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Patrick Julius

@pnrjulius.bsky.social
118 followers 1.2K following 63 posts

Writer, tutor, blogger, economist Bachelor's in cognitive science from the University of Michigan PhD in economics from the University of California, Irvine Taught at the University of Edinburgh

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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
This week's post is about Hume's "is-ought problem". I argue that this "problem" is largely illusory; all arguments need premises, you can always challenge premises, but there's nothing special about "is" and "ought" here. patrickjuli.us/2025/01/05/w...
patrickjuli.us
What’s fallacious about naturalism?
Jan 5 JDN 2460681 There is another line of attack against a scientific approach to morality, one which threatens all the more because it comes from fellow scientists. Even though they generally agr…
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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
I don't think people appreciate that the US military is extraordinarily good at destroying a nation's productive capacity but also extraordinarily bad at running a successful occupation. In fact, we've lost the last several wars where we had to do that.
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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Given this news, it would be good to see academics and academic institutions cut ties with meta. It is now abundantly clear they are using laundering academic research to justify decisions made for purely practical and financial reasons. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01...
nytimes.com
Meta to End Fact-Checking Program in Shift Ahead of Trump Term
The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump a...
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
In this week's post, I reflect on land acknowledgments, and the history of violence they are meant to acknowledge: patrickjuli.us/2024/12/29/o...
patrickjuli.us
On land acknowledgments
Dec 29 JDN 2460674 Noah Smith and Brad DeLong, both of whom I admire, have recently written about the practice of land acknowledgments. Smith is wholeheartedly against them. DeLong has a more nuanc…
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
In this week's post I continue my takedown of religious morality, showing how mainstream religious institutions have been implicated in some of the worst crimes imaginable and religious ideas have held back moral progress for centuries. patrickjuli.us/2024/12/16/m...
patrickjuli.us
Moral progress and moral authority
Dec 8 JDN 2460653 In previous posts I’ve written about why religion is a poor source of morality. But it’s worse than that. Religion actually holds us back morally. It is because of rel…
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
In my latest post I continue my takedown of religious morality, this time with a focus on holy texts: Even if God were real, we couldn't trust the books. patrickjuli.us/2024/12/09/m...
patrickjuli.us
More on religion
Dec 8 JDN 2460653 Reward and punishment In previous posts I’ve argued that religion can make people do evil and that religious beliefs simply aren’t true. But there is another reason to…
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Ersatz Doctor @ersatzdoctor.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Also, here’s a friendly reminder of how much a billion dollars is. If you made $20/hour and worked 40 hours per week (52 weeks per year): It would take you 25 years to earn $1 million. But it would take you 24,039 years to earn $1 billion.
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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Back on Twitter, there was an awesome account called “… in mice.” Every time someone tweeted out a mouse-based study like it was a human-based one (“Cheez-Its cause lung cancer!”) it’d RT w just “in mice” to highlight the extrapolation concerns. Need that for “… in an artificial survey” too.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
the fact that we have "serious" convos about whether billionaires are okay suggests public consciousness that is totally divorced from the 1) actual scale of private wealth accumulation 2) its political implications. helpful data visualization: eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-weal...
eattherichtextformat.github.io
Wealth, shown to scale
Wealth inequality in the United States is out of control. Here we visualize the issue in a unique way.
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Trump's margin of victory—in a country of 342 million—is down to 2.2 million and 1.47%. His vote share is <50%. Republicans for now have only a 1-vote majority in the House. Things are so bad for Trump in the Senate that he's floating illegally dismissing the entire body. This is his "mandate."
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
In this week's post I tear down one of the most critical foundations of religious belief: The afterlife. It's time to stop being politely "agnostic" about this; the nonexistence of an afterlife is a scientific fact. patrickjuli.us/2024/12/01/t...
patrickjuli.us
The afterlife
Dec 1 JDN 2460646 Super-human beings aren’t that strange a thing to posit, but they are the sort of thing we’d expect to see clear evidence of if they existed. Without them, prayer is a…
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
In this week's blog post I continue my series on religion, with a simple but highly controversial claim: Religion is false. patrickjuli.us/2024/11/24/r...
patrickjuli.us
Religion is False.
Nov 24 JDN 2460639 In my previous post I wrote about some of the ways that religion can make people do terrible things. However, to be clear, as evil as actions like wiping out cities, torturing no…
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Micah @rincewind.run · 24/11/2024
they’ve managed a neat trick where, by being so obviously impossible to reach or change in any way, they’ve escaped all need to do so the people who write these thinkpieces blaming progressives for not reaching out know that everyone would laugh at them for suggesting the same of MAGA
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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
I wrote about some particularly egregious cases of high-profile liberal and – nominally, at least – anti-MAGA elites opting to fall in line: Leading Democratic politicians, the ostensibly liberal legal establishment, news media stars… Not a lot of appetite for resistance to be found among them.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
“In theory, the I.R.S. could audit the Trump transition…” It’s pathetic that we’re at the point where we acknowledge we could uphold the law “in theory” and we all know it’s just a joke.
Experts on presidential transitions say lawmakers did not appear to have anticipated that a presidential candidate would decline millions of dollars from the federal government or refuse to post an ethics code.
In theory, the I.R.S. could audit the Trump transition and ask it to provide information on its contributors, but even if it did, the agency would not make those names public.
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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
ive been thinking how the right is never asked to extend the olive branch to the left -- if the left wins elections, they should be inclusive and reach out. If the left loses elections, they should be inclusive and reach out. at no point is it ever possible that the right will reach out to the left.
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Jaclyn A. Siegel, PhD @jacasiegel.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
I think that the public has conflated questioning authority with discounting the legitimacy of expertise, and that’s a dangerous mix-up.
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Adventurism Time @flow.blacksky.app · 20/11/2024
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
“In 2022, YouGov asked “What percentage of Americans do you think are ___?” The results were hilarious. Trans: 21% Muslim: 27% Jewish: 30% Black: 41% Live in NYC: 30% Gay or lesbian: 30% The errors are off by orders of magnitude. The trans estimation by 2,000%.” www.thebulwark.com/p/americans-...
thebulwark.com
Americans Have One Very Strange Cognitive Bias
Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love The People.
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Anna Goeddeke @annagoeddeke.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Maybe something for #EconSky
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Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
I think a lot of the folks remaining on X think that you need MAGA faithful in the mix or else it's an echo chamber. I have no problem being in a place where people hate my politics but agree that Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy.
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
This dialogue is full of great stuff, but this quote in particular really stuck with me: "In other words, just because you disagree with every tenet of these people’s faith doesn’t mean that they don’t sincerely think of themselves as servants of the Lord."
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shea in the catskills @sheainthecatskills.com · 22/11/2024
"I want us to think about what that 'counterzeal' looks like in practice." A difficult + amazing conversation ⭐️ also: I am a truthout monthly donor at $11/mo because independent journalism has never been as important as it is now! can you match me? or make a one-time donation at truthout.org?
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muscular baby jeb lund @mobute.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
"we have a cache of secret documents about pedophiles in government that we will only release if you force us, it's not like we wanna make this public" is certainly a threat about someone's credibility, but i don't think they understand whose
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lockit.bsky.social @lockit.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
stop immigration so we can take care
of our own

im starving. 

fuck off.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
If you’re willing to fuck your union and your own paycheck over trans people being able to use the bathroom I don’t really know what to say www.inquirer.com/politics/ele...
inquirer.com
Social issues drove some Teamsters to ‘take that risk’ and vote for anti-union candidate Trump
Republicans elevated culture-war issues alongside economic ones to siphon working-class support from Democrats in a way longtime Teamsters said was unprecedented.
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David McKenzie @dmckenzie.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
In Friday's #econjmp, Peter Deffebach(BU) looks at the puzzle of why exits from wage jobs are so high in developing countries. Using panel surveys, he finds quit rates are much higher in Ghana than the U.S., & are driven by both self-employment & family transfers blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...
blogs.worldbank.org
Wage work, what is it good for? Labor market dynamics in urban Ghana: Guest post by Peter Deffebach
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Great. I really needed something else to be horrified about.
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David Greene @davidgreene.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
The myth of "US conservative censorship" on social media has always been a bit of a puzzle to those of us who track and study content moderation as a global phenomenon. But it has proved frustratingly, and quizzically, persistent and now will be embedded in US policy for the next 4 years.
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Lauren Bauer @laurenhlb.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
SNAP work requirements fail to increase employment. Just plain getting on SNAP does improve labor market outcomes. www.hamiltonproject.org/publication/... #EconSky
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
it just feels like the entire political press right now is all “guess we’ll have to wait and see if raising taxes 200% and ripping 10M people from society while nominating slimer and jenny mccarthy to cabinet positions will work out”
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Matthew G Nagler @matthewgnagler.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
I’d have believed that populist leaders offer a tradeoff: they’ll efficiently break rules for you, but they take a large commission (in graft and nepotism). Turns out the rule breaking isn’t even helpful. So it’s a lose-lose.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20/11/2024
It should be emphasized just how obscene the Gaetz nom is. He's unqualified, unfit, & was recently investigated for sex trafficking. He faces accusations of paying for sex & sexual misconduct w/ a minor. That there's even a chance he gets confirmed as the top law enforcement official is shameful.
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TheSickness @thesickness.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Teacher here. Kids who use AI are settling and not noticing the massive volume of mistakes these technologies make. It’s like cranking up the careless mistakes knob to infinity.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 20/11/2024
If this bill passes, only patent trolls will PREVAIL.
eff.org
Oppose The Patent-Troll-Friendly PREVAIL Act
Good news: the Senate Judiciary Committee has dropped one of the two terrible patent bills it was considering, the patent-troll-enabling Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA).Bad news: the committ...
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
In this week's blog post, I challenge the common notion that religion is a good source of morality: patrickjuli.us/2024/11/17/r...
patrickjuli.us
Religion as a source of morality
Nov 17 JDN 2460632 After that brief interlude of politics and current events, I now return to my previous topic: Religion. I am an atheist (among other things). To avoid confusion, allow me to expl…
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Patrick Julius @pnrjulius.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
The really striking thing to me about AI is how far we've gotten by basically brute force. We have still learned next to nothing about how consciousness actually works, but we can mimic its output convincingly by throwing ludicrously huge matrices at things.
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NoiseOfKnowing @noiseofknowing.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
The hours of work that are necessary to buy groceries has decreased:
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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Given this, completely unreasonable to expect low-information voters to understand that inflation was global, mostly not caused by Biden policies 3/
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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Originally documented by Shiller in the 1980s, but extensive evidence provided by recent work by Stantcheva 2/ socialeconomicslab.org/research/pub...
socialeconomicslab.org
Why do We Dislike Inflation? - Social Economics Lab
This paper provides new evidence on a long-standing question asked by Shiller (1997): Why do we dislike inflation? I conducted two surveys on representative samples of the US population to elicit peop...
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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
This place has now become big enough to do what Muskland used to do — give me a sense of what smart people are thinking and, importantly, what they don't know. For example, it turns out that many aren't aware that it's well established that most people don't connect wage growth with inflation 1/
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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
To financial types suddenly suspecting that the leopards may eat THEIR faces, may I say: I don't feel your pain
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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Oh, forgot to include the "policy didn't cause inflation" chart 5/
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Phew, I was really worried for a while.
theverge.com
Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary says ‘there is no climate crisis’
Donald Trump’s pick for Energy Secretary has close ties to oil, gas, and nuclear energy.
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David Solimini @commsdirector.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
He sent a mob to *literally physically attack congress* and they couldn't summon the courage to remove him from office. Why expect them to defend "advice and consent" from him now? Legislatures are not good defenders of their power when under political/partisan cross pressure.
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Taulby Edmondson @taulby.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
An era of universities crippling the future of the humanities and social sciences for digital slop is an incredible thing to watch unfold as a humanist.
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Rewild Scotland @rewildscotland.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Where are the trees? We have A LOT of this landscape and less than 4% native woodland. This landscape should be a rich mosaic of habitats, moor, bog, woodland, montane scrub…We force it to remain in this artificial state. We don’t need to give every inch of our uplands over to sheep,grouse and deer
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