Sean Carroll

Also a Review of Habermas Is Habermas a titan of recent philosophy or a stodgy academic lacking a burning political vision?

I enjoyed this recent @mattpolprof.bsky.social piece on Habermas, which makes the sympathetic observation that Habermas *wanted* philosophy to be dull and difficult, if by that you mean modest and respectful of the arguments of others www.liberalcurrents.com/also-a-revie...

Here is my best Habermas story.

I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

His Harvard Lab Was Thriving. Then Came the Cuts.

This article tells the story of what researchers have been going through over the past 14 months. As funding dries up, professors struggle to keep people employed and to keep doing the work.

The Trump Administration is destroying so much science in this country.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/u...

Look on my works, ye hungry, and despair! (Or rejoice, whichever.)

My lecture for the Pittsburgh Annual Lecture Series is next week, Friday, March 20, 3:30 PM EDT. For those of you who can't make it in person, it will be streamed. Zoom and youtube links are on this page.

www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/event/annual...

Ok folks, ready to hear what you got!

Insurrectionist Brunch: Trumpists plotted to deploy military on U.S. soil Before the 2024 election, a cadre of MAGA loyalists met over brunch to plot ways for Trump to use the military domestically.

This is just astonishingly great reporting.

All of the crises the White House has claimed over the last 14 months were planned in advance. All of them.

And however much contempt you have for media outlets who reverently relayed Trump's claim to have no relation to Project 2025, it isn't enough.

Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power They’re saying the quiet part out loud now.

"Palantir CEO Alex Karp says his AI technology will lessen the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men."

Just saying it right out loud now.

newrepublic.com/post/207693/...

Submissions (< 10,000 words) invited for 2026 Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics. Topic Celebrating 300th anniversary of 3rd ed. Newton’s Principia.
www.duchateletprize.org
Winner will receive $1000, workshop & SHPS pub
Open to grad students & w/in 5 yrs PhD
Deadline September 1, 2026 #HPS

It's unsurprising that some people think this way, but an absolute failure that they have such influence.

[2602.18203] Metrology of Complexity and Implications for the Study of the Emergence of Life

Useful paper by @wlknsn.xyz :

www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/u...

Many Worlds, Bad Science, and the Strangeness of Being w/Sean Carroll (Members Only #307) Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and philosopher, is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins. He's also that guy that consults Marvel on the multiverse.

Many Worlds, Bad Science, and the Strangeness of Being w/Sean Carroll (Members Only #307) • Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and philosopher, is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins. He's also that guy that consults Marvel on the multiverse.

Featuring DISI co-director, Erica Cartmill!

Ig Nobels ceremony moves to Europe over security concerns Marc Abraham: “During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country."

The IgNobel Prizes, usually bestowed at a ceremony in Cambridge, Mass, are moving to Europe this year due to security concerns for honorees and journalists coming to the US from abroad.

I bet I know who's going to win the IgNobel Peace Prize this year.

arstechnica.com/science/2026...

I think the job of a metaethical framework is to tell you what actions are ethical in what circumstances. Anything that does that (even if it's fuzzy or non-deterministic) can be cast as an algorithm.

Everything is an algorithm if you try hard enough.

Thanks!

Stefanopoulos Philosophical Society The S.P.S has donated over thirty thousand dollars in prize money in pursuit of higher education.

APA member @seanmcarroll.bsky.social (Johns Hopkins University) has been awarded the 2026 Apostolos P. Stefanopoulos Prize in Philosophy for contributions in applied philosophy and ethics. Congratulations! stefanopoulosphilosophicalsociety.org

Who Would Be Emperor If the Roman Empire Still Existed Today? During Wimbledon a few years ago, a thread about King Felipe VI of Spain went viral. It was posted to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter by Derek Guy, author of the menswear blog Die,...

Another pressing issue we are supposed to have an opinion about: who currently has the best claim to being the Roman Emperor?

www.openculture.com/2026/03/who-...

You don’t want to blindly reason backwards to humans, but there might be a reasonable argument that deontological or consequentialist approaches fail in real-world constraints of bounded rationality, biases, error rates, etc. VE might just be more robust. (Not convinced, but I’m open to it.)

Claude's new constitution A new approach to a foundational document that expresses and shapes who Claude is

Anthropic’s constitution is a good example of this:

www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

I’m not sure what the best metaethical stance is for human beings, but LLMs definitely seem to do best with virtue ethics.

Sad news about Tony Leggett, who was a lovely man. I first came across him in a 1977 book The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance. He was the first author I ever discovered who toyed with the idea of a retrocausal approach to EPR-Bell. Full piece here, extract in the image.
drive.google.com/file/d/1zFaR...

Really enjoying the Paralympics, especially since I found the replay feeds with full commentary. :) Visually impaired skiers have "guides" but it still sounds completely terrifying. Imagine being blindfolded and hurtling down a steep slope with a guide calling out the turns.... Huge achievement.

Among other things, Erica runs the Observing Animals project. They are looking for data from anyone who observes animals doing certain behaviors!

www.observinganimals.org

Mindscape 346 | Erica Cartmill on How Human and Animal Minds Think and Play. #MindscapePodcast

www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...

The age of free info on the internet may be coming to a close.

Wait - the corner of Olympic and Cloverfield, Santa Monica? Ladies and Gentlemen, that is almost exactly the location where the old Buffy offices stood. I believe we may owe thanks for this one to the Hellmouth.