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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas

@unfilosofo.bsky.social
910 followers 325 following 509 posts

Professor of Philosophy, etc. UC San Diego free will, moral psych, responsibility, Latin American philosophy, secularization My views do not necessarily represent my views.

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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 4h
Who doesn't love Fall in San Diego? Balmy in the mid-90s with limited AC. So awesome!
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In case anyone is wondering, San Diego‘s chronically mild weather has become chronically mildly unpleasant, what with this annoying humidity.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Rove and Carlson supporting senate Dem candidates was not on my bingo card. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
independent.co.uk
Tucker Carlson backs Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan Senate race
Mike Rogers is ‘unfit to serve’, right-wing commentator writes, after wave of Islamophobic abuse against El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani over 9/11
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I used to be one of those people who said things like "I don't understand how San Diego weather can get boring." Lo:
Highs of 77 F for five days straight.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
It would be awesome if the main result of rogue AI was simply that it made the internet and connected devices totally unusable.
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Andrew Lopez @andrulus.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This paper is now out! If you're interested in politics on the internet, 4chan, and the intersection of politics, sociology, and philosophy, give it a read! journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article...
journals.publishing.umich.edu
It’s Just a Joke: Thinking Online Politics with Jorge Portilla
I argue that the philosophy of Jorge Portilla can help us understand the current social and political conditions of the United States. In particular, I draw from Portilla’s account of relajo and his w...
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Yes, but does this mean at least one person gets the ability to echolocate?
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Shen-yi Liao 廖顯禕 @liao.shen-yi.org · 09/09/2026
It's scandalous that for-profit companies like SpringerNature and Elsevier rent-seek from academic publishing and profit off of our labor. I'm also convinced by @hiphination.bsky.social that it's just as scandalous that for-profit digital infrastructure companies do the same in higher education.
globecollegetown.substack.com
College campuses need to be liberated from their administrators
Higher ed is being strangled by absurd and costly rules. What message is that sending to students?
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Would this summer have been a bit more chill if back in the day SCOTUS was like, "Actually, we pick Gore?"
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 09/09/2026
The alarms are all flashing red.
Screenshot of a thread on X by user Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) detailing his resignation from Anthropic.
​The first post reads: "I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below."
​The second post reads: "Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing."
​The third post reads: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger."Screenshot continuing the thread on X by Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess).
​The first post reads: "A common response is 'if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?' At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk."
​The second post reads: "Accepting this race and entering the 'endgame' is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company's Slack. Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that there are no better trajectories available."
​The third post reads: "I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between U.S. labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities."
​The fourth post reads: "If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because 'it’s happening anyway' - or take this moment to call for different conditions?"
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I can't believe we're talking about renaming NM. We've got to save "New America" for the moon, obviously. Also, the solar system needs to be renamed the American System, and the Milky Way is . . . wait for it . . . THE AMERICAN WAY.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
A crisply stated overview of my current-ish views about free will, by George Semaan at The Daily Neuron. dailyneuron.com/moral-respon...
urldefense.com
Moral Responsibility Doesn't Need Free Will to Do Its Job - Daily Neuron
Blame and praise can keep working even if nobody was ever free to choose otherwise. The philosophical case for keeping them, and what it costs.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
If AI stayed down, how long would it take to see a discernible improvement in student learning?
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Philosophers and furniture stores fighting about what it means to define a room.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
In the absence of any real knowledge about what happened, I'm blaming the stalled out inter webs on AI, stupid wars with enemies and allies, and all the enemies of free will revisionism.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
This is awesome. cailinoconnor.substack.com/p/nara-smith...
cailinoconnor.substack.com
Nara Smith is a Performance Artist, Not a Tradwife
A close textual reading of the work of Smith
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
It would be funny if Nolan reviewed Emily Wilson's new book, focusing on its putative shortcomings concerning imagistic, musical, and generally cinematic elements. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/b...
nytimes.com
For Emily Wilson, Translating the Ancients Requires a Dash of Cardi B
A new book of essays by the celebrated classicist captures her excitement for her subject matter and the surprising range of her references.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I wonder how much would it cost to get an executive order stipulating that Manuel Vargas' philosophical views on any given topic must always be referred to as "the true view."
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Stares in revisionism (at the original headline).
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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Ozymandias shoulda made two monuments so he could have told people to look upon his works ye mighty and de spare
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Am desk rejecting the Parton news. She had remarkable grace for someone who lived her life in the fishbowl of celebrity.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
TIL I learned the long-deleted "Voice Memos" app on my phone provides transcription, thus allowing me to transcribe paper ideas worked out while hiking.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Yeah, well since we are all using pretty loose notions of "potential," I'm pleased to announce that the potential revenue opportunities for investing in me is $30 QUADrillion.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Turns out that knowledge of how coaxial cables screw on to coaxial ports is also no longer general knowledge for youngsters. It feels like the beginning of Battlestar Galactica where only folks using ancient tech survive the AI uprising.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Wisdom of the ages: impressing daughter and her roomie w/ my practical knowledge of how portable dishwashers from the 1980s work
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 19/08/2026
People who don’t know the difference between ‘entomology’ and ‘etymology’ bug us in ways we cannot put into words.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
This is a helpful (and, alas, alarming) discussion of how we are inadvertently training artificial systems to deceive and cheat. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The A.I.s Are Already Out of Control
Helen Toner, who served on OpenAI’s board, hopes the recent hack by that company’s models serves as a warning.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
New idea for my utopia: outright ownership rights to the AI company of your choice to whichever country or company provably makes the biggest dent in mitigating climate change. Ownership of a second AI company of your choice for eliminating or overcoming data center environmental effects.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Some, uh, striking changes to academic freedom in the US. academic-freedom-index.net
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
New law in my utopia. Every college athletics program that runs at a deficit for more than two years is required to pause major sports and pour in equivalent amount of money lost into the humanities for two years before they can restart major sports.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Hey everyone: I have an idea! Let’s improve the greatest higher ed system in the world by emulating places whose higher ed system is falling apart! We‘d be so much better off with less [checks notes], uh, social work and teaching aides? Less music? And no one likes religion, right? Right?
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 03/08/2026
President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
trib.al
Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees
Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.
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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Seems kinda irresponsible to start another week like right after that last one. Borderline reckless.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Pretty sure I'd be a lifetime voter for anyone who can undo climate change and effectively rolls back the current outbreaks of, say, ticks, explosive diarrhea, measles, chagas, West Nile, and ebola.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Inspired by Nolan's Odyssey, this fall term I'm gonna present Fanon as Afro-Caribbean on my slides, St. Augustine as N. African, and Jaegwon Kim as Asian. People will condemn it as woke, but I'm making a point about the fall of the American Empire. #philsky
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Pretty sure this set a record for the number of jokes about tortas in Mexican social media.
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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
From the abstract: “promoting a woman to Associate Professor increases female faculty by 1.5 members after 15 years, leads to six additional female PhD graduates over the following decade, and raises the number who subsequently remain in academia and reach tenured positions”
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Can confirm, Obsession is pretty good horror.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
My fav tenure/promo letters to write are the ones where the dept is super clear about standards and the candidate just blows past those standards by a country mile.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Using AI to set up filters to block email and messages about AI, even as I write papers about AI.
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da share z0ne @dasharez0ne.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
DA REAL INTERNET MUST COME BACK - dashare.zone ADMIN
A SKELTEN WITH 2 CEO REMOVER'S "BRING BACK RSS READER'S AND BLOGS" - DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Or, the inevitability of Sor Juana. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/b...
nytimes.com
Valeria Luiselli on Her Favorite Books and Her New Novel
Pliny’s “Natural History” is meant for “skimming and skipping,” she says. Her own new (one-volume) road-trip novel is “Beginning Middle End.”
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I have a profound love/hate relationship with reading tenure/promotion files. I always learn a ton, but there is no way to do this properly that doesn't take an enormous amount of time and it is rare that anything we write makes much difference to what happens.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Disappointed to learn that the "Brown Investigator Award" isn't actually targeting browns who are investigators.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Was told this by a friend in the UK and I thought it had to be a mistake. But apparently it isn't? The UK has a per capita GDP lower than ANY state in the U.S. www.newsweek.com/britons-gues...
newsweek.com
Britons guess how wealthy UK is vs. all US states—and get it all wrong
Britons were asked to rank U.K. wealth against U.S. states'. A report found most guessed wrong—placing Britain far higher than reality.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I would totally watch a tourney that has the top 4 most endearing teams that didn’t make it into the quarterfinals and beyond. Call it the Fan’s Cup.
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Still laughing that one of the WC finalists is led by an MLS star, and they got there by defeating a team chock-full of EPL stars.
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Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Sign tapped:
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Manuel Buckaroo Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
That's what you get for golfing with that one guy.
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