct empirical significance no less than ‘global’ ones. Partly vindicating the standar…
The asymptotic safety scenario for quantum gravity – An appraisal
The paper has three main aims: first, to make the asymptotic safety-based approach to quantum gravity better known to the community of researchers in the history and philosophy of modern physics by outlining its motivation, core tenets, and achievements so far; second, to preliminarily elucidate the finding that, according to the asymptotic safety scenario, space-time has fractal dimension 2 at short length scales; and, third, to provide the basi…
Ethics of Nuclear Energy in Times of Climate Change: Escaping the Collective Action Problem
In recent years, there has been an intense public debate about whether and, if so, to what extent investments in nuclear energy should be part of strategies to mitigate climate change. Here, we address this question from an ethical perspective, evaluating different strategies of energy system development in terms of three ethical criteria, which will differentially appeal to proponents of different normative ethical frameworks. Starting from a st…
Epistemic Separability and Everettian Branches: A Critique of Sebens and Carroll
We discuss the proposal by Sebens and Carroll to derive the Born rule in Everettian quantum mechanics from a principle they call ‘ESP-QM’. We argue that the proposal fails: ESP-QM is not, as Sebens and Carroll argue, a ‘less general version’ of an independently plausible principle, ESP, and can only be motivated by the empirical success of quantum mechanics, including use of the Born rule. Therefore, ESP-QM cannot have the status of a meta-theore…
Operationalising sustainability? Why sustainability fails as an investment criterion for safeguarding the future
Policy instruments promoting sustainability, such as investment taxonomies, are playing an increasing role in guiding the allocation of financial resources internationally. But can policy instruments define sustainability in ways that are both operational (i.e. assessable via replicable procedures) and which specify practices that can reliably be expected to enhance future generations' welfare? This paper analyses candidate definitions of sustain…
Introducing the Q-Based Interpretation of Quantum Theory
This article outlines a novel interpretation of quantum theory: the Q-based interpretation. The core idea underlying this interpretation, recently suggested for quantum field theories by Drummond and Reid [2020], is to interpret the phase space function Q -- a transform of the better known Wigner function -- as a proper probability distribution, roughly analogous to the probability distribution ρin classical statistical mechanics. Here I motivate…
Causation, Cluelessness, and the Long Term
Agents are said to be “clueless” if they are unable to predict some ethically important consequences of their actions. Some philosophers have argued that such “cluelessness'' is widespread and creates problems for certain approaches to ethics. According to Hilary Greaves, a particularly problematic type of cluelessness, namely, “complex” cluelessness, affects attempts to do good as effectively as possible, as suggested by proponents of “Effective…
Book Symposium
The selfish machine? On the power and limitation of natural selection to understand the development of advanced AI
Against the Manhattan project framing of AI alignment
In response to the worry that autonomous generally intelligent artificial agents may at some point take over control of human affairs a common suggestion is that we should “solve the alignment problem” for such agents. We show that current discourse around this suggestion often uses a particular framing of artificial intelligence (AI) alignment as binary, a natural kind, mainly a technical‐scientific problem, realistically achievable, or clearly …
Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Physics (9 works) · Quantum Mechanics and Applications (8 works) · Theoretical physics (7 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Quantum mechanics (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (4 works) · Quantum (4 works)