Jo Wolff
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jowolff.bsky.social
Jo Wolff
@jowolff.bsky.social

Jonathan Wolff,
Political Philosopher.
Fellow British Academy
Emeritus Professor Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford
Wolfson College
President The Royal Institute of Philosophy
THFC supporter in 'early season false hope’ mode.

#academic .. more

Jonathan Wolff is a British philosopher. He is a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy and Public Policy and Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He was formerly the Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Prior to his joining the Blavatnik School in 2016, Wolff's academic career had been spent at University College London (UCL), where he was, latterly, Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. .. more

Political science 51%
Philosophy 14%
Pinned
I’ve changed my header photo to this one. It shows my father Herbert and his sister Lotte with their parents Fritz and Marta in their Frankfurt apartment before Herbert and Lotte were sent to England on the Kindertransport, and later Fritz and Marta transported to Lodz Ghetto, final fate unknown.

A tree absorbing a headstone into itself at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Frankfurt. Very evocative image of transcendence (in Hegel’s sense of preservation but superseedence) of memory by new life.

Finally dawned on me why speaker introductions are generally so over the top. If they told the truth the audience would be sitting there wondering why they couldn’t get anyone decent to give the talk.

Ha!! He also went over length, so I pretended to be cutting my comments short to allow more time for discussion and spoke for five minutes or so.

Question is, did he get the word from Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm or The Muppets?
"Quiet! Quiet, Piggy."

German translation bringing tears to my eyes.
Have been thinking about “immigration has been tearing this country apart.” Surely I’m not the only person to think that it isn’t true, but inflamed rhetoric about immigration by politicians is what is tearing this country apart and so statements like that only makes it worse.

My little Summers story. I agreed to give a reply to him at a conference I co-organised at the Kennedy School. He said he couldn’t give me his paper in advance but we had a long phone conversation about what he would say and I wrote up notes in reply.

Then he gives a completely different talk.
"Quiet! Quiet, Piggy."

What’s the news on the Trump and MTG spat? Both apologised and said they overreacted? Trump admitted he was in the wrong?

The examples of co-authorship in philosophy are still fairly rare outside very technical areas. I think it comes from some unstated assumptions that rigour requires integrity, co-authorship requires compromise and integrity is incompatible with compromise.

Good try but not accepting the third. He wrote against Smart, not with him.

We mostly only like them when they are out of office, though there are serious exceptions to that rule.
When I was reflecting on my career for my retirement conference I realised it was built on three things I was advised no respectable philosophy academic should do

1 Write texts for students

2 Write collaborative public policy reports

3 Co-author philosophical research

My advice. Do your thing.

Reposted by Alex Callinicos

“Senate Majority Leader John Thune”

How embarrassing is it that if you had asked me who John Thune is I would have guessed a character from an Ayn Rand novel?

Academic Headstone:

Here lies a man who believed his own models.

Esoteric post follows.

Acting on the social determinants of health should be known as ‘stealth care’.

Thanks! I once gave a talk on this to a pharmaceutical company that said that they wanted to cure the world of disease. They were looking a bit shocked as I spoke.

I suppose I agree but tend to put it in Freud’s terms from Civilisation and Its Discontents. There is a thin veneer of civilisation that needs constant care and vigilance. It can be broken very easily. Maybe the same view as yours?

Hahaha!!

Thanks Chris! I think it was you that drew my attention to this in the first place.

Seems to me that if the Epstein files are released then demand for cabins in the woods, where older men can live on their own just with their dog and shotguns, will go through the roof.

Remembering that hideous Daily Mail story about Jews hiding their gold and jewellery when arriving as refugees. Of course they did if they had any. Would Daily Mail journalists and editors do any differently if they were in a similar plight? Such a failure of emphethetic imagination and compassion.
Govt minister Alex Norris is asked if the govt will take jewellery from people [fleeing war and persecution]. Norris says the govt won't be taking peoples wedding rings but they will seize assets.

Suddenly remembered a line from A.J. Ayer’s memoirs about why he didn’t do political philosophy because he found it too hard. Something like ‘I wasn’t satisfied with the concept of the general will but I couldn’t think of anything of my own to replace it with.’

I suppose that ChatGPT is doing what we thought the search engine Ask Jeeves would do, though it lacks the required biting edge of contempt that you needed to ask the question at all.
Govt minister Alex Norris is asked if the govt will take jewellery from people [fleeing war and persecution]. Norris says the govt won't be taking peoples wedding rings but they will seize assets.

That was the joke!

Reposted by Joanna Bourke

Trouble is, the buck doesn’t stop any more.

That’s a missed opportunity for AI to announce that it wouldn’t accept any paper that had itself as an author.
This is what happened when AI acted as both author and reviewer - a study found AI peer-reviewers accepted fake AI-generated papers 4 out of 5 times. We need #PeerReview to be better, and human oversight is more vital than ever!
#ResearchIntegrity #AI #AcademicPublishing #ResearchSky #AcademicSky
AI peer reviewers are fine with AI-fabricated papers
Study finds artificial intelligence reviewers accept AI-generated scientific studies 4 out of 5 times
cen.acs.org

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

Of course you know why a private market in health care is so bad for health.

The best way to make money is to sell a drug that relieves the symptoms of, but does not cure, a very uncomfortable chronic condition.

The worst way to make money is to prevent illness through social change.