Nolen Gertz
@ethicistforhire.bsky.social
Philosophy professor @utwentephilosophy.bsky.social
Author of #NihilismAndTechnology (RLI 2018), #Nihilism (MIT 2019), #PhilosophyOfWarAndExile (Palgrave 2014)
https://www.nolengertz.com
#Philsky #Philtech #Existentialism #Phenomenology #Filmsky
Author of #NihilismAndTechnology (RLI 2018), #Nihilism (MIT 2019), #PhilosophyOfWarAndExile (Palgrave 2014)
https://www.nolengertz.com
#Philsky #Philtech #Existentialism #Phenomenology #Filmsky
Pinned
Nolen Gertz
@ethicistforhire.bsky.social
· Dec 27
Nihilism and Technology, Updated Edition
Investigating how human values mediate the design and use of new technologies, the updated edition of Nolen Gertz’s Nihilism and Technology explores the ramifications of artificial intelligence. G...
rowman.com
Thread of things I wrote this year:
1) Updated edition of my #NihilismAndTechnology book with new chapters about why AI doesn't exist, why ChatGPT shouldn't exist, and why climate change can't be solved by nihilism...
rowman.com/ISBN/9781538...
1) Updated edition of my #NihilismAndTechnology book with new chapters about why AI doesn't exist, why ChatGPT shouldn't exist, and why climate change can't be solved by nihilism...
rowman.com/ISBN/9781538...
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Gotta say, if the genre of article that goes “I talked to the machine that’s poisoning Black communities, and here’s what it said” went extinct tonight, we’d all be better off.
November 25, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Gotta say, if the genre of article that goes “I talked to the machine that’s poisoning Black communities, and here’s what it said” went extinct tonight, we’d all be better off.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
can’t fucking catch a breath
make it stop
make it stop
November 25, 2025 at 7:31 PM
can’t fucking catch a breath
make it stop
make it stop
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
No bailouts. The US should extort these companies when the crash happens so they get minimal compensation in return for nationalizing the entire panopticon industry and then destroying it once harvested for socially useful parts. It won’t happen but it should
November 25, 2025 at 4:22 PM
No bailouts. The US should extort these companies when the crash happens so they get minimal compensation in return for nationalizing the entire panopticon industry and then destroying it once harvested for socially useful parts. It won’t happen but it should
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
This is so funny because recipes can literally already be copied and reposted with no attribution or copyright. All AI does here is add statistical noise and make the stolen content useless. AI can’t even steal content without fucking it up.
NEW: AI “recipe slop” is overrunning search and social. Food creators say Google’s AI Overviews and glossy fake food pics are drowning out real, tested recipes — collapsing traffic and setting home cooks up for disaster, especially this Thanksgiving.
Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet -- And Thanksgiving Dinner
Food bloggers see traffic dip as home cooks turn to AI, inspired by impossible pictures
www.bloomberg.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
This is so funny because recipes can literally already be copied and reposted with no attribution or copyright. All AI does here is add statistical noise and make the stolen content useless. AI can’t even steal content without fucking it up.
Shot / Chaser
#NihilismAndTechnology
#NihilismAndTechnology
November 25, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Shot / Chaser
#NihilismAndTechnology
#NihilismAndTechnology
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
The military has a duty to refuse unlawful orders, but Congress has a duty to remove from office a president and secretary who would issue such orders. There is something off about members of Congress talking about the former while refusing to say the latter, the part that's actually their job here.
November 25, 2025 at 6:38 AM
The military has a duty to refuse unlawful orders, but Congress has a duty to remove from office a president and secretary who would issue such orders. There is something off about members of Congress talking about the former while refusing to say the latter, the part that's actually their job here.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Cannot overstate how, from my perch as a national-security reporter, this would have been an earth-shattering scandal in a prior era.
Billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, pardoned by Donald Trump, has been accused of facilitating millions of dollars’ worth of payments to Hamas in the wake of its attack on Israel on October 7 2023. Zhao also financed the Trump family's entrance into the cryptocurrency market.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao accused of facilitating payments to Hamas
Crypto tycoon pardoned by Donald Trump faces US court complaint from families of victims of October 7 attack
www.ft.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Cannot overstate how, from my perch as a national-security reporter, this would have been an earth-shattering scandal in a prior era.
*Foucault bursts out of his grave*
November 24, 2025 at 7:49 AM
*Foucault bursts out of his grave*
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
RIP Udo Kier, a true original
📽️
his one and only social media post:
📽️
his one and only social media post:
November 24, 2025 at 7:27 AM
RIP Udo Kier, a true original
📽️
his one and only social media post:
📽️
his one and only social media post:
Top Meta staff allegedly compared Instagram to a drug and worked for years to obscure the social media platform’s potential dangers from parents and children, even as they appeared to acknowledge their technology was harmful. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...
‘We’re basically pushers’: Court filing alleges staff at social media giants compared their platforms to drugs
Meta said the allegations “rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions” to present a misleading narrative.
www.politico.com
November 24, 2025 at 7:40 AM
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Yo what’s up chat. It’s ya boy Sisyphus, back again with another Eternal Boulder Any% run. If you’re new here, smash that follow button like Zeus smashed my hopes and dreams.
November 23, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Yo what’s up chat. It’s ya boy Sisyphus, back again with another Eternal Boulder Any% run. If you’re new here, smash that follow button like Zeus smashed my hopes and dreams.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.
My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.
My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.
November 23, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.
My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.
My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
“AI workers said they distrust the models they work on because of a consistent emphasis on rapid turnaround time at the expense of quality.”
Meet the AI workers who tell their friends and family to stay away from AI
When the people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least, it shows that incentives for speed are overtaking safety, experts say
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 5:12 PM
“AI workers said they distrust the models they work on because of a consistent emphasis on rapid turnaround time at the expense of quality.”
Feeling queasy now I've learned that Google is not only now offering Gemini ambassador certificates to teachers but also awarding students and *children* to be corporate AI mascots. Coercive normalization of commercialized digital education. blog.google/outreach-ini...
November 22, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
My favorite piece of content today.
November 21, 2025 at 8:28 PM
My favorite piece of content today.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
this is your brain when your entire politics is just a set of aesthetics
November 21, 2025 at 11:04 PM
this is your brain when your entire politics is just a set of aesthetics
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
'Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain'
#Iran 🇮🇷
#Iran 🇮🇷
Iran president says capital move now a necessity as water crisis deepens
Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has mad...
www.iranintl.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:52 AM
'Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain'
#Iran 🇮🇷
#Iran 🇮🇷
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Reporter: Are you affirming that you think the president is a fascist?
Mamdani: I've spoken about --
Trump: Just say yes, it's easier than explaining.
Mamdani: I've spoken about --
Trump: Just say yes, it's easier than explaining.
November 21, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reporter: Are you affirming that you think the president is a fascist?
Mamdani: I've spoken about --
Trump: Just say yes, it's easier than explaining.
Mamdani: I've spoken about --
Trump: Just say yes, it's easier than explaining.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?
We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
November 21, 2025 at 9:25 PM
TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?
We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to
"There’s clearly something political about it but nobody knows what it is"
Explained this mural to my class as a part of a section on Cthulhu (since people online were making a connection between the distorted images and Lovecraft), and they were amazed at these responses to its "politics" 😞
Just catching up with this amazing bit of London Centric reporting and this is such an excellent description of the weird epistemic ambiguity produced by AI: "There’s clearly something political about it but nobody knows what it is." www.londoncentric.media/p/ai-artwork...
November 21, 2025 at 9:48 AM
"There’s clearly something political about it but nobody knows what it is"
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Oh this hadn't occurred to me. Yikes. Another reason to throw AI into the Sun.
I am by no means a prominent public intellectual, but my inbox is increasingly filled with messages from people who have been convinced by sycophantic chatbots that they have discovered revolutionary theories that entirely upend our scientific understanding of the universe.
November 21, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Oh this hadn't occurred to me. Yikes. Another reason to throw AI into the Sun.
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
Cal State quite literally using chatbots in their efforts to suppress student unionization: edsource.org/2025/ai-assi...
Cal State says staff AI use ‘resulted in errors’ in legal filing
An administrative law judge said a document filed by Cal State had "all the hallmarks" of AI hallucinations.
edsource.org
November 21, 2025 at 6:39 AM
Cal State quite literally using chatbots in their efforts to suppress student unionization: edsource.org/2025/ai-assi...
Reposted by Nolen Gertz
This may very well be an accurate representation of the "modern software stack".
November 21, 2025 at 7:35 AM
This may very well be an accurate representation of the "modern software stack".