Brian Kogelmann

@erniebornheimer @landemore I think that's the beauty of electoral representative democracy, when it functions well. All get an equal say through equal votes, but we can elect individuals with special competencies to govern.

@bkogel89 @landemore Re: "an uncomfortable question: are ordinary citizens competent enough to rule?" A fair question, and we should look at the facts dispassionately But I'm concerned about legitimacy. There are both moral and practical reasons for popular rule. How to balance these values?

My review of @landemore's newest book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule. independent.org/tir/2026-sprin…

@Ansel @landemore Great question that I don't know the answer to! It is an empirical one, and I am unfamiliar with the evidence.

@bkogel89 @landemore Interesting stuff, Brian. Do you believe American juries in the legal system suffer from the same supposed elite biases as mini-publics?

@PhilipDBunn That is a false belief!

I genuinely do not believe that AI can make me a better writer. Not in the drafting, not in the editing, not in the conceiving or brainstorming, none of it. I crave human reviewers and editors. I embrace the virtue of doing things "inefficiently."

@PhilipDBunn AI has made my writing so much faster and better that I now spend so much more time reading. It's great!

If AI is actually making your research and writing more efficient and productive, I would expect you to be reading more source material, not less. If AI is helping you read less, you are becoming dumber.

@Doc_Licon But they also lean classical liberal in econ!

Or the establishment leans left and high IQ know how to play the game lol

@BrandonWarmke I don't think the argument works, and will hopefully have a paper soon explaining why :)

Joshi argues for a striking thesis: If you care about democratic legitimacy, you must be committed to ensuring adequate ideological diversity within the academy. And if universities are unable or unwilling to do this themselves, outside forces may legitimately intervene.

@alexolegimas I think a big part of basic research is reading without yet knowing what it is you are looking for, and I think it is hard to prompt AI for that.

This is a skills issue. Part of using AI effectively is knowing what you want to just look up (eg you need an answer to a query) vs what you want to *learn*. Learning is not just a function of seeing the information, it’s a function of spending time with it. Getting stuck, failing, looking back to something you missed is how information turns into skill. This isn’t new. Remember spark notes? You weren’t supposed to use them as substitute for reading the original text. After you read it closely, sparknotes were great to look up random details. AI summaries are similar. But that’s not to say AI can’t be used for learning effectively. I have now seen several scaffolds that prompt user to stop and think, to read original text before asking questions, etc. Claude teaching mode is one example. There’s a lot of promise in using AI to improve learning, but just getting summaries instead of reading text ain’t it.

@ben_golub As a phil professor, checks out.

one of the smartest people i've ever talked to: "philosophy as a field is like if astrology and physics were one department"

@victorckumar Frame or different kind of mogging?

Excited to mog our colloquium speaker

@kvallier @victorckumar Their livelihoods are at stake. It's motivated reasoning.

@victorckumar What is it about AI that blinds incredibly smart people so dramatically? With many issues, the truth is hard to see. With this issue, you just need to give OpenAI $200.

Yesterday, I listened to a respected philosopher of AI argue that LLMs can’t make predictions, that the future is utterly closed to them, because their training data is limited to the past. Unlike humans.

If your friends aren't talking about: -institutions -self-governance -political economy -knowledge problems -the art of association -the impartial spectator Time to find new friends. Apply to @mercatus fellowships to meet them & discuss ideas: mercatus.org/students/fello…

@enzoreds RE not inconsistent w/ intuition pumps, but requires them. RE just means you don't privilege a proper subset of intuitions.

Does anyone actually use the method of reflective equilibrium? Or do people just do intuition pumps? I mean, if a considered judgment is strong enough the theory will have to yield even in RE. So what’s the difference with straight Cohen/Partit-style intuitionism, really?

@Alex_A_Guerrero I got an advanced copy to review for Independent Review.

Can’t wait to read this!

@ben_golub Scholars do peer review, not Substacks.

In this post, Bryan concludes by praising Chris Rufo and encouraging him to use his patented culture-war tactics to dramatically reduce funding for higher education in the US. A scholar who does that doesn't deserve much respect, whatever his views otherwise.

UB's PPE program secures $4 million federal grant to facilitate and study civil discourse, led by PI Justin Bruner buffalo.edu/news/releases/…

@itaisher Karl Popper agrees!

I think I am a pretty tolerant person politically but I don’t have tolerance for people advocating authoritarianism in the United States.

Anyone interested in doing a panel on populism at the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics annual meeting in London this summer?

@FriedrichHayek Those who defend sortition? No; they would say those largely defeat the point.

@bkogel89 have they contemplated competency test

Should we scrap elections and pick legislators at random? Some philosophers say yes. In my latest paper, I argue there are strong reasons to doubt that ordinary citizens are smart enough for the job. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14…

@FriedrichHayek Poor character is probably true, but the best empirical evidence we have suggests that they are far smarter than the average citizen.

@bkogel89 we have endless receipts, showing us that elected officials are incredibly ignorant, have poor character, and are as dumb as bricks