Of cultural interest
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There are many things to like about Singapore…
…but caning online “scammers” has to be way up there. (Singapore inherited caning as a punishment from the British, just for some context.)
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Yesterday’s U.S. elections were good news for the Democrats
Democrats scored victories in California (with voter approval of redistricting to counter Trump’s efforts in Texas and elsewhere), New Jersey (a boring centrist beat a Trump acolyte), and Virginia (where another less boring centrist beat a somewhat nutty Trumpista for the governorship, but, more importantly, Democrats swept almost all the state races). In NYC, of…
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The recent Dutch elections
Amsterdam political philosopher Enzo Rossi and others comment.
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On this year’s Nobel “Peace” Prize
Like the “literature” (and to a lesser extent the economics prize), the “peace” prize has an erratic record. Consider this year’s winner.
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“Prosthetic Gods” podcast
Philosopher Nir Eisikovits writes: I think your readers might find some of the recent episodes of Prosthetic Gods interesting: they touch on questions that many academics are grappling with: AI and the future of writing, AI and the future of higher ed, and some more philosophical debates such as the merits (or lack thereof) of…
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On dreading the AI future
Philosopher Harvey Lederman comments; a long, but far from exhaustive, excerpt: For the last two and a half years, since the release of ChatGPT, I’ve been suffering from fits of dread. It’s not every minute, or even every day, but maybe once a week, I’m hit by it—slackjawed, staring into the middle distance—frozen by the…
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Two great remarks about “journalists”
There are honorable exceptions, but not enough! “No ideas and the ability to express them: that’s a journalist”–Karl Kraus “The journalist belongs to a sort of pariah caste, which is always estimated by ‘society’ in terms of its ethically lowest representative.”–Max Weber Kraus’s quip probably illustrates Weber’s observation!
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Some observations about Twitter, esp. philosophy-related Twitter
Max Noichl, a graduate student at the University of Vienna, made a map of philosophy tweeters (based on followers and retweets) which is making the rounds on Twitter. I’m not really sure what it means, but it looks neat! (Mr. Noichl offers some explanation here.) Friends and colleagues like Leslie Green at Oxford and Queen’s,…
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What is “cancel culture”?
This is a pretty apt characterization of some of the markers of “cancelling”, including, e.g.: 1) Punitiveness: Are people denouncing you to your employer or your social connections? Are you being blacklisted from jobs and social opportunities? Does what is being said to or about you have the goal—or foreseeable effect—of jeopardizing your livelihood?…
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The first five laws of cyber-dynamics
First Law of Cyber-dynamics: any unmoderated comment thread will reduce the total amount of knowledge and understanding in the world in proportion to its length. Second Law of Cyber-dynamics: any unmoderated comment thread on a post touching on politics, race or gender will degenerate into vile idiocy within the first ten comments. Third Law of Cyber-dynamics: no…
All about class.