A neat rallying cry for open access.

Poptimism (also called popism), a portmanteau of pop and optimism, is a mode of discourse which holds that pop music deserves the same respect as rock music and is as authentic and as worthy of professional critique and interest.

via: https://jude-doyle.ghost.io/po/

Following the first hyperlink in the main text of an English Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually leads to the Philosophy article. In February 2016, this was true for 97% of all articles on Wikipedia, an increase from 94.52% in 2011. The remaining articles lead to an article without any outgoing wikilinks, to pages that do not exist, or get stuck in loops.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_philosophy_phenomenon

via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283276

I worry that the same things that drive me to the fridge at midnight drive others to credit agreements on cars the size of maisonettes. Both coping mechanisms in an increasingly alienating world; immediate individual comfort over long-term collective survival.

A bit doomer-y, but I definitely understand the sentiment.

When I got to be an upper-level PhD student, I would go to conferences, look for the people who were five years or so ahead of me, and ask myself: do they seem happy? Do I want to be like them? Are they pleased to have exited the gauntlet of pain that separates my life and theirs? The answer was an emphatic no. Landing a professor position had not suddenly put all their neuroses into remission. If anything, their success had justified their suffering, thus inviting even more of it. If it took this much self-abnegation, mortification, and degradation to get an academic job, imagine how much you’ll need for tenure!

The US legal system is so effed.

There are two senses in which writing can be good: it can sound good, and the ideas can be right. […] I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right.

This thought feels dangerous and is arguably wrong. He later says that this isn’t quite right, but it still feels like a bad (and arguably bit dishonest) thing to lead your essay with.

So it’s not quite right to say that better sounding writing is more likely to be true. Better sounding writing is more likely to be internally consistent. If the writer is honest, internal consistency and truth converge.

This is significantly better, but still reads as naïve. If anything, I feel like well-written stuff can make it really hard to challenge the assumptions of an argument, which in a way is its own hell. I think Graham is right to point out that clumsy writing reflects wrong ideas, and that getting rid of those errors can help you fix the ideas, but I feel like in some way, because of how the argument is framed, that this essay is self-refuting.

In truth, much of this “are we, aren’t we in a bubble” talk isn’t actually useful if you are operating in our current environment. What is more important to ask is “what should I do?” and “what are some of the things to watch out for?” and “how do I make sense of our current moment?”

What starts out as a response to a comment on the importance of reading business biography transforms into an excellent commentary on why tech is where it currently is, and how the reader can take the time to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

If we want to build robust systems in which humans play a part, we cannot write off human decisions as random. We must investigate what made the human act that way because that’s the only way we can improve system robustness. I’m not making a philosophical statement by saying human behaviour isn’t random – it’s a practical standpoint for the purpose of safety engineering. Human decision-making never fails. Instead, human error is a symptom of a system that needs to be redesigned.

This is a lecture video about chapter 5 of HLA Hart’s seminal 1961 book, The Concept of Law. In this chapter Hart begins to present his own theory of law. He distinguishes primary rules from secondary rules. He enumerates three defects that plague systems of rules composed only of primary rules (uncertainty, static-ness, and inefficiency). He then explains how thee defects are remedied by secondary rules (the rule of recognition, rule of change, and rule of adjudication, respectively). This is part of a Philosophy of Law course.

This is a lecture video about a short selection from book 3 of David Hume’s famous work of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40). Hume was an empiricist. The lecture of basically a presentation of his argument from empiricism to the conclusion that there are no genuine, objective moral facts residing in actions themselves (rather, there are only sentiments of moral disapprobation or disapproval in us). This lecture of part of Introduction to Ethics.

Firstly, you need to hold in your head the knowledge that you will probably–no, almost certainly–fail. You will need to hold that uncomfortableness in your heart and carry it with you always. Never to share, but always to hold. Ground yourself in the impossibilities of what you’ll attempt, lest your hubris lead you to ruin.

Secondly, you will need to hold firm and irrationally deep conviction. Unshakable. Unshatterable. Conviction that you will succeed. This is the conviction that you have to share, that you have to use to lead people along with you, that you have to embody fully and without reservation.

I think it’s important to question the script, even if you decide that you like it. You should be able to explain why you like it. This process of questioning is a radical act. A radical, in its non-pejorative usage, is born when someone questions their life and worldview, decides that they want something else, and seeks out others who came to similar conclusions.

If you are a scientist, an engineer, a philosopher, an anthropologist, or an academic of any stripe, thinking and understanding is your job.