iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Is someone recommending we do?

Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

...slip into something like, "because some people will always treat others like objects, it is either (A) pointless to try to create systems that make doing so difficult or (B) stupid to oneself not treat other people like objects." Anyway your reviewer seems to be stuck in (A).

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

...stop propaganda b/c idiots will always love it). And that part of the difficulty of being on the left entails encouraging people to recognize certain aspects of reality (people are not equal before the law; beautiful people get more nice stuff; morality is often a sham) while not letting that...

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I've been thinking lately about Diderot's "Rameau's Nephew" b/c of something John Ganz wrote. Basically it's about how a mostly correct understanding of reality (many people project their stupid desires onto the world so they can get them back) can lead one to cynicism (there is no reason to...

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Is it that propaganda is basically just the desires of the people who consume propaganda, projected outward onto the world so that they can return to the produces from an "outside"? And since desire is infinite, there is no way to stop propaganda?

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

getting angry about some relatively minor rhetorical overreach by the people on your side, over and over again, until it becomes your whole personality and you forget who you ever were.

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This 🧵 is 👌.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

To which I add: the theory of "thinking" and "own" operating here is so basic and naive as to be beyond parody; Bhabha used to know better, which only leaves me to wonder what has changed. There might be smart ways to teach and use AI with writing, but this ain't it.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Don't worry, students, the line between "using AI to do your thinking for you" (bad!) and "stopping just short of that line so that you stand on your own ground" (good!) will be completely clear to you in every instance, just as it is for Homi Bhabha.

Comparative Literature and English professor Homi K. Bhabha, who is teaching one undergraduate course this fall, said he would continue having students keep AI logs documenting how they used AI to prepare for class.

But Bhabha drew a line at students using AI to do all the thinking for them — it could not, for example, be used to write students’ essays.

“AI can help you prepare the ground for your thinking, for your preparation. But once the ground is prepared, you have to stand on it with your own voice and your own vision,” he said.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Good point; he should be made to wear a Newcastle kit for the whole season anyway.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Yes, at this point the view has been widely enough available that it is hard to imagine the person hearing about it for the first time and thinking, "I can't believe I wasn't taught this in school!" Mein Kampf sold 12m copies between 1925 and 1945.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Penn State Comp Lit departmental statement on in-class tech use (recommended), posting here in case you are working on one of your own or want to use/copy/edit for yourself.

Research on the use of laptops, phones, and tablets in classrooms consistently shows that students who use those technologies—even if they are taking notes or looking at course slides—learn less in class than those who do not. Students who use such technologies also impact the learning of others, since flashing screens create consistent forms of classroom distraction. Best practices on technology use in classroom suggest that it works best when it is used socially—as when students look together at the slides for the lecture or work in groups on a specific project. Research also shows that students who take notes by hand learn more than those who type them onto a computer.

As a result, unless you have a specific accommodation request from SDR that requires the use of this kind of technology or are explicitly directed to use a device for a collaborative classroom activity, you are not allowed to use laptops, tablets, phones, recording devices, smart glasses, or any other screens or screen-adjacent technology in this classroom.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Penn State comp lit departmental statement on AI (recommended, not required), posting here in case others are drafting their own (or want to copy/use/rework).

Research on unguided GenAI use in pedagogical contexts consistently shows that students who rely on GenAI to complete assignments miss critical opportunities for foundational skill and critical thinking development. Because the goal of this class is to teach you as much as possible, the unauthorized use of Generative AI or LLMs to complete your assignments is banned in this course. This also extends to the use of smart glasses during class or while completing an in-class assignment.

Use of these technologies is only allowed when you are specifically directed to do so (e.g. in a particular assignment). Unauthorized use of these technologies will be considered a violation of the university’s academic integrity policy. The Department of Comparative Literature also bars instructors from using GenAI to evaluate, grade, or otherwise respond to student work.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

utterly patient response to professional misconduct Appiah DOGEd disciplines and fields about which he knows nothing, incinerating his reputation in the process "He just hasn’t done the reading."

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Sounds great. Now please fund universally.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

In "Criticism Inc" Ransom describes a certain kind of professor (outmoded but he likes them better than the historians) as a "museum docent"; they construe their job as pointing at stuff and saying, "look at this! it's amazing!!" Still a useful thing to do sometimes, when teaching.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

A really interesting and important piece on the history of literary criticism, and the way it produces an axiology of the aesthetic...

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I wish I had something to add to this. But it almost defies response. It's so.... weird. Off. Mismatched to the situation.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

I wonder if the answer is different for people in cultures that read right-to-left (since, as I look at my hands, I count, left 1, right 2).

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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Here’s a must read critique of that “report” on the humanities/soc sciences. “But you know how when someone says ‘I don’t want to say X, but,’ the only important part of the sentence is the part that comes after the ‘but’?” @michael-berube.bsky.social @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social

pghrev.com

Report on the State of a Report (on the Humanities) - Pittsburgh Review of Books

On June 5, 2026, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article in a genre that has unfortunately become all too familiar in that venue titled “Has

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

A couple decades ago, in Ohio, my mother was part of a group of private schools that sued the state to keep from being subjected to state graduation standards that were being uniformly imposed. They lost.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

"This committee’s report would be terrible in the best of times, with its secret evidence and embarrassingly weak arguments compounded by a call for administrative repression. But to make these fantastical claims during the middle of a war against the humanities is a particularly dangerous delusion"

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Really? That seems...odd to me. A reasonable response may entail an evaluation of risk and a measure of trust/distrust that may not work out (I trust the AI companies, close to 0, and I take the risk to certain things to be high)... but I don't live in a world where all kinds of wrong are identical.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

What do you use it for, Aaron? (Serious question)

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Agreed. She should have asked him why he was being such a crybaby instead. "I came all this way" puts the dominance shoe back on his foot.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

But let me on the way out recommend this thread to you, which comes at the problem (I think) I'm addressing from another angle: bsky.app/profile/josh...

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Well, Michael, I don't think we're going to agree here. Full agreement and a good discussion would have to take place in a forum other than this one. So if we're ever in the same place we can hash this out over coffee or a drink.

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The Bi of Hormuz @joshstein.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

OK... I wasn't going to do a thread about this, but after trying to draft something short and pithy, I'm going to. It's a thread from my perspective, as someone who was a student of Paul Boghossian, an analytic philosophy acolyte, who abandoned the views of this about 15 years ago. 🧵

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

My argument is that the heuristic itself replicates exactly the model it supposes itself to be criticizing, and that the work cited in the previous sentence is part of what you would assign someone to read if you were trying to get them to see that.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I agree with this section of the report; the disconnect is a major topic of my book on humanist reason. That the Chronicle doesn't understand it--and that this misunderstanding is inevitable, and will be used in exactly this way--is a consequence the report's authors should have anticipated.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

This entire thread is really worth reading.

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 06/06/2026

I thought this was very good. It also got me thinking: I can tell *immediately* when my writing has been edited by someone else, because I know my voice so well. I assume others are the same. I wonder what it means to never gain that ability. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

insidehighered.com

Writing, Cognitive Offloading and Generative AI (opinion)

Neither paradigm captures what matters when it comes to questions of cognitive offloading.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

This Chronicle piece gives a pretty clear sense of the rhetorical use to which the report will be put. The idea that the authors didn't know this ... seems far-fetched. www.chronicle.com/article/has-...

chronicle.com

Has the Left Ruined the Humanities?

A group of well-known scholars convened by two prominent campus leaders studied the question and found “a deterioration in scholarly standards” across several disciplines.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I cite this paragraph in particular b/c it is a place where the report acknowledges evidence-driven argument in favor of the socially determined structure of "objectivity" itself... but then dismisses that evidence with a "But for..."--where the present purposes justify a retreat to a certain mania.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Well, this is going to get complicated. But I see the authors as arguing (against "politicized" scholarship and relativism/anti-objectivism) that there is some ideal form of disinterested research that eschews both those problems. See below, the sentence that begins "but for present purposes."

The foregoing presupposes that humanistic scholarship is distorted when political considerations are brought to bear in the assessment of scholarship. This in turn presupposes that humanistic inquiry traffics in claims that are true or false independently of their political appeal, and that such claims are to be assessed by reference to the evidence and not by their presumed utility for one or another purpose. There is abundant room for disagreement about the nature of this purported “objectivity,” and in particular about whether the objectivity appropriate to the humanistic disciplines differs in some way from the objectivity at issue in the natural sciences (Wright 1992, Daston and Galison 2007). But for present purposes all we need is a minimal distinction between politically attractive accounts on the one hand and true or well-supported accounts on the other. Anyone who accepts this distinction is in a position to recognize the phenomena described in the last section as seriously damaging to the academic enterprise.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/06/2026

This is a diabolically evil report. That is the only way to put it. Its objective is to reignite the culture wars using the imprimatur of both the university and prominent scholars so as to sow deep epistemic doubt about the humanities and hasten the project of killing us off entirely.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

What purpose is served by remaining within that binary? Why would people who are otherwise "smart" stay stuck in such a dumb idea? What could possibly explain it? And the answer is either: they're dumb. Or... their "knowledge" is partly the product of the rhetorical/social situation they're in.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

...is itself an artifact of the 1990s. Many of the folks they cite (Butler, Foucault, Derrida, etc.) have far richer theories of the construction of knowledge (so did Max Weber) than this; to remain stuck in the truth vs. relativism binary is to ignore all that work. And then one has to ask: (2/3)

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

And finally: I've written against the kinds of relativism they critique (as has @annakornbluh.bsky.social and many others). It's not that their target doesn't exist (there are relativists! some humanists do bad work!) but that the binary they choose to think through (truth vs. relativism)... (1/2)

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

These folks must be regularly surprised by the decisions of the Roberts Supreme Court.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

The other thing to say is: the fact that the content of this report is almost entirely predictable from the identity of its authors and its sponsors is in fact evidence AGAINST their claims that true knowledge is the product of the disinterested consideration of facts and not social position.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

First, I'm not sure they are smarter than you; what I would say is that their intelligence has been compromised by the social and structural position. Second, this reads like a rehash of the Sokal era; people whose mental map of academia froze in the 1990s. It's frankly embarrassing.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

My guess is that the original poster was thinking mainly about Man City (and possibly Chelsea, given the London-specific comparison)... two clubs that have had lots of money pumped into them and won many titles as a result.

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Eric Hayot @ehayot.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

My sense based on over the fence talk is that this is now completely normalized in the social sciences as well.

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

So the Rosenbaum FUTURE OF TRUTH thing is appalling, but let’s not pretend this is an aberration: the over the fence talk I hear is that full on AI is now the norm in trade nonfiction.

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