Writing by Justin Murphy on philosophy, social science, technology, and independent scholarship.https://jmurphy.studio/https://jmurphy.studio/supreme-court-ensemble-llms/https://jmurphy.studio/supreme-court-ensemble-llms/LLMs can process human language with formal rigor—the function of Supreme Court justices.Sun, 07 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-bari-weiss-strategy/https://jmurphy.studio/the-bari-weiss-strategy/Notes on a $150M playbook that's never been written downWed, 08 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/in-domestic-war-beware-the-rabble/https://jmurphy.studio/in-domestic-war-beware-the-rabble/Notes on an "unfortunate season" of civil conflictMon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/karp/https://jmurphy.studio/karp/I wanted to love it, but Alexander Karp's new book is a mess of contradictions and a bloody revenge by the Frankfurt School against the school of American Optimism.Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/plato-playbook/https://jmurphy.studio/plato-playbook/Influence and Intellect in the Ancient WorldTue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/deregulation-and-cyberspace/https://jmurphy.studio/deregulation-and-cyberspace/Reading Nick Land's Meltdown sentence by sentence.Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/plato-the-first-indie-scholar-plus-a-norcal-meetup-in-3-weeks-7f57586f670d8279/https://jmurphy.studio/plato-the-first-indie-scholar-plus-a-norcal-meetup-in-3-weeks-7f57586f670d8279/A preview from my forthcoming book and an upcoming weekend in the woods.Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/body-count-climbs/https://jmurphy.studio/body-count-climbs/Reading Nick Land's Meltdown sentence by sentence.Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ecstatic-swoons/https://jmurphy.studio/ecstatic-swoons/Stendhal, Lacan, Gutenberg, Nick Land and moreMon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/markets-manufacture-intelligence/https://jmurphy.studio/markets-manufacture-intelligence/Reading Nick Land's Meltdown sentence by sentence.Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/a-blow-to-the-head/https://jmurphy.studio/a-blow-to-the-head/On Alex Karp, Hélène Cixous, Gorgias, Sarah McNally, and MoreSun, 23 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/catastrophe-and-child-s-play/https://jmurphy.studio/catastrophe-and-child-s-play/Notes for the weekSun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/homo-sacer-and-the-invention-of-reading/https://jmurphy.studio/homo-sacer-and-the-invention-of-reading/The final installment of our 2024 annual letter.Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-next-5-years-of-other-life-part-3/https://jmurphy.studio/the-next-5-years-of-other-life-part-3/An annual review in 3 parts.Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-next-5-years-of-other-life-part-2/https://jmurphy.studio/the-next-5-years-of-other-life-part-2/An annual review in 3 parts.Wed, 08 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-next-5-years-of-other-life-part-1/https://jmurphy.studio/the-next-5-years-of-other-life-part-1/An annual review in 3 parts (with a shipping update on The Independent Scholar).Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/nietzsches-big-mistake-three-ideas-on-christianity/https://jmurphy.studio/nietzsches-big-mistake-three-ideas-on-christianity/A close reading of St. John blows Nietzsche out of the water.Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/farber/https://jmurphy.studio/farber/An exploration of Manny Farber's aesthetic philosophy of 'Termite Art vs. White Elephant Art' and its connection to rhizomatic thinking.Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ivf/https://jmurphy.studio/ivf/Why genetic manipulation of babies leads to market slavery and embryonic holocaust, even by secular utilitarian standardsSat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/libidinal-economies/https://jmurphy.studio/libidinal-economies/And how masterpieces are made.Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/dostoevsky-vs-nietzsche/https://jmurphy.studio/dostoevsky-vs-nietzsche/And the second most fateful bookstore encounter in history...Sat, 03 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/deadline-tonight-06f0/https://jmurphy.studio/deadline-tonight-06f0/On Nietzsche's fatal mistakeFri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/you-can-probably-just-have-it/https://jmurphy.studio/you-can-probably-just-have-it/The right attitude and body language can obtain almost anything through confidence and presence.Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/walls/https://jmurphy.studio/walls/The removal of walls decreases the fraction of relevant space under your control.Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/logistically-accelerating/https://jmurphy.studio/logistically-accelerating/Reading Nick Land's Meltdown sentence by sentence.Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/renaissance-rationalization/https://jmurphy.studio/renaissance-rationalization/On the first sentence of Nick Land's Meltdown.Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/spinoza/https://jmurphy.studio/spinoza/How did a lens-grinder who published only two failed books during his lifetime become one of the most influential philosophers in history? The keys to Spinoza's success as an independent scholar.Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/no-doesnt-always-mean-no/https://jmurphy.studio/no-doesnt-always-mean-no/Nietzsche, Marinetti, Ecuador, and my new print book coming soonSat, 20 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/angelicism/https://jmurphy.studio/angelicism/Become imperceptible, not illegible.Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/angels/https://jmurphy.studio/angels/How the visible world hangs together.Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/divorce/https://jmurphy.studio/divorce/Divorce rates increased from 1960 to 1980, partially thanks to an academic trend led by divorced women. Upper-class divorce rates have stabilized, but working-class divorce rates continue to rise. Divorce harms children in most cases, contrary to earlier claims.Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/video-game-syndrome/https://jmurphy.studio/video-game-syndrome/In the 21st century, it's easy to forget you are not Super Mario.Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/deadline-tonight/https://jmurphy.studio/deadline-tonight/Aristotle and the Secret of Esoteric BoomerismFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/seminars-meetups-dinners-nyc-philly-austin/https://jmurphy.studio/seminars-meetups-dinners-nyc-philly-austin/And online, too.Sun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/wittgenstein-religion/https://jmurphy.studio/wittgenstein-religion/"The facts of the world are not the end of the matter." —WittgensteinWed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/heraclitus-nietzsche-john-apostle-wyoming-trip-report/https://jmurphy.studio/heraclitus-nietzsche-john-apostle-wyoming-trip-report/On speech, truth, and the printed wordSat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/social-mobility-illusion/https://jmurphy.studio/social-mobility-illusion/On Gregory Clark's 2014 book The Son Also Rises, one of the most remarkable economics book I've read this year.Sat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/urbit-telos/https://jmurphy.studio/urbit-telos/A long-running historical gradient suggests that individuals will enjoy full control over the creation, distribution, and monetization of their work, eventually evading all centralized platforms and arbitrary constraints.Fri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/orgy/https://jmurphy.studio/orgy/Baudrillard famously asked, "What are you doing after the orgy?" Our answer: Take a leap of faith about the ultimate truth, then harness the chaos of modernity to bring that truth into being.Fri, 10 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ask/https://jmurphy.studio/ask/"Wham! I became Catholic the next day."Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/mary-emerson/https://jmurphy.studio/mary-emerson/On Mary Moody Emerson.Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/montaigne-paradox/https://jmurphy.studio/montaigne-paradox/The greatest social power is achieved by withdrawing from society.Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/write-alone/https://jmurphy.studio/write-alone/Sibi scribere.Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/looking-for-spinoza/https://jmurphy.studio/looking-for-spinoza/Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain.Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/time-capsules-air-lifts/https://jmurphy.studio/time-capsules-air-lifts/News and updates, the essays of Samuel Johnson, and more...Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/bad-therapy-by-abigail-shrier/https://jmurphy.studio/bad-therapy-by-abigail-shrier/Why the Kids Aren't Growing UpSun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/i-see-satan-fall-like-lightning-girard/https://jmurphy.studio/i-see-satan-fall-like-lightning-girard/A detailed summary of René Girard's account of mimetic desire, scapegoating, violence, and Christianity.Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/kant-capital-incest-nick-land/https://jmurphy.studio/kant-capital-incest-nick-land/The high-water mark of revolutionary Deleuzian Feminism.Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/after-virtue/https://jmurphy.studio/after-virtue/A critique of modern moral discourse and a proposal to revive the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics.Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-rising-returns-to-focus/https://jmurphy.studio/the-rising-returns-to-focus/And the accelerating rate of paradigm turnoverTue, 09 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-the-unleavened-a-thought-for-easter/https://jmurphy.studio/on-the-unleavened-a-thought-for-easter/"Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." —Corinthians 5:8Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/north-northwest-2024-annual-life-meetup/https://jmurphy.studio/north-northwest-2024-annual-life-meetup/Registration now open.Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-height-from-which-no-one-is-cast-down/https://jmurphy.studio/the-height-from-which-no-one-is-cast-down/Seneca on philosophy as immortalityFri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/there-is-a-time-to-polish-your-rifle-and-a-time-to-fire/https://jmurphy.studio/there-is-a-time-to-polish-your-rifle-and-a-time-to-fire/Stendhal, Sex, Classics, JewsWed, 21 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/a-simple-view-of-bitcoin-in-historical-perspective/https://jmurphy.studio/a-simple-view-of-bitcoin-in-historical-perspective/What could enjoy the Mandate of Heaven more than an autopoietic truth system offensive to all prestigious consensus and immune to human manipulation?Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/auteur-ghetto-archipelago/https://jmurphy.studio/auteur-ghetto-archipelago/Multipolar aesthetic warfare, cruelty, marriage, and Charlotte PerriandTue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/nietzsche-on-the-pride-of-the-philosopher-in-contrast-to-the/https://jmurphy.studio/nietzsche-on-the-pride-of-the-philosopher-in-contrast-to-the/Slavery gets a bad rap, but it had one silver lining.Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-the-miracle-and-scandal-of-education/https://jmurphy.studio/on-the-miracle-and-scandal-of-education/You are allowed to go straight to true knowledge of the highest things.Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/magic-money-madness/https://jmurphy.studio/magic-money-madness/"The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions." —Samuel ButlerMon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/introducing-new-monthly-print-issue/https://jmurphy.studio/introducing-new-monthly-print-issue/And the most important event we've ever hosted.Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/suburban-kings-academic-revolutions/https://jmurphy.studio/suburban-kings-academic-revolutions/"If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago." —HazlittFri, 26 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/diogenes-on-excellence-and-how-to-be-unstoppably-happy/https://jmurphy.studio/diogenes-on-excellence-and-how-to-be-unstoppably-happy/“Many men compete in digging and kicking, but no one at all in the pursuit of human excellence.” —DiogenesTue, 23 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-idea-hoarding/https://jmurphy.studio/on-idea-hoarding/Stop saving your best ideas for later because later never comes.Tue, 16 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/st-francis-and-the-obscure-logic-of-cultural-influence/https://jmurphy.studio/st-francis-and-the-obscure-logic-of-cultural-influence/Do you have what it takes to leave behind a long-lasting institution?Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/unpopular-truths-about-mate-selection/https://jmurphy.studio/unpopular-truths-about-mate-selection/A man should not seek intellectual satisfaction from his wife, but from the only place men have ever found it.Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/and-were-back-welcome-to-other-life-2024/https://jmurphy.studio/and-were-back-welcome-to-other-life-2024/A return to the masters, a republic of letters.Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/nick-land-on-ai-acceleration/https://jmurphy.studio/nick-land-on-ai-acceleration/"The world is becoming hypersensitive to signs."Tue, 07 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/lacan-leibniz-english-programming-language/https://jmurphy.studio/lacan-leibniz-english-programming-language/“All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors.” —LacanMon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/there-is-no-winning-the-culture-war/https://jmurphy.studio/there-is-no-winning-the-culture-war/To win the culture war, leave the culture war.Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-independent-scholars-guide-to-twitterx/https://jmurphy.studio/the-independent-scholars-guide-to-twitterx/On Algorithmic Publishing with DignityMon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/virilio-parenting-network-state/https://jmurphy.studio/virilio-parenting-network-state/"There is something in the synchronization of emotion that surpasses the power of standardization of opinion that was typical of the mass media in the second half of the 20th century."Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/form-israel-death-athletic/https://jmurphy.studio/form-israel-death-athletic/Why Writing on the Internet Still Hasn't Been TriedFri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/emersons-21-principles-of-self-reliance/https://jmurphy.studio/emersons-21-principles-of-self-reliance/Why intelligence and knowledge are overrated, while honesty and courage are underrated.Wed, 11 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-shakespeare-wyoming-and-merely-staying-afloat/https://jmurphy.studio/on-shakespeare-wyoming-and-merely-staying-afloat/“You are hanging on by a very fine thread, and I dig that about you.”Wed, 11 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/return-to-the-future-of-classical-education/https://jmurphy.studio/return-to-the-future-of-classical-education/Three reflections toward the acceleration of traditional knowledge.Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/billionaire-gentleman-scholar/https://jmurphy.studio/billionaire-gentleman-scholar/Why the future belongs to the wordcel tinkerer.Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/generate-subtle-tweets-from-an-essay-in-the-style-of-the-aut/https://jmurphy.studio/generate-subtle-tweets-from-an-essay-in-the-style-of-the-aut/This script will take your essay text, extract key points, and use function-calling to create a subtle thread composed of your ideas. It works and it’s damn better than any tweet generator I’ve ever...Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-to-build-software-with-natural-language/https://jmurphy.studio/how-to-build-software-with-natural-language/I’ve built two fully-functioning web apps so far. One is deployed to the web, the other will be soon. They both do things, and they both can take payments that go into my bank account. Each one took...Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/recursively-self-improving-writers/https://jmurphy.studio/recursively-self-improving-writers/Then, about two weeks ago, I had a real idea...Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/plato-prose-selective-breeding/https://jmurphy.studio/plato-prose-selective-breeding/On reading Plato's Republic, writing better, and another nail in the coffin of institutional publishing.Sat, 23 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/rigor-angels-kant-borges-heisenberg/https://jmurphy.studio/rigor-angels-kant-borges-heisenberg/"Humanity forgets... that it is a rigor of chess masters, not of angels." —BorgesSat, 16 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-delirium-of-reason-on-william-gibsons-neuromancer-1984/https://jmurphy.studio/the-delirium-of-reason-on-william-gibsons-neuromancer-1984/"Your business is to learn the names of programs, the long formal names, names the owners seek to conceal. True names."Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/montaigne-mary-emerson-race/https://jmurphy.studio/montaigne-mary-emerson-race/"Always do what you are afraid to do." —Mary Moody EmersonThu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/intent-on-truth-st-augustines-philosophy-of-history-in-the-c/https://jmurphy.studio/intent-on-truth-st-augustines-philosophy-of-history-in-the-c/"Life eternal is the supreme good, death eternal the supreme evil, and that to obtain the one and escape the other we must live rightly."Tue, 29 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/if-you-can-articulate-youre-all-set-russell-yeats-gaddis/https://jmurphy.studio/if-you-can-articulate-youre-all-set-russell-yeats-gaddis/"The things I want are not in any country, nor in any job." —William GaddisSat, 26 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/everything-you-know-about-audience-building-is-wrong/https://jmurphy.studio/everything-you-know-about-audience-building-is-wrong/And what you should do instead.Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/war-as-the-truest-form-of-divination-on-cormac-mccarthys-blo/https://jmurphy.studio/war-as-the-truest-form-of-divination-on-cormac-mccarthys-blo/Meet the 7-foot albino who says you should petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute.Sun, 20 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ask-truth-medium-light-marshall-mcluhan/https://jmurphy.studio/ask-truth-medium-light-marshall-mcluhan/What the media won't tell you about the famous media theorist.Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-solitary-volcano-four-lessons-from-the-life-of-ezra-poun/https://jmurphy.studio/the-solitary-volcano-four-lessons-from-the-life-of-ezra-poun/"If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good." —Ezra PoundWed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/cybergothic-john-milton-nick-land/https://jmurphy.studio/cybergothic-john-milton-nick-land/"It all starts for you with a casual channel-hopper question: What's happening on the other side?"Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ezra-pound-and-the-aristocratic-spirit/https://jmurphy.studio/ezra-pound-and-the-aristocratic-spirit/On the Pursuit of Artistic ExcellenceTue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/signaling-through-the-flames-artauds-inquisition/https://jmurphy.studio/signaling-through-the-flames-artauds-inquisition/“I cannot conceive any work of art as having a separate existence from life itself.”Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/catholic-instead-of-what-by-alasdair-macintyre/https://jmurphy.studio/catholic-instead-of-what-by-alasdair-macintyre/Transcript of a public lecture by Alasdair MacIntyre.Fri, 21 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/rene-girards-anthropology-of-the-cross/https://jmurphy.studio/rene-girards-anthropology-of-the-cross/Can social science vindicate religion, or should we respect the Cartesian Bargain instituted 400 years ago?Fri, 21 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-julien-bendas-the-treason-of-the-intellectuals-1927/https://jmurphy.studio/on-julien-bendas-the-treason-of-the-intellectuals-1927/"The most insignificant writer can serve peace, where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing."Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-industrialization-of-the-mind/https://jmurphy.studio/the-industrialization-of-the-mind/Reflections on the judicious use of social media.Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/excess-vitality-reversible-modernity-wyndham-lewis-leo-strauss-art-reading/https://jmurphy.studio/excess-vitality-reversible-modernity-wyndham-lewis-leo-strauss-art-reading/"Intelligence would be electrified by naïveté and humor."Fri, 14 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/literary-outlaw-three-lessons-from-william-s-burroughs/https://jmurphy.studio/literary-outlaw-three-lessons-from-william-s-burroughs/Never seek to impress, having kids is no excuse, and the absolute necessity of a high-intensity, private friend group.Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/weight-glory/https://jmurphy.studio/weight-glory/And how to find secret weapons.Fri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/from-self-pity-to-pulitzer-lessons-from-the-life-of-john-ken/https://jmurphy.studio/from-self-pity-to-pulitzer-lessons-from-the-life-of-john-ken/Why you should never count yourself out as a writer, especially in the internet era.Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/harold-blooms-4-rules-reading/https://jmurphy.studio/harold-blooms-4-rules-reading/"A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light."Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/reading-is-selfish-elitist-and-anti-social/https://jmurphy.studio/reading-is-selfish-elitist-and-anti-social/Reflections on Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why (2000)Mon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/welcome-to-the-new-other-life/https://jmurphy.studio/welcome-to-the-new-other-life/I am asking you to quit all of your passive media consumption to read great books and write the truth every single day. Or unsubscribe now!Sun, 18 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/63-reality-splitters/https://jmurphy.studio/63-reality-splitters/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/64-physicists-dancers-escape/https://jmurphy.studio/64-physicists-dancers-escape/Master Baby by William Quiller Orchardson (1886)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/65-no-eternal-life/https://jmurphy.studio/65-no-eternal-life/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/66-variant-judgment/https://jmurphy.studio/66-variant-judgment/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/67-naming-power/https://jmurphy.studio/67-naming-power/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/68-urbit-apocalypse/https://jmurphy.studio/68-urbit-apocalypse/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/69-texan-cybergothic/https://jmurphy.studio/69-texan-cybergothic/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/71-imperceptible-war/https://jmurphy.studio/71-imperceptible-war/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/70-small-games/https://jmurphy.studio/70-small-games/A Scene in Leigh Woods, Francis Danby (1822)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/72-nomads-never-travel/https://jmurphy.studio/72-nomads-never-travel/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, it must be pretty cool. Subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/73-greatest-hazard/https://jmurphy.studio/73-greatest-hazard/The Tay Bridge from My Studio Window by James McIntosh Patrick, 1948Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/74-cold-winds/https://jmurphy.studio/74-cold-winds/Welcome to Signs of Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. It's about philosophy and science on the frontiers of internet culture. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/75-secret-victory/https://jmurphy.studio/75-secret-victory/The Artist in His Studio by Henry Alexander (1860-1894)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/76-power-whispers/https://jmurphy.studio/76-power-whispers/Welcome to Signs of Life, a periodic roundup letter from Other Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/77-water-desert/https://jmurphy.studio/77-water-desert/Illustrated depiction of North Africa by British Orientalist artist Augustus Osborne LamploughMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/78-abysmal-knowledge/https://jmurphy.studio/78-abysmal-knowledge/In the Middle of the Valley by Ivan Shishkin (1883)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/79-rite-makes-might/https://jmurphy.studio/79-rite-makes-might/The Baptism by Julius LeBlanc Stewart (1892)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/80-flatline/https://jmurphy.studio/80-flatline/Black Lake Technical Institute in Northern Ontario, ancestral home of the TzikvikMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/81-grace-gaucherie/https://jmurphy.studio/81-grace-gaucherie/L 450 flat loudspeaker, TG 60 reel-to-reel tape recorder and TS 45 control unit by Dieter Rams for BraunMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/82-fear-clever/https://jmurphy.studio/82-fear-clever/Landscape With a Clump of Trees by Théodore Rousseau (1844)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/83-imperceptible-house/https://jmurphy.studio/83-imperceptible-house/You're invited here for the weekend of November 4-6Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/84-secret-agents/https://jmurphy.studio/84-secret-agents/Hegel, Napoleon, and the World Spirit on HorsebackMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/86-enlightenment/https://jmurphy.studio/86-enlightenment/Brutalist Silence, interior by Annabell KutucuMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/85-no-regime/https://jmurphy.studio/85-no-regime/Welcome to Signs of Life, a periodic roundup letter from Other Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/88-subdued-fate/https://jmurphy.studio/88-subdued-fate/Renzo Piano Building Workshop offices in Genoa via Benjamin SchneiderMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/87-selfreliance/https://jmurphy.studio/87-selfreliance/Welcome to Signs of Life, a periodic roundup letter from Other Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/90-kings-realm/https://jmurphy.studio/90-kings-realm/Welcome to Signs of Life, a periodic roundup letter from Other Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/91-smoking-room/https://jmurphy.studio/91-smoking-room/The Smoking Room with Monkeys by Abraham Teniers (1629-1670)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/92-duel-masquerade/https://jmurphy.studio/92-duel-masquerade/The Duel After the Masquerade by Jean-Léon GérômeMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/93-well-directed-attention/https://jmurphy.studio/93-well-directed-attention/Welcome to Signs of Life, our periodic roundup edition sharing the best ideas, art, code, and events from the Other Life community on Urbit and beyond. If someone sent you this, subscribe for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/94-kindness-not-fondness/https://jmurphy.studio/94-kindness-not-fondness/City of London (1951), Robert Frank. "London was black, white, and gray, the elegance, the style, all present in front of always changing fog…”Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/95-edifying-death/https://jmurphy.studio/95-edifying-death/The Funeral of Shelley (1889) by Louis Edouard Fournier. In 1822, the poet died in a shipwreck. From left to right, that's Trelawney, Leigh Hunt, and Lord Byron.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/96-unbearable-repartee/https://jmurphy.studio/96-unbearable-repartee/Villa by the Sea (1865) by Arnold BöcklinMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/a-child-is-not-the-most-important-thing/https://jmurphy.studio/a-child-is-not-the-most-important-thing/Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman (1956) by Charles and Ray EamesMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/a-machine-superintelligence-might-never-display-itself/https://jmurphy.studio/a-machine-superintelligence-might-never-display-itself/This seems to me a crucial point not often discussed by the AI Risk folks such as Bostrom and Yudkowsky. Whether it’s a bug or a feature of the AI Risk industry is harder to know, a thorn in the side...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/a-realm-of-ones-own-urbit-and-the-next-creator-economy/https://jmurphy.studio/a-realm-of-ones-own-urbit-and-the-next-creator-economy/Holium's new desktop app for Urbit communitiesMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/a-theory-of-verbal-inflation/https://jmurphy.studio/a-theory-of-verbal-inflation/“All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from want of honor or virtue, but from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” —John Adams in a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/abjection/https://jmurphy.studio/abjection/To be a philosopher one must be abject, and the reason a lot of people don't understand anything about this concept is because most contemporary philosophers want to be respected; they want to be in...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/academialeaks-university-of-chicago-edition/https://jmurphy.studio/academialeaks-university-of-chicago-edition/I was just sent this by an anonymous reader. It's not private but it's not in the news. The reader says "Haha imminent collapse. For real though, mostly suggestions for more committees..." They went...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/advancing-to-level-2/https://jmurphy.studio/advancing-to-level-2/I’ve now been on Patreon for one year. It's been good, but I think I need to level up. Would you like to help? If so, I have a new flashy object with your name on it. Read on.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/algorithms-and-prayers/https://jmurphy.studio/algorithms-and-prayers/The mild-mannered socialist humanist says it's evil to use algorithms to exploit humans for profit, but the articulation of this objection is an algorithm to exploit humans for profit. Self-awareness...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/against-the-epistemic-status/https://jmurphy.studio/against-the-epistemic-status/I've been considering the idea of assigning an "epistemic status" to each of my blog posts, in the fashion of Scott Alexander. Basically: adding an addendum at the top of each blog post indicating...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/all-men-by-nature-desire-to-know/https://jmurphy.studio/all-men-by-nature-desire-to-know/“All men by nature desire to know.” — Aristotle, MetaphysicsMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/an-automated-system-for-delivering-high-volumes-of-exclusive/https://jmurphy.studio/an-automated-system-for-delivering-high-volumes-of-exclusive/This took a lot of tinkering, but I think I've finally figured out the best currently available way to manage and deliver a wide variety of exclusive items to patrons.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/american-cities-are-vastly-superior-to-european-cities/https://jmurphy.studio/american-cities-are-vastly-superior-to-european-cities/Somehow, Americans have gotten the impression that European cities are paragons of intelligent urbanism.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/an-effort-allocator-for-content-creators/https://jmurphy.studio/an-effort-allocator-for-content-creators/If you're trying to build a long-term intellectual life on the internet, one of the biggest problems you'll face is figuring out how to allocate your effort. There is no template for doing this...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/are-the-greatest-beneficiaries-of-effective-altruism-its-pro/https://jmurphy.studio/are-the-greatest-beneficiaries-of-effective-altruism-its-pro/[I’m not sure how much I believe this, this just barely passed my threshold of post-worthiness.]Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/are-politically-correct-students-better-or-worse-students/https://jmurphy.studio/are-politically-correct-students-better-or-worse-students/In my current book project, one of my goals is to provide the fullest possible empirical accounting of the strange new persona sometimes derisively called the "social justice warrior."Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/aristocracy-communism/https://jmurphy.studio/aristocracy-communism/Communism remains the best conceivable form of human organization, and it can work, but the major catch is that it requires something that smells intolerably fishy to those who are most likely to...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/audience-structure-on-the-left-and-right-of-new-indy-media/https://jmurphy.studio/audience-structure-on-the-left-and-right-of-new-indy-media/It looks to me like the audience structure of public intellectuals and/or "content creators" differs across the Right and Left. Right-leaning writers/creators in contemporary culture seem to enjoy a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/bear-traps/https://jmurphy.studio/bear-traps/It is very clever how Moldbug chooses extra-provocative phrases and examples—for instance, extended reflections on the successful infrastructure projects of the Third Reich. He likes to purposefully...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/barbarians-past-the-gate/https://jmurphy.studio/barbarians-past-the-gate/2 million full-time “content creators,” outside any professional sanction; the election of Donald Trump against an airtight media consensus certain of its impossibility; mass, hysterical preference...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/becoming-imperceptible-1/https://jmurphy.studio/becoming-imperceptible-1/Deleuze and Guattari repeatedly stress the importance of becoming imperceptible, but the idea remains poorly understood.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/beware-rationalism/https://jmurphy.studio/beware-rationalism/A fatal flaw of rationalism is that the spread of rational thinking often causes a net-decrease of rationality across the population. For every type of logical fallacy, for instance, there is a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/bioweapon/https://jmurphy.studio/bioweapon/A few months ago, Martin Shkreli wrote a blog post from prison entitled, "Love is a Battlefield." It was about the stock market. The post never mentions love or battlefields. I've been wondering what...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/calling-all-indie-thinkers-literally/https://jmurphy.studio/calling-all-indie-thinkers-literally/Over the past week, I’ve conducted more than ten private Skype interviews with a diverse group of internet intellectuals, “content creators” of the higher-brow variety, cancellation-vulnerable...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/camping-in-bear-country/https://jmurphy.studio/camping-in-bear-country/Timothy Treadwell in Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/can-you-do-a-phd-if-you-have-adhd/https://jmurphy.studio/can-you-do-a-phd-if-you-have-adhd/I received this question recently from a reader. Here is how I replied. I also made this video if you’d prefer to hear my thoughts that way. This post and the video are not exactly the same.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/catholicism-as-nomad-war-machine-deleuze-and-chesterton/https://jmurphy.studio/catholicism-as-nomad-war-machine-deleuze-and-chesterton/Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life.  Imagination does not breed insanity....Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/caviar-cope/https://jmurphy.studio/caviar-cope/I watched The White Lotus because my wife told me about it, and I saw people talking about it. I didn't really enjoy the first episode, and I didn't learn anything, but I figured it would get better,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/communism-is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-and-nothing-else/https://jmurphy.studio/communism-is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-and-nothing-else/Money is a trap, but how? For many years I believed that radical intellectuals and political revolutionaries (interchangeable terms, I thought) should simply eschew instrumental calculations...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/cyber-hype-techonomics-the-ccru-and-crypto/https://jmurphy.studio/cyber-hype-techonomics-the-ccru-and-crypto/The endpoint of the digital revolution is cyber-hype techonomics, the confluence of cyber-hype (the digital coordination of collective desire around the promise of a future outcome) and techonomics...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/database-animals-financialized/https://jmurphy.studio/database-animals-financialized/Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942) by Piet MondrianMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/decouple-intellectualism-and-intelligence/https://jmurphy.studio/decouple-intellectualism-and-intelligence/Speak of the intellectual life and a lot of people will think you’re pretentious; they think you’re calling yourself intelligent.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/defacing-the-currency-how-academia-got-pwned-9/https://jmurphy.studio/defacing-the-currency-how-academia-got-pwned-9/This is the ninth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. This will probably become a book. If you'd like to hear...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/deleuze-cybernetics-evolution-academics/https://jmurphy.studio/deleuze-cybernetics-evolution-academics/Alexander Galloway thinks that Deleuze sees cybernetics as an enemy, or even the enemy:Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/deleuzes-troublesome-inheritance-excerpt-from-based-deleuze/https://jmurphy.studio/deleuzes-troublesome-inheritance-excerpt-from-based-deleuze/Now that the book is a little more than 75% done, I figure I should start posting some excerpts. Did you know Deleuze’s parents were both fascists? Good son that he was, though, he never disavowed...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/depressive-capitalist-realism/https://jmurphy.studio/depressive-capitalist-realism/I recently received an email challenging some of my past comments on depression and public political theorizing. Here is the main gist of the email and beneath it is my response.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/democrats-wanted-strongman-rule-way-more-than-republicans-un/https://jmurphy.studio/democrats-wanted-strongman-rule-way-more-than-republicans-un/That graph is from the new book by political scientists Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart (2019), Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/disconnected/https://jmurphy.studio/disconnected/Once again, I'm absolutely plagued with a desire to quit everything normal, to mentally and socially withdraw from everything one is supposed to know...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/disrobed-academics-crimethinc-anarchism-and-the-resurrection/https://jmurphy.studio/disrobed-academics-crimethinc-anarchism-and-the-resurrection/Thanks to some good questions in last night's livestream, I managed to give a relatively concentrated hour of talking, with a surprisingly high signal/noise ratio (relative to my average, which isn't...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/does-a-countrys-separation-of-powers-affect-its-status-cultu/https://jmurphy.studio/does-a-countrys-separation-of-powers-affect-its-status-cultu/I was recently wondering whether countries with more centralized executive and legislative powers (less checks and balances) might have more status-intensive cultures — or in some way a qualitatively...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/durkheim-meltdown/https://jmurphy.studio/durkheim-meltdown/The French sociologist Émile Durkheim believed that one defining feature of a profession is that the attitudes and behaviors that count as "professional" within it are of no interest to the general...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/dr-samuel-johnson-hustler-savage-grifter-great/https://jmurphy.studio/dr-samuel-johnson-hustler-savage-grifter-great/Samuel Johnson's Club. From the left: Boswell, Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, Paoli, Burney, Wharton, GoldsmithMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/early-days-of-defacing-the-currency-how-academia-got-pwned-1/https://jmurphy.studio/early-days-of-defacing-the-currency-how-academia-got-pwned-1/This is the tenth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. This will probably become a book. If you'd like to hear...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/emerson-on-the-american-scholar/https://jmurphy.studio/emerson-on-the-american-scholar/I've recently taken to the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson because he was arguably the first world-class public intellectual of a distinctly American type. Of course there were great thinkers...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/educated-errors-on-perceptions-of-trumps-ideology/https://jmurphy.studio/educated-errors-on-perceptions-of-trumps-ideology/More educated individuals generally know more than less educated individuals. If you test what they know about any random political issue, for instance, uneducated individuals are more likely to give...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/eichmann-in-oxford/https://jmurphy.studio/eichmann-in-oxford/I have recently been assigned to an Ethics Reviewer position, and I just had my first training. One of the lecture slides for this training was quite audacious: It placed the UK's current academic...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/empty-pockets/https://jmurphy.studio/empty-pockets/Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii (1995) by Nam June PaikMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/eric-weinsteins-error/https://jmurphy.studio/eric-weinsteins-error/Eric Weinstein has released his highly self-aggrandized anticipated research paper on geometric unity.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/evaluating-exit-modes-resign-or-be-fired-how-academia-got-pw/https://jmurphy.studio/evaluating-exit-modes-resign-or-be-fired-how-academia-got-pw/This is the eleventh post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/every-angel-is-terrifying-by-riva-tez-and-praxis-society/https://jmurphy.studio/every-angel-is-terrifying-by-riva-tez-and-praxis-society/Riva Tez and Praxis Society just published a really lovely video, which I think deserves to be read as text. I transcribed it for my own archive, so I figured I might as well post some of my favorite...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/explaining-who-gets-to-speak-at-universities/https://jmurphy.studio/explaining-who-gets-to-speak-at-universities/I recently received the following question from a journalist (paraphrased): "Universities host many Islamist extremists as speakers, but they order comedians performing on campus to not offend...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/exponential-satanism-girard-and-digital-technology/https://jmurphy.studio/exponential-satanism-girard-and-digital-technology/Christianity invented the concept of defending the victim. In pre-Christian societies, collective violence against innocent scapegoats was commonplace. With the revelation that humans would kill God...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ezra-pound-and-the-curse-of-genius/https://jmurphy.studio/ezra-pound-and-the-curse-of-genius/I mentioned last week I've been reading about the life of Ezra Pound, which is somehow both inspiring and sobering.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/fear-and-dissembling/https://jmurphy.studio/fear-and-dissembling/Philosophically, it is impossible to ground claims about the ultimate value or quality of living entities, e.g. genetic quality.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/fascism-over-yourself-is-called-autonomy/https://jmurphy.studio/fascism-over-yourself-is-called-autonomy/When I recently sketched out a system for bootstrapping a libertarian communist society from a combination of AI and blockchain, I was genuinely surprised to receive so many indignant accusations to...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/flannery-oconnor-and-the-mysterious-secrets-of-writing/https://jmurphy.studio/flannery-oconnor-and-the-mysterious-secrets-of-writing/In 1955, Harvey Breit asked the great Irish-American writer Flannery O'Connor, "What is the secret of writing?" She said:Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/free-hierarchy/https://jmurphy.studio/free-hierarchy/Libertatem hierarchia. What we call European feudalism was the becoming–patchwork of the Roman Empire. As the control structures of the Roman Empire atrophied, and the de facto liberty of its...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/from-the-imperceptible-country/https://jmurphy.studio/from-the-imperceptible-country/The Other Life community is also known as the Imperceptible Country. Think of it as a Web2.5 community.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/fully-automated-luxury-communism-as-rousseauean-techno-comme/https://jmurphy.studio/fully-automated-luxury-communism-as-rousseauean-techno-comme/My take on Fully Automated Luxury Communism is that — if it is anything — it should probably look something like a Rousseauean techno-commercial cyber-manorialism. In short, think The Four Hour Work...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/fully-automated-personal-brands/https://jmurphy.studio/fully-automated-personal-brands/Right now, it’s still seen as bad taste to overly automate your personal social media — and for good reason. But taste changes, and it always follows the money.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/garden-state-cybergothic/https://jmurphy.studio/garden-state-cybergothic/I grew up in New Jersey, but I got out as soon as I graduated high school. Never really did much site-seeing or interesting travel within NJ, I mostly just skateboarded in the Asbury Park area and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/genetic-research-disrupts-racist-views-of-welfare/https://jmurphy.studio/genetic-research-disrupts-racist-views-of-welfare/Following on my post from yesterday, I've been thinking about how the widespread and often racist views of "welfare" in the United States — especially among poor whites — fester on top of the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/getting-high-on-easter-sunday/https://jmurphy.studio/getting-high-on-easter-sunday/I got high in the morning, for the first time since I can remember. There exists a defensible Christian opposition to drugs, no doubt, but it's poorly calibrated to the Information Age.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hallow-be-thy-name/https://jmurphy.studio/hallow-be-thy-name/To say that one believes in God is to be stupid and wrong by the definition of these words in modern secular culture. And yet I believe that I believe, so how? The word “God” does not mean what...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/gunslingers-and-iconoclasts/https://jmurphy.studio/gunslingers-and-iconoclasts/More shootouts have occurred in Texas than any other state in the US.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hard-forking-reality-part-1/https://jmurphy.studio/hard-forking-reality-part-1/TLDR: Environmental complexity increases the cost of adjudicating interpersonal disagreements about the true model of reality, while information-processing power increases the payoffs (and decreases...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hard-forking-reality-part-2-communication-and-complexity/https://jmurphy.studio/hard-forking-reality-part-2-communication-and-complexity/This post is the second in a three-part series. You can also read Part 1 and Part 3.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hard-forking-reality-part-3-apocalypse-evil-and-intelligence/https://jmurphy.studio/hard-forking-reality-part-3-apocalypse-evil-and-intelligence/This post is the third in a three-part series. You can also read Part 1 and Part 2.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hateful-silence/https://jmurphy.studio/hateful-silence/What's great about modern tolerance is that we're rarely confronted with negative judgments about our personal choices (notwithstanding the resultingly elevated sensitivity to negative judgments,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/heard-mentality/https://jmurphy.studio/heard-mentality/The trial of Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard is like a magical keyhole into the hidden realities of Hollywood power politics and modern gender relations. It’s like a little wormhole in the Hollywood...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-accurate-social-valuation-of-individual-characters-gener/https://jmurphy.studio/how-accurate-social-valuation-of-individual-characters-gener/But how would this create communism, you ask? Well, first of all, the small number of highly productive people would want to pay for a comfortable and dignified subsistence for everybody else! Why...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-academia-got-pwned-1/https://jmurphy.studio/how-academia-got-pwned-1/This is the first post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-im-successfully-digitizing-another-professorial-function/https://jmurphy.studio/how-im-successfully-digitizing-another-professorial-function/[Update: Much of this turned out to be prescient, in fact so prescient that a lot below has been transcended by the creation of IndieThinkers.org. So I'm not really helping many people personally and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-many-readers-do-you-need-kierkegaard-only-hoped-for-one/https://jmurphy.studio/how-many-readers-do-you-need-kierkegaard-only-hoped-for-one/From Copenhagen on his 30th birthday (May 5, 1843), Kierkegaard wrote the following in the Preface for his first book, Two Upbuilding Discourses:Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-to-deal-with-punishment-according-to-nietzsche-and-spino/https://jmurphy.studio/how-to-deal-with-punishment-according-to-nietzsche-and-spino/I was just reviewing my copy of Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals, before I send it off to someone through Version 2 of my book recommendation experiment. The person said they wanted something I...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-to-kill-the-grump-in-your-head-deleuzean-nicerx/https://jmurphy.studio/how-to-kill-the-grump-in-your-head-deleuzean-nicerx/I can sometimes sense inside of myself, already, the early stirrings of elderly grumpiness. Needless to say, I do not like this, and so at this relatively early stage in my life, I must do everything...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-urbit-wins/https://jmurphy.studio/how-urbit-wins/Philip Monk co-authored the Urbit whitepaper with Curtis Yarvin in 2016. He's now one of the top engineers working on Urbit.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hunger-games-but-really-slow/https://jmurphy.studio/hunger-games-but-really-slow/Une Passion Dans Le Désert (2017) by Antonio RecalcatiMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/hyperstition-americana/https://jmurphy.studio/hyperstition-americana/I like Lana Del Rey. She’s not super hot, and she's not a great singer — but she’s become an entity that is “super hot” and “great singer.” That’s true art.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/i-think-i-built-a-liberal-arts-college-on-the-internet/https://jmurphy.studio/i-think-i-built-a-liberal-arts-college-on-the-internet/I've spent the past 2 years building a business.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/i-have-a-dream-how-academia-got-pwned-6/https://jmurphy.studio/i-have-a-dream-how-academia-got-pwned-6/This is the sixth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. At some point, I will very likely edit and compose this...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/if-education-is-signaling-does-moral-signaling-become-a-viab/https://jmurphy.studio/if-education-is-signaling-does-moral-signaling-become-a-viab/In a recent post, I encountered an interesting empirical fact about the college wage premium accruing to low-ability college grads over the period 1979-1994. Looking at a 2003 article by Tobias,  I...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/inscrutably-obvious-a-paradox-of-technological-change/https://jmurphy.studio/inscrutably-obvious-a-paradox-of-technological-change/In 1997, everyone thought the cable industry was dead.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/intelligence-as-a-political-cleavage/https://jmurphy.studio/intelligence-as-a-political-cleavage/Intelligence is increasingly a political cleavage, thanks to the phenomenon of skill-biased technological change.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/introducing-deleuze-vs-heidegger-on-technology-enslavement-a/https://jmurphy.studio/introducing-deleuze-vs-heidegger-on-technology-enslavement-a/That’s the title of an online course I’m developing with Johannes Niederhauser. You may remember Johannes from his widely admired appearance on Other Life: “Heidegger, Ecstatic Time, and the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/introducing-monthly-seminars/https://jmurphy.studio/introducing-monthly-seminars/For the past two months, I've been hosting private online seminars for patrons supporting me at $25/month or more. The first one was good, but the second session really took off. Participants became...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/introducing-statistical-on-chain-analysis/https://jmurphy.studio/introducing-statistical-on-chain-analysis/Impulse Response Functions exemplify the insightfulness of proper time-series analysis, showing the expected effect of X on Y over time. Graph by Kevin Kotzé.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/irlmaxxing-against-the-soydevs-indie-magazines-filmmaking-ur/https://jmurphy.studio/irlmaxxing-against-the-soydevs-indie-magazines-filmmaking-ur/Today I want to share some highlights from the last few episodes of the Other Life podcast.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/is-facebook-the-largest-corporate-fraud-ever/https://jmurphy.studio/is-facebook-the-largest-corporate-fraud-ever/Jaw-dropping new post up today on Naked Capitalism, “Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg’s Fake Accounts Ponzi Scheme,” by Aaron Greenspan.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/is-it-racist-to-use-the-kekistani-flag/https://jmurphy.studio/is-it-racist-to-use-the-kekistani-flag/I was recently queried by a reporter in Arizona covering a story about some conservative university students who caused a scandal by displaying a Kekistani flag. It turns out that I am now the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/is-parental-social-status-a-mixed-blessing-on-toleration-for/https://jmurphy.studio/is-parental-social-status-a-mixed-blessing-on-toleration-for/Many people assume that coming from parents with high social status is an advantage, because it would appear to increase the probability of gaining high social status for oneself. But what if...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/its-rational-to-move-somewhere-beautiful-to-write/https://jmurphy.studio/its-rational-to-move-somewhere-beautiful-to-write/Having unique and true ideas is, pound for pound, the most valuable human resource in the world. If you are blessed with periodically arriving flashes of insight, in the long-run it is economically...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/know-youre-talking-wokescold-scientific-method-preventing-irl-flame-wars/https://jmurphy.studio/know-youre-talking-wokescold-scientific-method-preventing-irl-flame-wars/[FYI: If you’re interested in data-blogging like this, I’m offering a little free course on it.]Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/left-singularity/https://jmurphy.studio/left-singularity/…modern political history has a characteristic shape, which combines a duration of escalating ‘progress’ with a terminal, quasi-punctual interruption, or catastrophe – a restoration or ‘reboot’. Like...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/lessons-from-nietzsches-awful-publishing-results/https://jmurphy.studio/lessons-from-nietzsches-awful-publishing-results/Independent intellectuals today should study closely one of the most profound and impactful thinkers in all of modern philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche. I’m not referring to his ideas (although one...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/lets-make-personal-computers-rugged-dignified-and-enduring/https://jmurphy.studio/lets-make-personal-computers-rugged-dignified-and-enduring/A Sol LeWitt wall drawing in constructionMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/life-gift-guide/https://jmurphy.studio/life-gift-guide/I've never done a gift guide before! Probably because the Other Life remit has been so wide over the years, it was never clear to me what types of things it would make sense to recommend.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/life-news-links-february-6-2019/https://jmurphy.studio/life-news-links-february-6-2019/Other Life started as a “side project,” but it seems now to have escaped its cage, destroying my normal life, and growing itself into the project, which is now my life itself (at least until I go...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/life-update-from-the-sunshine-state/https://jmurphy.studio/life-update-from-the-sunshine-state/It's been about three months since I set sail from all currently existing institutions. After finalizing our business in the UK, saying goodbyes, and flying back to the United States, it's now been a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/make-communism-elite-again-corralling-desperate-hordes-is-no/https://jmurphy.studio/make-communism-elite-again-corralling-desperate-hordes-is-no/Any serious theory of communism needs to have not only an account of how and why communism has always failed, but also an account of how and why it could work differently now. Ideally, a parsimonious...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/meaning-clubhouse-vs-taylor-lorenz/https://jmurphy.studio/meaning-clubhouse-vs-taylor-lorenz/This is not just another Twitter beef, but a bellwether for the changing structure of intellectual influence.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/millennials-migrate-to-mountain-mansions/https://jmurphy.studio/millennials-migrate-to-mountain-mansions/[In less than 30 days my wife and I are packing up our few belongings and driving up into Colorado, Utah, and/or Montana. We haven’t decided where yet, but we’re going to be renting somewhere,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/modern-liberalism-is-not-peace-its-pacification/https://jmurphy.studio/modern-liberalism-is-not-peace-its-pacification/Readers of my work over the past few years will know that I have long been interested in how natural human rebelliousness gets pacified (1, 2, 3).Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/multiple-heuristic-equilibria-cognitive-patchwork/https://jmurphy.studio/multiple-heuristic-equilibria-cognitive-patchwork/If we are living through a “semantic apocalypse,” a likely implication is that the signal-to-noise ratio in most explicit political debates is not only lower than it might seem, but asymptotically...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/mushrooms-modafinil-and-mass-shooters-how-academia-got-pwned/https://jmurphy.studio/mushrooms-modafinil-and-mass-shooters-how-academia-got-pwned/This is the second post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. Tell me: Would you like to read the whole story, edited, in...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/new-frontier-personal-computing/https://jmurphy.studio/new-frontier-personal-computing/Ever since I articulated my first thesis about Urbit two years ago, I’ve never felt more confident that Urbit is the future of personal computing.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/mussolini-a-wormhole-in-the-fabric-of-history/https://jmurphy.studio/mussolini-a-wormhole-in-the-fabric-of-history/Hyperrealistic fashion photograph Benito Mussolini in Balenciaga puffy coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome natural outdoor lighting --ar 16:9 --v 5Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/not-everyone-needs-to-be-heard/https://jmurphy.studio/not-everyone-needs-to-be-heard/One of the worst mistakes I made as a younger man was believing that everyone just “needs to be heard.” Some do. I don't relinquish at all my conviction that exhaustive, collective, emotional...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/not-making-progress-or-losing-motivation/https://jmurphy.studio/not-making-progress-or-losing-motivation/As I wrote a few weeks ago, I was recently hired on a monthly retainer to do some intellectual consulting. Basically, a very smart person just needed to some help getting a project off the ground —...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/now-wars-start-themselves/https://jmurphy.studio/now-wars-start-themselves/Major wars have become less frequent, but a curious feature of the wars we still observe is that almost nobody starts them. When wars occur today, they appear to start themselves, or are started by...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/nxivm-was-a-rationality-cult/https://jmurphy.studio/nxivm-was-a-rationality-cult/From 1998 to 2018, Keith Raniere built one of the most rationally optimized private enterprises in recorded history. NXIVM was a private company that synthesized all of the most powerful and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/occupations-and-their-ideologies/https://jmurphy.studio/occupations-and-their-ideologies/Occupations are strongly sorted by ideology. Political scientist Adam Bonica has produced reliable and consistent estimates of ideological placement for a huge number of individuals, politicians, and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-agnes-callard/https://jmurphy.studio/on-agnes-callard/Greek Girls Playing Ball (1889) by Frederic LeightonMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-british-reservedness-and-american-boisterousness/https://jmurphy.studio/on-british-reservedness-and-american-boisterousness/The British are known be to reserved, and Americans boisterous, but I don’t think Americans communicate more in their higher volume of noises and gesticulations. If one could somehow measure the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-intellectual-twitter-beefs/https://jmurphy.studio/on-intellectual-twitter-beefs/Smart and capable people spend vast amounts of time engaged in useless, circular debates on a platform that is arguably designed to thwart intellectual illumination. Why? No sane person would ever...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-not-being-fired-how-academia-got-pwned-12/https://jmurphy.studio/on-not-being-fired-how-academia-got-pwned-12/This is the twelfth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. This will probably become a book. If you'd like to hear...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-the-business-model-of-the-private-intellectual/https://jmurphy.studio/on-the-business-model-of-the-private-intellectual/I built my business in order to run a successful research program, including for the analysts that work at Bismarck. The priority often there is intellectual growth, accumulation of this type of...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-those-who-worship-the-big-other/https://jmurphy.studio/on-those-who-worship-the-big-other/Nina Power just lost her gig at The Wire because of her appearance on my measly haphazard experimental one-man Youtube channel with no particular identity and a whopping ~2k followers. (Feel free to...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-writing-in-the-age-of-machine-intelligence/https://jmurphy.studio/on-writing-in-the-age-of-machine-intelligence/On taste and brand in the face of AI acceleration.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/open-letter-concerning-luke-turner/https://jmurphy.studio/open-letter-concerning-luke-turner/In a paranoiac and libelous screed written recently against Nina Power, yours truly is mentioned several times. The so-called "open letter" calls me a neo-reactionary, among other things I am not....Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/optimal-podcasting-process-indie-thinkers-automate-proliferate/https://jmurphy.studio/optimal-podcasting-process-indie-thinkers-automate-proliferate/Here is the podcasting process I’ve developed over nearly 2 years of iteration. It’s not perfect, and it’s not for everyone, but for many indie thinkers I think this is the best system. Certainly...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/other-implications-and-observations/https://jmurphy.studio/other-implications-and-observations/Now, for all the anti-communist right-wingers out there, you might still strongly doubt all of this. And indeed, you have some good reasons to fear that in such a situation the Masses would...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/paul-skallas-is-a-scammer-and-i-called-it-in-2020/https://jmurphy.studio/paul-skallas-is-a-scammer-and-i-called-it-in-2020/I just have to take a little victory lap on this one…Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/paid-vacation-begins-how-academia-got-pwned-3/https://jmurphy.studio/paid-vacation-begins-how-academia-got-pwned-3/This is the third post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/personal-computer-or-personal-enemy/https://jmurphy.studio/personal-computer-or-personal-enemy/The personal computer has become a personal enemy.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/personal-knowledge-management-bullshit/https://jmurphy.studio/personal-knowledge-management-bullshit/And what to do instead.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/peter-thiels-theory-of-california/https://jmurphy.studio/peter-thiels-theory-of-california/I'm constantly hearing about California’s acute mismanagement problems, but I haven't heard any good, general theories of what's going on. Until recently.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/planning-tour-like-visit/https://jmurphy.studio/planning-tour-like-visit/I have received just enough speaking invitations to announce that I'm pretty much embarking on a DIY book tour. Basically how punk bands do it: no agents, no rules, no frills. Would you like my wife...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/post-structuralism-and-false-authority/https://jmurphy.studio/post-structuralism-and-false-authority/A major epistemological foul in Continental Philosophy is that it often treats concepts as if they were tested and validated empirical models, when they are not. People routinely speak as if X’s...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/progress-report-for-first-book-project/https://jmurphy.studio/progress-report-for-first-book-project/I launched a pre-order form for Based Deleuze a little more than a month ago (June 20, 2019). I committed to publishing a short book of about 20k words by September 20 at the latest.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/quick-note-on-a-site-change/https://jmurphy.studio/quick-note-on-a-site-change/For those of you who've subscribed to receive my blog posts via email, you'll notice my posts are now coming from a different email address. This is just a quick note to let you know, in case you're...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/radical-europeans-of-the-twentieth-century-in-color/https://jmurphy.studio/radical-europeans-of-the-twentieth-century-in-color/Machine-learning techniques for automated colorization are increasingly effective and accessible. I came across a Python library by Algorithmia that makes colorization very easy. If you have a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/ralph-waldo-emerson-self-reliance-and-intellectual-strategy/https://jmurphy.studio/ralph-waldo-emerson-self-reliance-and-intellectual-strategy/In 1836, when his Twitter profile still showed nothing but some obscure username and the face of a Roman statue, Ralph Waldo Emerson published a badass blog post called Nature. The day before he...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/rap-is-not-art-but-its-cool/https://jmurphy.studio/rap-is-not-art-but-its-cool/Rap is not art, it’s stylized abjection. Same with punk. Indeed, this is one reason why it has been possible for rap and punk to merge today, musically and sociologically. Who ever would have...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/reasons-ihme-model-might-underpredicting-coronavirus-deaths-usa/https://jmurphy.studio/reasons-ihme-model-might-underpredicting-coronavirus-deaths-usa/Most political elites in the United States right now seem to be invoking one epidemiological model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/reasons-not-to-start-an-online-magazine/https://jmurphy.studio/reasons-not-to-start-an-online-magazine/TLDR: The magazine model is not the best choice for indie intellectuals trying to start something. Two reasons: (1) Accelerating digital culture requires you to move fast and group projects move...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/religion-guilt-and-creativity/https://jmurphy.studio/religion-guilt-and-creativity/One feature of religion a lot of secular people do not understand is that, although religion can make one feel guilty at times, it also prevents one from feeling guilty about trivial matters. Secular...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/religion-is-an-extra-rational-condition-for-the-possibility-/https://jmurphy.studio/religion-is-an-extra-rational-condition-for-the-possibility-/G.K. Chesterton happily understood in advance what the Frankfurt School theorists only observed with great horror after the fact. Namely, that without an authority such as the Catholic Church, placed...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/remodeling-the-units-and-flows-of-intellectual-production-ho/https://jmurphy.studio/remodeling-the-units-and-flows-of-intellectual-production-ho/This is the eighth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. This will probably become a book. If you'd like to hear...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/renaissance-rationalization-oceanic-navigation-lock-commodotization-takeoff/https://jmurphy.studio/renaissance-rationalization-oceanic-navigation-lock-commodotization-takeoff/Regatta on the Canale Grande (1740) by CanalettoMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/reputation-how-academia-got-pwned-5/https://jmurphy.studio/reputation-how-academia-got-pwned-5/This is the fifth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. At some point, I will very likely edit and compose this...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/respectability-is-not-worth-it-reply-to-slatestarcodex/https://jmurphy.studio/respectability-is-not-worth-it-reply-to-slatestarcodex/I've had some vague notion of trying to contribute more to other intellectual communities, but whenever I start to write a quick reply, I end up hunched over in a room gone dark from nightfall with a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/results-based-deleuze/https://jmurphy.studio/results-based-deleuze/The Based Deleuze project is now officially complete, so it’s time to do some final accounting. Here I will review the financials, the labor/time costs, and the main lessons learned.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/rethinking-intellectual-production-models-how-academia-got-p/https://jmurphy.studio/rethinking-intellectual-production-models-how-academia-got-p/This is the seventh post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. This will probably become a book. If you'd like to hear...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/review-of-based-mansion-la-observations-finances-and-bibliog/https://jmurphy.studio/review-of-based-mansion-la-observations-finances-and-bibliog/On the weekend of February 28, I rented a mansion in Los Angeles for two nights and stayed there with about 15 people from the internet. I facilitated a mini-conference; everyone there presented some...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/riva-tez-on-epistemological-freedom/https://jmurphy.studio/riva-tez-on-epistemological-freedom/I recently sat down with Riva to talk about the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, why the brain might be an antenna, why she moved away from Transhumanism, why Rationalism is cringe, how she...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/samo-burja-new-private-intellectual/https://jmurphy.studio/samo-burja-new-private-intellectual/I just published a new episode of the podcast. Here I collect some of its best insights, in text for your convenience. From Other Life Episode #129, Samo Burja on Intellectual Legitimacy and His...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/satisfice-money-maximize-freedom/https://jmurphy.studio/satisfice-money-maximize-freedom/Welcome to today's issue of Other Life. If you received this from a friend, subscribe here. Instead of paywalling posts, we offer a unique community membership.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/scientific-introspection-and-the-analytical-advantage-of-ave/https://jmurphy.studio/scientific-introspection-and-the-analytical-advantage-of-ave/When you have thoughts and feelings and drives, note them and try to understand which variables about yourself cause them. The best way to do this is to compare yourself to others, and the best way...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/seldom-frequented-path/https://jmurphy.studio/seldom-frequented-path/Welcome to Signs of Life, a periodic roundup letter from Other Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/segmentation-and-personalization-for-philosophers-and-scient/https://jmurphy.studio/segmentation-and-personalization-for-philosophers-and-scient/The techniques used by today's marketing professionals, such as "customer segmentation" and "web-page personalization," would appear to be emblems of instrumental, exploitative communication. Today,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/sell-outs-and-sell-ins/https://jmurphy.studio/sell-outs-and-sell-ins/It's interesting to note that, since I've shifted a lot of my intellectual energy to autonomous work on the internet, I've received a fair number of accusations about "selling out" or "pandering."Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/shared-roots-versus-hard-forks/https://jmurphy.studio/shared-roots-versus-hard-forks/I’m reading with interest the recent comeback post by Curtis Yarvin. I might have some longer thoughts later, but for the moment I just wanted to quibble with part of his empirical model.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/shock-almost-lethal/https://jmurphy.studio/shock-almost-lethal/Dear reader, I write you today with two interesting notes and one last-minute opportunity.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/show-me/https://jmurphy.studio/show-me/Leptis Magna, a prominent city of the Carthaginian Empire (Libya).Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/signs-89-exiles-world/https://jmurphy.studio/signs-89-exiles-world/The California coast in Pescadero (Imperceptible Mansion, November 4-6 2022)Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/signs-life-may-2021-truth-schelling-point/https://jmurphy.studio/signs-life-may-2021-truth-schelling-point/“When someone reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, 'And I sentenced them to stay at home.’” —DiogenesMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/so-what-if-im-afraid-of-death/https://jmurphy.studio/so-what-if-im-afraid-of-death/I must admit to feeling afraid of death. I am drawn to religious belief, in part, because I think I do want help with my fear of death. I don’t see why it would be an intellectual violation to want...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/social-ai-is-coming/https://jmurphy.studio/social-ai-is-coming/It's never been possible for an arbitrary number of average people to combine Turing-complete computation and financial liquidity within one seamless, integrated operating system and graphical user...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/some-news-and-updates-resettling/https://jmurphy.studio/some-news-and-updates-resettling/I'm now back in the United States, for the foreseeable future. My last two weeks in the UK were possibly my favorite two weeks in my 5.5 years there. On February 28, we went up to London with only...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/some-personal-reflections-on-jordan-peterson/https://jmurphy.studio/some-personal-reflections-on-jordan-peterson/If you've been following me for some time, you'll know that current affairs commentary is not exactly my strong suit. I don't really keep up on the news and my own thoughts and ideas are quite...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/st-augustine-the-kernel-and-the-long-run/https://jmurphy.studio/st-augustine-the-kernel-and-the-long-run/In The City of God, St. Augustine points out that philosophers can very well establish a rational system of ethics, but we humans suffer from infirmities that prohibit us from consistently executing...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/start-substack/https://jmurphy.studio/start-substack/TLDR: For most of you, no, starting a Substack is not the best way to build a financially sustainable long-term writing project. You should definitely build an email list, but you should do it with a...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/stream-theory/https://jmurphy.studio/stream-theory/As a livestreamer, you ignore the entire world to focus your attention on a subset of people who are genuinely interested in you. Entrance into the practice of livestreaming immediately leads you to...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/student-debt-is-worse-than-a-bubble/https://jmurphy.studio/student-debt-is-worse-than-a-bubble/I've often thought about higher education today as a kind of economic bubble, though I've always wondered if that's quite right. It seems to have the traits of a bubble: It seems overpriced, herd...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/study-finds-the-relationship-between-genes-and-earnings-incr/https://jmurphy.studio/study-finds-the-relationship-between-genes-and-earnings-incr/Someone sent me a recent NBER working paper by Nicholas W. Papageorge and Kevin Thom on polygenic scores and educational attainment/earnings. Most pertinent to my theoretical interests is that the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/suicide-should-be-slightly-stigmatized/https://jmurphy.studio/suicide-should-be-slightly-stigmatized/For people on the brink of suicide, struggling with excruciating suffering, no good would ever come — and wanton cruelty would certainly result — from stigmatizing their difficult situation. I wish...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/technocommunist-vectors-radar-edition/https://jmurphy.studio/technocommunist-vectors-radar-edition/When I first laid out my idea for a neo-feudal technocommunist patch, I only waved my hand at the coming technological pathways to my proposed polity. In that first talk, I just hypothesized that...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/technology-class-and-ideological-realignment/https://jmurphy.studio/technology-class-and-ideological-realignment/I appreciate Michael Lind's model of the contemporary American class structure. He asks us to visualize two horseshoe structures:Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/terre-thaemlitz-on-why-you-should-just-stop/https://jmurphy.studio/terre-thaemlitz-on-why-you-should-just-stop/Woker Nexus in my Discord server recently introduced me to the work of Terre Thaemlitz aka DJ Sprinkles. (If Woker Nexus sounds familiar, Woker is one of the more active participants in my Youtube...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/testosterone-is-declining-because-its-illegal/https://jmurphy.studio/testosterone-is-declining-because-its-illegal/A lot of people wonder why testosterone levels have been decreasing for decades.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-billion-dollar-personal-server/https://jmurphy.studio/the-billion-dollar-personal-server/The City Rises (1910) by Umberto BoccioniMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-case-for-annexing-mexico-and-canada/https://jmurphy.studio/the-case-for-annexing-mexico-and-canada/My first argument is Manifest Destiny—the most Alpha political theory doctrine ever conceived.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-categorical-dual-of-the-blockchain/https://jmurphy.studio/the-categorical-dual-of-the-blockchain/Ted Blackman is a senior engineer at Tlon and one of the most advanced Urbit engineers in the world.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-catholic-coordination-game/https://jmurphy.studio/the-catholic-coordination-game/[Disclosure: I don't actually know that much about European feudalism. Most of my posts contain a fair bit of speculative guesswork and imagination, but after finishing this I felt compelled to make...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-crypto-reformation/https://jmurphy.studio/the-crypto-reformation/In my latest podcast with former historian Joshua Rosenthal—The Crypto Reformation—there were some gems I want to share with you.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-cybernetic-trinity/https://jmurphy.studio/the-cybernetic-trinity/The Trinity is one of the more vexing doctrines in all of the Catholic tradition. God is one, and yet God is three: the father, the son Christ who walked on earth, and the Holy Spirit. To make...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-cyberpositive-ai-aligned-communism-caic-protocol/https://jmurphy.studio/the-cyberpositive-ai-aligned-communism-caic-protocol/In Atomization and Liberation, I began to outline a vision of small-c communism divorced from the corruption of modern Communism as most people know it. As I've explored many times before, the entire...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-devil-is-in-the-denial/https://jmurphy.studio/the-devil-is-in-the-denial/The religious, who possess only tacit knowledge of the pragmatic truths inhering in religion, should be forgiven their occasional intellectual backwardness, for the same reason we forgive the idiocy...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-facts-of-the-world-are-not-the-end-of-the-matter-on-witt/https://jmurphy.studio/the-facts-of-the-world-are-not-the-end-of-the-matter-on-witt/Wittgenstein’s hut (restored) in Skjolden, Norway. All photos courtesy Jon Bolstad and © Wittgenstein Initiative.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-freedom-specificity-tradeoff/https://jmurphy.studio/the-freedom-specificity-tradeoff/When it comes to internet writing, a highly specific brand will grow faster than a vague or mysterious brand.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-first-problem-of-being-perceptible-is-being-manipulated-/https://jmurphy.studio/the-first-problem-of-being-perceptible-is-being-manipulated-/This is the second post in a series, on the concept of "becoming imperceptible" in Deleuze and Guattari. The first one is here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-great-flaw-in-west-coast-thought/https://jmurphy.studio/the-great-flaw-in-west-coast-thought/Welcome to today's issue of Other Life. If you received this from a friend, subscribe here. Instead of paywalling posts, we'll give you a new sovereign computer.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-highest-human-activity/https://jmurphy.studio/the-highest-human-activity/Welcome to today's issue of Other Life. If you received this from a friend, subscribe here. Instead of paywalling posts, we'll give you a new sovereign computer.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-highest-ranking-non-player-characters-how-academia-got-p/https://jmurphy.studio/the-highest-ranking-non-player-characters-how-academia-got-p/This is the fourth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. I'm curious: Would you like to read the whole story,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-highest-reason-is-always-the-truest-emersons-method/https://jmurphy.studio/the-highest-reason-is-always-the-truest-emersons-method/According to Ralph Waldo Emerson in his first book Nature, everyone enjoys equal access to a kingdom as great as Adam’s or Caesar’s.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-human-cartel-part-1-the-working-ruling-class/https://jmurphy.studio/the-human-cartel-part-1-the-working-ruling-class/Why do so many people in large bureaucratic organizations spend so much time doing meaningless paperwork that has no effect on anything? One possible answer, suggested by David Graeber, is that the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-imperceptible-country/https://jmurphy.studio/the-imperceptible-country/How I Gained Creative and Financial Independence. "The Paul Millerd episode and subsequent discussion has prompted me to share my experience & perspective in hopes that some will find it helpful and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-improvement-illusion/https://jmurphy.studio/the-improvement-illusion/Have you ever had a great idea and thought to yourself, "I need to write an essay about this," but then you never wrote a single word about it?Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-imperceptible-mechanisms-of-deep-community/https://jmurphy.studio/the-imperceptible-mechanisms-of-deep-community/I started noticing this about three years ago.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-interaction-of-education-and-race-on-trump-approval/https://jmurphy.studio/the-interaction-of-education-and-race-on-trump-approval/The correlation between education and support for Trump is very different across the black-white divide. The graphs below I have taken from Civiqs.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-key-ideas-of-leo-strauss/https://jmurphy.studio/the-key-ideas-of-leo-strauss/Below is the text of an interview I conducted with political theorist Michael Millerman, PhD. Listen to this interview on the Other Life podcast or watch it on Youtube. We cover all the key ideas of...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-long-run-is-getting-shorter/https://jmurphy.studio/the-long-run-is-getting-shorter/St. Augustine says there are two cities: The City of God and the City of Man.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-net-negative-utility-of-utilitarianism-in-the-long-term/https://jmurphy.studio/the-net-negative-utility-of-utilitarianism-in-the-long-term/Utilitarianism, taken as a world-historical arrival at the level of civilization itself, might very well have a net-negative utility. It is perfectly plausible that an overly refined awareness of,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-new-cyberpunk/https://jmurphy.studio/the-new-cyberpunk/Original photographs by the author. Urbit Assembly 2022 in Miami.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-non-fungible-aristocracy/https://jmurphy.studio/the-non-fungible-aristocracy/Fidenza #531 by generative artist Tyler Hobbs. At time of writing, $11,362,995.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-next-men-of-letters/https://jmurphy.studio/the-next-men-of-letters/"Fine minds are seldom fine souls." —RichterMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-non-linear-effect-of-ability-on-earnings-in-the-computer/https://jmurphy.studio/the-non-linear-effect-of-ability-on-earnings-in-the-computer/A reader/watcher/listener has brought to my attention another paper, which shows that, for college-educated individuals, earnings are a non-linear function of cognitive ability or g — at least in...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-other-deplatforming/https://jmurphy.studio/the-other-deplatforming/There is increasing awareness that social media can be bad for the mind—we use words like "addiction" and "distraction"—but we rarely discuss how social media can reshape the contents of the mind.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-patchwork-intellectual/https://jmurphy.studio/the-patchwork-intellectual/Patchwork intellectuals do not protest or endorse technological acceleration; they ride the waves of destruction wrought by disintermediation. They fall forward, sacrificing the twin pillars of...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-psychology-of-prohibiting-outside-thinkers/https://jmurphy.studio/the-psychology-of-prohibiting-outside-thinkers/This post was first published on May 15, 2017 on my old personal site. I'm republishing it here because it will be new for a majority of Other Life readers; it was widely shared in 2017; it remains...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-psychology-of-supporting-open-borders/https://jmurphy.studio/the-psychology-of-supporting-open-borders/Angela Nagle makes the case that open borders are not consistent with leftist politics. The wonderful thing about the intensity of the culture wars right now is that, with a little bit of courage,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-rich-are-more-communist-than-theyre-allowed-to-be/https://jmurphy.studio/the-rich-are-more-communist-than-theyre-allowed-to-be/When I talk about aristocratic communism — the idea that a functional communism might be achieved by organizing and enforcing respect for the rich, on condition they distribute wealth — many...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-second-problem-of-being-perceptible-is-motivational-high/https://jmurphy.studio/the-second-problem-of-being-perceptible-is-motivational-high/Another problem with being perceptible is easy to understand in our current digital context. It is a problem we might summarize as the motivational problem. Being perceived triggers dopamine, and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-second-golden-age-of-blogging/https://jmurphy.studio/the-second-golden-age-of-blogging/Many people say that “blogging is dead,” but dead for whom? Blogging remains powerful, just not for the same type of person who found it powerful in the “golden age of blogging” (roughly 2003-2009)....Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-singular-importance-of-being-correct/https://jmurphy.studio/the-singular-importance-of-being-correct/Technocapitalism increases returns to judgment relative to labor.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-struggle-of-the-independent-scholar/https://jmurphy.studio/the-struggle-of-the-independent-scholar/Welcome to today's issue of Other Life. If you received this from a friend, subscribe here. Instead of paywalling posts, we'll give you a new sovereign computer.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-sweet-smell-of-success/https://jmurphy.studio/the-sweet-smell-of-success/I'm the first to admit I usually don't love movies from before the 1970s.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-time-to-withdraw/https://jmurphy.studio/the-time-to-withdraw/"Being, as the most unique and most rare, in opposition to nothingness, will have withdrawn itself from the massiveness of beings, and all history—where it reaches down to its proper essence—will...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-two-paths-to-power/https://jmurphy.studio/the-two-paths-to-power/There are two paths to power: top-down and bottom-up.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-two-meanings-of-reaction-excerpt-from-based-deleuze/https://jmurphy.studio/the-two-meanings-of-reaction-excerpt-from-based-deleuze/The following is an excerpt from my short book Based Deleuze, which will be published on September 20th. Pre-order here and you’ll receive it by email as soon as it’s released.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-univocity-debate-in-a-nutshell/https://jmurphy.studio/the-univocity-debate-in-a-nutshell/From Lecture #3 in my video course for Based Deleuze:Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-unreasonably-negative-effects-of-podcast-listening/https://jmurphy.studio/the-unreasonably-negative-effects-of-podcast-listening/The feeling of listening to podcasts approximates the feeling of having original thoughts.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-violent-focus-of-francis-bacon/https://jmurphy.studio/the-violent-focus-of-francis-bacon/Francis Bacon’s studio at 7 Reece Mews in London. 13x20 feet. Bacon probably designed the large mirror himself in the 1930s when he worked as a furniture designer. Image scanned from Margarita...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-vortex-of-tiny-effects/https://jmurphy.studio/the-vortex-of-tiny-effects/This is a story about eggplants, do you have the courage to read it? 🍆Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-worst-that-can-happen-is-nothing/https://jmurphy.studio/the-worst-that-can-happen-is-nothing/If you’re genuinely seeking the truth and you put something crappy into the world, nothing happens. There is no punishment for crappy content. It’s one of the simplest and most profound facts of...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-young-balzac-disordered-knowledge-strange-student/https://jmurphy.studio/the-young-balzac-disordered-knowledge-strange-student/I'd like to share with you some biographies of great writers, artists, maybe some inventors—people who represent the other life ethos—people who have produced great work from the fringes, or in weird...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/there-are-no-humans-on-the-internet/https://jmurphy.studio/there-are-no-humans-on-the-internet/The best way to build community and make friends on the internet is to treat all internet interlocutors as if they are real humans in a real-life, local village. If you do this, over time many people...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/theology-and-experimental-method/https://jmurphy.studio/theology-and-experimental-method/I think tomorrow morning I will take the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). It will be the first time for more than 15 years. Why not? I will do it with absolute sincerity, but also reflect on...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/thousands-of-lovers-executed-for-ai-safety/https://jmurphy.studio/thousands-of-lovers-executed-for-ai-safety/Death of Chatterton (1856) by Henry WallisMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/to-become-rich-and-famous-take-a-vow-of-poverty-and-anonymit/https://jmurphy.studio/to-become-rich-and-famous-take-a-vow-of-poverty-and-anonymit/When the famous documentarian Ken Burns first started doing his long, historical documentaries, he thought he was taking "a vow of anonymity and poverty,” he recalls.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/tools-sequences-and-workflows/https://jmurphy.studio/tools-sequences-and-workflows/Automatic editing and uploading with AuphonicMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/tour-stop-raleigh-north-carolina-thursday-may-16/https://jmurphy.studio/tour-stop-raleigh-north-carolina-thursday-may-16/Currently in the mountains of western North Carolina, I’m looking to buy an old broken down house somewhere for like $50k but I need to test Wifi quality first...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/truth-joy-power-spinozas-galaxy-brain/https://jmurphy.studio/truth-joy-power-spinozas-galaxy-brain/We live in a bourgeois culture where people hate intellectuals, the truth is. So, yes, of course there are stupid people on the internet who are really pretentious and think they're really smart....Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/two-kinds-of-hustle/https://jmurphy.studio/two-kinds-of-hustle/To get the kind of life I want, or anywhere close to it, I realize I'm going to have to hustle like crazy. But one thing that's become immediately clear to me is that working hard has profoundly...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/unfair-competition-how-academia-got-pwned-13/https://jmurphy.studio/unfair-competition-how-academia-got-pwned-13/This is the thirteenth post in a series about the glorious completion of my academic career, the internet, and the future of intellectual life. It's going to become a book, so for updates be sure to...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/utilitarianism-incentivizes-suffering-or-victim-culture-as-a/https://jmurphy.studio/utilitarianism-incentivizes-suffering-or-victim-culture-as-a/Insofar as people live according to its suggestions, Utilitarianism strangely incentivizes suffering. In a society where utilitarianism operates as the governing philosophy, the accommodation you...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/virtues-of-the-desert/https://jmurphy.studio/virtues-of-the-desert/Here is Joseph Ratzinger, formerly Pope Benedict, on St. John the Baptist.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/wang-yis-other-life/https://jmurphy.studio/wang-yis-other-life/A listener of the podcast writes me about a Christian pastor in China who was recently detained. The pastor Wang Yi has released a personal and theoretical statement that followers of my work (and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/wasp-microaggressions-my-metoo-moment/https://jmurphy.studio/wasp-microaggressions-my-metoo-moment/I've noticed I strongly favor words beginning with intense, brash sounds. Words which invite you to say them quickly and loudly. The paradigmatic example might be the greeting: "WHAaat's up, DUuude?"...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/we-are-all-conspiracy-theorists-now/https://jmurphy.studio/we-are-all-conspiracy-theorists-now/The collapse of trust in mainstream authorities is discussed as if it is only one of many troubling data points. It's not. People are still underestimating the gravity of the interlocking trends that...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/we-still-dont-understand-the-attention-economy/https://jmurphy.studio/we-still-dont-understand-the-attention-economy/Simone Weil's ID card working for the French resistanceMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/what-am-i-doing/https://jmurphy.studio/what-am-i-doing/Many different people are asking me what's going on with me. In different languages, sometimes gleefully and sometimes worriedly, I have been asked some variant of "what are you doing?" so many times...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/what-happened-to-national-geographic/https://jmurphy.studio/what-happened-to-national-geographic/For today's issue we have a rare guest post, actually our first ever guest post—by the doctor and soldier Cornelius Stahlblau, author of The Outpost on Substack.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/what-im-reading-ernst-junger/https://jmurphy.studio/what-im-reading-ernst-junger/I've been exploring the work of Ernst Jünger, which I've never really read until now. The most cursory searching confirms a high likelihood of this man entering the Other Life pantheon. Consider the...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/what-is-an-image-of-thought-for-deleuze/https://jmurphy.studio/what-is-an-image-of-thought-for-deleuze/From Lecture #3 in my video course for Based Deleuze:Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/what-would-i-do-without-this-world/https://jmurphy.studio/what-would-i-do-without-this-world/faceless incuriouswhere to be lasts but an instant where every instantspills in the void the ignorance of having beenwithout this wave where in the endbody and shadow together are engulfedwhat would...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/when-does-blogging-become-worth-it/https://jmurphy.studio/when-does-blogging-become-worth-it/A misconception about blogging is that one needs X number of readers before it's worthwhile, where X is some dauntingly high number. But actually, you only need Y readers, such that when you write...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/when-kipling-met-twain/https://jmurphy.studio/when-kipling-met-twain/Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) in his writing cabin at Quarry Farm in Elmira, NY. 1903. Photograph by Thomas E. Marr.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/when-not-to-go-with-the-flow/https://jmurphy.studio/when-not-to-go-with-the-flow/The task of identifying the line between good and evil is like infinitesimal calculus. Mere intuitions are insufficient, which is why "going with the flow" so easily ends in evil. Many marriages fail...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/why-do-muslim-immigrants-and-western-leftists-like-each-othe/https://jmurphy.studio/why-do-muslim-immigrants-and-western-leftists-like-each-othe/It's fairly well known that Muslim immigrants in Europe tend to support left-wing political parties, but it's not obvious why, given that Muslims tend to oppose key planks of Western social...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/why-im-interested-in-blockchain-tech-for-creators/https://jmurphy.studio/why-im-interested-in-blockchain-tech-for-creators/I’m becoming more bullish on crypto, in particular the long-term value of Bitcoin and the shorter-term value of blockchain infrastructure for content creators.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/why-no-depiction-of-hitler-is-evil-enough/https://jmurphy.studio/why-no-depiction-of-hitler-is-evil-enough/Robin Hanson thinks it the result of a signaling spiral, "wherein people strive to show how moral they are by thinking... even more lowly of standard exemplars of bad..." Certainly possible, and...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/why-virtue-ethics-is-probably-correct/https://jmurphy.studio/why-virtue-ethics-is-probably-correct/Die Römische Ruine in Schönbrunn (1832) by Ferdinand Georg WaldmüllerMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/why-write-one-book-when-you-can-speak-18-volumes/https://jmurphy.studio/why-write-one-book-when-you-can-speak-18-volumes/Have you ever wondered how and why The Life of Samuel Johnson is so damn long (and influential), even though he's just rambling like a livestreamer on adderall? Some thoughts on the current frontiers...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/will-the-pandemic-have-partisan-effects-on-voter-turnout/https://jmurphy.studio/will-the-pandemic-have-partisan-effects-on-voter-turnout/Election forecasts will probably err systematically in some way, given the unique shock of the pandemic. But in which direction might the forecasts err?Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/will-the-university-of-austin-succeed/https://jmurphy.studio/will-the-university-of-austin-succeed/I’ve been asked a few times now what I think about the new University of Austin.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/writers-are-losers/https://jmurphy.studio/writers-are-losers/We live in a strange era where words and dreams and realities constantly crisscross in befuddling ways.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/writing-is-a-single-player-game/https://jmurphy.studio/writing-is-a-single-player-game/If you can figure out the truth, you should share it. You might help someone.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/wyrd-patchworkshop/https://jmurphy.studio/wyrd-patchworkshop/I was recently approached by Diffractions Collective in Prague, who are working with a group called Sdbs, about hosting a discussion event on my livestream. The topic is patchwork. I don't know...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/you-can-be-neutral-on-a-moving-train/https://jmurphy.studio/you-can-be-neutral-on-a-moving-train/There's a popular idea that one can't avoid taking some political position because having no position is to support the status quo. In the words of Howard Zinn, "You can't be neutral on a moving...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/you-cant-be-smarter-than-you-are/https://jmurphy.studio/you-cant-be-smarter-than-you-are/This might sound obvious, but it’s not: You are only as smart as you are. People get stuck because they aspire to be smarter than they are. People refuse to produce until they are as smart as they...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/you-dont-have-writers-block-youre-just-being-evil/https://jmurphy.studio/you-dont-have-writers-block-youre-just-being-evil/If you are unable to think and express words, something is certainly wrong, but you are not “blocked.” Your brain is a ceaseless machine. It identifies and creates connections. When it gets blocked,...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/youre-content-creator-youre-tiny-startup-just-dont-know-yet/https://jmurphy.studio/youre-content-creator-youre-tiny-startup-just-dont-know-yet/All of the following terms from Silicon Valley startup culture have direct analogues in the content-creation game. In the examples below, I’ll discuss a blogger or video producer who earns income via...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/reality-patchwork-and-neo-feudal-techno-communism-transcript/https://jmurphy.studio/reality-patchwork-and-neo-feudal-techno-communism-transcript/[This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the Diffractions/Sbds event, "Wyrd Patchwork," in Prague on September 22, 2018. The video can be found here. My talk begins at around the 2-hour and 6-minute...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/cs-lewis-edith-stein-and-how-to-make-it-as-an-indie-writer/https://jmurphy.studio/cs-lewis-edith-stein-and-how-to-make-it-as-an-indie-writer/Hey gang, hope you're well—today I'm sending you some highlights from the latest episode of the Other Life podcast, Be Not Afraid with James Ellis.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/girard-and-baudrillard-on-pandemics-and-plagues/https://jmurphy.studio/girard-and-baudrillard-on-pandemics-and-plagues/Dear readers, I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the Other Life podcast, The Hyperreal Plague: How Girard & Baudrillard Explain the Pandemic with Geoffrey Shullenberger.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/housewives-on-lsd-and-other-secrets-about-the-psychedelic-re/https://jmurphy.studio/housewives-on-lsd-and-other-secrets-about-the-psychedelic-re/"My impression of ketamine was... It's like a brand new skyscraper, all the walls, all the floors are carpeted in white, all the drinking fountains work, the elevators run smoothly, the fluorescent...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-chris-williamson-grew-modern-wisdom-from-zero-to-450k-su/https://jmurphy.studio/how-chris-williamson-grew-modern-wisdom-from-zero-to-450k-su/Today I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the Other Life podcast (#200): How Chris Williamson Grew Modern Wisdom From Zero to 450k Subscribers.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-to-dominate-substack-with-genetic-blackpills/https://jmurphy.studio/how-to-dominate-substack-with-genetic-blackpills/I just published a new episode of the podcast. Highlights below for your reading convenience. Highly recommend this one, some true galaxy brain content here.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/how-plato-made-himself-the-most-influential-thinker-ever/https://jmurphy.studio/how-plato-made-himself-the-most-influential-thinker-ever/Today, I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the Other Life podcast, Plato Uncovered: Building Influence in the Ancient and Modern World with Alex Petkas.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/if-you-build-it-correctly-god-will-come-to-dwell/https://jmurphy.studio/if-you-build-it-correctly-god-will-come-to-dwell/The Other Life podcast had its biggest month in May. We're still pretty underground—growing the podcast has never been a focus—but we're seeing a little liftoff with 18k downloads in May. Thanks for...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/insanely-bullish-on-urbit-with-uqbar-founder-timluc-miptev/https://jmurphy.studio/insanely-bullish-on-urbit-with-uqbar-founder-timluc-miptev/Today I want to share some highlights from a recent episode of the Other Life podcast, "Insanely Bullish" on Urbit With Uqbar Founder ~timluc-miptev.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-virtue-ethics-and-why-effective-altruism-is-wrong/https://jmurphy.studio/on-virtue-ethics-and-why-effective-altruism-is-wrong/Today, I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the podcast, Virtue and Excellence: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics with Colin Redemer.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/on-zero-knowledge-crypto-anarchy/https://jmurphy.studio/on-zero-knowledge-crypto-anarchy/Today, I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the podcast, Zero-Knowledge Crypto-Anarchy with Rachel-Rose O'Leary from DarkFi.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/should-bitcoin-have-a-king-curtis-yarvin-on-crypto/https://jmurphy.studio/should-bitcoin-have-a-king-curtis-yarvin-on-crypto/Today I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the Other Life podcast (#199): Curtis Yarvin on Crypto: Bitcoin, DAOs, Inflation, and Government Crackdowns.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://jmurphy.studio/the-harvard-finance-bro-building-an-urbit-network-state-from/https://jmurphy.studio/the-harvard-finance-bro-building-an-urbit-network-state-from/Today I want to share some highlights from the latest episode of the Other Life podcast, The Harvard Finance Bro Building an Urbit Network State from El Salvador.Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT