"He's kind of a strange dude, but in the best way possible." - student Detroiter; Philosophy Prof; OU Phil Camp advisor; Plato stan; musician; husband; dad.
Joined February 2017
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In Plato's terminology, Trump is what happens when a man's thumos becomes a spice that comes to the assistance of his appetite, rather than a centurion that comes to the assistance of his rational judgments.
When the id (the pleasure principle) exhausts all the enjoyments money can buy, what is left is to make your pleasurable pursuits increasingly open and shameless, to flaunt your wealth and power, and to humiliate your enemies.
This is the story of Donald Trump.
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When the id (the pleasure principle) exhausts all the enjoyments money can buy, what is left is to make your pleasurable pursuits increasingly open and shameless, to flaunt your wealth and power, and to humiliate your enemies.
This is the story of Donald Trump.
Socrates would have a field day with the idea that *elect* mine inspectors. Because clearly the masses are highly qualified to know about mine safety.
Good luck with your mines, democracy!
JUST IN: AP projects Democrat Brian Matlock has won the Arizona Mine Inspector race, defeating Republican Les Presmyk. fox10phoenix.com/news/2026-a…
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Those who think Kansas is suddenly a blue state are like those who see a parent put their child in timeout and then decide the parent hates the child.
Repudiating a Republican who has become wild and dangerous does not make a conservative any less conservative.
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And, oh, I forgot, we could also use some appropriate outrage that some people think Ohio should be a state.
You know what this election eve needs?
A completely random and loopy Joyce Carol Oates discourse that questions whether a fifth of the world's population are playing pretend when it comes to some of their most deeply held beliefs.
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You know what this election eve needs?
A completely random and loopy Joyce Carol Oates discourse that questions whether a fifth of the world's population are playing pretend when it comes to some of their most deeply held beliefs.
Anderson Cooper: "With all due respect ..."
Narrator: "Very little respect was due."
Anderson Cooper: Do you want democrats to win control of the Senate?
Haley Stevens: I absolutely do. I just- I'm just casting my vote this one way--
Anderson Cooper: With all due respect, you're casting your vote that way and you're on television right now talking about it and you had a press conference earlier, so you're not just casting your vote, you are very publicly casting your vote. That's what you're doing, right?
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Suddenly it becomes critical to find out whether Jackson came into the world by C-section.
This quoted post is unavailable.
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Academics would be much healthier if we took a Straussian approach to communications from university administrators.
There's more to this email about budget cuts than meets the eye, and if you fail to see it, it's a failure in the scholar, not the text.
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Daniel Propson retweeted
My student has decided that Diogenes was a "madlad" and Alexander the Great was a "gigachad".
Can anyone with knowledge of contemporary slang confirm or deny?
Me, to students: "I'm really bad about email. If you need to ask me a question, talk to me before or after class."
Me, when students ask me a question before or after class: "OK, we can get that sorted. Just send me an email."
<bangs head against wall>
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This falls into the genre of tweet:
"This thing actually happened, and people didn't say what I am now saying they would probably say, but I'm gonna pretend my point is valid anyway".
Surprisingly common genre
If you had told people about LLMs a few years ago, they would probably have predicted a knowledge explosion because they make learning much easier, but just with the Internet and free online courses before, what they show is that the main problem was always demand and not supply.
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"extend mercy where appropriate"
Mercy is never appropriate. That's why it's mercy.
Sometimes we do well to treat people better than they might strictly deserve.
Yes, happy to explain. I don’t think it’s wise to let your opinion of an entire immigration policy be dictated by outlier cases, tragic cases, or sad stories. I also support the second amendment even when there are tragic cases of gun violence.
I support ICE and I believe mass deportations are necessary. I believe in law and order and I believe in justice. So does Samuel Sey. I don’t fault ICE for doing its job. I also believe in helping friends when you can, and also believe that mercy is sometimes appropriate. I know Samuel—he’s a good man of integrity. He has made good faith effort to file the right paperwork and comply with the law. He didn’t deceive or purposefully break the law. He would make an excellent American citizen. I hope he can become one someday.
There are many other similar cases, I’m sure. It doesn’t change my opinion. All we can do is support justice as well as we can, and extend mercy where appropriate to the best of our ability. You might find this inconsistent, but I don’t. It’s just part of living in a messy world.
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User: LLM, solve all the open problems in philosophy for me.
LLM: The world is all that is the case. The world is the collection of facts, not things...
LLM (many hours later): Whereof what one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
In the early 2000s, GM made a faulty ignition switch that, over the course of two decades, killed over 100 people. The company only survived this debacle bc they lied about it until after a bailout. Public scrutiny was brutal.
Imagine they had announced those deaths in advance.
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It never occurs to these people that knowledge and wisdom are intrinsically valuable.
It's honestly not clear what the purpose of education is now. To teach useful work skills? AI can do anything you learn in class. To teach you to think? Can't you pick stuff up while working? For aesthetic value? Are most classes particularly aesthetically interesting?
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I'd have thought that one could promote great works of literature & philosophy without attacking academic freedom, but apparently not.
We can imagine a maximally classical college with no single required reading. Is that good? I dunno. But common experiences are not essential.
Guess how many books all Harvard undergraduates read in common?
15? 8? 3?
The answer is zero. Not one.
Meanwhile every single graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in California has read
1. The Holy Bible
2. The Iliad — Homer
3. The Odyssey — Homer
4. The Republic — Plato
5. The Apology — Plato
6. Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle
7. Politics — Aristotle
8. The Aeneid — Virgil
9. Confessions — St. Augustine
10. City of God — St. Augustine
11. Consolation of Philosophy — Boethius
12. Summa Theologiae — St. Thomas Aquinas
13. The Divine Comedy — Dante
14. The Canterbury Tales — Geoffrey Chaucer
15. Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes
16. Hamlet — William Shakespeare
17. King Lear — William Shakespeare
18. Macbeth — William Shakespeare
19. The Prince — Niccolò Machiavelli
20. Paradise Lost — John Milton
21. The Social Contract — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
22. Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville
23. The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky
24. War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
25. The Waste Land — T. S. Eliot
And so many more
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