prior probability

In addition to my usual fare of scholarly papers and erudite essays, below are some of the books that I am reading (or in the case of item #4, re-reading) this fall:

1. Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology (W. W. Norton, 2017)
2. Amartya Sen, Home in the World: A Memoir (Allen Lane, 2021)
3. Leo Strauss & Joseph Cropsey (editors), History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1987)
4. William Strunk & E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (Pearson, 2000)

Delete your academia.edu accounts, if you have not done so already. Here’s why. See also the screenshot of their super-scammy updated user agreement below:

1. Julie Bort, OpenAI’s research on AI models deliberately lying is wild, Tech Crunch (18 September 2025).
2. Nils Köbis, et al., Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour, Nature (17 September 2025).
3. u/MinuteDistribution31, Why ChatGPT isn’t a good tool for education?, Reddit (21 September 2025).

Bonus link: ChatGPT is eating the world

1. What is the real reason he resigned from his post after only 17 months? Was he forced out?
2. Why is this motherfucker still being paid $1 million dollars a year?

Is Al a scam, a potential genocidal maniac, a wizard with magical powers, or just meh? (See below.) What is your take on Al?

1. A.I. as scam. See Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI con (Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, 26 June 2025): Bender and Hanna explain why A.I. in education simply leads to the perfunctory performance of educational tasks without the fulfillment of their original purpose: learning.
2. A.I. as magic. See Ethan Mollick, On working with wizards (Substack, 11 Sept. 2025): Mollick explains why the best A.I. models are now indistinguishable from magic.
3. A.I. as meh. See David Wallace-Wells, A.I. may be just kind of ordinary (N.Y. Times, 20 Aug. 2025): Wallace-Wells explains why A.I. is more like electricity or the Internet, once-revolutionary technologies that are now normal and taken for granted.
4. A.I. as genocidal maniac. See Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, Can we survive A.I.? (Sam Harris podcast, 16 Sept. 2025): Yudkowsky and Soares explain why A.I. will destroy the world.

That is the title of this erudite 68-page law review article by Eric R. Claeys, a law professor at George Mason University. (See also Professor Claeys’s book with the same title.) Alas, Professor Claeys makes no mention of the greatest theft of natural property rights of all time: the spring 2020 lockdown orders by State governments in the U.S. in response to the spread of the Wuhan virus.

Pam “The-Epstein-Client-List-Is-on-My-Desk” Bondi needs to divulge her law school transcripts so we can verify whether she is even qualified for the position of Attorney General. While discussing the assassination of Charlie Kirk on an episode of “The Katie Miller Podcast“, Bondi announced that hate speech is now a crime. It’s not; hate speech is protected speech under the First Amendment. More details are available here, via the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Franz Gürtner was Hitler’s first Minister of Justice from 1933 until his death in 1941. (He was also Justice Minister in the governments of Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher.) Among other things, Gürtner helped Hitler find legal justification for the Nazi’s repression of political dissidents. For more details about Gürtner’s role in justifying Adolf Hitler’s consolidation of power, see pp. 71-73 of the 2013 book The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice.

In addition to the Detroit Institute of Art, the Motown Museum, and the Fox Theater, my wife Sydjia and I also visited a hidden gem: the original Ford factory on Piquette Avenue (Wikipedia page here), the birthplace of the first mass-produced automobile, the revolutionary Ford Model T. In its heyday, Henry Ford’s historic factory employed over 1,000 workers (men and women!) from all over the world. Highly recommended! Our tour guide, Jerry Elmy, is a local treasure. (Among other things, we learned that the origins of such terms and phrases as cranky, self-starter, and want a lift? can be traced back to these first-generation cars.)