Brett Karlan

In an LLM world, this kind of pure, uncut human slop hits me harder than the goddamn Brandenburg Concertos. It's just so beautiful

Predatory journal in my inbox this morning is actually philosophy-themed, for once. Almost makes me feel warm towards them, compared to the emails I usually get from the International Journal for the Society of HVAC, Neuroscience, and Management Society

It's truly an indictment of social media in 2026 that this place, of all places, is the best one still

Bluesky is big enough for furry communists to find your posts and yell at you but small enough that, if like 3 of your friends are not currently posting, it is noticeably worse. Scholars of the internet call this the "Suck Zone"

Probably the coolest guy to graduate from the sketchy "liberal" "arts" ""college"" in my hometown

Lol excellent identification skills

You want me to host a debate? The thing that killed Charlie Kirk??

Honestly many people with backgrounds in both philosophy and cog neuro still have way too strongly-held beliefs about consciousness

There's some stuff on "alien intelligence" that makes this point (but imo not that well)

A Wikipedia listing of instruments: vocals, guitar, pedal steel, piano, violin, dobro, hurdy-gurdy, autoharp, mandolin, bouzouki, banjo, saxophone, theremin

POV: you're about to see the hottest band in Williamsburg in 2007

Screenshot of venmo transactions for $20 to multiple people who's names are redacted, all labeled "Gender Reparations"

Happy International Women's Day 🥳

No takers? So much for the tolerant left...

Challenge for those who are confident that Claude isn't conscious: give me a little kiss on the forehead, pat my head, and say you're proud of me

I tweeted something like this during Trump 1, but it bears repeating:

Golf is NOT for the rich
Golf IS for Mario and his buddies

Lol yeah. Even autocorrect is watching it's language in Indiana in 2026

What's so bleak is idk how to change this, since Indiana is gerrymandered/supermajoritied to hell. Maybe a mass exodus of faculty will get their attention? But even then, they'll just say good riddance to the woke.

I guess just don't judge harshly Indiana people applying out with tenure details lol

Extra story: was recently talking to a person who researches abortion who told me straight up that she knew, no matter how much she published, she wouldn't get tenure in this state, but that the work was so important she was gonna do it anyway. (1) She's a badass, but (2) that's where we're at

This has been a report from a frog already basically boiled

So look, I know I have a TT job and should be grateful. And I am. But man, when I write all these things down, even I (who live it every day) am shocked at how bad it is. And I teach AI and cog sci stuff! Imagine trying to teach feminist philosophy (e.g.) in this environment. You actually just can't

AND my specific university has a de facto admissions freeze for students from China (and other "countries of concern") that was clearly communicated to people doing admissions, but never written down. So when the Guardian comes asking questions, boom, there's no paper trail, there's no freeze

Universities have de facto hiring freezes, only hiring in large clusters (where ultimate control of who is actually hired is concentrated at the top, not in departments). Unless, of course, you want to hire someone for these right-coded civics centers. Then there's all the money in the world

And the real problem is how all of this seeps into lower levels of administration. We've seen cases of tenure denials (or yanking cases before they get to the board) purely because the profs involved work on something that looks too woke for the administration

There's a state-run anonymous form where students complain about you indoctrinating them. Surprise, I've never heard about econ departments getting complaints. But a friend got a complaint that they push "trans ideology" for teaching (checks notes) how gender expression develops in adolescence

If we graduate fewer than 15 majors a year, or (just added!) if those majors aren't sufficiently high-earning, the state forces you to cut those programs. God forbid the point of a specialized program be research or preservation or anything like that; it's all job preparedness, baybee

We now have to provide evidence during our yearly reviews both that we (a) do not "indoctrinate" students with our lefty ideology, and (b) that we have presented them with sufficiently diverse (read: conservative) viewpoints (even if you're teaching like logic or cell biology)

And that's setting aside all of the ways we've long been behind the ball (we've had post-tenure reviews that could lead to termination forever, and faculty governance has had no official power well before a recent state bill codified this into law)

With Texas and Florida taking up the lion's share of attention, I think people might be sleeping on just how oppressive the situation for public higher education is in Indiana right now

one question i've been thinking about is whether targeting a girls school harms the girls in their capacities as knowers

"Oh it's just a human using the AI to bomb somewhere? Talk to me when the AI is doing it on its own"

AI: *bombs a hospital*
AI ETHICS: It's also more likely to assume a doctor must be a man and a nurse must be a woman :((