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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.org

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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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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 2h

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 · 3h

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 · 3h

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

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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 5h

Strong truth here from @himself.bsky.social. Civil society has to get its act together and coordinate for the greater good, even if that's not its usual mode. Universities most especially.

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 6h

"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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Baptiste Le Bihan @baptistelebihan.bsky.social · 1d

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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Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕 @liao.shen-yi.org · 1d

I know this might further contribute to my increasing professional irrelevance, but I think I have to expand my journal boycott from Springer and Elsevier journals to Wiley journals too. It's all rather terrible.

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 2d

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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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d

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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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 3d

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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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 4d

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 · 4d

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

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 4d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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 · 5d

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

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 5d

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

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 5d

everything is terrible so here's the Muppets channeling Hamilton and bringing me untold joy (via the brilliant brettevansmafrog on insta)

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 6d

The "compact" is a threat, with the administration explicitly stating that it plans to disfavor universities that don't sign in areas from foreign student visas, student loans, federal contracts as well as grants, and even tax [501(c)(3)] status.

It's a maximalist plan of 1st Amendment violation.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d

This is partially why Ishani and I argued that we should welcome the idea of coercive conditions on funding; it captures some things the government should not be able to do.

It's just that it was never plausible that Medicaid expansion was one of those things.

brian.weatherson.org/quarto/posts...

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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 6d

RIP Jane Goodall, by all accounts a wonderful woman who loved this Far Side cartoon

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 7d

Please report this fucking AI slop. Goddamnit. www.amazon.com/KALEB-HORTON...

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The Upshot @upshot.nytimes.com · 8d

How range anxiety is being replaced by the freedom of the open road.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

See How E.V. Road Trips Went From Impossible to Easy

There are a lot more fast chargers than there used to be. Look up what that could mean for a route near you.

www.nytimes.com

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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 8d

The President of the United States tells assembled US top brass that he wants to use the US military to kill US citizens on US soil.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8d

Trump to top military officials: "I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but our military. Because we're going into Chicago very soon. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor."

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Lakshya Jain @lakshya.splitticket.org · 8d

Many students use AI to get their work done. I think this is a disaster for higher education — it circumvents the process of learning, and expertise never gets built.

I wrote about it for The Argument today, with findings from our latest poll on AI attitudes.

www.theargumentmag.com/p/chatgpt-an...

ChatGPT and the end of learning

My students kept using ChatGPT. I couldn't make them stop.

www.theargumentmag.com

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Mark Eli Kalderon @markelikalderon.bsky.social · 8d

"One was Realism in Mathematics by Penelope Maddy. In the margins, McCarthy summarizes the author’s points and comments on them, frequently disagreeing. “Gibberish,” he noted at one point."

www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture...

$Image of Cormac McCarthy\s copy of Wittgenstein's Blue and Brown Books with a grocery list$

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