A podcast @Slate about events in the world, and the deeper philosophical issues they raise, made by @profbarrylam, professor at UCR. Season 6 done! Go listen!
Los Angeles, CA
Joined August 2015
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Announcing my first book, with my style of longform narrative journalism and philosophy @wwnorton. It's about the clash between governing by top-down rules versus discretionary decision-making, in law, in sports, in the household. Pre-order now. wwnorton.com/books/fewer-rul…
On the bright side, it looks like those 11th years finally finished.
Humanities dissertations have fallen by 49 percent since 2015, compared with a drop of 4.5 percent in the social sciences, according to a new analysis of nearly 445,000 dissertations in these two fields over 65 years. Explore the data: chroni.cl/4yxUZ4S
Philosophy of Language 101-Implicatures Gone Awry: Store with toy bird that is not for sale puts a $15,000 price tag on it as a joke, because they assumed no one would consider buying it for that price and would therefore conclude that the tag means it’s not for sale.
What are the odds that inserting a criminal case right into the middle of America’s culture wars and partisan politics is going to turn into justice for the victim? Or the alleged perpetrators? Or Cornell?
I was interviewed longform about the ideas expressed in the Boston Globe piece, so I elaborate, with stories, evidence, and charitable reconstruction of why administrators feel the need to acquire more software. I also introduce the "assessment-industrial complex."
Raise your hand if you've spent hours in front of a screen completing new administrative tasks at your college. That busywork has name. It's called "Bloat 2.0" chroni.cl/4z28VF0
Malcolm Gladwell observes that city of LA has the same population as Berlin but Berlin has >18,000 police officers and LA has 8,500.
But Los Angeles already spends double per capita on its police department as Berlin. If LA staffed LAPD at Berlin levels, it’d bankrupt the city.
“More people are in charge of standing in the way of the educational mission than actually facilitating it.”- Me in the Boston Globe today. @Tyler_A_Harper @anecdotal
globecollegetown.substack.co…
This makes sense of a lot of the way analytic philosophy has developed. People see themselves as reporting research findings that incrementally build on past successes, with solely alethic aims.
Hi-Phi Nation retweeted
Grant News - Public Scholars Project
Thanks to a $2.7 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, we are excited to officially launch the Public Scholars Project based here at Wake Forest University.
This 5-year project is aimed at training and supporting natural scientists, social scientists, and philosophers from across the globe to be better equipped to do public-facing work. We will run 10 workshops (the first is already open to applications), an alumni network, 5 fellowship competitions, and 5 prize competitions.
Please share this widely! To learn more visit: news.wfu.edu/2026/09/01/from…
Philosophy today should be related to philosophy in the past as
38%Science: Past science
18%Math: Past math
25%Poetry: Past poetry
19%Composers now: classical
120 votes • Final resultsHR trainings be like:
You must score 90 or above to pass this training.
(56 min to go).
What is the best reason not to bully your co-workers?
a) good reason 1
b) good reason 2
c) good reason 3
The name “Bruce” peaked in 1952. Today it is well outside the top 500 baby names. Meanwhile, many old names for girls like “Sophia” swung back to #1 for Gen Zers. I think it’d be great to see “Bruce” be the name of a new generation. Any other old timey names due for a comeback?
I’m starting to think the culture wars could use some ethics of actual wars. A little proportionality and necessity, distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate targets, and defensive versus punitive versus aggressive aims…maybe people will be more responsible.
Maybe basing hiring policy and decisions in academia on the basis of social media trends was part of the problem and also not part of the solution.
I spoke to Heather Bigley of BYU Radio about the 1960 film Spartacus, and concluded that the message of the film is that the vicious are incapable of understanding the virtuous. The motivations of the latter are alien to the former.
open.spotify.com/episode/6V0…
I had a dream that Alex Rails was hired as The Ethicist at the New York Times and I was his/her editor.
The funny thing about Asian dudes is that, since we’ve been the most populous human beings on the planet for a long time, we’ve been quietly in background of everything.
