Matthew Sheffield

🟦 Editing Flux (npub1rq3…rj7q)
🟦 Writer, web developer, and AI researcher
🟦 Host, Theory of Change podcast  
🟦 Words in Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Daily Beast, and elsewhere
🟦 Posts about politics, cognitive science, technology, religion, and media, with occasional memes 

Signal: matthewsheffield.01

Verified: https://flux.community/creator/matthew-sheffield/?mtm_campaign=mws&mtm_kwd=mast
Podcast: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change
Book: What Republicans Know: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/what-republicans-know
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/matthewsheffield

Public Key

npub1t4p0etmcuzf0mxhw4s76mjrjngr7zcwdefp8n9y0e8sjfj0tvu3ql25qhu

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs96shu4auwpyhanth2c0ddepef5plpv8xu5snejj8uncfye84kwgspqqfysa57

Publishing to

Author Public Key

npub1t4p0etmcuzf0mxhw4s76mjrjngr7zcwdefp8n9y0e8sjfj0tvu3ql25qhu

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-06-12 19:11:21 UTC

Fundamental physics has long strongly suggested that time is not a basic property of the universe. It is a local emergent byproduct of quantum interaction.
We still need more experimental proof for the math though, and it's starting to come in.
Here's a short piece discussing an experiment that really opens up how the emergence of time can work:
https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientist-miniuniverse-clock.html
And of course, time emergence has zero to do with human thought.
#physics #philosophy #science #quantum

2026-06-06 17:18:32 UTC

1/2 Add beluga whales to the mirror test passers:
✅ Baby humans
✅ Several primates
✅ Elephants
✅ Dolphins & orcas
✅ Horses
✅ Mimic octopus
✅ House mouse
Disputed passers
✅ Crows & magpies
✅ Myrmica ants
✅ Cleaner wrasse fish
Mirror tests are unreliable for many species but still very interesting https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/belugas-can-recognize-themselves-in-mirrors-joining-a-short-list-of-non-human-species-that-show-signs-of-self-awareness-180988783/

2026-06-04 20:42:40 UTC

- reply

And just in case you have not seen the stats, the average cost of a date is now about $200.
That's beyond the price of many regular people https://fortune.com/2026/05/05/is-dating-worth-it-anymore-average-cost-of-dating-nears-200-dollars/

2026-06-04 20:09:23 UTC

People can't afford to date or have kids, but let's blame "heteropessimism" instead.
Trumpism is crushing the middle class out of existence, that's why people aren't having sex as much. No amount of shaming them is going to reverse that. Love is a luxury when you're just trying to survive.
I appreciate that the author is trying to keep romance alive. We deserve beauty and all it entails. But flowers don't grow in dry and untilled ground.
https://archive.is/HyvY9
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/693/764/183/618/555/original/ec292e33b15477ab.png

2026-06-02 21:00:03 UTC

- reply

Yes, that would be the normal reaction. Unfortunately, the con-artist shamwow persona is actually very normalized within Southern Evangelicalism. The carnival and the church were one and the same for a long time.

2026-06-02 18:54:03 UTC

Reactionary Evangelicalism is more of a political machine than a religion. MAGA pastor Shane Vaughn recently made this clear, telling his followers to abandon all moral principles and blindly obey Trump’s every desire.
"Lay down your convictions. We don't need them right now. Lay down your principles."
This is how radicalized pretty much every Republican Evangelical has become. They’ve rejected ethics and morality in favor of power.
More on the history & theology here: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/05/liz-cheney-epistemic-collapse-conservatism
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/682/023/932/980/478/original/953e82228034a969.mp4

2026-06-01 22:39:13 UTC

Olo is the ultimate teal, so teal that humans can't naturally see it. Mary's Room is real 😆, just not with red.
Super interesting research:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-discover-new-color-thats-impossible-to-see-without-lasering-your/
#philosophy

2026-06-01 04:00:32 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/116402716327956884
Wonderful news
#note1qc3…6yyg

2026-05-29 00:32:11 UTC

Change my mind: Non-eliminative physicalism cannot evade the hard problem of consciousness without slowly transforming into dualism or panpsychism.
If you think phenomenal experience (qualia) is real and created by minds, there is nowhere else to go except dualism or panpsychism/pan-experientialism.
The only way to avoid supernaturalism is saying qualia create minds.
https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2026/01/its-like-this-why-perceptions-are-our-realities/
#philosophy

2026-05-26 22:44:05 UTC

I'm reading through this now and it seems like the authors love to define terms and then never use them again, including bizarre ones like "gods."
It's not light reading, but it's directly related to #ml
https://cimc.ai/cimcHypothesis.pdf
#philosophy

2026-05-21 03:40:43 UTC

LinkedIn has always been trash. But now it's almost entirely slop.
Corporate executives are paying Filipinos to use AI to ghostwrite posts which these same people then reply to with congratulatory comments.
This is the doom loop future internet that oligarchs want everywhere. https://restofworld.org/2026/virtual-assistant-linkedin-engagement/

2026-05-20 22:21:36 UTC

- reply

Yes, there is a lot of shitty bullshit in this world. But we have to stop doomscrolling and start helping each other if we ever want something better.
We have to imagine better things constantly, and how we get there. Whining about Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Tino Chrupalla, etc. does nothing. Normies. Do. Not. Care.
We have to go beyond the personal scandals and attack the far right's ideas. The average person doesn't know what they're about, and how they seek to harm the public.

2026-05-20 22:18:46 UTC

- reply

There have been dozens of books and probably hundreds of naive panels dedicated to hand-wringing about how Trump is mean and lies, how Fox and Xitter are cesspools, and how AI can be magically banned.
This is 101 stuff. Time to create alternatives and face the facts.
You cannot fact-check your way out of fascism. Trump will be a menace until he's dead. Popularism doesn't work.
AI is too useful for people to ever go away, even if it's not useful to you.

2026-05-20 22:16:54 UTC

- reply

If you read the Wired excerpt of his book, the entire thing sounds like it was made by ChatGPT or Claude. It has the style marks all over it:
"It's not X, it's Y."
This is an exact quote:
"That verdict, built by millions of young people navigating this system together, is already in."
This is trash writing, even if it was human-generated. Totally cliched airport book dross.
https://archive.is/HjOSC

2026-05-20 22:15:07 UTC

- reply

The guy seems to be one of a zillion liberal grifters who vacuum up liberal C3 bucks and never accomplish much of anything. Just a handwringer who flatters rich old people and never does anything substantial.
He's not on Bluesky or Mastodon, despite supposedly being concerned about truthful information. He is on Elon Musk's hellsite, though.

2026-05-20 22:13:44 UTC

🧵 A book called "The Future of Truth" has been exposed as filled with AI-generated fake quotations.
The author, Steven Rosenbaum, presents himself as an expert in media and technology, but basically no one seems to have heard of the guy.
I looked through his Xitter feed and he has never once mentioned Anthropic or Claude. He doesn't know about interpretability.
If you read the book, the whole thing seems to be AI slop. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/media/future-of-truth-ai-quotes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jlA.ypdI.raPxVDZEXxu-
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/609/131/428/663/317/original/3f4129b83dcccfa4.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/609/131/952/209/705/original/a78e7cce9529098b.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/609/132/348/338/677/original/70de0ce14b8e2690.png

2026-05-03 06:19:39 UTC

- reply

Richard Dawkins's Claude delusion didn't happen because he's elderly, it happened because he has a broken view of human minds--especially those of others https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2026/05/richard-dawkins-and-the-claude-delusion/

2026-05-01 20:39:37 UTC

- reply

LLMs are mirrors of their users. It's no coincidence that narcissists like Richard Dawkins keep writing essays about how their AI girlfriend is alive.
Nor can he see the complete hypocrisy of gendering a software execution state while also believing that human beings cannot be trans.
The "End of History" guy wrote this exact same article a year ago: https://www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt-teacher

2026-05-01 20:37:26 UTC

- reply

Used without understanding and awareness of what they are, they can create and magnify delusions.

2026-05-01 19:42:43 UTC

- reply

LLMs are mind augmentation programs. They amplify what you tell them.
They can be very useful, but for narcissists like Dawkins, this is the inevitable product.

2026-05-01 19:39:16 UTC

- reply

Dawkins is a great example of how people who have a naturalistic view of "real patterns" but don't have a process ontology will end up in metaphysical dualism unintentionally.
Minds are not software, they are what specific bodies are doing as they engage with the world. https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2026/01/its-like-this-why-perceptions-are-our-realities/

2026-05-01 19:34:10 UTC

In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
#atheism
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/500/985/601/301/045/original/fbfcebf1872ef52c.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/500/987/170/328/629/original/1cc161a5b64d34b9.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/500/989/265/699/628/original/54f6ebb73f0aa05d.png

2026-04-29 20:49:12 UTC

- reply

They're printing papers describing the power of propaganda. The artist is holding one.

2026-04-29 19:50:56 UTC

This new art exhibit featuring Boston Dynamics robot dogs with the heads of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and others is incredibly striking and disturbing.
“In the past, our view of the world was shaped in part by how artists saw the world,” Beeple, the artist who created them, told the AP. "Now our view of the world is shaped by tech billionaires who own powerful algorithms that decide what we see and what we don't see."
https://apnews.com/article/germany-berlin-robot-dogs-beeple-bezos-digital-art-4a2be2a4a4490553ad68c27beedfe83a
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/489/725/232/637/665/original/fb8ad43b9db30b4c.mp4

2026-04-23 19:35:47 UTC

The most dangerous of RFK Junior's many crazy beliefs is his opinion that germs are not the primary causes of disease. Instead, he believes in a completely unproven notion called "terrain theory."
He was finally asked about terrain theory by Bernie Sanders yesterday: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/04/rfk-jr-s-rejection-of-germ-theory-debunked-in-senate-hearing/

2026-04-18 22:02:49 UTC

Republicans are flooding social media with AI generated videos featuring fictitious people all saying verbatim talking points.
I'm uploading the Times's collage of some of the clips.
Edit to add: The video has no sound, just in case you were wondering.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/business/media/artificial-intelligence-trump-social-media.html
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/427/963/588/056/527/original/714211833008fb95.mp4

2026-04-15 20:24:09 UTC

The annual budget for USAID, which was allegedly a huge waste, was only $31 billion. Trump has already spent more than that on his Iran war in just a few weeks.
And last month, the White House estimated it would request $200 billion for war, a number likely to go up.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/hegseth-iran-war-budget.html

2026-04-10 18:51:12 UTC

Science cannot live by LLM alone, part 12,386.
As an experiment, Almira Osmanovic Thunström published fake papers about a fake eye disease that credited Professor Maria Bohm of Starfleet Academy. They were said to be funded by the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation in partnership with the University of the Fellowship of the Ring.
Despite such obvious trickery, within a few weeks, chatbots were citing the studies as real:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01100-y

2026-04-08 16:34:44 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@ZachWeinersmith/116369799271818568
If there ever were a cartoon destined for the fine folks monitoring #philosophy...
#note16hf…yjy0

2026-04-06 20:59:25 UTC

A sad day for more than 120 #AssociatedPress employees as the organization announced that it is having to close down its newspaper-focused business, which represents only 10% of its revenue and is shrinking. More buyouts are expected.
The general public does not seem to value information quality, and at this point only governments will be able to sustain quality #journalism. https://apnews.com/article/news-industry-buyouts-ap-newspapers-dd790effc6a385514b3323560161ea4f

2026-04-02 01:41:49 UTC

- reply

Is that because you know it's AI though? Given that 97% of people cannot tell the difference, what if you didn't know the context?
There's so much formulaic music made by assembly lines of people who stitch the components together and then the singer is auto-tuned to hell while singing it.

2026-04-02 01:24:20 UTC

- reply

Eddie Dalton had 3 of the top 5 Apple Music songs, and all of the songs released on YouTube have hundreds of thousands of views within just days.
People absolutely love it.
"This song has touched the depth of my soul," one listener wrote on YouTube.
You can listen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az5FSZzm-k8

2026-04-02 01:23:59 UTC

🧵 AI-generated soul music by "Eddie Dalton" is taking over iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify--raising the question of where humans think beauty and art lives.
Software-made music has gotten so good now that 97 percent of people cannot differentiate it from human-made music.
https://plus.flux.community/p/eddie-dalton-isnt-real-but-what-does

2026-03-25 21:13:57 UTC

All valid epistemologies are similar, while each faulty epistemology is incorrect in its own way.
#philosophy

2026-03-12 02:26:48 UTC

Just one day after Republican billionaire Bill Ackman gave his best wishes to an obviously AI-generated young white woman comes news that a million thirsty MAGA men have been following and buying foot fetish pics from an fake soldier named "Jessica Foster." https://www.fastcompany.com/91507096/jessica-foster-popular-maga-influencer-ai-model
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/213/795/670/268/417/original/8374209f1a8e4f32.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/213/814/117/268/809/original/8639f232f8fdcd8b.png

2026-03-11 18:35:58 UTC

The young and racial minority voters who powered Trump's 2024 victory are very much against his Iran war https://newrepublic.com/article/207604/trump-iran-maga-crack-up

2026-03-10 16:31:47 UTC

Trump's Iran policy in three panels
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/205/823/678/053/838/original/7a5455586c6aeecb.png

2026-03-10 02:54:31 UTC

Donald Trump lies constantly, and yet almost never gets confronted to his face about his obvious deceptions.
The New York Times's Shawn McCreesh did something today that should happen in every Trump news conference, he actually asked Trump about one of his most blatant lies. It did not go well for Trump:
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/202/611/060/655/241/original/058d15193346a9ec.mp4

2026-03-09 19:42:49 UTC

#BlueSky CEO Jay Graber announced that she is resigning. Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic (WordPress maker) and partner at True Ventures, will replace her https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-09-2026-a-new-chapter-for-bluesky

2026-03-06 03:08:05 UTC

Trump literally doing the Lord Farquaad meme. He's handing truckloads of rhetorical gifts to the Democratic campaign ads every single day now.
"Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die."
https://time.com/7382697/trump-iran-war/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/180/013/520/937/704/original/85778b1d911e0af0.png

2026-03-04 20:11:25 UTC

Science magazine has an informative article about 3 male scientists who resisted Jeffrey Epstein's attempts to network with them.
The one thing all have in common is that they listened to women's advice.
https://www.science.org/content/article/why-three-scientists-said-no-epstein

2026-03-01 02:05:24 UTC

In case you were wondering, before this morning's Iran attack, Polymarket had yet another spate of likely inside traders betting that the US would strike Iran by February 28.
Per the due diligence investigation service Bubblemaps, the wallets used were first used 24 hours earlier.
Betting prediction websites are national security risks, not Anthropic.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/151/462/584/048/068/original/a7943e9b3e3db568.png

2026-02-25 03:28:50 UTC

The stupidity and corruption of Pete Hegseth knows no bounds. In the latest instance, the AI company Anthropic says it doesn't want its products to have full autonomy to guide weapons since it doesn't think the software is reliable enough.
Hegseth is threatening to terminate Anthropic's contract because of this stance. He wants a product known to be unreliable to control weapons.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/24/tech/hegseth-anthropic-ai-military-amodei

2026-02-24 21:04:56 UTC

Instead of watching Trump lie and ramble for hours tonight, you should watch, listen, or read the latest Theory of Change episode in which Jeet Heer and I discuss how tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are literally basing their politics on sci-fi novels.
This is the most comprehensive deep-dive I have seen on the subject. I had a lot of fund with it, and I think you will as well: https://plus.flux.community/p/why-big-tech-billionaires-are-trying

2026-02-20 02:05:46 UTC

Super cool: Glass as the new permanent storage medium--potentially lasting more than 10,000 years https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10042-w

2026-02-13 19:09:31 UTC

Mid-20th century America saw a profusion of rationalist cults which used scientific and philosophical rhetoric to gain legitimacy.
Scientology is the only one that has survived, but there were others, including the "general semantics" of Alfred Korzybski, which is like Dunning Kruger analytic philosophy.
Ayn Rand and innumerable quantum woo peddlers like Robert Anton Wilson are others.
Recording next week on this.
#philosophy #science

2026-02-13 17:42:11 UTC

Companies selling open source software should be using open source groupware. Fully agree with @npub19yg…w8um here: https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/12/suse_runs_ms/

2026-02-12 19:28:04 UTC

Young Republican men rage that young women have gone left so overwhelmingly. But it's obvious why they've done so.
Why would any reasonably intelligent woman who isn't religiously indoctrinated want to be in a party of forced birth that's run by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein?
Why would they join a party filled with young men who agree with Nick Fuentes that all women should be imprisoned?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/059/301/495/674/116/original/1b15bef1653b3915.mp4

2026-02-10 04:25:34 UTC

LGB without the T people are truly in the Leopards Eating Faces Party.
Trump just removed a Pride flag from Stonewall National Monument. He's coming for you next, don't kid yourselves.
Source:
https://gaycitynews.com/trump-rainbow-flag-stonewall-national-monument/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/044/402/450/352/647/original/b7e9396b136d75f2.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/044/402/871/974/363/original/42a9987f90b785af.png

2026-02-09 23:40:15 UTC

In our post-capitalist system, AI companies can relentlessly violate copyright law by profiting from models based on pirated content, but people who actually want to read the books at Anna's Archive are the bad guys.
This isn't an either/or scenario, judges. It's both or none.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/judge-orders-annas-archive-to-delete-scraped-data-no-one-thinks-it-will-comply/

2026-02-09 03:27:28 UTC

Just when you thought that Robert Kennedy Junior could not get more insane, here he is on Fox claiming that junk food is "spiritual warfare."
And of course, he spews his usual post hoc fallacy about lower healthcare spending in past years on conditions that were barely diagnosed.
I should note also that Kennedy was a great friend of Jeffrey Epstein and in the interview, he's touting Brett Ratner, a fellow Epstein pal and fellow sexual predator who directed the "Melania" propaganda film.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/038/541/666/383/345/original/b3303c5d6ab7b910.mp4

2026-02-03 03:10:37 UTC

George Carlin famously said that politics and economy are "a big club and you ain't in it."
The #Epstein files are showing how right he was, especially this one, in which Epstein cackles with his pal Peter Thiel about how #Brexit was "just the beginning" of their plans to destroy governments and institute a "return to tribalism."
They elected Trump knowing that he is a corrupt/evil imbecile who destroys anything he touches.
It's all about buying the dip https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02459362.pdf
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/004/493/423/326/555/original/244fcc051f0b5b8d.png

2026-02-03 00:43:59 UTC

The Trump regime's medical scam point man, Mehmet Oz, announced the new plan for rural Americans' healthcare:
"There's no question about it, whether you want it or not -- the best way to help some of these communities is gonna be AI-based avatars"
Yes, they are cutting your Medicaid and making you use a chatbot.
Every low-information Trump voter should see this video. More details here: https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/report-dr-oz-suggests-ai-avatars-can-replace-frontline-physicians-in-first-cms-town-hall
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/003/917/006/409/789/original/0787ce6637832b40.mp4

2026-02-01 23:08:54 UTC

With a compliant Supreme Court in hand, the religious right announced that it's officially trying to repeal marriage equality https://plus.flux.community/p/christian-right-groups-launch-new

2026-02-01 21:07:48 UTC

The far right's smartest people are deeply ignorant. This is why their policy ideas always end in disaster or corruption.
Here's Curtis Yarvin showing he knows nothing about the history of civil disobedience.
Henry David Thoreau invented the term in 1849, to describe practices that had existed long before that, such as in the work of Augustine who declared that unjust laws were not laws at all.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/997/412/107/878/779/original/7ff03a3a45185c07.png

2026-01-30 21:22:20 UTC

Catherine O'Hara apotheosized the sesquipedalian. A hilarious actress with incredible range and grace.
RIP!
h/t to Merriam-Webster
#CatherineOhara
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/986/143/529/924/969/original/81b22e7a5fab0649.mp4

2026-01-26 19:40:00 UTC

The public pressure on the Trump regime is working. Here he is trying to say he's working with Tim Walz
They must have private polling that is absolutely horrible.
The people of Minnesota are doing this. Thank you for your persistence and courage!
Minneapolis is becoming Trump's Kent State.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/963/091/308/531/674/original/1be56e9512d8e801.png

2026-01-22 22:10:28 UTC

- reply

I think they largely originated as space-fillers for print. That's what the places I used them in did it for.
In the digital age, they are obsolete and should be stopped.

2026-01-22 21:33:29 UTC

An esoteric and likely unpopular opinion of mine: Pull quotes are terrible things.
Articles should be written, structured, and designed such that you don't need them. I find that they improperly preview arguments and also are confusing to people using speech-to-text readers.

2026-01-22 17:57:02 UTC

Traditional secular materialism is incomplete and it's become too weak to defeat irrational religious fundamentalism.
Humanity needs better explanations of how a material world can give rise to phenomenal experience. I'm working on a brand-new philosophy that does this. We need answers, not magic.
Paid subscribers are getting first access https://plus.flux.community/p/its-like-this-why-your-perception
#philosophy

2026-01-22 00:16:18 UTC

Exactly right:
"Philosophy is the most productive force ever discovered by human beings ... It is philosophers who created systematic ethics, interconnected principles defensible by reason, instead of mere lists of rules handed out by the gods." https://hilariusbookbinder.substack.com/p/why-philosophy-matters-b35
#philosophy

2026-01-18 21:20:57 UTC

- reply

People are sometimes surprised that Trump and other reactionary politicians don't have consistent policies.
They shouldn't be. Reactionaries hate abstract systems and coherence. They don't understand NATO, USAID, public broadcasting, literature, or science. So these things must be destroyed.
Government as the ultimate mutual aid, cooperation, consent, and sexual autonomy are concepts that don't make sense in a worldview where only the strong survive.

2026-01-18 21:20:33 UTC

- reply

These institutions and the global order they created were very far from perfect, but they were much better than what existed before.
Unfortunately, their creators didn't realize that they needed to continue to advocate for institutions and to always reform them to help more.

2026-01-18 21:20:01 UTC

- reply

Liberalism originated as #philosophy that said all minds are equal, that no one has inherent superiority, and that anyone can be wrong. This is ultimately why right-wing people hate it so much.
But the problem of other minds also extends to institutions made by other minds.
During the Great Depression and after World War II, the United States and many other countries built governmental and international institutions to alleviate poverty and resolve disputes.

2026-01-18 21:18:35 UTC

- reply

Besides piling up all kinds of newfangled things, expansions in knowledge also can liberate people from social prejudices.
For centuries, women and other ethnic groups were not fully human. Same-sex attraction & trans people weren't real.
These bigotries are the product of what's often called the "problem of other minds."
Because cognition is inherently private, & language is an only a very partial extrusion of thought, we can't know for sure that other minds are real. https://plus.flux.community/p/renee-good-and-the-problem-of-other

2026-01-18 21:16:04 UTC

- reply

Cumulative advances in knowledge are threatening to people who only want to use somatic reasoning and who respond to all new things memetically. They want to imitate authorities rather than have humility and accept extrinsic realities through abstraction.
This is the conservative epistemology. And it's inherently pre-political. There are many conservatives who are not Republicans or Tories, etc. https://plus.flux.community/p/the-science-behind-why-donald-trump

2026-01-18 21:14:54 UTC

- reply

This extrinsic epistemic approach has made modern humans able to advance through science in ways that would appear godlike to any ancient person.
But this new way of thinking is knowing through negation. And it's not how humans did things for the entire history of our species. It's "unnatural."
https://plus.flux.community/p/robert-kennedys-bizarre-obsession

2026-01-18 21:14:10 UTC

- reply

The paradox of modernity is that each advance in knowledge also creates ignorance, in two major ways.
The first is that knowing more things also increases the number of known unknowns. Our models of reality are not reality itself. Scientific laws are descriptions of physical obligation, rather than the obligations themselves.
When we describe a thing via a model, the model itself becomes a source of doubt, because no model can explain obligations perfectly.

2026-01-18 21:12:03 UTC

- reply

Memetic epistemology isn't inherently bad. It is in fact how we experience love, art, music, faith, and maintain coherence in adversity.
But the self-focused, somatic nature of memetic thinking means that it can be dangerous when applied to the world at large.
Society has become so large and so complex that one person can no longer have total mastery of even two fields of knowledge.

2026-01-18 21:11:25 UTC

- reply

This fear actually proceeds from an even deeper impulse, the belief that quick judgment thinking (what I call memetic epistemology) is superior to extrinsic thinking.
They trust their instincts more than any other person, regardless of their expertise.
Conservatives and reactionaries believe that their views are true because 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 believe them. Evidence isn't needed for "common sense."
This viewpoint is the fundamental unifier of everyone on the right, from atheist ancaps to Christofascists.

2026-01-18 21:09:30 UTC

- reply

Due to personal, family, and cultural histories, some people are inherently terrified of most things.
The fear of the world usually manifests as fear and hatred of new things. They rarely admit to this fear (especially the men), but they show it in their actions of carrying a gun everywhere or thinking that if they don't cheat others first, they will be cheated.

2026-01-18 21:08:57 UTC

🧵 As a former Republican consultant who left in 2015, I'm often asked why Trump and his minions are willingly destroying science, K12 education, universities, international organizations, public broadcasting, and social welfare institutions.
There are many reasons, but the main ones are psychological rather than ideological. They struggle with abstract thinking and are afraid of the world...

2026-01-17 21:42:12 UTC

Thousands of people protested today in Nuuk, Greenland against Trump's threats to take over their country.
Just over 55,000 people live in Greenland, which means that this was about 1/4th of the country's population.
Details: https://abc7ny.com/post/thousands-march-greenland-support-arctic-island-face-us-president-trumps-threats-take/18422426/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/912/591/369/355/701/original/ab28563f7c0f6468.mp4

2026-01-09 22:44:39 UTC

Is marketing to right-wing incels really this easy?
I guess we'll see.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/867/546/269/329/198/original/63700ae6e057c5f2.png

2026-01-07 23:36:04 UTC

Texas A&M banned a #philosophy professor from teaching Plato in his ethics class
The Handmaid's Tale is not an exaggeration. The Christian right wants the world that it depicts.
Much more info: https://archive.is/LiA44

2026-01-07 13:15:43 UTC

Texas A&M University just ordered a #philosophy professor to remove a #Plato reading from his course because it supposedly promoted "gender ideology."
The guy who started the first known Western university is apparently a woke postmodernist to Republican censors.
The supposedly evil reading was excerpts from Plato's Symposium, a book that has been taught in universities for thousands of years without incident--until now.
Please share this.
Archive link to news story: https://archive.is/ullmV
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/855/776/989/278/228/original/ea030aa24aca72bc.png

2026-01-05 02:21:26 UTC

The idea of building a modern-day "red-brown coalition" isn't just morally reprehensible, it is completely uninformed by history and political philosophy.
The project of fascism is to impose violent feudalism. The fact that it occasionally looks anti-capitalistic is a coincidence.
Anyone saying otherwise is lying or totally misinformed. Great piece showing the history and context: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-fascists-always-come-for-the-socialists-first

2026-01-03 21:12:39 UTC

This is probably the most definitive image of Trump. Greasy, pompous, classless, and pretending to advocate peace.
He's now set the precedent that any country can abduct and jail him for his numerous crimes against humanity.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/833/211/662/842/597/original/cf0462c2aeae851c.png

2026-01-03 19:52:01 UTC

Mark Warner with a great statement on #Venezuela and Trump's violation of the rule of law.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/832/904/328/653/803/original/b21f5fa71bc6be21.png

2026-01-03 02:45:28 UTC

Reactionary extremists like Vought/Vance/Trump hate #science, democracy, and accountability so much that they struggle greatly with facts and coherence.
That's why empty people like Lawrence Krauss are so valuable to the reactionary enterprise.
Normal people don't support destroying science and the academy. But with a big enough web of lies, some will.
Great piece here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/wars-on-science-real-and-otherwise/
#atheism

2025-12-24 21:39:00 UTC

Minds are often thought of as software that is instantiated within the hardware of bodies, but this is actually a bad analogy.
It's more accurate to think of minds as what bodies are doing with the information they have stored. So minds are execution states, beliefs and memories are software, and the body is hardware.
This often sounds confusing, but here is a video that perfectly illustrates the analogy via #Pokemon Let's Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GngchcORtNk
#philosophy

2025-12-23 00:40:28 UTC

- reply

This trend is present on the irreligious side as well.
Republican adults who were raised outside religion seem *much* more likely to have joined one later compared to Democrats.
80% of Democrats who were "nones" as kids stayed that. Far fewer, 64%, of Republicans did.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/766/094/023/756/205/original/abac41449f716d05.png

2025-12-23 00:39:09 UTC

- reply

There are extremely interesting crosstabs on religious switching among political partisans that support the idea that personal cognitive style undergirds religious and political preferences.
33% of Ds who were raised in a faith tradition say they are "nones" now. Just 14% of Rs by contrast.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/766/088/685/872/071/original/29693ec00acff69b.png

2025-12-23 00:38:01 UTC

🧵 The Pew Research Center has some fascinating details on religious switching. Only 56% of American adults are in the system they were raised in.
Very important info on switching from various groups, too.
Why do people say they leave? The biggest reason is that they stopped believing the claims. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/12/15/why-do-some-americans-leave-their-religion-while-others-stay/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/766/084/000/970/361/original/294983261d7cfdf9.png

2025-12-11 18:11:01 UTC

The brainworms have gotten to Liam Neeson. He just narrated an antivax crockumentary.
Please share so everyone can avoid his schlock in the future: https://www.importantcontext.news/p/liam-neeson-narrates-anti-vax-pro

2025-11-22 21:38:34 UTC

Window shading is such a great feature. If you're stuck with an operating system or window manager that doesn't have it, you are missing out. It's so nice to be able to minimize a window in place temporarily and then come back to it when ready.
Really hoping that KWin gets it set up on Wayland soon. It's long overdue and is the only reason I'm still on kwin_x11.
#linux #freebsd #kde

2025-11-20 19:16:09 UTC

Elon Musk's long-promised lobotomy of Grok has arrived. His chatbot seems to have been ordered to sing his praises in a way that any normal person would find obscene.
Grok seems to be required to output that Musk is a paragon of fitness, and one of the most intelligent people in human history. These posts are absolutely embarrassing for him.
Source thread: https://x.com/wrotator/status/1990935873018376499
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/583/587/086/506/099/original/918f266c79eecaab.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/583/604/149/676/170/original/2761e81e7d458035.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/583/609/583/172/874/original/e522a9e3893112c7.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/583/620/189/088/533/original/d78180291ab84060.png

2025-11-20 17:00:27 UTC

The Mastodon iPhone app promotes bad accessibility with its buggy interface. You can't post alt text with multiple lines. And when you attach an image, it won't let you scroll down to tap into the alt text field. And you can't hide the keyboard to make room.
I'm not sure to whom this should be directed, but it would be great if these issues could be resolved.

2025-11-18 00:45:58 UTC

The Epstein case is a really important illustration of why erotic professionals deserve full legal rights and workplace protections.
Epstein and his clients were able to victimize so many people because the victims risked imprisonment if they told police about his crimes.

2025-11-10 16:47:19 UTC

What numbers do you see in this optical illusion puzzle?
This is one of the funner ones that I've ever seen.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/526/414/455/928/889/original/32a75df037abbd49.png

2025-11-05 19:14:12 UTC

Wow: Peter Thiel in a private 2020 email argued that capitalism has failed young Americans, and so this is why they have become socialist.
This was almost literally Zohran Mamdani's campaign message.
The email was posted to Xitter by his VC friend Chamath Palihapitiya.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/498/680/477/981/509/original/ee4329e50ace5746.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/498/686/011/380/262/original/f33fea52141cd5b6.png

2025-11-05 05:07:28 UTC

Where do I go to pitch my establishment media op-ed urging Republicans to pivot to the middle if they want to win?

2025-11-04 03:25:35 UTC

The Asininity of Totalitarianism:
A sandwich can be thrown at "point blank range." Yes, Trump toady Jeanine Pirro ordered that sentence to be filed in a brief to prosecute the sandwich guy.
It's an ironic coincidence that today is National Sandwich Day
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/jury-selection-begins-case-dcs-sandwich-guy-rcna241563
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/489/278/561/368/324/original/0dd5305e385f4ab5.png

2025-10-27 04:19:29 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@QasimRashid/115444035226415202
The American Bar Association. The #1 organization for lawyers cannot get an attorney.
This is how cowardly corporations are—and how manifestly not left-wing they are.
There are some very stupid people who claim to believe that corporations with some token diversity programs are leftist. Um, no.
#note1yxa…rzur

2025-10-26 03:07:25 UTC

- reply

This all goes back to Immanuel Kant and how his ontology is contradicted by his epistemology.
Most of science listened to David Hume that objectivity was impossible. Too much of liberalism listened to Kant that it was.
New Atheism and right-wing libertarianism are both undead sciences that have made common cause with the older undead science of traditionalist religion.

2025-10-26 02:43:33 UTC

- reply

That perspective you highlight, which is indeed the New Atheist viewpoint, is anti-scientific.
All the best philosophers of science share the idea that there is no objectivity, only ideas which are presently unfalsified.
We can only know through negation.
Nothing about the external world can ever be "true." It can only be false, possibly false, and not known to be false.

2025-10-26 01:01:58 UTC

- reply

Reactionary intellectualism is completely impoverished. The atheists like Curtis Yarvin are puerile, and the theists are still serving up CS Lewis's gruel.
NYT columnist Ross Douthat wrote a book trying to convince people to believe in religion, but it appears to be nothing more than a distended version of Pascal's wager, an argument debunked centuries ago. https://archive.ph/bkp8c

2025-10-25 16:07:14 UTC

🧵 Having been one for 27 years, I can tell you that far-right people almost uniformly have a deep inferiority complex towards mainstream society.
They know that their beliefs are either unprovable or disproven. But they want to believe anyway. Thus, they seek to destroy objective knowledge.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/435/657/756/287/934/original/86e51a78e39ddfef.png

2025-10-22 19:35:05 UTC

I think I'm going to stop boosting all Bluesky bridged accounts.
The authors want the audience of the fediverse but don't want to engage. That seems disrespectful to fedi posters.
I get that we all have only so much time. Still, a Bluesky-bridged account is a zombie account in my opinion. Why boost it?

2025-10-21 06:57:20 UTC

- reply

ICYMI, Vivek Ramaswamy had an event marred by Christian supremacist bigotry earlier this month.
“Jesus Christ is God, and there is no other God,” one student said. “How can you represent the constituents of Ohio who are 64 percent Christian if you are not a part of that faith?”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/surprise-vivek-ramaswamy-turning-point-211106566.html