Neil Levy

Capitalism already does that.

I expected Albanese level disappointment. I was disappointed even in that.

If you think as I do that marginalisation is bad for people broadly, you won't think that some groups doing better on a test is necessarily evidence that the test is bad (though it can be). It might instead be evidence that inequality (in resources and opportunities centrally) are real.

I suspect the overgeneralisation helps drive opposition to standardised tests. If they produce evidence of inequality, they're bad tests because whatever marginalised people think about they think insightfully.

That's something we should find implausible a priori. Charles Mills talks about the conditions that lead to insight, and points out that some oppressed people are in them but others are not. The lines almost certainly are complex: every marginalised group mixes insight with epistemic limits.

This view obviously got a lot going for it, for reasons people like Patricia Hill Collins emphasised: e.g., black people can have insights into white people that white people tend to lack. But this is too often overextended into a general insightfulness.

There's a widespread view that oppression and inequality are bad for people materially and (let's say) spiritually, but not essentially intellectually. Oppressed people are denied educational opportunities, so there's lots they can't think about. But what they do think about they think insightfully.

I learned a lot from this. A small caveat. @lastpositivist.bsky.social says opposition to standardised tests arises from concerns that results will fuel the Discourse; more generally, that evidence for inequality is itself racist. I think there's another motivation as well.

I will alert Alex Rails and we'll get you the Daily Nous post this item needs.

They retired it after your entry. No point anymore.

That really is my view.

Border force was intermittently hostile to me, a white Australian with a work visa. Can only imagine what it was like for non-whites to run into the arseholes. Most aren't arseholes, so you get to play border lottery.

Once I had a love and it was a gas
Soon turned out had a heart of glass

[pats Brett on the head; ruffles hair]

The mood of pessimism here is very striking, and it's also striking how our governments live down to it every time. You give a plausible story about the rise of the far right. I wonder whether background climate change plays a role. For me, it nullifies any reason for optimism anywhere.

I am surprised, but only because I assumed you already were.

I don't dispute any of these people being genuinely excellent. I think, though, that contemporary philosophy is innovative in a way that jazz (I think music generally, though I don't know much about non-jazz) hasn't been for good while.

I think there's far more vision and insight in philosophy today than at any time in the past. I don't think that's true of jazz. I think there are very few today (not zero) that will be remembered in the same category as Bird, Trane, Miles, Monk...Caveat: I'm a jazz amateur.

THANK YOU.

Agree about philosophy, disagree about jazz. Sure there are many more people who can and do play everything from swing to free. But there’s been nothing really innovative for decades.

Maybe the difference is the Aus preferential voting system? Voting in the UK presents a real dilemma in a way that it doesn't in Australia.

I had low, low, expectations for Labour. I thought they would be just like Albanese's Labor. They managed to make Albanese look great.

I'm beginning to think that peak analytic philosophy was a lot kinkier than anyone realised.

There's still the system of German idealism to finish off.

I recall someone saying there's an association of latinate with high-culture/pretentious that is somewhat independent of word origin - the pronunciation of 'garage' and 'envelope' varies within people depending on context.

I quite liked the original book, but ironically Warmke's entire online presence consists in signalling.

Image of a joke: My brother and I were arrested for stealing some books on Game theory. We had no fucking clue what to tell the police.

Stolen from Reddit (obviously ).

For me, this isn’t area specific but pretty common. I often read papers where the thought experiments just don’t seem relevant to me. Like: there’s a cat with a blue collar on; therefore we can see it would be wrong to wear a hat.

It's always rational to ignore me.