Tara McMullin

so we might say that the most important thing one can acquire in college is a well-functioning bullshit meter. 11 It’s a technology that will never become obsolete.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

— Albert Camus

Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have,... See more

The experience of affective friction is similar as well: a loss of fluency combined with negative emotional signals arising from the gap between social expectations and realities. Even when the difference between an old norm and a new one replacing it seems trivial, the disruptions caused by the shift can create feelings of anxiety, awkwardness –... See more

Sometimes, one needs to be emotionally invested in a hypothetical situation to fully appreciate its consequences. In such cases, fiction seems a better tool to explore the consequences of particular philosophical views than philosophical thought experiments.

Much of the pleasure of “generating content” — whether through a machine or by some other means, about oneself or about other things or about other things as a way to signify oneself — is in imagining that someone else might also want it. The content is not just for you to consume but to anchor shared experience, or at least allow us to imagine its... See more