Excited to share our fifth (and final) "explainer video"! (Refresher: these are ~5 min animations introducing applied epistemology concepts for a wide audience.) This one's on partisanship, featuring a script by Rishi Joshi! Please share & consider using in teaching! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke2c...

Welcome to the daily existence of a public health ethicist on a health sciences campus (So. Many. Unexplored. Value. Judgments.) Scientism is a heckuva drug. #SorryNotSorry #ISaidWhatISaid #PHEthx

New paper! I investigate cases where experts tacitly encode value judgments into their public pronouncements, and examine the complications this presents for the rationality of deference to experts, with a particular focus on pandemic policy. (1/2) philpapers.org/rec/WORCVJ

Really excited about the lineup for this. Check out the full thread for details and for how to apply to be a respondent.

AEP research getting out there! 👏👏👏

22 new papers up at @philimprint.bsky.social, including papers by @thisishannahkim.bsky.social, @catsaintcroix.bsky.social, @wiglet1981.bsky.social & @jweisber.bsky.social, @dellsen.bsky.social, @bartstreumer.bsky.social, and @aworsnip.bsky.social. journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/

(Kinda) new paper, with the fab Z Quanbeck, finally out @ Phil Imprint! We defend a combo of epistemic permissivism + limited pragmatism re reasons for belief. This preserves some features of pragmatic encroachment views while avoiding their drawbacks. journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/articl...

For one year only, the 8th Chapel Hill Normativity Workshop will (paradoxically) be in Montreal! Keynote by Jane Friedman plus 7 talks selected via open CFA. As usual, accepted papers eligible for special issue of Phil Studies. Submissions due Oct 15th; more info at normativity.web.unc.edu

Very excited to share our third "explainer video". (Refresher: these are ~5 min animations introducing applied epistemology concepts for a wide audience.) This one's on epist of free speech, featuring a script by Rob Simpson! Please share & consider using in teaching! www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMgb...

Reminder: tomorrow is the deadline to apply for this! It's a chance to get expert instruction in public writing on applied epistemology, feedback from peers, and to enjoy an in-person workshop here at UNC

🥁🎉It's time again! My colleague Thomas Grundmann is organising the Cologne Summer School in Philosophy. This year's star is @aworsnip.bsky.social (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). 🎊📢 You can find more information on the following website: cssip.uni-koeln.de Spread the word and repost!

The exciting AEP announcements just keep on coming! This is a really cool initiative being spearheaded by our summer 2025 RA Devin Lane--anyone interested in writing applied epistemology for a public audience should apply!

These explainer videos (produced and animated by the fantastic Ripley Stroud) are among my favorite things we're doing at the @unc-aep.bsky.social. The second one just came out, featuring Kevin Dorst on polarization. Please check it out and share widely!

What a gigantic surprise--the "civil discourse" folks have been having a little trouble with their civil discourse www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

In support of #philosophymatters, this fortnight I'll be highlighting things that don't matter that are not philosophy. First up: layovers.

Fascinating new post on our blog by Emily McWilliams, discussing the denial and undertreatment of women's pain in medical procedures through the lens of applied epistemological work on testimonial injustice, manufactured ignorance, and motivated reasoning: aep.unc.edu/2025/03/17/t...

One columnist, a professional pundit, is living in a paranoid delusion. The other, a sociologist, is living in America.

Is the unwillingness of deferring to experts really a serious societal pathology? Review by @aworsnip.bsky.social et al explores under exactly what conditions we ought to defer to experts, and under what conditions people are willing to defer to experts: buff.ly/NXuDVSu

New Paper in Philosophical Psychology: Trust in experts is low. Why? How bad is it? And what should we do? To answer these questions, we reviewed philosophy (when *ought* we defer to the experts) and psychology (when *do* people defer to the experts). Link in comments!

Speedy work by @journalphp.bsky.social and their publishers--the published version of the paper is now available, open access (thanks to our grant!), here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The disease of the American political class is the inability to see, describe, or respond what is happening, when doing so would conflict with the speech norms of the American political class

I wrote a blog post about Samuel Alito as a case study in the ethics of suspicion and psychologizing blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/openfordebat...

First (soon to be) published paper to come out of a fun collaborative project we're doing at UNC with a group of philosophers and psychologists on deference to experts!

It's this kind of thing that gives me hope that we live in a simulation designed by a massive joker and all the other crap that's going on is just a part of that too

Interesting to see that US safety standards focus on what happens to people inside the car on collision, whereas in the UK there’s a much greater focus on pedestrian safety and that of people in the cars you collide with.

I'm honored to be the guest lecturer at this year's Cologne Summer School in Philosophy, where I'll be delivering five lectures (plus a public lecture) on my current work in applied epistemology. (1/2) cssip.uni-koeln.de

Genuinely never thought I'd see the day when Mitch McConnell was described by other Republicans as a "RINO". *Mitch McConnell* as "Republican in Name Only". Because he--what?--opposed like 1% of Trump's agenda and appointments?

Starmer confirming the UK is willing to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. An immense moment. Hard to overstate how important this is or how impressive it is that he's done it.

[speaking to Senate committee] I choose to use the remainder of my time to add this mp4 of MBV's live rendition of You Made Me Realise to the congressional record youtu.be/HNlvioY0Y-0?...

This is a good idea. A daily Democratic press conference with a consistent, skilled spokesperson who covers two things: 1. What DOGE and the Trump administration did to the American people today 2. What Democrats are doing in response

Termination notices going out this afternoon to more than 300 employees of the National Cancer Institute. Access likely ends today. Four weeks paid leave and that’s it. Strong power move for Team Cancer.

The "woke grant" database is predictably idiotic, includes papers about diversity in beetles, cis-regulatory gene pathways, and brain trauma. US gov characterises the included grants as advancing "neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda". www.astralcodexten.com/p/only-about...

also you do not have to think like a political operative, you aren't one and honestly most political operatives are wrong about stuff, just care about what you care about and care loudly

Dropping the Adams case is so obviously corrupt and unethical that a former Scalia clerk resigned on principle. This is not a partisan issue; it's a question of whether DOJ will be weaponized by this administration on behalf of its allies and against its opponents. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/n...

I am begging the Democratic Party to create a media spectacle. Myself & dozens of other political communication experts will coach you for free.

We could just be reading great books, watching good movies, and eating fruit. Instead we have to survive/fight miserable power hoarders. What a waste of limited time.

This is so depressing. The UK has a very restrictive (and at times cruelly arbitrary) immigration system. For years the Tories have been entirely inaccurately accusing Labour of presiding over "open borders" when they were in government; now Labour is accusing the Tories of the same. Utter fiction.

There's so much going on, but important not to lose sight of the possibility that the NC Supreme Court could overturn an election in an act of partisan lawlessness almost as brazen as what Trump attempted www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/o...

When Stanford IT staff and a pro-diversity group shared a list of words they encouraged others not to use, it was national news, despite the fact it never represented campus policy. When the government erases any mention, data or research related to words, will it be treated as a free speech issue?

I feel like 'all-inclusive' actually *never* comes up in a DEI context and only ever refers to like package vacations

Trump does well on vague approval but that support plummets as soon as voters are asked about details. Do you approve of how Trump is handling Gaza?” has 54% approval but “Do you approve of the specific plan Trump has advanced for handling Gaza” has 13% approval.

"I promise, America will soon be the Cybertruck of countries—uglier than you could have imagined, built for rich chuds, borderline inoperable, and on fire."

Trump and Musk are shutting down US AID because they do not want to interfere with overseas issues WITH ONE WEIRD EXCEPTION

If anyone whines that we "self-segregated ourselves from X" and "aren't in the conversation anymore," feel free to show them this screenshot of my "For You" tab.

don’t get overwhelmed! pick 2-3 things and focus your energy there. for example, I am: - crying in my morning coffee - making a list of people I would like to catapult out to sea - staring out the window

I've got to say, the guy who accidentally became the Director of the FBI does 100% look like the guy who accidentally becomes the Director of the FBI in a mid-2000s comedy about a guy who accidentally becomes the Director of the FBI