By Peter Ludlow In a classic essay entitled “On Bullshit,” the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt argued that the bullshitter is different (maybe worse) than the traditional liar because the bullshitter does not bother keeping an eye on the truth. Frankfurt’s essay has subsequently had uptake in the broader culture and…

In a fascinating recent paper, the philosopher Craig Warmke has offered an analysis of Bitcoin that purports to show (i) how it works and thereby (ii) what it is. And he concludes that, contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin isn’t code, but is rather a fictional substance. I agree with Warmke…

By EJ Spode Alex Rosenberg laments the current state of economics, worrying both about its failure to secure its basic concepts (notably the concept of money) and its predictive failures. In the end, he asks the following question. “ The elimination of money as a real causal factor from economics’…

Sailing the Seas of Confusion with Language Typologist Martin Haspelmath by Peter Ludlow In (2019) I published an article on best theory criteria in linguistics and in that article, I took issue with Martin Haspelmath’s “framework free” approach to the study of language. I argued that it amounted to a…

by EJ Spode A standard routine that DeFi investors must endure, is the often arduous and expensive process of moving from one staked asset to another. To illustrate, imagine that one wanted to move from yWETH in a YFI vault, to staked YFI on another platform. As matters stand one…

In a recent article, Vitalki Buterin has offered an interesting analysis of trust. While I think his article is good starting point for discussion, I take issue with his definition of trust, as well as his vision for the way forward. What is Trust? According to Vitalik, we should understand trust as follows…

A position paper by EJ Spode (comments appreciated). Sept. 7, 2020 email: eulyssesjspode@gmail.com / twitter: @ej_spode Overview We would like blockchain governance to be representative of the many, not the few, but how is such a thing possible? …

On 20 July 2016, something happened that was arguably the most philosophically interesting event to take place in your lifetime or mine. On that day, after much deliberation and hand-wringing, in the aftermath of a multimillion-dollar swindle from his automated, algorithm-driven, supposedly foolproof corporation, Vitalik Buterin, then 22 years old…

By EJ Spode. After the recent Trump election in the United States and the not unrelated rise of fascism (or as the cool fascists say: alt-right), there was the expected onslaught of bad punditry attempting to answer the question, “What gave rise to this terrible thing?” And the attempted answers…