It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. Theodore Roosevelt said that in Paris in 1910. The credit, he said, belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by … Read more
Competence and compliance are not the same standard. Competence is the ability to do the work. Compliance is the ability to perform the language, attitudes, and procedures the institution prefers. Most organizations still say they reward the first. In practice they increasingly reward the second. The person who does the work well and refuses the … Read more
When institutions claim to value inquiry but treat unwelcome conclusions as intolerable, whether those conclusions are mistaken or true, what remains of the freedom to think? That is the question. Most people say they support free speech. What they usually mean is the right to be wrong. That right matters. Without room to say something … Read more
Classical liberalism and modern liberalism use the same word and do not mean the same thing. Classical liberalism, in its serious 18th- and 19th-century form, treats liberty as freedom from interference. The person judges, chooses, and acts. Rights are recognized, not granted. Government is limited so that free agency is not turned into an object … Read more
Free speech is the good. Safety is not a reason to give it up. The demand to limit speech in the name of safety, emotional safety, psychological safety, or protection from offense is a demand to stop the testing of claims. Once speech can be restricted because it unsettles someone, the power to decide what … Read more
AI cognitive offloading is the use of an external system to do intellectual work a person would otherwise have to do. A calculator offloads arithmetic. A search engine offloads memory. GPS offloads the map in your head. AI offloads writing, analysis, planning, research, and the early stages of reasoning. The work still gets done. The … Read more
You have probably watched a familiar word change meaning in public use, sometimes quite quickly. A term that once described a specific action or condition gets expanded, narrowed, or inverted so that it better serves a preferred conclusion. The shift is rarely announced as a formal redefinition. It is simply repeated until the older sense … Read more
ou see it all over. Institutions talk a big game about inquiry while punishing it out of sight. Places praise openness and then build quiet systems to decide what can be said. Language keeps sliding just beyond the thing it’s supposed to name. Questions that were ordinary yesterday somehow cost you today. All you did … Read more