Cultural Observations

Twenty-five years ago Allan Bloom proclaimed a heresy: The supposed idealism of the 1960s was in fact a veneer hiding a new barbarism. He saw that our elite liberal culture has a very definite vision, however much it talks about diversity, multiculturalism, and the like: the relativism of moral truth. This anti-dogmatic dogma, he thought, is leadin... See more

Dismantling current gen ed requirement to align with a new upstream mission will be hard. First, state boards must put a sunset date on all gen ed credit requirements that measure AI-replicable outcomes, replacing them with requirements focused on knowledge production and validation. Second, accrediting bodies must revise their standards to emphasi... See more

Physics may try its damnedest to instill in us existential dread at an incomprehensible universe, but biology will always be the most offensive science. For physics merely deals with the nature of reality, whereas biology contends with our own nature, and so it repeatedly runs up against wishful thinking about who we are. Biology forms the paramete... See more

Artists cannot simply ignore his charge that our failures are uniquely volatile threats to the social order.

Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worth-while, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievemen... See more

The man who wants to write a great book, paint a great picture, create an architectural masterpiece, become a great scientist, and knows that never in all eternity will he be able to realize this, his innermost desire, can find no peace in a stable social order—old or new. He sees his life as irrevocably spoiled and the world as perpetually out of ... See more

the current epidemic of attention disorders is being exacerbated by each of us being expected to do the work of an entire community.

if you don’t have a Black woman on your board, I better not see a Black woman on your billboard.” –Aurora James,