Gerald Moore

The Truth of Stiegler: 2024 special issue of Philosophy Today on Bernard Stiegler, each article currently available for free download, with articles by @profgeraldmoore, @AnneAlombert, @digital_objects, and others (and my article on the "idiotext"): pdcnet.org/collection-ano…

🗣️Decision After the Algorithmic Turn: Politics Ethics Ontology • 24 Sept ⁦@KentLawSchool⁩ • w/ ⁦@AmooreLouise⁩ ⁦@profgeraldmoore⁩ ⁦@AnneAlombert⁩ ⁦@AlexCampolo⁩ ⁦@conorhean⁩ ⁦@DrCarolynP⁩ ⁦@TonyDSpamson⁩ dropbox.com/scl/fi/b4jjf8d…

@RestPoliticsUS Thinking of how they'd parachute Newsom in, given what little time remains... Constitutionally, what happens if (Biden) the candidate dies between confirmation and the election? Are there any mechanisms for postponing the election to prepare a new candidate?

@BookScribbler @BSHSNews @UChicagoPress @IMEMSDurham Congratulations! And apologies in advance for the idea it has given me, which is about to hit your work inbox. :)

I'm super thrilled to write that the British Society for the History of Science has shortlisted my book for the PICKSTONE PRIZE! This is wonderful news, not least because the BSHS has been my intellectual home for many years. @BSHSNews @UChicagoPress #hps #histsci @IMEMSDurham

@ProfSJJames We'll get a boost to admission numbers from teens desperate to escape national service?

quick look at the manifesto - why would anyone who works in, or even slightly cares, about Universities vote Conservative?

@lastpositivist Lots of people died, yes, but there are some conspicuous oddities over whether the Covid is actually what killed them - which tie, in turn, into much bigger questions about its status as a 'syndemic' and the underlying conditions of poverty that exacerbated it.

It's odd to me when I still run into accounts whose schtick seems to be denying COVID was or is a real disease. A lotta people died, and not like it disappeared; now we just have a new disease out there. That sucks. Whats even the point of denying it now? Just wishful thinking?

Great to see this special issue on “entropies” out now, edited by Joel White and Gerald Moore! Thank you for the work in putting this issue together. I have contributed with a paper on “entropy’s critical translations” @profgeraldmoore @philotechne eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%…

@bayesianboy Notionally but perhaps not meaningfully empirically testable? As in, if it happens, it happens - but we may well see deferrals until the day when a 1,000-year-old Elon Musk watches them alone on a seastead surrounded by a lifeless planet on fire.

@JeremyTate41 Care to name those philosophers you are holding responsible? I answered about half of your questions and am not persuaded any of them are important of even good questions. We may well be committing civilisational suicide, but a shift away from fact-digestion isn't the culprit.

My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture. It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them:  they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world. Related: The Chaos of College Curricula But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno? Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural?  What are the Federalist Papers? Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers. But most students have not been educated to know them. At best, they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance. It is not their “fault” for pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature. They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present. Related: Courses without Content Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West. During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others. But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, by the way). E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix. Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.

@Philip_Goff I think it this case, it's judging a book cover by its book cover, which would be circular. But it is excellent.

Should you judge a book by its cover? In this case: yes.

@DPDCare How do I put in yet another official complaint about your diabolically awful service? The app won't let me. But I don't see why I should spend £30 going to collect 7kg of catfood from the random shop you dumped them in when you decided to deliver it on the wrong day.

@bayesianboy You want to be able to show that you are adding to their strengths without replicating what they already do. And I want reassurance that applicants actually know what job they are applying for and want it...

@suzanne_moore Yes, but there was reason to facilitate him: self-educating, working-class public intellectuals with a flair for communication are rare and to be welcomed. Whether 'they' knew he was malignant and abusive is another question, and there is every reason to suspect wilful blindness.

They are blaming tabloid culture but they made him.

@IZrudlo To be considered a true intellectual, you need the French and German originals.

The Paul Ricoeur and Gadamer section of my bookshelf is coming along well … I’ve read a few others in PDF, but do you see any important, glaring omissions that I should make sure to add to my collection?

@garibaldIooo @PhysInHistory Finally! A decent suggestion after two minutes of scrolling. Someone else said Plantinga, but nothing else on this thread would even count as philosophy of science...

@PhysInHistory Process and Reality By Alfred North Whitehead

Which is one science or philosophy book that every human being should read? ✍️

@VladDavidzon @ArmandDAngour @robinsaikia Not as bad as the seemingly near-universal trait of conflating passive aggression with either passivity or aggression. And also hard to claim it's straightforwardly worse than aggression.

@ArmandDAngour @robinsaikia Passive aggressive is the worst trait in the world

9 years ago a girl was suspended from her school and nearly expelled after another girl lied about her and the mum demanded action. The lie was revealed, but covered up by the HM and mum for months. It caused distress and ongoing damage. Two nights ago we met the mum at a party.

@dioscuri Would be that it's irrelevant to the tweet you are responding to. It doesn't matter whether we are all healthy billionaires if global food, air and water supplies are collapsing within a timeframe we are manifestly incapable of staving off.

@dioscuri Stealing people's land off them, forcing them to work on it for a pittance and declaring their income of $2.01 to be above the wholly arbitrary and inadequate threshold assigned to absolute poverty is no basis whatsoever for making this kind of argument. But the bigger point...

The majority of people alive today have it far better than at any time in history, in terms of prosperity, health, and political rights. This is especially true of minority groups, many of whom only achieved legal equality in the West in very recent history.

@RyanCMullally @dioscuri No. it really, really shouldn't. Read @jasonhickel 's The Divide for a primer on why much of this thread is bullshit.

@dioscuri 100%. Sadly most people have no historical frame of reference. The below should be required reading. amazon.com/Enlightenment-…

@RIMooreHistory Childhood and adulthood.

What are in betweeners alleged to be in between?