Posts

Elites Failed the Discernment Test: Elites let their disfavor for cultural change, and a desire to cozy up to edgy ideas, turn into a normalizing and promotion of far-right ideas.

089: AI, Cultural Tools, and Pluralism (w/ Ted Underwood): The episode explores the impact of artificial intelligence as a cultural technology that can enhance liberal values like pluralism and tolerance, inspired by Ted Underwood’s essay on the topic.

Roy Cooper, Prayer, and the Folly of Anti-Religious Collectivism: Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign announcement, which included a mention of prayer, sparked backlash on social media from people who’d rather be bigots than understand another’s faith.

Boys Are Falling Behind Girls Because Girls Aren't Being Held Back: Let’s not blame boys’ underperformance on women teachers.

Silicon Valley’s “996” Is About Power, not Productivity: The “996” work schedule reflects a troubling belief in sacrificing personal well-being for perceived productivity, driven more by power dynamics than actual efficiency.

AI and the Threat of Nostalgia Culture: The rise of AI-generated content risks overshadowing original creative works, potentially leading to a market collapse for writers and artists if consumers prefer nostalgia-driven remixes over new expressions, but the enduring human desire for innovation suggests that original art and writing will …

An Inconsistent Approach to Viewpoint Diversity: If school choice is the answer to fights over curriculum in K-12 schools, it also needs to be the answer at universities. But culture war supporting libertarians don’t tend to apply the argument that consistently.

If You Want to Win Political Arguments, Stop Being an Asshole: Political persuasion versus the urge to political domination.

Trump Promised Disaster. His Supporters Didn’t Believe Him.: Many Trump supporters underestimated his intentions during his first term, believing he wouldn’t follow through on his campaign promises, but his second term has revealed the dangers of their misjudgment.

Reign of the Competency Cosplayers: American politics suffers from a lack of genuine expertise, as leaders prioritize performative competence and tribal loyalty over actual knowledge and skill.

The GOP is now just grifters grifting each other: The GOP has become a political movement of con artists conning each other without realizing they’re being conned.

Selling Out vs. Just Selling: The Weirdness of "Content" Monetization: A generational divide in the relationship between creators and their creations reflects a shift towards personal branding and content monetization, where the focus increasingly prioritizes selling oneself over creating meaningful art.

The Politics of "Unbiased" Conservative Search Engines: It’s impossible to build a search engine that isn’t biased and doesn’t manipulate results. But it is possible to convince conservatives you can.

The Shaky Future of Trump's Personality Cult: Given Trump’s poor and declining health, we might see the American right dramatically fracture during his second term.

Why, Despite the Numbers, Bluesky Feels Bigger than Threads: Threads has significantly more active users than Bluesky, but feels a lot smaller. Why?

It's Okay if Your Social Media Platform is a Bubble: Is it wrong to have a social media feed primarily of people you agree with?

The Quillette Effect: When echo chambers masquerade as open inquiry.

The GOP's Competence Gap: Republican talent has largely been replaced by amateurs and grifters. That’s a hole the right will have difficulty recovering from.

The Verge’s “Failure” is a Win for Everyone: Talent Networks as Networks: Becca Farsace’s departure from The Verge highlights the dynamic nature of talent development within creative networks, where her growth is a shared success rather than a failure of retention.

Silicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse: Like an AI trained on its own output, they’re growing increasingly divorced from reality, and are reinforcing their own worst habits of thought.

Twitter/X as a Bubble for Bad Ethics: Twitter’s shift under Elon Musk has distorted its role as a cultural touchpoint, misrepresenting the national discourse and leading thought leaders to adopt increasingly unethical perspectives.

The Misuse of Meritocracy: On men who convince themselves they are the only true meritocrats because women somehow don‘t understand or don‘t appreciate the idea of merit.

Why the Right Lies About Cities: Right-wing narratives falsely depict American cities as failing in order to defend traditional values, while urban residents experience thriving, diverse, and inclusive communities.

The False Equivalence Trap: As America faces authoritarianism, many intellectuals wrongly insist on equating both political sides, downplaying the clear danger posed by the far-right’s attacks on democracy.

The Necessary Virtue of Not Being an Asshole: No matter what you tell yourself, you can’t be a principled person if you’re an asshole.

Why Tech Bros Overestimate AI's Creative Abilities: Silicon Valley’s overconfidence in the imminent arrival of Artificial General Intelligence stems from a combination of limited understanding of the humanities, an insular culture, and a business model that incentivizes exaggerated claims about AI’s capabilities.

Substack Doesn't Want You to Leave: Substack is in trouble, and their recent feature releases are evidence of that.

How to Talk Yourself into Defending Nonsense: Engaging in political discussions outside one’s expertise can lead to flawed arguments and a refusal to accept criticism, as individuals may mistakenly view dissent as a political attack rather than a valid critique.

Liberalism and Sympathetic Joy: Liberalism thrives on pluralism and is reinforced by virtues like goodwill and sympathetic joy, which foster happiness and social harmony without imposing a single conception of the good life.

The Challenge of Committing to Liberty—and Meaning It: It is all too easy to abandon liberty when its practice inconveniences us.

Three Kinds of Conservatives: Conservatism encompasses three distinct forms—personal, social, and political—that should not be conflated with being “on the right,” which refers to an ideological perspective on natural human inequalities.

Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Admirable, and Distance Yourself From Those Who Aren’t.: An examination of the place of admirable friendship in an ethical life.

How Social Media Tricks our Brains — and Destroys our Politics: Social media convinces us our small communities are representative of the whole and tells us we’re more right than we really are.

Speaking Ill of the Dead: Pat Robertson’s death prompts a necessary critique of his legacy as a figure who spread hate and exclusion, illustrating that speaking ill of profoundly harmful individuals can be justified, even immediately after their passing.

A Twitter Eulogy: This weekend I deleted my Twitter account. Which is a small thing, yes, but it’s 16 years of interactions, and 13,000 followers, and it wasn’t an easy decision. Not the least because, in those 16 years, I made real and important friends through Twitter. The platform meant a lot to me. So as my …

You Haven’t Been Canceled. You’re Just Unlikable.: Social rejection often isn’t about your ideas.

A Crash Course in Cultivating Liberal Virtues: Perfect virtue is impossible, and moral growth is challenging. But we can improve ourselves in practical ways, even if we can’t achieve the ideal.

Social Conservatism is Suffering: We cannot make permanent what is inevitably impermanent, and insisting otherwise brings distress. Better to embrace dynamism and social diversity

No, Midjourney (and other AI) Is Not Stealing Your Work: The argument that AI image generators steal from artists would mean that all artists are thieves.

Hate Can Be Mainstream: Bigotry is bigotry, even if the bigots are in the majority.

How the Right Distorted Libertarianism: Once rooted in liberalism, libertarianism’s detour through the conservative movement has blunted its radical edge and commitment to principle.

How To Be a Better Advocate for Liberty (w/ Cory Massimino): The first episode of ReImagining Liberty focuses on redefining the liberty movement’s relationship with conservatism and the value of exploring diverse ideas.

Liberty Upsets Patterns—and Conservatism: Liberty is dynamic. Conservatism is static. They cannot coexist.

The American Right Never Really Loved Freedom: Conservative ideology fundamentally contradicts individual liberty and self-determination.