Make broth this year

I don't usually tell my students the answer, but in the final lecture for this class at the National University of Singapore, I did so. Meaning in life is found in subjective enjoyment of objectively worthwhile projects. www.youtube.com/watch?v=slNN...

Interesting hypothesis about AI ethics: "The prevailing negativity is a result of the particular way the discipline is institutionally organized, which pressures AI ethicists to portray AI in a critical light."

the people are starting to understand

The American Philosophical Association interviewed me, @bradleyrettler.com, and Craig Warmke about our bitcoin book and how things have changed since it came out last year. apablog.substack.com/p/revisiting...

Fun chart: the estimated lifespans of USD notes

CRUSHING BLOW TO NSO: 🇺🇸Court permanently bans Pegasus spyware-maker from targeting WhatsApp 🚫Must destroy tools exploiting WhatsApp 🚫Stop future development of WA targeting Foreign gov customers exempt from data deletion but... 🚫NSO is barred from helping them hack WA. 1/

saving this bad boy in my jpgs folder for future use in all group chats

If it bothers you when millions of holders of an asset exercise political influence, your issue is not with their asset. It is with democracy.

It‘s so cool that we get to keep learning stuff our entire lives. Every day I can read about a new topic and I won’t ever run out of things to study.

Audiobook coming soon -- finally! Thank you to the dozens of people who begged our publisher to do this.

the charts from this new Deutsche Bank report are kind of funny. look at what you have to do to the y axis to make bitcoin and gold performance look even remotely similar across this 2012-2025 timeframe

A perfect table of contents.

I've been reading a bunch of AI skeptics lately, and I'm noticing how closely they resemble another kind of technology skeptic I know well — the bitcoin skeptic. Some patterns:

I have never started getting interested in some new tech stack -- 3D modelling (90s), web development (2000s), bitcoin (2010s), chatbots (2020s) -- without feeling like I am late. But if you just stick around for a while, that feeling goes away. And there's always more to learn.

In serious academic hiring, letters are mostly noise. A confident search committee does fine without them. Why, then, do they persist? Three compatible theories: 1. They're fun, in a kind of gossipy way 2. Many committees aren't equipped to do their jobs 3. Inertia

bitcoin fixes this

indeed

middlemen have their place (from Tibor Fischer's My Bags are Big; a good read)

I've spent much of my public life being a little cagey about God, the Catholic Church, and philosophy of religion (no way to live, for the record). This interview on all that stuff with @2Philosophical_ was a first for me, and fun. Thank you, JP! www.youtube.com/watch?v=14O1...

The Wire said it best, “is you takin’ notes on a criminal fuckin’ conspiracy??” The answer, for some reason, is always “yes.”

Friendly reminder

If the reviewers are right, maybe this book isn't so great. But you gotta hand it to Millgram for the title. "Why Didn’t Nietzsche Get His Act Together?" is an amazing book title.

guy who says we should say "doctor" for honorary doctorates, but not for earned PhDs. Dr. Taylor Swift, Dr. Donald J. Trump, Dr. Justin Timberlake, Dr. Barbra Streisand, etc. (guy is me)

I can't remember the last time the news cycle synced so well with my teaching. In 35 minutes, I'll be lecturing on discretionary monetary policy, central bank independence, and the monetary rule of law bitcoin offers as an alternative.

One of the cool things about reading The Silver Chair aloud to your child is that you can have her recite the signs every time, and to succeed where Jill Pole faltered. Full immersion. Locked in.

A remarkable interview with a remarkable person And by one too. Nathan Ballantyne spends months on these things, getting the questions right and teasing things out of his subjects that no one else has ever managed to do. Read this one, and then read them all. www.the-workbench.ca/interviews/p...

“An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.” From: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

is philosophy a scam?

"fewer yachts, more hemorrhoid cream" A curious phrase in an otherwise practical and well-argued post about how deal with the hedonic treadmill and empty pursuit of positional goods. Link below.

Oh look. Everything experts and activists warned about is happening exactly as predicted.

What is philosophy? And why would one do it? If you do not do philosophy yourself, someone will do it for you. I recommend the path of a free person — thinking about the big questions yourself. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpM...

It is never a bad day to call crypto bros arseholes and corrupt.

Famous Professor X once went out of his way to introduce me, then a student, to Famous Professor Y. I had no idea that Professor X even knew my name, much less my interests and such. Almost twenty years later, I still remember Professor X fondly. He can do no wrong. Note to self: act accordingly.

I don't always get quoted in my local paper of record. But when I do, I am unable to refrain from saying what I really think about crypto token pumpers

SometimesI think about a phrase from this old spoken word piece: 'aggressively inarticulate'. Talking this way is a choice. And it is disrespectful to one's audience to take up their time with ums and uhs and likes and rights. www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Po...

I wrote about automation and the meaning of life, as a guest post on Scott Aaronson's Shtetl-Optimized. (1/5) scottaaronson.blog?p=9030

We should probably discuss this, as it’s one of Bluesky’s biggest hurdles.

Gerrymandering illustrates how automation in policy can be better than discretion. If you give a legislature the power to chop things up as they will, they will do so in ways that benefit the dominant local party.

politician ::lies:: world ::sighs:: me ::sighs not so::

Ordinary conscientious objectors, in principle opposed to killing, may opt out of war when their religion requires them to. I dream of a world where other conscientious objectors, in principle opposed to buying USFG debt, may opt out when their religion requires them to.

Resistance Money - Andrew Bailey, Bradley Rettler, Craig Warmke If you're looking for a philosophy textbook about Bitcoin this is a philosophy textbook about Bitcoin. I thought it was quite interesting and am glad I read it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlZT...

some people out there don't know who Barbara, Celarent, Darii, and Ferio are, and it shows

In the most bsky-ish interaction I've ever had, some anon complained that our bitcoin book (which they've not read) is full of motivated reasoning. I reply that we document and discuss pro-bitcoin motivated reasoning in the book and take issue with it. The response? Blocked!

Sometimes I get to know someone well and think: 'Oh my. He is so himself.' It is a high compliment.

Every idol makes two promises: you will be invulnerable (a citadel) and you will be powerful (coin-carrying masters in a world of serfs). Hypothesis: if bitcoin is bad religion, the antidote is good prophecy

"The growth of [A.I.] will slow drastically... most [LLMs] have nothing to say... By[2032] it will become clear that [A.I.'s] impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s"

habibi have I got a school for you

Guy who loves LLMs and uses them for everything: From the inside, guy feels great. Powers are extended and levered; productivity is up. From the outside, it feels like losing a friend.

I've found this framework useful in understanding the ideologies at work around me. What examples would you give for these four categories?