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bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson
@bweatherson.bsky.social
2.7K followers 210 following 1.5K posts

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

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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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bweatherson.bsky.social
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

Reposted by Ben Worthy, Brian Weatherson

chanret.bsky.social
Chris Hanretty @chanret.bsky.social · 4h
Has no one in the BBC heard of the Streisand effect?

Did everyone think, "oh, Rutger Bregman, he'll be cool with this"?
rutgerbregman.com Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 5h
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Scott A. Imberman, Brian Weatherson , and 1 more

peark.es
George Pearkes @peark.es · 21h
latest sham investigation just dropped
Department of War 🇺🇸 @DeptofWar OFFICIAL STATEMENT: The Department of War has received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.). In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations…

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 23h
My favorite heuristic about LLMS that they're usually unhelpful when they give you 1 option, and usually helpful when they give you more. Exceptions in both directions of course, but it's a good heuristic.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
I don’t think they are uploading their own papers with the prompt “Tell me some objections to this”; that would be interesting to see how they found it.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
If they are they haven’t told me. The most I’ve heard is that some use it as super-Google, asking for explanations of unfamiliar terminology. I assume it’s not 100% reliable, but probably better than guessing or random web searching.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
This week with bonus @philimprint.bsky.social content thanks to @devinsanchezcurry.com.
dailynous.com Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 1d
An "honest" book review. Formal methods in philosophy. Poetry against the machine. Who disagrees w/ scientific consensus? Folk psychology, science, & IQ. AI girl/boyfriends as "dependency-fostering products". Nancy Sherman answers "why philosophy?"
Mini-Heap - Daily Nous
New links... “It is not uncommon to open an analytic philosophy paper written during the past century and find logical symbols and mathematical notation among the prose… Why do analytic philosophers d...
dailynous.com

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

dailynous.com
Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 1d
An "honest" book review. Formal methods in philosophy. Poetry against the machine. Who disagrees w/ scientific consensus? Folk psychology, science, & IQ. AI girl/boyfriends as "dependency-fostering products". Nancy Sherman answers "why philosophy?"
Mini-Heap - Daily Nous
New links... “It is not uncommon to open an analytic philosophy paper written during the past century and find logical symbols and mathematical notation among the prose… Why do analytic philosophers d...
dailynous.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
One role it can play right now is being something like a thesis advisor. It's not very good at that role, and it's fragile - it depends on being asked the right questions in a way a good advisor doesn't. But it's not useless, and getting better.

And I hope thesis advisors help people learn.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
There have been one or two cases in history where rage against the rich and powerful has been used to left wing ends. The results are sometimes a bit more dramatic than intended, but that’s the nature of rage.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
I agree these are important to the US higher ed system, but the parenthetical about other countries is weird.

The Australian system is nothing but equivalents of the big US state universities. That doesn’t undermine the value of the big US state universities.
alanallport.bsky.social Alan Allport @alanallport.bsky.social · 1d
Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.
jackiantonovich.bsky.social Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 1d
One of the bragging rights that the US ed system had in the 20th century is that we didn't have education tracks. Essentially, any kid could go to a CC or state school & major in whatever they wanted to (obviously an oversimplification). I fear this aspect of the American dream is dying.

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, David Dunning, Julie L. Lockwood , and 12 more

alanallport.bsky.social
Alan Allport @alanallport.bsky.social · 1d
Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.
jackiantonovich.bsky.social Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 1d
One of the bragging rights that the US ed system had in the 20th century is that we didn't have education tracks. Essentially, any kid could go to a CC or state school & major in whatever they wanted to (obviously an oversimplification). I fear this aspect of the American dream is dying.

Reposted by Richard Pettigrew

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
Nice example of Simpson’s Paradox in this post.

Minor league umpires have a higher accuracy rate on ball-strike calls than major league umpires but

(a) they are worse on easy calls and
(b) they are worse on hard calls.

blogs.fangraphs.com/your-final-p...
Your Final Pre-Robo-Zone Umpire Accuracy Update
This is the last time we’ll get to judge umpire accuracy without the ABS challenge system. Where do umpires stand, and how might we expect their accuracy to change once the robots get involved?
blogs.fangraphs.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
FotMob.com is good for real time xG, though I don’t know anything about the company behind it.
FotMob
FotMob is the essential app for matchday. Get live scores, fixtures, tables, match stats, and personalised news from over 500 football leagues around the world.
FotMob.com

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

pmomtch.bsky.social
Peter Momtchiloff @pmomtch.bsky.social · 2d
We the Would-be-goods shall release a new album on 13 February, *Tears Before Bedtime*. At our Bandcamp page you can listen to ‘The Gallopers’, a single from the album, and watch the first ever Would-be-goods video . . .

would-be-goods.bandcamp.com/album/tears-...
Tears Before Bedtime, by Would-Be-Goods
14 track album
would-be-goods.bandcamp.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d
Obviously this downside would still be there if people were using Gemini or Claude, but I do think it’s interesting how much it’s ChatGPT that is at the center of all this.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d
This is interesting about how ChatGPT means we’re losing easy signals that something is incoherent.
eliothiggins.bsky.social Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 6d
Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

Reposted by Timnit Gebru, Shannon Vallor, Steve Peers , and 5 more

eliothiggins.bsky.social
Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 6d
Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d
Yep the Cambridge Elements series is precisely that length.

Reposted by Mary Bosworth, Brian Weatherson, Stuart White , and 1 more

crookedfootball.bsky.social
Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 6d
Me at the LRB blog on the atrocious refugee policy of Mahmood and Starmer
Christopher Bertram | ‘Core Protection’
Refugeehood is not supposed to be like this. The ideal envisaged by the Refugee Convention is that refugee status should...
www.lrb.co.uk

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Brian Weatherson, Ann Bartow

bretdevereaux.bsky.social
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 6d
Email just went out on my campus that the Immigration Goons ("federal immigration agents") will be in town (Raleigh).

Inter alia, it says,"International students, faculty and staff should carry evidence of their immigration status with them at all times."

The fuck kind of country are we living in?

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d
Time for Elon to argue that the in car supervisors are making things worse, and they'd beat Waymo numbers if only those pesky humans got out of the way.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 7d
“.. Tesla’s current Robotaxi crash rate .. is about 2x higher than Waymo’s, despite in-car supervisors that prevent an unknown number of crashes.”

@electrek.co $TSLA
electrek.co/2025/11/17/t...

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, Brian Weatherson

carlquintanilla.bsky.social
Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 7d
“.. Tesla’s current Robotaxi crash rate .. is about 2x higher than Waymo’s, despite in-car supervisors that prevent an unknown number of crashes.”

@electrek.co $TSLA
electrek.co/2025/11/17/t...

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

dailynous.com
Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 7d
"She felt that she was deceiving her professors and betraying the purpose of her education." Still, she continued to use ChatGPT...
Even Conscientious Students in Their Favorite Courses… - Daily Nous
In a philosophy seminar—“my favorite class I’ve taken so far,” she said—Gwen used AI to write almost all her essays just to avoid late submissions. That's "Gwen", a student at Yale, interviewed for an...
dailynous.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d
I'm in Michigan and, yeah, this seems basically right. The difference between Michigan and red states is (a) the size of the metro areas, and (b) how Dem the rich suburbs are getting. Once you get beyond the metros, the voting patterns (and political views) aren't that different from "the South".

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d
John Maynard Keynes clearly just got everything because of his famous name.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

gabecontessa.bsky.social
Gabriele Contessa @gabecontessa.bsky.social · 8d
My Element on science denial is free to download until December 1st! Get it for free while you can!

doi.org/10.1017/9781...
Science Denial
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - Science Denial
doi.org

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Shannon Vallor, Rebecca Solnit , and 23 more

jackjenkins.me
Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 10d
Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:
“Faith leader, Michael Woolf, minister at Lake Street Church of Evanston, is detained by Illinois State Police during a protest against immigration actions, outside the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., November 14, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska”

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

nber.org
NBER @nber.org · 10d
Exposure to a field-specific faculty sexual misconduct incident decreases degree completion in that field by 3.4 percent four years after the incident, from Sarah R. Cohodes and Katherine B. Leu www.nber.org/papers/w34456

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 11d
Highway to Hell

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Anna O. Law, Peter Thorne , and 13 more

brookenewman.bsky.social
Brooke Newman @brookenewman.bsky.social · 11d
Message to all faculty: your expertise is no longer trusted or valued at this so-called “university.”
A thread by an A&M professor describing how the new rules will impact faculty. Syllabi must be fed into AI to be checked for content not aligned with approved syllabi; students will be encouraged to report faculty for inaccurate content; and young people are now being told they get to decide what a professor should teach.