Rob Sica
@robsica.bsky.social
Knowledge would have little allure if we did not have to overcome so much shame on the way to acquiring it. -Nietzsche
"Democratic backsliding or the electoral wins of undemocratic politicians such as Trump may be due not only to our failure to realize liberal egalitarianism, but also to our failure to recognize & appreciate the difficulty of its realization & resultant impatience & intolerance."
Do We Know How to Implement Rawls’s Liberal Principles of Justice? | Philosophy | Cambridge Core
Do We Know How to Implement Rawls’s Liberal Principles of Justice?
www.cambridge.org
December 4, 2025 at 3:43 AM
"Democratic backsliding or the electoral wins of undemocratic politicians such as Trump may be due not only to our failure to realize liberal egalitarianism, but also to our failure to recognize & appreciate the difficulty of its realization & resultant impatience & intolerance."
"An intellectual predilection for what is hard, ghastly, evil, problematic in existence from out of well-being, from overflowing health, from *fullness* of existence?" #Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy / Unpublished Basel Writings (Winter 1869/70–Fall 1873) | Stanford University Press
During his early years in Basel, as professor of classical philology, Nietzsche develops an original understanding of ancient Greek poetry, philosophy, and culture, alongside a biting critique of cont...
www.sup.org
December 4, 2025 at 3:39 AM
"An intellectual predilection for what is hard, ghastly, evil, problematic in existence from out of well-being, from overflowing health, from *fullness* of existence?" #Nietzsche
Reposted by Rob Sica
📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation
doi.org
November 18, 2025 at 8:05 AM
📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
🔪"Darwinism applied to humans was the key abstraction that elites saw as too threatening to their cherished ideals"
The Rise And Fall of Abstraction
Most animals see the world around them in pretty concrete terms.
www.overcomingbias.com
December 4, 2025 at 12:18 AM
🔪"Darwinism applied to humans was the key abstraction that elites saw as too threatening to their cherished ideals"
"Trump has a good gut feeling of what voters want. He promises to implement popular policies and ignores opposition, whether it be from judges, universities, or the media. That’s a simple strategy, and to the fine mind of an intellectual, it is even primitive. However, it works."
You don't have to be smart to win elections
A question I get asked all the time is some version of:
laurenzguenther.substack.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:55 PM
"Trump has a good gut feeling of what voters want. He promises to implement popular policies and ignores opposition, whether it be from judges, universities, or the media. That’s a simple strategy, and to the fine mind of an intellectual, it is even primitive. However, it works."
"whether we should always choose to forgive those who have wronged us"
The Philosophy of Living Well | Choosing to Forgive
In what sense is forgiveness a choice? Is forgiving something that is under the victim’s voluntary control, or do some victims find themselves unable to forgive, no matter how hard they try? Guest ...
the-philosophy-of-living-well.transistor.fm
December 3, 2025 at 10:35 PM
"whether we should always choose to forgive those who have wronged us"
"understanding human behavior means tracing that diversity back to the universal machinery and the situational inputs that shape it — a task difficult in practice, but conceptually pretty straightforward"
How To Understand Human Behavior (Part 3/4)
The more you zoom out, the less diverse behavior appears.
thelivingfossils.substack.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:25 PM
"understanding human behavior means tracing that diversity back to the universal machinery and the situational inputs that shape it — a task difficult in practice, but conceptually pretty straightforward"
🔪"Philosophy, as I have understood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain-peaks – the seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality has set its ban" #Nietzsche
December 3, 2025 at 10:10 PM
🔪"Philosophy, as I have understood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain-peaks – the seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality has set its ban" #Nietzsche
"The errors made during the experimental procedures and the results of the stocking case do not support the sceptical claim that introspection regarding mental processes, such as the decision-making process, is untrustworthy."
Telling Just What We Know: Revisiting Nisbett and Wilson’s Stocking Case | Philosophy | Cambridge Core
Telling Just What We Know: Revisiting Nisbett and Wilson’s Stocking Case
www.cambridge.org
December 3, 2025 at 8:16 PM
"The errors made during the experimental procedures and the results of the stocking case do not support the sceptical claim that introspection regarding mental processes, such as the decision-making process, is untrustworthy."
"Why are so many professors ignorant of their own ignorance?"
December 3, 2025 at 5:39 PM
"Why are so many professors ignorant of their own ignorance?"
Reposted by Rob Sica
What Should We Do About Sex Differences?
The fifth excerpt of my forthcoming book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences
www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/what-shoul...
The fifth excerpt of my forthcoming book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences
www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/what-shoul...
What Should We Do About Sex Differences?
The fifth excerpt of my forthcoming book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences
www.stevestewartwilliams.com
December 3, 2025 at 11:50 AM
What Should We Do About Sex Differences?
The fifth excerpt of my forthcoming book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences
www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/what-shoul...
The fifth excerpt of my forthcoming book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences
www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/what-shoul...
Reposted by Rob Sica
They close with a call that children’s voices and experiences should be integrated into the design and governance of GenAI systems – which reading this very rich report is hard to disagree with.
December 3, 2025 at 10:42 AM
They close with a call that children’s voices and experiences should be integrated into the design and governance of GenAI systems – which reading this very rich report is hard to disagree with.
"Critique, in my view, is not a label that one can stick on anything, it is a status that one must *aspire* to."
Anatomy of a kvetch
It appears to be an unspoken conviction, among academics, that there is no field of study so uncool that it cannot be made at least somewhat cooler by appending the word “critical” to its title.
josephheath.substack.com
December 3, 2025 at 4:57 AM
"Critique, in my view, is not a label that one can stick on anything, it is a status that one must *aspire* to."
🌻"Nietzsche did indeed repeatedly expose the hypocrisy underwriting liberal ideals, sweeping the ideological flowers from man’s chains not so as to break their links and cast them off, but in order to make their metallic glint yet clearer and more vicious."
Parasites, Heroes, and Ordinary Souls: Nietzsche’s Politics from the Nineteenth Century to Neoliberalism
Nietzsche’s political reception appears at present to be undergoing a paradigm shift. Recent publications rightly call into question established readings which present Nietzsche as an apolitical, libe...
www.degruyterbrill.com
December 3, 2025 at 4:26 AM
🌻"Nietzsche did indeed repeatedly expose the hypocrisy underwriting liberal ideals, sweeping the ideological flowers from man’s chains not so as to break their links and cast them off, but in order to make their metallic glint yet clearer and more vicious."
"Alternatives to evidence-based medicine, many of them supernatural in nature, are prevalent everywhere, including contemporary western culture."
Mysterious illnesses have supernatural and ritualistic cures: Evidence from 3,655 century-old Irish folk cures | PNAS
Why and when do people draw upon religious and supernatural solutions to problems?
Cognitive scientists and anthropologists have proposed a range o...
www.pnas.org
December 3, 2025 at 3:34 AM
"Alternatives to evidence-based medicine, many of them supernatural in nature, are prevalent everywhere, including contemporary western culture."
💀"A world history of pessimism, while interesting, would also confirm a disquieting truth: reflective men and women around the world, with significantly different assumptions and concerns, consistently arrive at pessimistic conclusions on human life."
Weltschmerz and the World | Issue 169 | Philosophy Now
Ian James Kidd takes a realistic and global view of the history of pessimism.
philosophynow.org
December 3, 2025 at 3:18 AM
💀"A world history of pessimism, while interesting, would also confirm a disquieting truth: reflective men and women around the world, with significantly different assumptions and concerns, consistently arrive at pessimistic conclusions on human life."
💔"Proust’s In Search of Lost Time inspires my appeal to intermittence, a central theme throughout the novel, especially concerning grief."
Grief Rekindles - The Journal of Value Inquiry
For many of us grief is forever. Or so goes a folk view. In this paper I present a qualified defense of this insight. We don’t feel the impact of loss maximally all the time. Rather, we continue to fe...
link.springer.com
December 3, 2025 at 2:20 AM
💔"Proust’s In Search of Lost Time inspires my appeal to intermittence, a central theme throughout the novel, especially concerning grief."
"In fact, we should assume evolution built many circuits to be opaque on purpose: strategic ignorance, self-deception, emotional hijacking, and attentional blind spots are design features, not bugs."
The Iron Law of Intelligence
Why General Intelligence is a Symphony of Idiot Savants
deepdebates.substack.com
December 2, 2025 at 10:21 PM
"In fact, we should assume evolution built many circuits to be opaque on purpose: strategic ignorance, self-deception, emotional hijacking, and attentional blind spots are design features, not bugs."
"Rawls himself [...] misunderstood his relationship to Marx's views, and came to overestimate the scope of their disagreements... Rawls avoids Marxist objections precisely by incorporating Marxian insights into his liberal theory of justice"
Liberalism and Socialism: Allies or Opponents? | Blog of the APA
The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City Mayoral election has propelled discussion of socialism to the front of the political agenda. Mamdani identifies his political outlook as a form ...
blog.apaonline.org
December 2, 2025 at 9:20 PM
"Rawls himself [...] misunderstood his relationship to Marx's views, and came to overestimate the scope of their disagreements... Rawls avoids Marxist objections precisely by incorporating Marxian insights into his liberal theory of justice"
Reposted by Rob Sica
Why do people endorse seemingly extraordinary beliefs such as in pseudoscience & supernatural entities?
Leading approaches stress cognitive biases (like agency detection) & social dynamics (like signaling). Eli Stark-Elster & I argue that experience matters too & put fwd a framework explaining how.
Leading approaches stress cognitive biases (like agency detection) & social dynamics (like signaling). Eli Stark-Elster & I argue that experience matters too & put fwd a framework explaining how.
In a new Review for @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social -- and my first first-authored paper! -- @manvir.bsky.social and I argue that experience shapes the emergence and evolution of seemingly extraordinary beliefs.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
How experience shapes extraordinary beliefs
The ubiquity of extraordinary beliefs across human societies, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and supernatural beliefs, is a long-standing…
www.sciencedirect.com
December 2, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Why do people endorse seemingly extraordinary beliefs such as in pseudoscience & supernatural entities?
Leading approaches stress cognitive biases (like agency detection) & social dynamics (like signaling). Eli Stark-Elster & I argue that experience matters too & put fwd a framework explaining how.
Leading approaches stress cognitive biases (like agency detection) & social dynamics (like signaling). Eli Stark-Elster & I argue that experience matters too & put fwd a framework explaining how.
"Nietzsche can plausibly be regarded as a descriptive moral relativist... however, #Nietzsche cannot be considered a metaethical moral relativist about either the truth-value or the justification of moral judgments"
Was nietzsche a moral relativist?
Nietzsche has long been associated with relativism of some sort, particularly in relation to moral values, although contemporary Nietzsche scholars tend to dismiss this interpretation as misleading...
www.tandfonline.com
December 2, 2025 at 7:00 PM
"Nietzsche can plausibly be regarded as a descriptive moral relativist... however, #Nietzsche cannot be considered a metaethical moral relativist about either the truth-value or the justification of moral judgments"
Reposted by Rob Sica
Superb. Egalitarianism is best understood in terms of process, not outcome
I think this conclusion has important consequences for political philosophy, open society, etc.
I think this conclusion has important consequences for political philosophy, open society, etc.
📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation
doi.org
December 2, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Superb. Egalitarianism is best understood in terms of process, not outcome
I think this conclusion has important consequences for political philosophy, open society, etc.
I think this conclusion has important consequences for political philosophy, open society, etc.
Reposted by Rob Sica
In a new article for @us.theconversation.com, I explain our new perspective on how experience shapes extraordinary beliefs -- a good piece to read if you want the quick and dirty deets!
theconversation.com/flat-earth-s...
theconversation.com/flat-earth-s...
Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs
Conspiracy thinking, supernatural beliefs and pseudoscience can seem impervious to evidence. An anthropologist suggests the opposite: Extraordinary beliefs may be supported by an individual’s experien...
theconversation.com
December 2, 2025 at 3:35 PM
In a new article for @us.theconversation.com, I explain our new perspective on how experience shapes extraordinary beliefs -- a good piece to read if you want the quick and dirty deets!
theconversation.com/flat-earth-s...
theconversation.com/flat-earth-s...
Reposted by Rob Sica
This week, love and regret with Cari Goetz!
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-mazyp...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
youtu.be/XWTV4Wj-v4s
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-mazyp...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
youtu.be/XWTV4Wj-v4s
Love and Regret with Cari Goetz
YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast)
youtu.be
December 2, 2025 at 4:13 PM
This week, love and regret with Cari Goetz!
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-mazyp...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
youtu.be/XWTV4Wj-v4s
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-mazyp...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
youtu.be/XWTV4Wj-v4s