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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 6h

Vincent Bevins observations on Brazilian election are worth reading. His section on "The End of the Public Sphere", where he notes people don't seem to know what the campaigns are about because they're too busy playing w/ their phones is consistent w/ "next society"... substack.com/@northsouthn...

substack.com

Vincent Bevins (@northsouthnotes)

Three notes on the Brazil elections - - - I decided that I don’t have the time, and I have not carried out the necessary investigation for the right to speak on the subject – at least not in a proper...

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Trump got elected while claiming that Haitians were eating people's pets. I haven't seen too much discussion about how that was possible in a civil society with a long established tradition of multiculturalism. One explanation could be the shift from a public sphere to a networked space. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Fressoz's "More & More & More" traces the history of thinking about climate change in terms of technological diffusion back to the engineers and futurists who were originally concerned w/ the depletion of fossil fuels (i.e. an energy crisis), & then applied the same thinking to climate change. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Let me offer a (c). For the first time in history we can engage in the game of giving and asking for reasons with a technology whose patience and breadth of knowledge far exceed those of any human.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

From the fact that a political ideology has its roots in a religious tradition, it doesn't follow that rejecting that ideology involves rejecting or discriminating against members of that religious tradition. But let's take seriously the claim of those who say it does in this case. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I look forward to another essay from Freedman about how the left has been radicalised. At the same, maybe he could write about how being taught from a young age that Palestinians weren't forced from their land somehow doesn't constitute a form of radicalisation.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

How many Zionists believe Israel is committing genocide? I know there are plenty of Jews who think that. But how many people who identify as political Zionists believe that? Freedland doesn't think Israel is committing genocide. See the problem?

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Since I defended Sabine Hossenfelder recently, I feel obliged to say she doesn't do herself any favours in a recent video where she celebrates a billionaire funded (sigh) prize in social sciences. She mentions Nathan Cofnas as a potential candidate for his work... /1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0xP...

youtube.com

One Million Dollars for Telling the Truth. Who Might Win It?

YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Netanyahu talking about "radical indoctrination" reminds me of Rory Stewart talking about an "Australian friend" on his podcast. After the Bondi beach massacre, Stewart mentioned a very intelligent friend from Australia who told him about how anti-semitic.../1 www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

theguardian.com

Co-pilot in flight stabbing had ‘Islamic radical indoctrination’, says Netanyahu

Alleged flydubai attacker interrogated by Saudi security services as investigation into apparent crash attempt opens

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Corey Robin recommended an interview about AI with someone who... hates AI and has nothing to do with it. I understand there's a lot of anxiety out there about this topic, but presumably at some point intellectuals are actually going to have to *think* about it. substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

Model Behavior: George Saunders

“Of course, if AI can cure cancer, bravo. I’m all for it. But even with cancer cured, death will still arrive somehow.”

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I hope Russia loses its insane war against Ukraine and is forced to pay reparations and its leaders prosecuted. But what Albanese says here and in the original panel discussion isn't unreasonable. She thinks Europe is being pushed into a war over Ukraine & doesn't want it that to happen. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This professor suggests a way around the problem of students using AI for assignments is to engage in collective writing of essays, with students graded on their individual contributions. This reminds me of the "Reading to Learn" (R2L) cycle... /1 globeopinion.substack.com/p/ai-was-rui...

globeopinion.substack.com

AI was ruining my college philosophy classes. So I assigned a new kind of essay.

I couldn’t give take-home assignments anymore. Handwritten tests in class wouldn’t work either. Somehow, I needed to fill ChatGPT’s shoes.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

One of the things to look forward to w/ the collapse of US hegemony is that the left might actually find its balls again instead of sending out Judith Butler apology forms.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

For philosophers of language, it's not that surprising. Stanley Cavell (1958): "imagine that you are in your armchair reading a book... and come across the word "unmiak". You reach for your dictionary... how could we have discovered something about the world by hunting in the dictionary?"

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Some great TV from the last few years that I never see mentioned anywhere are "A Murder at the End of the World" and "Shining Girls".

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Re. that silly substack on Continental Philosophy, I thought: why use AI to mimic such writing rather than explain it? So I asked the frontier models to explain the passage from Derrrida's Of Grammatology, and they all did quite well. All offered a sentence by sentence exegesis. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is what a paradigm shift looks like. For the last 40 y liberalism involved leaving this stuff to the market. A new liberal paradigm involves re-embedding markets in social institutions. Cf. Reckwitz's End of Illusions. Also Wright's "symbiotic transformation" in Envisioning Real Utopias.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I was looking forward to discussing this, but there's no there there! He dismisses an entire philosophical tradition (actually many schools grouped together) by quoting from only two authors and making up quotes w/ ChatGPT. WTH?Talk about unseriousness. /1 benthams.substack.com/p/how-contin...

benthams.substack.com

How Continental Philosophers "Argue"

On the unseriousness of the discipline

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Continuing my reading of Nafeez Ahmed's review of Fressoz's book, I pointed out that Ahmed's attempt to rebut the latter's critique of the idea of energy transition by citing evidence that wood has been phased out as an energy source in many parts of the world fails to grapple w/ his actual arg. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I'm reading a critical review of Fressoz's "More...", and it's interesting that in seeking to rebut his argument the author narrows the notion of "transition" to the level of fuel & geography, while Fressoz it's about the larger material-energy metabolism.../1 ageoftransformation.org/the-delusion...

ageoftransformation.org

The Delusion of “No Energy Transition”: And How Renewables Can End Endless Energy Extraction

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

My favourite aspect of the immigration discourse on Bluesky is that half of the people here advocate open borders policies, while the other half claim that the left has never argued for open borders and the very suggestion is a right-wing psyop!

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This arg about immigration is Bluesky's version of copypasta. It's never accompanied by any positive suggestions about how to combat the far right. The Oz govt's reforms are an attempt to take ownership of the issue w/o exaggerating its salience. Anyone have a better idea?

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

In today's post-industrial society, it makes less sense to define class in terms of ownership of capital or selling one's labour, because the economy is increasingly organised around knowledge differentiation, symbolic production and "singular" value (Reckwitz). /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The bigger crime here is that the diagram treats relations of classification, causation, function, etc. as visually the same. Its composition lacks a strong reading path, & organization for conceptual importance is unclear. Work done in Systemic Functional Linguistics can offer guidance here. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The critiques of Sydney Sweeney's new ad are great & everything but where can I actually see it? You know, for research.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

An interesting angle on the problem of performative debates online is suggested by Dirk Baecker's theory of communication technologies (Studien zur nächsten Gesellschaft). A presentation in English is “The Network Synthesis of Social Action I” (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....). /1

papers.ssrn.com

The Network Synthesis of Social Action I: Towards a Sociological Theory of Next Society

Sociological theory has always been a theory on the network synthesis of social action. In this age of society intrigued by the introduction of computers, this

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This video of a guy trying to get Grok and Claude to control his computer is hilarious. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcM0...

youtube.com

This is not ready

YouTube video by Less Bitter

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Interesting discussion w/ Doctorow on AI. Two things I want to comment on. (A) He again raises the example Ryan Grim brought up (and apparently others), namely that LLMs predicting "the next word" is a sign of intelligence. I've already commented on this... /1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiDU...

youtube.com

This is how the AI bubble pops | Cory Doctorow

YouTube video by The Tech Report

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Schama went off the deep end after October 7th. A lot of people did.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I've finished Jean-Baptiste's Fressoz's 'More & More & More'. It really does challenge the idea that even a successful green energy transition under capitalism will be enough to mitigate climate change. The problem lies in the idea of a transition. Fressoz shows that the history of energy... /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

What is the point of undermining civil society in this way? And in the service of what? A foreign state? A paranoid elite? I admit I'm at an utter loss here. The idea that these protestors pose a threat to Jewish people or social cohesion is prima facie absurd. There is something sinister going on.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Bluuesky's Möbius strip discourse on plagiarism reminds me of Freud's "kettle logic": (a) I didn't borrow your kettle, (b) It already had a hole when I borrowed it, (c) I returned it in perfect condition.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This exchange illustrates my issues with the left, especially as it manifests online. Derek Guy is a darling of Bluesky, Matt Stoller a pariah. Guy focus on fashion and lifestyle, Stoller on political economy. Guy champions globalization... /1 substack.com/@mattstoller...

substack.com

Matt Stoller (@mattstoller)

So https://substack.com/profile/5532139-derek-guy has a long discussion where he essentially argues the U.S. shouldn’t bother with commodity garment production, but leave that offshore. Instead, we sh...

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I rarely see mentioned the role that finance/investment channels on YouTube play in right wing propaganda. Some nasty stuff in there, slipped in during talk about property markets or share investments, e.g. taxes = making public servants rich, immigration = importing left-wing voters, etc.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

“The rulers’ right to name things goes so far that we might even think of language itself as an expression of their power. They say, ‘this is this, and that is that’; they stamp every thing and event with a word, and in doing so, as it were, take possession of it.” - Nietzsche

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Well my opinion of Prof Dave has just dropped through the floor. He accuses Hossenfelder of racism but fails to present any evidence whatsoever. And given he is clearly obsessed by her (his third video on her) you'd think he would have found it if it exists. /1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdB7...

youtube.com

Sabine Hossenfelder: More Exposed Than Ever! (Racism Edition)

YouTube video by Professor Dave Explains

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I think you need a full blown psychoanalytical theory for those two. If you're not prepared to go that far, a middle of the road approach between psychoanalysis & ToM is Fonagy and Bateman's theory of mentalization. Not just cognitive but affective & relational, prone to break down under stress. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

De Boer's claim about the completeness of software is interesting because he talks about completeness as a possibility space bounded by an adequate model (map, periodic table), but argues for it using an anthropological arg about software & human needs. /1 freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-projec...

freddiedeboer.substack.com

The Project of Software is Complete

what is progress, when there are no more unique arrangements of 0s and 1s?

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I think this essay captures what is going on re. the Arday affair. The anecdote about the speaker asking "where is this heading?" before countenancing any critique betrays a common attitude in academia: there is too much at stake to concede I'm wrong. commoninfirmity.substack.com/p/i-have-not...

commoninfirmity.substack.com

I have nothing to say about Jason Arday

But I do have a question…

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The lengths to which people are going to defend Arday is almost pathological at this point. Extrapolating from two articles to claim over 99% of his work remains "intact and unchallenged"? Or pretending not to know what counts as "plagiarism"? Is it really worth trashing the credibility of academia?

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Freddie DeBoer's article on vibe-coding & software is too clever by half (intentionally I suspect) but raises some points worth exploring. Here I'll deal w/ the vibe-coding point, and return later to the completeness argument. /1 freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-projec...

freddiedeboer.substack.com

The Project of Software is Complete

what is progress, when there are no more unique arrangements of 0s and 1s?

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

"House of the Devil" (2009) captures the cheap voyeuristic thrill of 60s / 70s horror - watching a babe wander around aimlessly for 30 mins.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The substack linked to here completely ignores the actual accusations of academic fraud. Highlighting citations as evidence of the quality of a paper is totally misleading when the paper involves errors, deception or plagiarism. These have been documented in detail (see following thread). /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I've been arguing that Bob Brandom's inferentialism offers a more useful way of thinking about LLMs than mental-state approaches such as ToM. The issue raised below again allows me to make my case. One doesn't need to construe this as a matter of LLMs attributing hidden mental states to users. /1

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

“In many cases, the absurdity of its theses is turned against people, so as to test out what they will go along with, so long as they hear the threat that lies behind the phrases, or otherwise accept the promise that they will receive some of the spoils.” - Adorno, Contribution to Theory of Ideology

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Arday didn't deserve his fate & was clearly unwell. But he himself made racial bias & his autism central to both his self-promotion & his scholarship, a lot of which seems to have been fabricated. He wasn't some neutral academic unfairly caught up in these debates; he actively participated in them.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

You know what, go for it. Allow trans-gender athletes to play in women's sports like golf, swimming, tennis, etc. My prediction is it will be short-lived & result in a massive popular backlash to the entire trans-movement. But I could be wrong.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The "Beyond the Paper" (BtP) manifesto proposes replacing (or augmenting) the scientific research paper w/ AI agents & knowledge graphs. I'm sure there can be a healthy symbiosis but BtP treats genre as an optional extra when it comes to scientific knowledge. /1 cyborg.garden/open-science...

cyborg.garden

Beyond the Paper

Why the 1880s paper format fails 21st-century science — and what comes next.

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Newton did things like experiment on himself by sticking a needle in his eye to determine whether colour was objective or subjective. So no, he wouldn't have lasted five secs in today's academy. (We had this exact debate ten or twenty years ago, except then the example was Wittgenstein not Newton.)

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amontin.bsky.social @amontin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Also nice to see the same people who kept telling us "woke" is a meaningless slur now defending it.

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