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Brian Weatherson

@bweatherson.bsky.social

2.6K followers 210 following 1.4K posts

Philosopher at University of Michigan. https://brian.weatherson.org/

Brian Weatherson is the Marshall Weinberg Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He specializes in epistemology and philosophy of language.

Source: Wikipedia

Philosophy 47%

Psychology 20%

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · Aug 8

This is a thread of things I've recently published, starting with my book from last year, with Open Book Publishers, defending the claim that knowledge is interest-relative.

I'll continue this thread when new stuff comes out.

www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Knowledge: A Human Interest Story

In this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, bu...

www.openbookpublishers.com

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Reposted by Chris Hanretty

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2h

Goodhart's Law part N.

www.transformernews.ai/p/claude-son...

Claude Sonnet 4.5 knows when it’s being tested

Anthropic's new model appears to use "eval awareness" to be on its best behavior

www.transformernews.ai

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Reposted by Dani Rodrik, Stephen M. Walt, Cas Mudde , and 44 more Dani Rodrik, Stephen M. Walt, Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell, Jan W. Mueller, Guntram B. Wolff, Christian Odendahl, Richard S.J. Tol, Colin F. Camerer, Robbert Sanderman, Gabriel Felbermayr, Steven Van de Walle, Alistair Munro, Michael A. Clemens, Cyrus Samii, Lucas Leemann, Francesco Saraceno, Laia Balcells, Andrew Curry, Paul Lehmann, Guy Grossman, John Mullahy, Joshua Goodman, David Dorn, Ingo Rohlfing, Daniel W. Drezner, Iikka Korhonen, Aaron Sojourner, Daniel Huppmann, Julia Lynch, Rita Hamad, Stephen D. Murphy, Nazita Lajevardi, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Miguel Á. Malo, Henry Farrell, Dean Eckles, Maria Abreu, Dana R. Fisher, Jason Lyall, Brian Weatherson, Bård Harstad, Christina Pagel, Jürgen Janger, Nicolai von Ondarza, Adam Tooze, Anita Gohdes

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 8h

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

Wasn't that just a way to get fans used to the idea of shirt sponsors before they started raking in the euros from Qatar and Spotify?

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, I think it's a mix of that and aggressively banning anyone who looks like they might remotely know what they are doing. So if the overround isn't jumped enough you won't lose too much.

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

Do UK firms run accumulators on bets on the same game?

The trick the US firms seem to have figured out was how to profitably price bets on correlated events like "Erling Haaland scores and City wins".

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

It means banning parking within 20ft of an intersection. This primarily is aimed at making pedestrians more visible.

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

I didn't realise what "universal daylighting" was; it's a ban on parking within 20 feet of an intersection.

Given how many problems are caused in my neighbourhood by SUVs parked right near corners, I wish Ann Arbor had a similar ban.

www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/...

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

This got me nostalgic for the time when there were more large cricketers.

Rishabh Pant looked like he was going to bring back that tradition but he’s lost a ton of weight.

Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 1d

there are not a lot of sports where a person the shape of Alejandro Kirk could be playing at the highest level at the end of the season

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 1d

there are not a lot of sports where a person the shape of Alejandro Kirk could be playing at the highest level at the end of the season

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Tania Lombrozo @tanialombrozo.bsky.social · 1d

Glad and sad to see this series, which echoes the theme of lost science I wrote about below & does something to make it less invisible www.northjersey.com/story/opinio...

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Peter Jacobs

Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 1d

REI is closing unionized stores. So many companies that like to pretend to be progressive remain still virulently anti-union at their core. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/08/b...

REI Co-Op’s Boston location is set to close next year - The Boston Globe

REI said it will close three locations on the East Coast, including a store in Boston, as it launches a new strategic plan.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

I never knew how to write them, so I'd also like that kind of help.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz.bsky.social · 1d

New book in draft: AI and Consciousness [link in thread]
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.

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Reposted by Philip N. Cohen, Brian Weatherson, Baptiste Coulmont

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 2d

Halloween accidents and polar coordinates.

Halloween in the Round

Last year I wrote about cleaning some data from the NHTSA’s FARS system, tracks information about road accidents in the United States. I did that again this year for my Modern Plain Text Computing cla...

kieranhealy.org

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d

I think the short answer to this is no, because of the ramshackle distributed way US elections are run. But I suspect other opinions are available.

Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 2d

Is this a reasonable question?

Will There Be Midterm Elections? - Daily Nous

According to a site that aggregates data from several betting markets, bettors think there's a 63.9% chance that the Democratic Party will regain control of the US House of Representatives in the midt...

dailynous.com

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 2d

Is this a reasonable question?

Will There Be Midterm Elections? - Daily Nous

dailynous.com

Reposted by Dani Rodrik, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell , and 11 more Dani Rodrik, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell, Elizabeth Saunders, Hugo Mercier, Jacob T. Levy, Bessma Momani, Samantha Brennan, Dana R. Fisher, Kate Starbird, Brian Weatherson, Leah Stokes, Aviel Roshwald, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 2d

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Baptiste Le Bihan @baptistelebihan.bsky.social · 3d

I'm hiring, please share widely!
genevasymmetrygroup.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/2...

Homepage - Département de Philosophie - UNIGE

www.unige.ch

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 4d

They did have Matt Beard as part of the team earlier, so EGS isn’t the first philosopher they’ve had. I agree it’s very fun philosophy for kids.

www.case.org/dr-matt-beard

Dr. Matt Beard

Join us at CASE Academy and unlock the leader within you. At this exclusive online course, you’ll embark on a learning journey alongside colleagues from diverse advancement disciplines.

www.case.org

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Reposted by Zen Faulkes, Brian Weatherson, Catherine J. Frieman

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 4d

The new Wiley journal review system is an absolute nightmare. Editorial assistants have been replaced by a clunky, AI-enabled website that makes it harder to find and invite reviewers. Associate editor workloads have increased. I'm not convinced the invitations to reviewers are even going through.

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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 5d

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 6d

Proud to make a gift of this article www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u...

Statue of Trump and Epstein Holding Hands Returns to National Mall

www.nytimes.com

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d

Ugh, I meant portrait in the original. My bad! (Need edit button.)

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d

That is unfortunate, though it's across Wiley.

Again, once you've gone two column portrait, it is tricky. You either have footnotes across the whole page, which are too long, or uneven columns, which they might not like the look of.

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d

I think the intended use for these PDFs is basically archival. You aren't supposed to read them at all; you read papers in the XML/HTML version that's in browser. These PDFs are for citing and archiving.

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d

I don't love it, but it's a genuinely hard problem. Your readers are mostly using letter (or A4) size paper. They also expect to read things in landscape (ruling out Imprint's style). And they don't want to waste paper or have unreadably long lines. Meet all those conditions and you end up like this

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d

Did not expect to see a RRR sticker on the front page of the NY Times.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/a...

Evan Dando Is Back From the Brink

www.nytimes.com

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d

Oh sure, there will be borderline cases.

But the clear cases (to my eyes) look like this:

1. There is a leader (or leadership group)
2. The bulk of people agree to follow the leader over some range of instructions.
3. The leader chooses something from that range and communicates it.

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d

I think armies can intend to capture locations, and prosecutors’ offices can intend to prosecute a particular case.

The more structured a group is the easier it is to ascribe it intentions.

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d

Have philosophers talking about conceptual engineering done any work on SLAPP as a concept?

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 7d

in which, I try to give the YIMBYs a present to make up for all the mean things I've said about them backofmind.substack.com/p/sopppps-an...

SOPPPPs and SLAPPs

the importance of giving something a name

backofmind.substack.com