On behalf of Professor Hackett, I’d like to challenge you to a formal, moderated debate about whether you actually graduated from MIT.
In the comment thread under Hackett’s post, the best argument you could muster was that there are pictures of you in a cap and gown. Assuming that those pictures havent been digitally manipulated (I consulted with Bart Sibel and he says that Google’s SOTA image classifier has determined there is strong evidence they have been), there are tons of alternative explanations for that data.
Meanwhile, the theory that you graduated is absurd:
(1) - You’re telling me that you were able to graduate in 2014 and 2019 but havent done it again since? That’s very suspicious.
(2) - In the comments on Hackett’s post, you claim that you have now read Adorno. But everybody knows that an MIT graduate would never do that. So were you lying then or are you lying now?
(3) - I’ve constructed a critical-intellectual genealogy that would go way over your head - rest assured, it definitively establishes that there is no way that you graduated from MIT.
If you accept the debate, I will use these and many other arguments to expose the ‘self-appointedness’ of your pretensions to be an MIT alum. Shame!
To be honest, the most demoralizing part of this whole discourse cycle has just been the extent to which people are willing to lob around completely philosophically inert insults at one another. I am currently drafting a post about this, but why is it that we feel the need to call one another illiterate or blind or what-have-you, rather than just explaining why we disagree? I am all for being direct, but I think that 90% of the time, observing good manners actually allows us to be more direct in our critiques, rather than less, since it doesn’t muddy the waters of the discussion. As a bonus, it will probably make it more likely that the other person will actually take them on board
Probably written by another lowly grad. (Just kidding). The problem is that good manners is seen as a weakness because it assumes that giving accepting your opponent as someone worthy of your respect makes their ideas worthy of respect. I the same respect people who display good manners are often seen as being weak for the reason that they are strong enough to control their impulses
But this is well above my intellect so what do I know other than the old saying “university politics are so vicious becaue the stakes are so low”.
Re Kenny's point (which is very apt in the abstract) I think it's telling that both sides of the analytic/continental divide will usually agree that continental stuff is less clear.
I indulge a hope that the current strain of theory in the other humanities will go into decline. It would be a crime against academic freedom to do anything about it, but if the likes of Derrida and Adorno came to be seen the way Freud is seen in contemporary psychology, that would be great for the academy and justified on the merits. Seems unlikely to happen though.
The “cryptic semiotic torsions” made an appearance, so I am happy.
Daniel, I know you can’t read this as freshly minted blind man from the (apparently reprehensible) institution of MIT, but this was a good piece. I especially appreciated you calling out their speculation that you must hate continental philosophers for lacking in charity.
Now excuse me, I have to go find you Adorno on audiobook. Hang tight!
It seems so strange to demand a full intellectual genealogy of anything in, of all things, a short Substack post aimed at a broad non-academic audience. An absolute "Sir, this is Wendy's" moment.
Hackett has been an ass to me before on the internet. Does that mean I can become a self-appointed graduate of MIT? Or do you actually need to go to MIT to become a self-appointed graduate of MIT?
FWIW I think you're one of the better (best?) substack writers on here about cognitive closure and related questions of "what we (conceptually) can't see." Eg I really enjoyed this piece trying to grapple with that problem:
Engaging with you has been helpful for unpacking my own thoughts on that problem. I'm nowhere near to making enough progress to make a serious/toplevel post to address that cluster of problems head-on, but I hope to one day! See some very early notes here[1]
Someone calling you blind is unusually funny, here. And I don't think he added new thoughts or evidence or conceptual models for unpacking that problem, alas.
I also find calling you an "MIT grad" as an insult very funny. Isn't it generally considered one of the best universities in the world? "notice how Muñoz avoids that very big connection" is also confusing since usually the main complaint I hear about elite-university grads is people who bring up that connection too much.
Maybe his next post should insult (sorry, "problematize") your physical attractiveness and high intelligence as well?
Someday I might write up my complaints about how analytic philosophers write. There are lots of legitimate things to point to—they’re just not the complaints that have been going viral lately.
I don’t actually think that’s true! I think there’s a kind of writing (common in Wittgenstein and the like) where philosophical points are cryptically hidden in humorous ideas. One of the big complaints about some “clear” writing is that it’s dry and humorless! I think there’s are instances that go each way.
You can make a drinking game out of how many times “What Ellie Anderson Actually Did and What Daniel Muñoz Cannot See” mentions MIT and get blind drunk.
Over the years, I've seen a lot of interesting reactions to/stereotypes about students of different programs, while seeing mostly no reactions to students of other programs. MIT has always seemed to provoke strong feelings. I'm not necessarily talking about online, but in activities like job searches, interviews, people blind reviewing papers saying "oh this is clearly an MIT PhD". I'm not surprised by this. My PhD institution seems to provoke reactions like that. Ellie went to Emory and that is a program that definitely prompts people to stereotype their alums. What's interesting to me isn't so much as whether these are rational or irrational, justified or unjustified reactions, but just how some programs don't cue stereotyping reactions at all. Like I've never heard someone say "Oh, that's clearly a University of Virginia, or University of Washington way of thinking about philosophy.". It reminds of when my mom used to complain about her neighbor as a "Mercedes-driving" guy. Some programs are "Mercedes" and "Priuses" that are useful shorthands to categorize people in some kind of culture war, and others are "Mazdas" which mean absolutely nothing.
Individuals being prone to stereotype others by institution is one thing, and it's quite natural that some institutions provoke strong feelings and thus stereotypes more than others, but..."a program that definitely prompts people to stereotype" others is...yikes, if that's not itself merely an unfortunate stereotype.
On behalf of Professor Hackett, I’d like to challenge you to a formal, moderated debate about whether you actually graduated from MIT.
In the comment thread under Hackett’s post, the best argument you could muster was that there are pictures of you in a cap and gown. Assuming that those pictures havent been digitally manipulated (I consulted with Bart Sibel and he says that Google’s SOTA image classifier has determined there is strong evidence they have been), there are tons of alternative explanations for that data.
Meanwhile, the theory that you graduated is absurd:
(1) - You’re telling me that you were able to graduate in 2014 and 2019 but havent done it again since? That’s very suspicious.
(2) - In the comments on Hackett’s post, you claim that you have now read Adorno. But everybody knows that an MIT graduate would never do that. So were you lying then or are you lying now?
(3) - I’ve constructed a critical-intellectual genealogy that would go way over your head - rest assured, it definitively establishes that there is no way that you graduated from MIT.
If you accept the debate, I will use these and many other arguments to expose the ‘self-appointedness’ of your pretensions to be an MIT alum. Shame!
I’ll be honest, this comment is so convincing that I might have to go scrub some things off my CV
So you’re saying that most of the time when you write you are *not* being honest?
You have just made a stronger case for Hackett’s position than any of what he himself wrote…
Does MIT even really exist? 🤔😋
Nah, he made that up as well. He almost fooled me with the cv and MIT having a Wikipedia page, but I know better than to trust that.
To be honest, the most demoralizing part of this whole discourse cycle has just been the extent to which people are willing to lob around completely philosophically inert insults at one another. I am currently drafting a post about this, but why is it that we feel the need to call one another illiterate or blind or what-have-you, rather than just explaining why we disagree? I am all for being direct, but I think that 90% of the time, observing good manners actually allows us to be more direct in our critiques, rather than less, since it doesn’t muddy the waters of the discussion. As a bonus, it will probably make it more likely that the other person will actually take them on board
Send me the post once it’s up. Would be interested to read it.
If someone’s aim is directness in a critique as well as clear (un-muddied) water, they must already be a fan of clarity to begin with, don’t they? :D
(I don’t mean to throw shade at anyone, I just couldn’t help spotting your obvious bias toward clarity, which of course I like.)
I’ve been sitting here wondering about the other 10% implied in your response. If you don’t mind, could you please elaborate? :)
Probably written by another lowly grad. (Just kidding). The problem is that good manners is seen as a weakness because it assumes that giving accepting your opponent as someone worthy of your respect makes their ideas worthy of respect. I the same respect people who display good manners are often seen as being weak for the reason that they are strong enough to control their impulses
But this is well above my intellect so what do I know other than the old saying “university politics are so vicious becaue the stakes are so low”.
“Self-appointed graduate” made me laugh out loud. You’re like Barack Obama with the birth certificate or something.
Big iff Truthers
Hahahaha exactly
This was written with a contemptible abundance of clarity, but what can you expect from a mere graduate of MIT?
Re Kenny's point (which is very apt in the abstract) I think it's telling that both sides of the analytic/continental divide will usually agree that continental stuff is less clear.
I indulge a hope that the current strain of theory in the other humanities will go into decline. It would be a crime against academic freedom to do anything about it, but if the likes of Derrida and Adorno came to be seen the way Freud is seen in contemporary psychology, that would be great for the academy and justified on the merits. Seems unlikely to happen though.
No one can “graduate” from “MIT” because any degree program that doesn’t require you to study Adorno is obviously fake.
I guess that's why they called my undergraduate degree a B.S.
Ironically (?), the MIT undergrads are exempt from this charge bc it’s an SB from there!
The “cryptic semiotic torsions” made an appearance, so I am happy.
Daniel, I know you can’t read this as freshly minted blind man from the (apparently reprehensible) institution of MIT, but this was a good piece. I especially appreciated you calling out their speculation that you must hate continental philosophers for lacking in charity.
Now excuse me, I have to go find you Adorno on audiobook. Hang tight!
How can you be so blind as to miss that he’s making a genaeological argument about your”self”??? Smh not even questioning the ground of PhD-being…
It seems so strange to demand a full intellectual genealogy of anything in, of all things, a short Substack post aimed at a broad non-academic audience. An absolute "Sir, this is Wendy's" moment.
This is what you get for leaving the cave and staring directly at the sun Daniel
Underrated comment
Hackett has been an ass to me before on the internet. Does that mean I can become a self-appointed graduate of MIT? Or do you actually need to go to MIT to become a self-appointed graduate of MIT?
FWIW I think you're one of the better (best?) substack writers on here about cognitive closure and related questions of "what we (conceptually) can't see." Eg I really enjoyed this piece trying to grapple with that problem:
https://bigifftrue.substack.com/p/the-lightbulb-has-to-want-to-change
Engaging with you has been helpful for unpacking my own thoughts on that problem. I'm nowhere near to making enough progress to make a serious/toplevel post to address that cluster of problems head-on, but I hope to one day! See some very early notes here[1]
Someone calling you blind is unusually funny, here. And I don't think he added new thoughts or evidence or conceptual models for unpacking that problem, alas.
I also find calling you an "MIT grad" as an insult very funny. Isn't it generally considered one of the best universities in the world? "notice how Muñoz avoids that very big connection" is also confusing since usually the main complaint I hear about elite-university grads is people who bring up that connection too much.
Maybe his next post should insult (sorry, "problematize") your physical attractiveness and high intelligence as well?
[1] https://inchpin.substack.com/i/179032807/mapping-the-unknown
I don’t enjoy the style of writing most analytic philosophers employ, but this guy is barely writing coherent English.
Someday I might write up my complaints about how analytic philosophers write. There are lots of legitimate things to point to—they’re just not the complaints that have been going viral lately.
For some reason, clarity and humor often go hand in hand, and the absence of one generally entails the absence of the other.
I don’t actually think that’s true! I think there’s a kind of writing (common in Wittgenstein and the like) where philosophical points are cryptically hidden in humorous ideas. One of the big complaints about some “clear” writing is that it’s dry and humorless! I think there’s are instances that go each way.
You can make a drinking game out of how many times “What Ellie Anderson Actually Did and What Daniel Muñoz Cannot See” mentions MIT and get blind drunk.
Over the years, I've seen a lot of interesting reactions to/stereotypes about students of different programs, while seeing mostly no reactions to students of other programs. MIT has always seemed to provoke strong feelings. I'm not necessarily talking about online, but in activities like job searches, interviews, people blind reviewing papers saying "oh this is clearly an MIT PhD". I'm not surprised by this. My PhD institution seems to provoke reactions like that. Ellie went to Emory and that is a program that definitely prompts people to stereotype their alums. What's interesting to me isn't so much as whether these are rational or irrational, justified or unjustified reactions, but just how some programs don't cue stereotyping reactions at all. Like I've never heard someone say "Oh, that's clearly a University of Virginia, or University of Washington way of thinking about philosophy.". It reminds of when my mom used to complain about her neighbor as a "Mercedes-driving" guy. Some programs are "Mercedes" and "Priuses" that are useful shorthands to categorize people in some kind of culture war, and others are "Mazdas" which mean absolutely nothing.
Individuals being prone to stereotype others by institution is one thing, and it's quite natural that some institutions provoke strong feelings and thus stereotypes more than others, but..."a program that definitely prompts people to stereotype" others is...yikes, if that's not itself merely an unfortunate stereotype.