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bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson
@bweatherson.bsky.social
2.7K followers 210 following 1.6K posts

Philosopher at University of Michigan. https://brian.weatherson.org/

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Brian Weatherson is the Marshall Weinberg Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He specializes in epistemology and philosophy of language.

Source: Wikipedia
Philosophy 47%
Psychology 20%
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bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · Aug 8
This is a thread of things I've recently published, starting with my book from last year, with Open Book Publishers, defending the claim that knowledge is interest-relative.

I'll continue this thread when new stuff comes out.

www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...
Knowledge: A Human Interest Story
In this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, bu...
www.openbookpublishers.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
Right, it's a risky strategy. But it feels like their plan is to really focus on corporate customers. And if every alternative is soaked in ads, and they're the only one that looks like it belongs in a professional setting, that might help the plan.

If it's a bad plan though, that won't matter.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d
I wonder if this will help Anthropic distinguish itself, the same way that Apple stands out for being less ad supported than all the other big tech companies.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

dailynous.com
Justin Weinberg @dailynous.com · 1d
This may be the largest single grant for a project led by a philosophy professor.
Notre Dame AI Ethics Project Wins $50.8 Million Grant - Daily Nous
The University of Notre Dame's Institute for the Ethics and the Common Good (ECG), directed by philosophy professor Meghan Sullivan, has received a $50.8 million grant for work on various moral proble...
dailynous.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
I liked this thread where someone asked for where to get good Indonesian food in Melbourne and a common response is “Which part of Indonesia did you have in mind?”

www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/...

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
I just tried looking up recipes, and the first I found was from a chef at Het Anker!

yummyproof.com/en/recept/ve...
Vegan Flemish stew (carbonade flamande) | Yummyproof
After a lot of tests with seitan and jackfruit, my favourite vegan Flemish stew is by far this version made with vegan fillet pieces.
yummyproof.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
When I ate more meat, I Ioved Flemish beef stew. I made a pretty good version, and the one I had at a neighborhood place in Brugge was amazing.

Maybe I should try making the veggie version.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
I was just about to post that northern vs southern French matters a lot here.

You don't often see Belgian food described as the best in the world, and the food doesn't magically change the minute you step across the border.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
There could be something interesting to say about how this relates to optimal strategies in multi-arm bandit problems, which are also sometimes sensitive to the order information is received in.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
There are some really interesting cases in the paper (e.g,. the changed environment in §5.2, and the poverty trap in §9), which suggest that the order that the subject gets information is important even holding fixed which information they totally get.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
I was half tempted to write up a short reply paper along these lines, but on reflection I can't tell if that would just be a boring terminological dispute.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
One way would be to have an externalist theory of information, a la Knowledge and Its Limits.

Another would be to say that the relation between some information and what it supports depends on contingent correlations, not just on logical relations a la Keynes.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
I liked this paper by David Thorstad, but I was a bit puzzled by the framing as being externalism vs information-sensitivity.

I'd have thought a view can be information-sensitive and externalist.

philarchive.org/rec/THOERW-2
David Thorstad, Ecological rationality without externalism - PhilArchive
Theories of bounded rationality join process reliabilists in holding that rationality is ecological, or environment-relative. Most theories of ecological rationality, like most versions of reliabilism...
philarchive.org

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

philippeauclair.bsky.social
Philippe Auclair @philippeauclair.bsky.social · 2d
A propos of nothing, it's taken as a given that Bob Geldof should be made fun of and that his Band Aid Christmas song is not just a maddening tune, but also a prime example of the White Saviour syndrome. I'd just like to add something to this take, which I've only learnt about very recently.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
Don't the ads make it too annoying? I couldn't stand the volume spike every time an ad comes on.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 2d
This story gave me a stronger "I really live in a bubble" vibes than anything I've read in a long time.

Millions of people just turn on YouTube at the start of the day and just ... leave it running?

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/b...
YouTube Has a Firm Grip on Daytime TV
www.nytimes.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 3d
I think militaries with a lot less resources than the PRC could do a number on them.

The Russian navy didn't last a week when Ukraine went to work on it, and there are plenty of countries with more resources than Ukraine.

Surface vessels are just big juicy targets for anyone these days.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 3d
I thought Modi would be high on this list, but actually the number of things he’s gotten named after himself is less than I expected.

I’ve just watched too many cricket games from his pet stadium.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
List of things named after Narendra Modi - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Mark Rice, Brian Weatherson

lizzieohreally.bsky.social
Lizzie O'Leary @lizzieohreally.bsky.social · 4d
They deported Yuanxin www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/n...
Immigration Officials Deport Queens 6-Year-Old and Father Who Fled China
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Anna O. Law, David Brady, Linda J. Skitka , and 16 more

ricksteves.bsky.social
Rick Steves @ricksteves.bsky.social · 5d
It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans.

🧵 1 of 9

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d
This thread is very good on how the problems with LLMs in academic publishing are a scaled up version of existing but under appreciated problems.

The scale matters, but everyone who thinks the problems are completely new is kidding themselves.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d
I think there are two different claims here.

One is that the fakes are a new kind of problem. That’s true, but not worrying (to me). After all, they are so easy to spot. (I can write an LLM prompt that will catch ~100%.)

The other is that the scale has gone up. That’s a bigger deal I feel.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d
I'm thinking of writing up a longer post on just this point.

So much of what people dislike about LLMs is really symptoms of rot that was already there. There was always plenty of other evidence of the rot, but it took LLMs to make the evidence impossible to ignore.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d
I didn’t hear many academics complaining when their Google Scholar citation counts were bulked up by fake citations, or putting in any effort to verify those counts before reporting them.

Reposted by Steven French, Brian Weatherson

cambridgephilos.bsky.social
Cambridge Philosophy @cambridgephilos.bsky.social · 7d
🎉Warmest congratulations to Dr Jessie Munton on the publication of her book, Priority and Prejudice: The Epistemology of Salience and Attention (OUP) 📘
@jessiemunton.bsky.social
@oupphilosophy.bsky.social
@stjohnscollege.bsky.social
@leverhulmetrust.bsky.social

global.oup.com/academic/pro...
The cover of Dr Jessie Munton's book. Dark background, and spots of colour.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

paolosantorio.bsky.social
Paolo Santorio @paolosantorio.bsky.social · 7d
This post comes late, but I was very happy to see this in print. The thesis is in the title: the probability of "if p, would q" is the probability of q, in the counterfactual scenario where p.

doi.org/10.5840/jphi...
doi.org

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

unfilosofo.bsky.social
Manuel Impermanent Vargas @unfilosofo.bsky.social · 7d
Eduardo Mendieta has passed away. He was a friend and mentor to me, and he was responsible for so much of the activity in Latin American philosophy in the US in 90s and 00s. He is sorely missed.

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d
The last paragraph of this is related to the common view you see in online philosophy discourse that journals should be run the same way as exam boards.

Of course it's not put that way, but the characteristics people want are characteristics of well functioning exam boards.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

dsquareddigest.bsky.social
Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 7d
I serve up a helping of flamin' hot Discourse ... backofmind.substack.com/p/the-myth-o...
the myth of merit in the managerial class
tyranny of being good at exams
backofmind.substack.com

bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 7d
I think the importance of friends sharing stuff was always a bit overstated relative to people only watching Fox News (or only reading The Guardian). I'd prefer a model where it's always been TV, but now there are 1000s of stations.