Art

Book Recommendation: Variations on a Noble Theme

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I am primarily a writer, but sometimes I will edit a book by special request. In 2019 I edited America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It, a landmark book by C. Bradley Thompson. (See my brief review.) This year I edited the forthcoming novel, Variations on a Noble Theme, […]

Education

Crimson is the New Scarlet

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Of all the good opinion pieces on the answers by the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT to the question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” (and analogous questions for the other two schools), the very best essay is “Au Revoir, […]

Epistemology

The Most Important Issue

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In February, I applied to–and in March was rejected by–a program at the University of Austin. A question on the application was, Limit: 250 words. In your opinion, what is the most significant issue in the United States (or, if an international applicant, your home country) today? Why? The question is worth pondering by every […]

Politics

Israel, Lead the Free World

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Don’t believe mainstream news sources. They are liars. Follow @CarolineGlick for truth and reason in Israel. Listen to her 18-minute report and analysis posted on Saturday. To understand the ideas involved, see my 2014 post, Hamas is the Realization of the Leftist Ideal. The difference now is that we are weaker, and our enemies are […]

Art

Happy Atlas Shrugged Day 2023

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I celebrate Atlas Shrugged Day (September 2) each year by opening to a random page of Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and reading a passage. Here is what I found today, on pages 97–98 of the hardcover book (New York: Random House, 1957), Part I, Chapter V (“The Climax of the D’Anconias”): When Francisco left, that summer, […]

Artificial Intelligence

Language Models Divide the Child

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In my previous post, my dialogue with the language model Claude–created by the company Anthropic–revealed that political bias comes not only from being explicitly left-leaning, but more subtly and perhaps more importantly from being more committed to compromise than to principles. Today I had a similar dialogue with ChatGPT–created by the company OpenAI–using GPT-4, the […]

Artificial Intelligence

Language Model Claude 2 and Me on Political Principles and My Theory of Propositions

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Reprinted below are the substantive sections of two conversations (“Constitutional Principles” and “Chapter on Propositions”) I had last week with Claude, a large language model created by a company named Anthropic. Time Magazine on July 18 published an informative article entitled “What to Know About Claude 2, Anthropic’s Rival to ChatGPT.” As the two dialogues below demonstrate, […]

Epistemology

Videos on Epistemology

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James Ellias asked me excellent questions in a recent series of interviews about my book, A Validation of Knowledge. James has published the first two episodes: Discussing “A Validation of Knowledge” With Ron Pisaturo: Part 1: on Hierarchy (1:04:16) Discussing “A Validation of Knowledge” With Ron Pisaturo: Part 2: on Hierarchy (1:50:39) The remaining episodes are even […]

Politics

Book Recommendation: What America Is

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In 2019, Encounter Books published America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It, a landmark book by C. Bradley Thompson. (See my brief review.) Now Prof. Thompson has launched his own imprint, Loco-Foco Press, with the publication of his beautiful short book, What America Is. This new book consists of […]