Imagine a man who takes forty five minutes to explain why you should not lie to a murderer standing at your door asking where your friend is hiding. Now imagine that man on Twitter. Welcome to the nightmare of Immanuel Kant in the age of hot takes. Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, a […]
Why Kant Would Be the Most Hated Man on Twitter/X Read More »
There is a certain comfort in watching diplomats sign documents. The pens are expensive. The tables are long and polished. Everyone wears serious faces and shakes hands for the cameras. And then, somewhere between the champagne toast and the morning news cycle, the document starts to decay. Not physically. Physically it will be preserved in
Blood, Not Ink: Why Treaties Are Only as Strong as the Army Behind Them Read More »
There is a particular kind of person who wakes up every morning burdened by the weight of problems that are not theirs. They scroll through the news, absorb the suffering of strangers in distant countries, and feel personally responsible for fixing all of it. They post about injustice. They sign petitions. They argue at dinner
Stop Trying to Save the World: The Radical Ethics of Minding Your Own Business Read More »
There is an old line, usually attributed to Bismarck but probably older than him, that laws are like sausages. You should never watch either one being made. Most people hear this and chuckle. George Stigler, the Nobel laureate economist from the University of Chicago, heard it and thought: actually, let us watch. Let us watch
The Policy Factory: Why Laws Are Manufactured Exactly Like Sausages Read More »
You have probably been in this situation before. You are sitting across from someone at dinner, or scrolling through a comment thread, and someone says something that is obviously, demonstrably wrong. So you do what any reasonable person would do. You pull out the facts. You cite the numbers. You present the evidence like a
You got a raise last year. Maybe even a good one. You bought the slightly better coffee, upgraded your streaming plan, and for about eleven days you felt like you had finally made it. Then the feeling vanished. The new number on your paycheck became the new normal, and normal never feels like enough. This
Karl Marx’s Math: Why Your Salary Never Feels Like Enough Read More »
The Rothbardian case against the protective state You lock your front door at night. You check reviews before buying a car seat for your kid. You read the ingredients on food labels. You do these things because you care about safety. Nobody had to pass a law to make you care. And yet, somewhere along
How Government “Safety” Regulations Actually Make You Less Safe Read More »
There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a dinner table when someone announces they are studying philosophy. It is the same silence that follows a bad joke, except nobody is sure whether to laugh or offer condolences. The parents exchange a glance. An uncle clears his throat. Someone, inevitably, asks the question
Can Philosophy Pay the Bills? Russell’s Defense of “Useless” Arts Read More »
In 1821, David Ricardo did something unusual for an economist who had spent his career defending machinery. He changed his mind. In the third edition of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, he added a new chapter titled “On Machinery,” in which he admitted that the introduction of machines could, in fact, hurt workers.
Why ChatGPT Is the New “Steam Engine” of the Intellectual Class Read More »
There is a quiet injustice in the history of ideas. The people who plant the seeds rarely get credit for the forest. Ask anyone to name the father of data science, and you will hear familiar names. Maybe Thomas Bayes. Maybe John Tukey, who coined the term “data analysis” in 1962. Maybe some Silicon Valley
Is Condorcet the Real Father of Modern Data Science? Read More »