Why Philosophy
What it’s good for, and how it could be better still
Philosophy
Open Questions.
Exploring deep questions in philosophy, ethics, and society.
Recent essays
25 of 25How I Read
And how I write (or fail to)
Why Smart People Make Weak Arguments About AI
Tech CEOs aren’t the only ones captive to motivated reasoning
Why the Backlash Against Trans Rights?
And how the movement can recover
Science Has Shattered Our Worldview Again and Again
While philosophy only watched?
Time Bandits
Don’t let them rob you of posterity
It’s a Girl! (Thank God)
Why it’s better to have daughters than sons
Does It Matter if Trans People Are Born That Way?
The answer is more complicated than you might think
Save the Student Essay
Without getting played
How it Started vs. How it’s Going
My first nine months on Substack
Is Affirmative Action in Faculty Hiring Justified?
Why it’s harder to defend than many of us care to admit
Why Aren’t You Using ChatGPT? (Reprise)
It’s already far more useful than Google ever was.
The Fragmentation of America
How we got into this mess and whether there’s a way out
What The Left Misses About Trump's Appeal (Reprise)
It's the culture, stupid
Getting Schooled
What I learned studying philosophy and what I’m still learning
You Don't Need an AI Policy. You Need Two.
One policy to preserve the take-home essay, another to explore the frontiers of education
The Promise of Lab-Grown Meat
Can it free us from factory farming?
Weapon of Mass Plagiarism (Reprise)
Students are outsourcing essays to ChatGPT. What’s a professor to do?
The Fragmentation of Philosophy
After other disciplines have fallen away, what’s left?
It Gets Better (But Only Sometimes)
Why gay progress accelerated while trans progress stalled
Don’t Outsource Your Thinking to ChatGPT
Let it enhance your cognition instead
We Need to Talk
The Overton window is too damn narrow
Baby Doomers
A review of After the Spike by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso
Zero to One Thousand
My first three months on Substack
Culture Made Us Human
How our species became “behaviorally modern” and colonized the planet