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Brett Karlan

@oldjerryfodor.bsky.social

Assistant professor of philosophy at Purdue University. Cog sci, AI, epistemology, other stuff. Previously: Stanford, Pitt HPS, Princeton, Iowa, Jefferson High, Taft Middle, Coolidge Elementary, various daycares.

2,370 Followers  |  583 Following  |  2,532 Posts  |  Joined: 05.11.2024
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Posts by Brett Karlan (@oldjerryfodor.bsky.social)

Really mad to report that, in order for your brain and body to feel good, you do have to Do Things (exercise, self-care). This is the worst fact and I hate it

04.03.2026 13:45 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

"People want to hear a badly performed, wildly ignorant improvised podcast while they watch sports" - the rantings of the deranged

04.03.2026 05:09 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

We should ban sports broadcasts from interviewing athletes after and (especially!!!) during games. These people have no clue what they're doing, no clue what they just did. I don't want to hear from them. Honestly ban all commentary. Just the ambient noise of the stadium. No talking only vibes

04.03.2026 05:05 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

One fun thing about being married to someone with ADHD is often not knowing whether they are dead or just have forgotten about the existence of their phone for the last 6 hours

04.03.2026 00:16 — 👍 12    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

"AI tutors can cut down on teaching prep!" OK I actually like my job though

03.03.2026 23:27 — 👍 11    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

"With an LLM I can write a paper in two hours!" Why would you want to though

03.03.2026 23:25 — 👍 10    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

I mean, I shouldn't be surprised by this, but it's wild how many academics apparently don't want to do the main things (write papers, teach students) they are paid to do

03.03.2026 23:24 — 👍 19    🔁 5    💬 3    📌 0

A buddy of mine once asked if he should start a substack, thought for a minute, then just decided to message me when someone online annoyed him. True Virtue

03.03.2026 20:22 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Sorry, Bluesky, but I have to say it: my posts are good

03.03.2026 20:09 — 👍 8    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Might not seem like much, but for a white guy, this is essentially a superpower

03.03.2026 19:57 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Hell yeah I'm a high decoupler

I'm able to say, "Hmm, seems like this person sucks" and not turn it into a generalization about all members of the groups that person belongs to/a set of sustaining grievances that shape my whole personality/a political orientation

03.03.2026 19:57 — 👍 10    🔁 2    💬 2    📌 0

I knew y'all were good at responding to incentives, but I didn't realize it's just incentives all the way down man

03.03.2026 16:46 — 👍 16    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Joking aside, I feel like I'm losing my mind w/r/t LLM in academia discourse. I've always assumed I'm surrounded by people who care about the process (of learning, of research) as much as the product. "I had AI write/post about how it is a game changer" is the antithesis of everything I care about

03.03.2026 16:45 — 👍 26    🔁 0    💬 4    📌 0

*posting really bad posts and not receiving likes* Bluesky seems to have lost the juice

03.03.2026 15:56 — 👍 22    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

That's why they call you Kevin "Consistent AF" Zollman after all

03.03.2026 15:19 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

"AI is revolutionizing my workflow" we get it you have no respect for your own agency

03.03.2026 15:17 — 👍 11    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

If you spell it "premiss" instead of "premise," just know I am vomiting all over your paper as I read

03.03.2026 13:52 — 👍 17    🔁 1    💬 3    📌 1

Have decided what my final vaguepost will be on the day I leave Bluesky for good:

All video games are tennis (see: Pong, etc.)

02.03.2026 23:38 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Like a month ago everyone was talking about the AI bubble, and then we got a bunch of posts about how the new Claude Code or whatever was Finally Gonna Change Everything. Can infinite hype alone sustain the current way of doing things? We'll soon find out!

02.03.2026 22:35 — 👍 10    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

As much as I want to believe you are real and want to help me publish a book, person in my email who gave your name as "Cindy Commissioning Editor," I remain slightly skeptical

02.03.2026 19:03 — 👍 9    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

one thing i didn't anticipate when i got into the empirically informed philosophy of mind game was how often i would say 'you might get bonked on the head'

02.03.2026 15:06 — 👍 12    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Me: "Race is a social construct, it reveals nothing about our innate essence, we are all the same"

The song Cotton Eye Joe: *cuts so deeply to my core as a white person that I was born knowing the lyrics and will die with the fiddle part in my ears*

01.03.2026 03:59 — 👍 8    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Just surrounded by the basest depravity and cruelty every day

28.02.2026 21:11 — 👍 8    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Hard thing for me (a virtue ethics non-fan) to admit, but, from all perspectives, we really do need to make virtuous character traits a thing we care about again

28.02.2026 21:10 — 👍 29    🔁 0    💬 4    📌 0

"Now's not the time for jokes" I literally cannot turn it off it's called the poaster's disease look it up sweaty

28.02.2026 14:38 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Operation Epic Fury? You mean reviewer 2?

28.02.2026 14:38 — 👍 11    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

We should get "expecting authors to read is ableist" going on bluesky as a treat

28.02.2026 01:27 — 👍 16    🔁 2    💬 3    📌 0

Welcome to the Luddite resistance, US Department of War

27.02.2026 23:44 — 👍 7    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

One of the main problems with pluralism as a solution to various philosophical questions is, at the end of the day, you just have a lot of stuff, and it's not clear how the stuff is related, actually

27.02.2026 22:54 — 👍 14    🔁 0    💬 3    📌 0