Brian Weatherson
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bweatherson.bsky.social
Brian Weatherson
@bweatherson.bsky.social

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

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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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

Excellent taste in books!

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

knowledge norm of assertion in the wild

One of our grad students, Mica Rapstine, has written about how properly valuing something requires being angry when it is mistreated.

Not quite the thing you’re looking for I suspect, because not about utility, but might be adjacent to it.

philpapers.org/rec/RAPPRA
Mica Rapstine, Political Rage and the Value of Valuing - PhilPapers
This paper focuses on the question of political anger's non-instrumental justification. I argue that the case for anger is strong where anger expresses a valuable form of valuing the good. It ...
philpapers.org

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

This is how to convert from a for-profit Big Deal to an equitable, but professionalised, diamond OA system!

@theblochian.bsky.social and I dreamed of this scale when we launched @openlibhums.org Now, she has done it. Consortial funding, at scale.

Now over to the library community to support it.
We've officially launched! With our new #DiamondOpenAccess investment campaign to help libraries build a sustainable, community‑led future for scholarly publishing & support journals flipping away from costly subscription models. Read the Press release here drive.google.com/file/d/10Hgf...
We've officially launched! With our new #DiamondOpenAccess investment campaign to help libraries build a sustainable, community‑led future for scholarly publishing & support journals flipping away from costly subscription models. Read the Press release here drive.google.com/file/d/10Hgf...
Minneapolis is a place that means a lot to me, so I wrote a short Substack about the city, its people, and what we all owe them.

benansell.substack.com/p/my-minneap...
My Minneapolis
An ode to a city that knows who it is
benansell.substack.com

Yes it holds within years. I somehow broke the link but here’s the link that works. Figure 2 shows the relationship within ESC publication year.

brian.weatherson.org/quarto/blog/...
Short Titles! – Brian Weatherson
brian.weatherson.org

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Glad to share a new paper with Ivan Boldyrev and Bob Sugden, written for the 75th anniversary of the famous 1952 Paris conference on risk.

We reconstruct the rich discussions at the meeting and address the “sleeping beauty puzzle” linked to ideas presented there by Allais and Arrow.

bit.ly/4rkZqNn

Lots of Dems want to find their version of early 90s Paul Keating, who did all these things perfectly, and won the longest of long shot elections.

Then they have to hope their candidate doesn’t turn into mid 90s Paul Keating who stepped on every rake he could see.
Gallego’s whole thing of moderating on policy, radicalizing on tactics/partisanship, and attacking when events allow is pretty clearly trying to find a way through the “popularism/populism/future of Dems” stuff.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., rolls out his demand for supporting a DHS appropriations bill: fire Stephen Miller

I thought that I’d never seen even a precinct this lopsided. Then I remembered that the last state election was just after Roe was overturned, and abortion rights were the biggest issue. The in on campus voting center ended up about 98-2.

Still, getting this across a whole district is something.
Good lord Putin doesnt even rig it this big

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Gallego’s whole thing of moderating on policy, radicalizing on tactics/partisanship, and attacking when events allow is pretty clearly trying to find a way through the “popularism/populism/future of Dems” stuff.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., rolls out his demand for supporting a DHS appropriations bill: fire Stephen Miller

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Good lord Putin doesnt even rig it this big

Just before the pandemic I was at a bus stop on a cold morning and cars kept getting stuck on the hill leading up to the traffic lights. A few of us looked at each other and walked out to push the cars stuck at the lights.

When the pandemic hit I really missed random social interactions like that.
If you’re looking for a little respite from the insanity and depravity of the news, I really enjoyed this #WITHPod convo on the philosophy of games with @add-hawk.bsky.social

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
The Gamification of Our World with C. Thi Nguyen
Podcast Episode · Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast · 01/27/2026 · 59m
podcasts.apple.com
Here is the child’s drawing.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

It's not just Teams and Zoom which LaSuite is offering an alternative for: but also GMail, Google Docs, WhatsApp, etc.

Feeling quite patriotic today I must confess.
lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr

I think we're going to soon be in a world where lots of pieces of short writing would be improved, often greatly improved, by AI editing. But everyone doing this would make the system they're embedded in worse.

(In related news, I'm reading a lot of reference letters right now.)

But...

Comments sections need a little bit of friction, or they can spiral out of control. And making people writing out things longhand might be just the friction that's needed.

I think this is a good policy even though I also think it will make some of the comments worse.

Writing a paragraph or two that's clear, to the point, and polite, is really in the sweet spot for things Claude does well. Many DailyNous comments would be improved by Claude editing.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

New AI section in the comments policy. In short: "don't use, don't accuse" (sort of).
dailynous.com/2026/01/26/o...
On the Use of AI in Comments - Daily Nous
I've updated the Comments Policy at Daily Nous with a passage about using AI to write comments here. The update was occasioned by a recent discussion in which a few accusations were tossed around that...
dailynous.com

Wasn't it 30 million he was attributing to Rep Omar a few days ago?

That looks pretty close to the slope for the six months before that, at least eyeballing it.

So it clearly didn't help, but it looks from the numbers like one bad event among many all through 2005, not the single big popularity crisis it felt like (and still feels like).

In real time Bush seemed less popular after Katrina, but the numbers don't agree. Without dates, you wouldn't spot Katrina here.

I think, as you say later, the second-order effects were bigger. Post-Katrina, conservatives didn't reflexively back him in a crisis.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_...

Totally agree. The successful 20th century right-authoritarians used carrots for the biggest businesses and churches.

These guys have bullied businesses and alienated the biggest churches.

The carrots are, at most, for startup evangelical churches, and that’s not enough people for what they need.

We could have an American style continental league with 32 teams in two conferences. We'd just have to have UK and EU conferences, rather than split the teams based on which owners liked which other ones generations ago.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

My book on relevant logics will be available mid-2026
There’s video floating around. You don’t want to watch it.

News feed will be updated continuously. No paywall.

www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...
Live: Man shot by federal agent in south Minneapolis this morning, witnesses say
More than a hundred protesters and observers have gathered near E. 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue.
www.startribune.com

Shouldn't they have updated their watermark in the lower left?

If you get down to precinct level, anywhere large enough to have a hotel will likely be blue.

At least in Michigan (I'm sure other states are different), even inside the reddest counties, the precincts with the smallest geographic area were almost always blue.
Look at this: @inquirer.com has digitally preserved the interpretative signage removed by NPS, and used annotations to explain what specifically was flagged before removal. This keeps the content publicly accessible (for now) while doing newsworthy reporting
www.inquirer.com/news/philade...
Here are the signs the Trump administration removed from Independence Park
Following last year’s review, every sign has been removed from the President’s House site.
www.inquirer.com