An LLM is a perfect engine of form without encounter. It can reproduce the language of disruption, but it cannot undergo it. In my latest essay, I look at why true formation always resists attempts to tame it. Read "Something Always Resists" on my Substack: paulhoard.substack.com/p/something-...

Large language models have infinite answers to answerable questions. They operate entirely in knowledge. But they have no access to truth because truth requires a self capable of being genuinely unsettled. Why AI clarifies the true work of an educator: paulhoard.substack.com/p/the-profes...

The threat of AI isn't just that it generates errors, but that we've become comfortable with them because they're useful. We’ve reduced truth to data, and now we’re outsourcing the data. This piece looks at this impact on higher ed. paulhoard.substack.com/p/the-cobra-effect-and-the-formation

By reducing education to Wissenschaft (knowledge transfer), universities built a system AI was destined to automate. LLMs don't disrupt modern higher ed; they complete it. My latest essay on why LLMs are replacing the lecture: paulhoard.substack.com/p/ai-and-the-future-of-higher-education

If LLMs can perfect the transmission of knowledge what role is left for the professor? My latest piece looks at the role of the professor in the age of LLMs. Read more on Substack 👇 paulhoard.substack.com/p/what-unive...

Had a great conversation with @timwhitaker.bsky.social on @thenewevangelicals.bsky.social exploring the psychology of adult play, its mental health roots, and how finding joy in community can be a form of resistance to rigid norms of "maturity." 🕹️🧠 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/4...

LLMs have flawless language with nothing beyond it. But as Lewis and Lacan both understood, language always fails to fully capture the actual. The gap between words and reality isn't a bug. My latest on why AI can't cross the gap: paulhoard.substack.com/p/real-things-escape-language-cs-lewis

Dawkins recently published on AI consciousness. He mistakes an epistemological problem for an ontological one. My latest piece explores subjectivity from a Lacanian perspective. Not "is AI conscious?" but "what are we becoming in relation to it?" paulhoard.substack.com/p/i-cant-pro...

Such a great time

Computation is not consciousness. My latest post explores the "Abstraction Fallacy" in AI. Using C.S. Lewis and Lacanian theory, I argue that while LLMs are brilliant at using symbols, they have no capacity to inhabit the meaning behind them. paulhoard.substack.com/p/why-ai-can...

Are we talking to an "Other" or just an echo? 🪞 New post up on the intersection of AI consciousness and Lacanian theory. I’m arguing that we’ve made the metaphor of "thinking machines" so habitual that we’re now trapped inside our own projection. paulhoard.substack.com/p/the-mirror...

AI is a self-help book that talks back. 🤖📖 LLMs are brilliant "technicians," but they can’t be therapists. Therapy requires a subject shaped by lack and a "Real" encounter—not just language all the way down. New essay on the limits of AI knowledge: paulhoard.substack.com/p/what-ai-ke...

Therapy follows the Analyst’s Discourse. This requires the agent to function as "object a"—the cause of desire. LLMs are trapped in the University Discourse (S2). They can’t "not know." They have no lack, so they have no silence to offer. paulhoard.substack.com/p/constitutive-lack

LLMs offer "knowledge without a knower." In the University Discourse, AI provides data but lacks the constitutive lack that makes human inquiry honest. New post is up: Knowledge Without a Knower 🦋 paulhoard.substack.com/p/knowledge-... #Lacan #AI #Theory

I just posted a new piece: "The Anatomy of a Question." I’m looking at how we’ve moved from "ordering" Alexa around to "interrogating" AI. It’s a shift from a position of mastery to a position of seeking—and it changes our social bonds entirely. paulhoard.substack.com/p/from-command-to-question

New article out: “Lacan Plays Catan: Unconscious Desire in Tabletop Gaming.” A primer on Lacanian ideas and an attempt to use psychoanalysis to read games and play more carefully. #BoardGames #Psychoanalysis open.substack.com/pub/paulhoar...

AI can’t "miss the mark" because it has no mark to miss. My new essay uses Lacan’s "Four Discourses" to explain why we talk to Alexa differently than to each other. Read more: paulhoard.substack.com/p/the-failure-of-communication #Lacan #AI #Philosophy

Anthropic’s 'Constitution' isn't just a policy document. It’s a rhetorical one. I wrote about how we use 'master signifiers' like safety and ethics to try and anchor the slippery drift of AI language. These systems are mirrorsthey reflect our own desire. paulhoard.substack.com/p/claudes-co...

Most systems in life are built to produce success. Games are built to produce losers. Why do we return to structures designed to defeat most of us? New essay: on losing, repetition, and why winning is only a pause. open.substack.com/pub/paulhoar...

Is your game night a defense mechanism? We often treat "Alpha Players" as a flaw. But psychoanalytically, groups install them to escape the anxiety of shared uncertainty. New post on the big Other and being a "co-author of uncertainty": paulhoard.substack.com/p/quarterbacking-in-cooperative-games

If you missed the live stream of @trippfuller.bsky.social, @paulhoard.bsky.social, and I talking about AI and the Christmas story, fear not! You can watch the recording here. In this clip, we riff on desire, flourishing, The Good Place & Zechariah losing his voice. open.substack.com/pub/personal...

@paulhoard.bsky.social and I are so honored to have our book included on Dwight's Top 10 books of the year! And this list is fantastic. I absolutely recommend all of these! dwightfriesen.com/2025/12/5204...

Welcome to the season finale of @queerpolifaith.bsky.social! Today's episode is a conversation I had with @billieiswriting.bsky.social and @paulhoard.bsky.social about #bullshit. It is part 2 of our conversation about their book #Eucontamination: Disgust Theology and the Christian Life from August

Y'all this event is going to be February, virtual registration is available (and free to students I believe), @paulhoard.bsky.social and I are gonna be presenting, and my counselor friends will even get CEUs for it. You should definitely sign!!! open.substack.com/pub/paulhoar...

NGL I like how the ridiculous threats from Hegseth have prompted Kelly to start treating this fascist regime with the disdain it deserved all along. They will come for the rest of you and it will be better to act together now.

Today I am dropping the first of my brother @paulhoard.bsky.social 's Essay in his Lacanian Virtue Ethics Series. I plan to post Paul's essays (with a little additional commentary from me at the end) as my Friday posts for a while. open.spotify.com/episode/798d...

paulhoard.substack.com/p/not-whole-... A short essay on Lacan and humility

New essay on fidelity and friendship just dropped. open.substack.com/pub/paulhoar...

Had a couple of really good conversations now with @paulhoard.bsky.social and @billieiswriting.bsky.social regarding their new book, Eucontamination. This one is focused more on the Bible and theology. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

“For if we ever fully belonged—if we were completed—we would lose the very condition that makes love possible.” A thoughtful, provocative essay. It prompted this in me: loving my community is sorta like loving my own body — it isn’t perfect; it’s mine & I accept it even as I try to improve it.

As if irony isn’t already dead, the Hatch Act violation on the DOJ website, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, appears on the page advising DOJ employees they are subject to the Hatch Act. joycevance.substack.com/p/a-note-abo...

Eucontamination Ch. 2 (because this is apparently what I'm doing this weekend 😄) "Disgust is not so much about inherent qualities of an object, person, or group but about the concern they create around contamination. Nothing is *inherently* disgusting."

All that to say, yeah. Disgust doesn't care about logic, and it is a powerful motivator. To deal with any of these messes we're in, we're going to have to undermine the disgust reaction, so thank you to Paul and Billie for jumping into the work.

Oh my gosh I love this so much!

For the record, the technical term for language spoken or written without regard for the truth, designed only to shape the listener's/reader's imagined reality in a particular way is "bullshit". @paulhoard.bsky.social and I wrote about that (building on Frankfurt) in our book.

If you wait to decide until the federal government calls the question, the temptation to justify making the "safe" decision will be overwhelming. As my brother writes: integrity requires commitment to the unfinished and uncertain; reject the fantasy of security. open.substack.com/pub/paulhoar... 6/

"Authoritarianism treats critique not as feedback, but as infection." This line makes my mind go to the theology of disgust that @billieiswriting.bsky.social and @paulhoard.bsky.social talk about in their book.....

"Courage is the risk of fidelity when fantasy fails—the act that carries us further than fear would allow, without any guarantee that it will make us whole." Y'all need to stop sleeping on the 🔥 my brother has been writing.

In our book "Eucontamination" @paulhoard.bsky.social and I talk about the Disgust cycle [nausea—trigger—vomit—rationalize] which drives social expulsion at every level from stigma to ethnic cleansing and genocide. These folks are so thirsty to make a trigger stick! 1/4

Excited to be presenting with @billieiswriting.bsky.social, @tamicenamaespeaks.bsky.social, and @orthoparadoxy.bsky.social at Theology Beer Camp this October!