Reposted by Brett KarlanDoctor Wind Turkey @dog-envier.bsky.social · 2hI wrote a python script to scrape grad cafe when I was applying to PhDs 131
Reposted by Brett Karlannoam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 2hYou know something is a good idea when it is described as ‘something Brett would do’ 081
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 2hAs a person who once rigged up a custom RSS feed to get news from the Cocoon job market thread pushed directly to me (so I could see what jobs I was not up for in real time), this sounds like something I would do 1110
Reposted by Brett KarlanAG Holdier (Academic Job Applicant Edition) @agholdier.bsky.social · 3hyou’ll never be the netflicks professor of superior intelligence with posts like this 031
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5h(Suppose this matters more for grad students than colleagues; my colleagues can resent me all they like. If I were a grad student now, I would have one research strand/paper on AI. I would also work on something more legible to traditional phil depts. A straight philAI AOS seems ill-advised to me.) 060
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5hA sad reflection of the state of academic hiring that philosophy depts can only hire in something that brainrotted admins/boards of trustees/external donors think is the only way forward. But, in the vast majority of cases, depts are not themselves that into it, and that is reflected in hiring 2160
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5hAs PhilJobs fills up with philAI jobs again this year, my yearly reminder (to bitter colleagues and grad students considering AOSs) that departments are not hiring in philAI. They are hiring in whatever they already want to hire in, so long as someone can squint and see the candidate "working on AI" 3263
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5h(But very sad about the overall state of academia that this is almost exclusively how departments can get hires right now) 010
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5hBut yes, the overwhelming explanation is that brainrotted deans/boards of trustees/external donors only want to hire in AI, and philosophy departments are (again, I think rationally!) using this to their advantage 110
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5hI think it is totally rational for departments to do this. (Also, just think about it: how many members of your standard department even know what AI is, let alone think they should be hiring in philosophy of AI?). But it is also why I usually suggest grad students have another (main) AOS 120
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5hAs someone who was recently on this market (and actually, unfortunately, works on AI), this is what is happening in the vast majority of cases 120
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 5hTrue innovation at Purdue University: the new printer just installed in the department lounge was apparently (somehow) the *wrong printer,* and needs to be replaced with a different (apparently correct) printer. Absolute scenes in the department 4170
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 6hRecently my students were about 20 minutes into a heated (but cordial) discussion about James's Will to Believe and I had a moment where I was just like, hell yeah, this fucking rocks 0110
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 6hOne of the joys of teaching intro occasionally is I get to be reminded about how much philosophy rocks and how exciting it is to encounter it for the first time 2341
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 6hYeah that was the most surprising one to me. Not sure! 000
Reposted by Brett KarlanAG Holdier (Academic Job Applicant Edition) @agholdier.bsky.social · 7hyou’re laughing? your postdoc is in critical condition and you’re laughing? 0235
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 7hNobel Prize awarded to chemists who figured out how mirrors can be real if our eyes aren't real 150
Reposted by Brett Karlanokay Kelly @kmdoublev.bsky.social · 15ha burgeoning disinterest in emerging technologies 131
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 16hTo be clear, I think it is Very Important that sports be boring. (My two main sports are soccer and baseball.) But still, it is interesting to see how it would be if that weren't true 250
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 16hAfter a week of watching hockey, I believe it is the sport that dares to ask the question: what if sports weren't boring? 1213
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 17hI didn't used to think I thought this, but I clearly do! 1151
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 17h"AI did this proof" "AI wrote this paper" I literally, actually, truly do not care. Sorry 2778
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 17hSurprising to find this intuition in myself (I never would have predicted I thought this), but the major discovery of the AI era for me is there's a huge group of things (art, scholarship, etc) that I literally only care about if a human being makes it 617823
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 17hLol yeah, amazing find on the ambiguity in that one though 120
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 19hAt this rate, gonna be a traditional epistemologist writing about defeaters and higher-order evidence by the end of my career 080
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 19hThe better AI gets at stuff, the less interested I am in it 591
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 19hIf I were a mathematician I'd be freaking out right now. Luckily I'm a philosopher, where nothing is real and the points are made up 1416
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 23hYeah I think we are currently actually doing that. On my proposal, at least, we would be doing less of it! (And giving students more time for research instead, like they do in, say, psychology PhDs) 030
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026(And all the things that go along with those good pubs: good letters, a coherent research program in that area, etc.) 010
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026In general, I think that this (like many other considerations) can matter at the margins. But, for the most part, I think that an R1 hiring for a research job will probably just look for candidates with a lot of good pubs in that specific area of research 210
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Yeah tbf I really did just mean research jobs for this (and think that the balance of how many research/teaching jobs different departments tend to place should be the decider for how much, if at all, they would implement this advice) 010
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Yeah man, it is 300% more effective to pick an area, read the literature, and immediately start writing about it. I am sympathetic to in-principle visions people have about "depth" and all that, but the practical reality is that none of that matters anymore (again, for research jobs) 110
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026*Pittsburgh laser eyes dot jpg* People just need more time to actually do philosophy 040
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026(Which is, functionally, what is already starting to happen. Every incoming grad student at Purdue this year (a top-50 but not top-10 place) has a masters. I think we could massively reduce their coursework, and require them to start working with a mentor year 1, and they'd be much better off) 190
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026For most of us who aren't Chosen Ones, students need about 5 years of working on a specific project to get enough pubs to compete in the current market. (Will only get worse with the AI deluge.) Requiring an MA for coursework and lowering requirements for the PhD is one option 2100
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Tons of qualifications (there are no universal generalizations, you need wide range if you want a teaching job, etc etc) but, as more areas of the philosophy job market become more like the sciences (postdocs -> jobs in specific areas), we should probably change the way we do grad education to match 2100
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Wondering if now, when we're all talking about advice we would give grad students, would be the time to say that I think, in general, the standard model we use for graduate school training is basically completely out of date and borderline-useless for getting a research job 2232
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Socially and culturally, yes. Musically, no (because they did not compose music for sad indie ladies with melancholic backbeats) 010
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026It sucks for Bach, Beethoven, and other so-called "geniuses" that they lived when everyone erroneously thought classical music was the best form of music. In 2026, we now know this to be mistaken (the best form of music is a sad woman singing over melancholic indie rock) 1130
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Email from my university's IT people telling me my "personalized AI assistant license" is about to expire 1280
Reposted by Brett Karlannoam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 06/10/2026look, it's really simple: either you're a spooky dualist, or you accept that liberty biberty is conscious 6315
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 05/10/2026We pick out folk psychology as a capacity, rather than a set of specific views. If you don't want to call that folk psychology (and want to call it, say, "theory of mind"), we would have no qualms with that 230
Reposted by Brett KarlanEvan Westra @evanwestra.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Super psyched about this paper, which @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social and I have been working on for two years now. If you're into folk psychology, conceptual development, cognitive ontology, the Big Five, and being hangry, this one's for you. 3438
Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Just accepted today at Philosopher's Imprint: @evanwestra.bsky.social and I argue that human folk psychology is remarkably innovative, and this has unobvious and undertheorized implications for theories of cognitive ontology. So so happy to finally have this one placed philpapers.org/rec/KAROFIphilpapers.org 119016
