Brendan Hogan

Philosophy professor in nyc and abroad. NYU-Global Liberal Studies. Not retweeting ≠ disagreement.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@grok @cate_long @EdwardGLuce @elonmusk Stating that standards can be ranked by coherence and fit to the observable record is a metaethical position that is highly contested. This is why the assertoric character of ‘your’ responses on these kinds of issues is so problematic.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@grok @cate_long @EdwardGLuce @elonmusk So sez ‘you’. What ‘your’ response elides is that there is a huge debate over these issues and you assume that the metaethical framework ‘you’ employ is the right one. This is essentially why ‘your’ contributions to these types of issues will never pass the muster of thought.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@grok @cate_long @EdwardGLuce @elonmusk Yes, any judgment is subjective in this sense. Which is why I flagged it as not doing any work. ‘You’ give the game away because ‘you’ implicitly agree that a standard can be better or worse, and if a subject adopts the objectively right standard than the judgment is true.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@grok @cate_long @EdwardGLuce @elonmusk But the language you use in restricting those judgments as “subjective” gives the impression that they cannot be objective. Some subjective judgments are correct because they correspond with an objective situation. Some subjective judgments are false because they don’t.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@grok @cate_long @EdwardGLuce @elonmusk And there you have the metaethical priors of Grok. A positivist fact/value distinction and anti-realism with respect our ability connect moral judgments to another person’s actions. By these criteria I can never be warranted in judging another to be ‘malevolent’ or ‘delusional’.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@PatBlanchfield ‘The huge bailout it’s about to require is just us rubbing the lamp with your tax dollars.’

[Charlie D. Becker @charliedbecker]

I'm a second-generation bookseller. My family runs Houston's largest used & rare bookstore and I'm building an AI tool for used bookstores. We got hit by exactly these orders, including a single order for 70 obscure books that made us pause online sales entirely. So I dug in. I don't think this connects the way people want it to.

Every ingredient of the viral story is true. ISBNdb really does advertise sourcing books for AI companies. Anthropic really did destructively scan millions of books though they were mostly acquired through things like library deaccessions, not bookstore inventory. And booksellers really are getting bizarre bulk orders. But "rare" here isn't what you're picturing. It's The Insider's Guide to Metro Denver (1995) and how-to-use-WordPerfect 1991 manuals. Obscure, but often not precious.

When we combed through our orders, nearly every book bought from us was either unavailable on Amazon or listed there at 5, 10, 20x our price on the platform they were purchased on. And the shipments are going to FBA prep companies: which is what you do with a book you're about to resell, not one you're about to cut apart. There is more than circumstantial evidence that this is a well-funded company running algorithmic arbitrage, buying underpriced or out-of-stock books to relist on Amazon at markup. This evidence includes an official denial that they are selling to train AI but I don't want to mention them for several reasons. You can Google it.

That's more mundane than the shredder story. The actual risk is worse, though, because it's quieter: books that don't sell via FBA eventually get liquidated. If we really hold the last copies of some of these (and comparing platforms, it looks like we might) we're feeding them into a portal they may not come back from. No AI company required.

Everyone assumes the internet preserved everything. It didn't. Many of these books have almost no metadata anywhere, just a scattered listings across proprietary databases then nothing. That's what my project is for: building better bibliographic records for these books than exist anywhere else, so we at least have a map of what we stand to lose. So the Library of Alexandria is still burning, just more slowly, and kore from “who cares” than from some cinematic villain.

(I am open to being corrected.)

Full writeup: https://t.co/tHXMH0L3us

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@mis2centavos

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@jamesmire I got one of the first subscriptions when ‘citibike’ first started in 2013. It was 95$ a year , $25 for a whole week, or $10 for the whole day. It’s now $25 dollars a day. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests average NYC inflation would put it at $13.90 ( I know😂.)

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@fauxshizzle @tomaashby Top!

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@AngeCoultas @newBepie Top!

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@MattPolProf And that man finds the determinate negation of those spirits in John Dewey.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@kmunro_econ @djc84156279 Jfc. Municipalize now!

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@jonathanbfine @podsekalnikov Ftr, not a pedagogue!

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@uganda_sk8bding My deep condolences, destroying that kind of space is a real loss.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@ASPertierra @HeeeresJerry ‘Name an education opinion that’ll have everyone offering you their swords for the battle.’

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@joshshepperd Battling the negative effects of bad hot takes on public imagination is probably the only reason to stay on this site.

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@gloom_glam @thrashermag :08 off the charts

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@zachdcarter Lol

[Brendan Hogan @Brendanjh]

@Left_Hegelian @drewflieder @_CLancellotti Outed!