A Report on Politics and the Humanities

A group of eminent academics, led by Paul Boghossian and Kwame Anthony Appiah, recently issued a Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences.  They did not like what they found. The authors are highly disturbed by politicization of scholarship, which, they find, often reaches the point of denying that there is any value in seeking the truth:

For example, in a 2021 presidential address to the American Anthropological Association, UCLA anthropology professor Akhil Gupta declared that “anthropology is an outlier among the social sciences ... because its political project is to challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism”.

In a reply published in American Anthropologist, University of Colorado Boulder population geneticist Fernando Villanea emphasised the point that “the value of anthropology is not the pursuit of truth, because all truth is subjective,” but rather to “serve the interests” of people who have been harmed by anthropologists in the past. Two years later, in the same journal, José Santos argued that “all ethnographies”—the stock in trade of cultural anthropology—have as their goal “not voyeurism but advocacy”; as if the goal of describing the social world and making sense of it was not only not on the menu, but that it was to be disparaged as a kind of perversion. Taken literally, such remarks call, not for scholarship in the service of a social goal, but for a rejection of the core idea that scholarship aims at understanding. 

If anything this careful critique understakes what has happened in anthropology and sociology, where the very notion of truth has been completely discarded in favor of advocacy. There are many spaces – journals, conferences, private conversations – where “seeking the truth” is mentioned only as a concept held up to mockery, and questioning the assumption that scholarship exists to serve the marginalized draws either laughter or furor.

The authors have a different ideal in mind:

Part of the raison d’être of a university is that it should engage in disinterested inquiry — inquiry aimed at knowledge and understanding, both for their own sake and for the sake of further goods that require genuine knowledge and understanding, rather than ideologically informed opinion, for their promotion. This, at least in part, is what universities are for. Indeed, it might well be thought that one of the greatest contributions a university can make to society is to provide a model of what disinterested inquiry can be and how it might thereby be of value. If the pursuit of disinterested inquiry is compromised, it strikes at the very foundation on which a university should be based, just as the corrupt administration of justice strikes at the foundation upon which a system of justice should be based.

I agree.

Shorter, less bureaucratic version of the argument in Quillette.

The Faith of an Intellectual

For me, thinking is thanking. 

– Byung-Chul Han 

Why Young People Report So Much Mental Illness

Via Marginal Revolution:

Christoph Henking and Ben Baumberg Geiger found that while there has been a steep rise in the share of young Britons reporting a mental illness, the share of people who say a mental health problem limits their day-to-day functioning has barely budged.

…when asked if they would consider someone experiencing typical fluctuations in mood (described as broad happiness but occasional moments of worry, frustration or loss of confidence) as having a mental illness, more than half of young Americans say yes, up from just a fifth 15 years ago. Older people’s views show no such change. 

Lilies

Class in America

In this essay, Noah Smith articulates an important part of my own experience:

I grew up in the 1980s in a small house with only one bathroom shared between four people. The floor was linoleum. There was a carport instead of a garage, and we had one beat-up used Toyota Tercel hatchback. I don’t remember when we got our first color TV, but when I was young we had a black-and-white one that my grandmother gave us. Our furniture was all second-hand and we kept the couches covered up with worn old blankets.

When I was young, I mowed lawns for money. As a high school kid, I signed up to pick cotton by hand (!!) for an agricultural research project at Texas A&M University, for minimum wage. I have also worked as a cashier. Twice in my life, I have been a member of a labor union, and I have marched in a strike.

I have never once considered myself part of the working class.

Why not? Because I have never thought of class as being defined by a present snapshot of someone’s lifestyle or material circumstances. Instead, I always thought of class as being about someone’s potential. And I grew up always knowing that my economic potential went far beyond the rather humble circumstances of my early childhood.

Like Smith, I have at times been quite poor in my life: for the first three years after my parents divorced, when I left college and moved to Williamsburg, Virginia with no job prospects, during graduate school. But I was never a poor person; I was a middle class person who happened to have no money. I knew I would one day have a lot more, and eventually I did. 

Foucault, Authorship, and AI

Emily Eakin in the NY Times:

The A.I. revolution was still more than 50 years off when Michel Foucault published his lecture “What Is an Author?” in 1969. But he seemed to sense it coming. “We can easily imagine a culture where discourse would circulate without any need for an author,” he wrote. In such a world, writing “would unfold in a pervasive anonymity.”

Foucault was evidently excited by the idea. For him, language was not a neutral tool that we use to communicate or represent the world but something more sinister: the means through which power shapes how we think and act, and even what we can know. What he called the “author-function” was a legal ruse serving a strategic political purpose. It was a device for social control, a way of stanching the free flow of meaning, of tracing language back to a particular human being — “the author” — who could then be held accountable, even punished, for dangerous or objectionable ideas.

Now, of course, with the spread of generative A.I., language without an author is everywhere. But this new era of authorless discourse is hardly proving to be the liberation for people that Foucault fantasized about. Instead, it is dominated by a handful of chatbots produced by secretive, billionaire-owned corporations and vulnerable to manipulation for political ends.

Still, Foucault would not have been entirely surprised. Power, in his view, was inescapable. This is his double-edged legacy to us: a vision of the world that in its concrete details seems eerily to anticipate our own but in which progress and freedom often turn out to be illusions, at the mercy of power. 

Links 10 July 2026

Merovingian gilded silver brooch, c. 600 AD

So I was working down in Danville, Virginia this week, and then on my way home I hit a deer on US 29 (I'm fine, car is bad, deer is worse), which launched me into a long saga phone calls with insurance people, tow truck guys, a garage, and a rental car company, followed by long drives, maddening delays, and two highly competent women at the garage who saved me from being stranded overnight, and anyway my day was shot and this post was late. Blame the deer.

Do older leaders start more wars? Turns out to be a hard question without a clear answer. (18-minute video)

London maker of custom glass eyes.

Hoard of medieval jewelry found in Saudi Arabia.

My entire fantasy novel, The Voice from the Darkness, is available now on Royal Road.

Scott Sumner reviews Richard Hanania's new book on populism, Kakistocracy.

Wonderful collection of ancient figurines found in Peru.

Ukraine strikes Russia's largest oil refinery, in Omsk, more than 2,000 km from Ukrainian-held territory. (Twitter/X, Kyiv Post) Allegedly the flight path of the drones was about 3,400 km, or 2,100 miles. Russian social media is full of videos of fights breaking out in the long lines at gas stations.

Good explanation of a recent physics experiment which suggests that time is an emergent property of systems, related to entropy. (14-minute video) From the same source, recent data on the outer solar system makes the Planet 9 hypothesis much less likely.

Progress against dementia.

The American Atlas of 1776.

Speculations about Neanderthal babies.

Three intellectuals try to imagine the AI future.

How "medical privacy" has harmed research.

A New Russian Joke is an Old Soviet One

A Russian man is in line at the gas station. "I've had enough," he says to his wife. "You take the wheel, I'm going to shoot Putin."

After two hours he returns and gets back behind the wheel.

His wife asks him, "Did you shoot him?"

And he replies, "No, the line to shoot Putin is longer than this one!" 

–source

Ilya Somin Defends the American Revolution

You know the arguments against the American Revolution: it retarded the end of slavery, led to worse treatment of Indians, we would have been better off with a Parliamentary system, etc. Ilya Somin responds:

1. Far from retarding the abolition of slavery, the Revolution actually accelerated it. Its triumph gave a big boost to Enlightenment liberalism, which inspired the First Emancipation in the US (the abolition of slavery in the North that became the first large-scale emancipation of slaves in modern history), and boosted antislavery movements in Europe, as well.

2. Had the Revolution been defeated, Enlightenment liberal ideology would have been dealt a setback in Britain and France, too. That would have set back antislavery movements there, as well. It is no accident that many antislavery leaders in Europe were also sympathizers with the American Revolution. The Marquis de Lafayette was just one of the most famous examples of European liberals who actively backed both.

3. The West Indian slaveowner lobby in Parliament was strong enough to block abolition of slavery until 1833. Had Britain also been saddled with the much larger proslavery lobby of the American South, it would have taken far longer. Especially when you combine the impact of the larger slavery lobby with the force of point 2 above.

4. A defeat for the American Revolution would have set back other liberal causes too, not just antislavery. That includes, among other things, universal suffrage, freedom of speech, religious toleration, and increased rights for women. Each of these reforms (and others, too) was given new impetus by American Revolution, which inspired European liberals to imitate them.

I agree with all of this. The end of slavery was not some kind of natural event that happened because it was just. It happened because of the progress of Enlightenment ideas and liberal politics. Until the Enlightenment, there had never been an organized movement to abolish slavery, and that was only one of the many, many extraordinary parts of that great movement: democracy, women's rights, children's rights, anti-racism, a global peace movement, and more. The American Revolution only happened as it did because of the spread of Enlightenment ideas through the European and American elites, and that spread was very much bound up with the success of the Revolution.

The Songbook of Zengeren van Male

One of the weirdest manuscripts you will ever see, chock full of bizarre images across hundreds of pages.

Americana

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

– Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Links 3 July 2026

Kay Sage, Tomorrow is Never, 1955

Another charred scroll from Pompeii has been digitally "unrolled" and partially deciphered; more neo-Stoic philosophy.

I have finished uploading chapters of The Voice from the Darkness at Royal Road, so if you have been waiting for the whole thing to be up, it is. 

Scott Siskind, beautiful essay about parenting and inheritance.

Tyler Cowen on jobs in the AI future, 12 minute video.

The highest resolution photograph ever taken of the Milky Way.

Noah Smith on the insanity of European elites over air conditioning. It is especially rich to see French officials decrying air conditioning over climate change when most of their power is nuclear.

Sabine Hossenfelder on billionaires, state, power, and the AI future, 12-minute video.

Decent article on the records of the Assyrian merchant colony in Kanesh, our best look at Bronze Age trade.

Dean Ball on AI safety, regulation, the Trump administration, and what we should do.

The Dark Genius of Ukraine's Military Points System, 11-minute video.

Noah Smith on AI and the rise of single-person companies.

Will AI undo some of the damage done to our discourse by social media? (AI likes elite opinions and technical experts, so people relying on AI will hear more of that.)

Anton Petrov on new theories of the nature of time, 12-minute video.

Richard Hanania: "Conservatism became socialist when it went from complaining about blacks not working to immigrants being too good at work."

Mosaic floors of an early Christian basilica found in Italy.

The London photographer who has been recording the last days of things (tram lines, businesses, etc.) since 1952.

Excellent article on the distortions introduced by rent control. Summary at Marginal Revolution.

Thanks to Ukraine's ongoing strikes on Russian oil refineries and the resulting gasoline shortage, ordinary Russians are finally having to pay attention to Putin's war. (CNN, Aljazeera, NY Times)

Sixth-century BC chariot burial found in Italy.

How tall trees get water to their crowns in times of drought.

The artist who photographs places where deer have slept. I confess that I am so used to seeing these that the photos had no impact on me at all.

Heteropessimism and Female Alienation

Ross Douthat of the NY Times interviews Louise Perry, a British writer who has argued that the sexual revolution was a mistake.

Perry: Heteropessimism is a word sometimes used to describe particularly women’s feeling of antagonism and disappointment toward heterosexual relationships with men and the feeling of just wanting to opt out, which is often a product of being burned by hookup culture.

And I think that a lot of this is downstream of lack of friendships with the opposite sex. I think also it feeds into women not necessarily having had any positive close relationships with men until they are inducted into a sexual culture which assumes that the default initial relationship will be casual.

I think that is a lot of what explains heteropessimism, that if your only experience of men is within a sexual culture that favors their interests, it’s not surprising that women are feeling negative. And it’s not difficult to find women raging against a culture of casual sex. . . .

Douthat: As you were saying about heteropessimism, there’s just much more hostile discourse between men and women, coming from the feminist left, obviously, coming from a kind of masculinist right. I think it’s the negativity that is really striking to me.

And again, lots of this especially in the States, but I’m sure in the U.K. as well, has focused on men and male alienation. But there was a really good essay in The New Statesman about female alienation, that women are moving left out of a profound cultural alienation and deep pessimism about the whole social structure. Hostility to capitalism and hostility to young men seem to go together.

And then you obviously have something very powerful happening with younger men, who are deep into forms of right-wing politics that are tangled up with misogyny, as well as forms of racism and antisemitism.

How much of this do you think is just digital conditions? Just as the pill was a revolution, how much of it is just that the internet is bad for relations between men and women?

Perry: I think quite a lot. One of the things that the internet does is that it exposes what the other sex is saying about you all the time.

Douthat: OK, go on.

Perry: So what would previously have been locker room talk or would have been women gossiping among themselves is now public and exposed in a way that it was never historically. And I think that type of talk ought to be private.

It’s perfectly normal and natural for people to have mostly homosocial kinds of friendships and to say vulgar or unkind things in private. But now, of course, the internet blasts this out into the public domain. I think that is part of the problem. And this has been much commented upon; the extent the internet encourages people to double down on their ideologies is also part of the problem.

I’m sure that this is a big part of what’s going on with young women. Young women are very mimetic — human beings are very mimetic, but young women, I think, are more mimetic.

For instance, young women are often the originators of new slang. They’re very socially sensitive, and fashions and so on often originate among young women. And that ability, which is both good and bad, is turbocharged online because the internet is this remarkable tool for mimesis. Hence why I think you see actually greater political radicalization among young women than among young men.

Obviously, the young male political radicalization is more commented upon because young men are more dangerous. It’s probably the main reason. We’re more worried about violence that they might commit.

I think the manosphere is unlikely to encourage young men to be violent and dangerous. I think it’s quite likely to encourage them to be lonely and sad, and that seems like a problem.

But in terms of who has actually changed politically over the last 10 years, it’s young women who are veering left and young men who’ve actually stayed relatively still — at least the median young man has stayed relatively still.

Bedell: I notice two things, the high overall level of misery in our society, and the way the internet makes this worse by constantly exposing people to the worst people and the worst opinions. but Perry sees hope.

Perry: One good thing to say for our current era is that if you have sufficient agency and strength of will, you can almost have it all, pretty much. We all have the capacity actually to resist all of the negative trends that we’ve spoken about today, which maybe wasn’t so true for our ancestors. So in that sense, maybe the modern choices available to us are a good thing.

Salamanca's Two Cathedrals

The New Cathedral

Salamanca, Spain had a cathedral, its construction begun around 1125. It was nice, a fusion of late Romanesque and early Gothic in style. But as Spain's wealth and power soared, fed by its New World empire, it came to seem small and dingy. So a new cathedral was planned, and its construction began in 1520.

Alas, things did not go as planned, and the nw Cathedral was not actually completed until 1733. By that time everyone had gotten used to having the smaller old cathedral attached to the side of the new one, so it was left in place. This view shows the crossing tower of the old cathedral set against the bulk of the new cathedral to the left.

Here is a plan of the resulting arrangement; the remains of the old cathedral are the lighter colored sections to the lower left.

Interior views of the old cathedral.

And the new.

Looking over the roof of the old Cathedral at the new.

Two facades of the new Cathedral.

Choir stalls.

Seems like a wonderful place.

July Flowers

The flowers don't care about politics, so they are putting on their summer show despite the rampant ambivalence over the nation's birthday.

And one of the summer's first swallowtails.

Renaissance Illustrations to Marco Polo

Marco Polo sailing from Venice, and detail

People have been arguing over how to view Marco Polo's Book of Marvels of the World since it first appeared in 1300. The skeptics have had their day, but now the general view is that Marco Polo really did travel to China and serve Kublai Khan as an ambassador. There are embellishments in the text, but most of them are called out as things Polo only heard about and did not see himself; and as for the rest, well, the man to whom Polo dictated his tale was a noted author of romances named Rustichello da Pisa. Blame him.

Two versions of the Polo brothers doing homage to Kublai Kahn 

And one that shows the brothers receiving a gold passport.
These were real, one of the many accurate details in the book,

The Great Khan hunting

Harvesting pepper in Indonesia

The Polos served the Khan as ambassadors to South Asia, traveling to Indonesia, Burma, and India.

A battle between the Mongols in the King of Burma

And some of the fabulous details that made it into the manuscript.