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Brian Weatherson

@bweatherson.bsky.social

2.6K followers 210 following 1.4K posts

Philosopher at University of Michigan. https://brian.weatherson.org/

Brian Weatherson is the Marshall Weinberg Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He specializes in epistemology and philosophy of language.

Source: Wikipedia

Philosophy 47%

Psychology 20%

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · Aug 8

This is a thread of things I've recently published, starting with my book from last year, with Open Book Publishers, defending the claim that knowledge is interest-relative.

I'll continue this thread when new stuff comes out.

www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Knowledge: A Human Interest Story

In this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, bu...

www.openbookpublishers.com

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 16h

It's an even more fun style in Scotland, where the Great Figures change from town to town depending on what the dominant bank in that town is.

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 16h

The main suggestion is that the tetralemma that Frank Hong and Jeff Russell develop in this paper is really a dilemma.

What look like weak compensation and dominance principles turn out to be inconsistent in infinite settings.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Paradoxes of infinite aggregation

There are infinitely many ways the world might be, and there may well be infinitely many people in it. These facts raise moral paradoxes. We explore a conflict between two highly attractive principle...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 16h

There has been a flurry of interesting work in the journals recently on welfare aggregation in infinite worlds. Most of the discussion has revolved around variants of the St Petersburg paradox. This note looks at what happens if you add the two envelope paradox.

brian.weatherson.org/quarto/blog/...

Infinite Worlds and the Two Envelope Paradox – Brian Weatherson

brian.weatherson.org

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Reposted by Mark Rice, Brian Weatherson

Johanna Mellis @johannamellis.bsky.social · 21h

Found the publicly-available version on the FSU website: provost.fsu.edu/sites/g/file...

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 23h

Maybe this ends once Madrid or PSG buys a Championship team. I hear a couple of teams in Sheffield could use some outside investment.

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Reposted by Henry Farrell, Brian Weatherson, Paul Nightingale

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 23h

It's out! My review of "Abundance", my review of "Breakneck" and the slogan "rent extraction is always what the other guy does"
open.substack.com/pub/hypertex...

What happens when Chinese resolve meets American rent-seeking?

Reading "Abundance" and "Breakneck" side by side suggests that learning from one another is not enough.

open.substack.com

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson, Nicole Guenther Discenza

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

"The liberty and security of our fellow citizens is our great object, and not the prompt execution of the laws. Indecision, delay, blunders, nay villainous actions in the administration of government, are trifles compared to legalizing the full exertion of a tyrannical disposition."

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Ann Arbor District Library @aadl.org · 1d

NEW! The Docuseek collection adds 3,000+ titles from renowned documentary film distributors that can be searched and streamed directly from the AADL catalog. Stream these films, along with 10,000+ more titles, with your library card at https://aadl.org/streamingvideo

Promotional poster featuring logos of PBS, CNBC, ABC News, and other networks, advertising 13,000+ movies and videos in the AADL catalog. Includes images of four film posters: 'Finding Your Roots', 'The True Cost', 'The Roosevelts', and 'Deli Man'.

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 1d

Back around 2000 I did a version of this for the Dow going back to the 1930s and it showed the opposite pattern. Iirc, only owning after up days was better than buy and hold.

I figured if I could work this out so could everyone else, so it wouldn’t continue. Didn’t expect it to reverse though.

Sam Ro @tker.co · 1d

one of the all-time great stats via Bespoke. only owning on days after down days smokes only owning on days after up days

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Sam Ro @tker.co · 1d

one of the all-time great stats via Bespoke. only owning on days after down days smokes only owning on days after up days

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 3d

If the Lib Dems can't make real gains at a time when the combined Lab+Con vote is around 40, feels like they may as well pack it in.

It looks to me (from a great distance away) that they've got a chance to be the winners from the next few years, but if they can't take this chance, when will they?

Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 4d

Among the many possibilities for the next few years, the scenario of swapping one pair of dominant parties (Lab and Con) for another (Reform and LD) is intriguing, under-discussed and, in English elections, not entirely implausible either (several county councils made this leap in May)

Election Maps UK @electionmaps.uk · 5d

Aggregate Result of the 122 Council By-Elections (for 125 Seats) since the 2025 Local Elections:

RFM: 47 (+40)
LDM: 32 (+10)
CON: 13 (-15)
LAB: 12 (-30)
GRN: 11 (+3)
Ind: 5 (-4)
Local: 3 (-3)
SNP: 1 (-1)
PLC: 1 (=)

Explore: electionmaps.uk/byelections-...

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Dave Weigel @daveweigel.bsky.social · 3d

Bumpin’ that youtu.be/Kk7_f9RrTzY?...

Quiet Heart (Remastered)

YouTube video by The Go-Betweens - Topic

youtu.be

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Lisa W. Fazio, Nandita Sharma , and 36 more Shannon Vallor, Lisa W. Fazio, Nandita Sharma, Jonathan A. Eisen, Jocalyn Clark, Will Jennings, Jennifer A. Richeson, Julie L. Lockwood, Karen R. Lips, Joshua S. Weitz, Scott L. Greer, Steve Peers, Benjamin Mason Meier, Philip N. Cohen, Philip Nel, Daniel W. Drezner, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Robert C. Richards, Alan Richardson, Silvia Secchi, Aaron Sojourner, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Margot C. Finn, Jason Lyall, Mark Rice, Kent Johnson, Brian Weatherson, Mary Jane Curry, Claire L. Adida, Larry W. Hunter, Emily Evans, Richard M. Carpiano, David S. Tanenhaus, Aviel Roshwald, Jae-Young Son, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Timothy D. McBride, Melinda Baldwin, David Darmofal

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 4d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Unbreaking @unbreaking.org · 4d

The clear story in Immigration this week is the escalation of—and pushback against—the Trump administration’s militarized raids and warrantless stops in Democrat-run major cities. We’ve updated our timeline with a lot of events in this zone:

unbreaking.org/issues/immig...

Immigration — Unbreaking

How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

unbreaking.org

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Reposted by Chris Hanretty

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 4d

Goodhart's Law part N.

www.transformernews.ai/p/claude-son...

Claude Sonnet 4.5 knows when it’s being tested

Anthropic's new model appears to use "eval awareness" to be on its best behavior

www.transformernews.ai

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Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Anand Menon, Brian Weatherson , and 1 more Ben H. Ansell, Anand Menon, Brian Weatherson, Tim Leunig

Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 4d

Election Maps UK @electionmaps.uk · 5d

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Reposted by Dani Rodrik, Stephen M. Walt, Cas Mudde , and 51 more Dani Rodrik, Stephen M. Walt, Cas Mudde, Ben H. Ansell, Jan W. Mueller, Guntram B. Wolff, Christian Odendahl, Richard S.J. Tol, Colin F. Camerer, Robbert Sanderman, David Brady, Gabriel Felbermayr, Steven Van de Walle, Tomasz Mickiewicz, Alistair Munro, Michael A. Clemens, Cyrus Samii, Lucas Leemann, Francesco Saraceno, Laia Balcells, Andrew Curry, Paul Lehmann, Guy Grossman, John Mullahy, Joshua Goodman, David Dorn, Ingo Rohlfing, Daniel W. Drezner, Iikka Korhonen, Robert C. Richards, Aaron Sojourner, Daniel Huppmann, Julia Lynch, Rita Hamad, Stephen D. Murphy, Nazita Lajevardi, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Miguel Á. Malo, Henry Farrell, Dean Eckles, Maria Abreu, Dana R. Fisher, Jason Lyall, Brian Weatherson, Brooke Harrington, Bård Harstad, Christina Pagel, Jürgen Janger, Nicolai von Ondarza, Karsten Mäuse, Dietmar Fehr, Bartosz Bartkowski, Adam Tooze, Anita Gohdes

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 5d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d

Wasn't that just a way to get fans used to the idea of shirt sponsors before they started raking in the euros from Qatar and Spotify?

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d

Yeah, I think it's a mix of that and aggressively banning anyone who looks like they might remotely know what they are doing. So if the overround isn't jumped enough you won't lose too much.

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d

Do UK firms run accumulators on bets on the same game?

The trick the US firms seem to have figured out was how to profitably price bets on correlated events like "Erling Haaland scores and City wins".

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d

It means banning parking within 20ft of an intersection. This primarily is aimed at making pedestrians more visible.

Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 5d

I didn't realise what "universal daylighting" was; it's a ban on parking within 20 feet of an intersection.

Given how many problems are caused in my neighbourhood by SUVs parked right near corners, I wish Ann Arbor had a similar ban.

www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/...

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d

This got me nostalgic for the time when there were more large cricketers.

Rishabh Pant looked like he was going to bring back that tradition but he’s lost a ton of weight.

Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 6d

there are not a lot of sports where a person the shape of Alejandro Kirk could be playing at the highest level at the end of the season

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 6d

there are not a lot of sports where a person the shape of Alejandro Kirk could be playing at the highest level at the end of the season

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Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Tania Lombrozo @tanialombrozo.bsky.social · 6d

Glad and sad to see this series, which echoes the theme of lost science I wrote about below & does something to make it less invisible www.northjersey.com/story/opinio...

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Reposted by Joe R. Feagin, Brian Weatherson, Nathan P. Kalmoe , and 1 more Joe R. Feagin, Brian Weatherson, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Peter Jacobs

Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 6d

REI is closing unionized stores. So many companies that like to pretend to be progressive remain still virulently anti-union at their core. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/08/b...

REI Co-Op’s Boston location is set to close next year - The Boston Globe

REI said it will close three locations on the East Coast, including a store in Boston, as it launches a new strategic plan.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 6d

I never knew how to write them, so I'd also like that kind of help.

Reposted by Brian Weatherson

Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz.bsky.social · 6d

New book in draft: AI and Consciousness [link in thread]
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.

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Reposted by Philip N. Cohen, Brian Weatherson, Baptiste Coulmont

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 6d

Halloween accidents and polar coordinates.

Halloween in the Round

Last year I wrote about cleaning some data from the NHTSA’s FARS system, tracks information about road accidents in the United States. I did that again this year for my Modern Plain Text Computing cla...

kieranhealy.org

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