Bryan W. Van Norden
@BryanVanNorden
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Leading scholar of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism; opinions my own; retweets are not endorsements. he/his
Joined May 2013
Read the controversial new book: Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto by Bryan W. Van Norden! Available NOW via @amazon !
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Tools for cheating on the Chinese imperial civil service examinations--from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911): cheat book, cheat vest, and cheat socks.
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Short story: I had a @YouTube channel where I uploaded dozens of video lectures I created, covering Chinese philosophy from Confucius through Xi Jinping. YouTube deleted the channel without warning, and (apparently) erased all my content without backup. 1/.
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Tools for cheating on the Chinese imperial civil service examinations--from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911): cheat book, cheat vest, and cheat socks.
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The main problem I have with pop-Nietzscheans is that they consistently misidentify which of these two is a genuine Übermensch and which is motivated by "ressentiment."
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However, I'm sharing my horror story so that others know what can happen if you trust YouTube and Google to use ordinary common sense and responsibly safeguard your audio-visual material. 14/.
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My entire lecture series has been deleted because one careless bot told another careless bot to do so. 12/.
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This is the most horrifying description of education I have ever read.
Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow’s global workforce.
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Long story: It's hard to get any detailed answers from an actual person at YouTube (which is owned by @Google) but as far as I can tell, here is what happened in more detail. 2/.
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I'm surprisingly calm about all this. I had been considering re-doing the lectures because I now know better how to record them and I've updated the content for a few of the lectures. I'm in negotiation with @HackettPub to host the revised lectures. 13/.
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. so without warning to me an internal YouTube bot closed my channel and erased my content. To protest a copyright strike, you have to log into your channel, but of course I cannot do that because they deleted my channel. 8/.
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I also uploaded a series of clips from a 1934 film, "Java Head," which is historically important because it is an early film about an interracial marriage, and stars the first great Chinese-American actress, Anna May Wong. 4/.
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Here is a dead link to where the lecture series was. END THREAD 15/15
Video lecture series: Confucius through Mao
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Most of the content on my channel was created by me, or is playlists of material on other channels relevant to my teaching. However, because I teach about "Orientalism". 3/.
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My Chinese Philosophy Class Lectures series covered Confucians like Mengzi, Daoists like Zhuangzi, the Classic of Changes (I Ching), Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, East Asian Buddhism including Huayan and Zen, Neo-Confucianism, Chinese feminism. 10/.
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. and Chinese responses to modernity, including the May Fourth Movement, Communism, and recent trends like Xi Jinping's Confucian socialism. The videos were arranged in historical order with cross-reference cards, and had been used and praised by people all over the world. 11/.
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YouTube's policy is that an account is disabled after three "copyright strikes" against them. When you get one copyright strike, you get a warning. However, because I had more than three clips from "Java Head," I immediately got more than three strikes. 7/.
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. and they've been on my channel for months without any warnings from YouTube about potential problems, but recently an external bot owned by a company called "LeakID" found the clips and made a copyright claim against them to YouTube. 6/.
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"Java Head" is almost impossible to find, either online or on DVD (I found the video hosted on a free Facebook page), so I wanted to make some curated clips available for my students. I uploaded the clips last year. 5/.
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I find it very frustrating that some of my colleagues in other humanities departments are teaching students to write convoluted and almost incomprehensible essays instead of simple, clear, direct prose. It's like they are teaching them to write a parody of academic-ese.
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I did find email addresses to appeal directly to YouTube and Google: YouTube said I did not have a legitimate response to the copyright strikes, and Google said they could not help me because my account had been deleted and cannot be restored. 9/.
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I don't say it out loud very often, but I am often very angry about how many mediocre people are remarkably successful for no apparent reason other than being white and saying what many other white people want to hear.
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VICTORY! MY CHANNEL IS BACK UP! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE SOLIDARITY EVERYONE SHOWED ME! Overnight YouTube restored my channel and simply removed the disputed clips. I will post a thread with details and lessons learned later, but for now I am backing up my files! THANK YOU ALL!
Short story: I had a @YouTube channel where I uploaded dozens of video lectures I created, covering Chinese philosophy from Confucius through Xi Jinping. YouTube deleted the channel without warning, and (apparently) erased all my content without backup. 1/.
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I flunked kindergarten: literally had to re-do it. In first grade I got straight Cs. And this is my office door today. So don't put too much pressure on your kids about school.
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There's nothing wrong with disageeing with the Pope, or anyone else, about Christianity, but it takes a special kind of delusional arrogance to condescend to the Pope, as if he were a seminarian confused about an elementary tenet of his faith.
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"Americans treat the rest of the world to the shameful sight of one of the most accomplished scientists in one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world having to be guarded against unhinged cultists in his own country." @RadioFreeTom
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@TeamYouTube Read the thread, @TeamYouTube! I received no warning prior to disabling my account, I have been unable to determine who even allegedly owns the copyright to the 1934 film "Java Head," I volunteered to remove the links, but was told by Google the account cannot be restored.
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Someone changed my mind about policing based on a simple question: when you think of positive impressions you have of police, how many were from film and television? Now think ONLY about times you or people you personally know have actually interacted with police.
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Far-right Catholics do not seem to realize that their current Evangelical political allies do not regard them as genuine Christians.
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Guess who just got a coffee mug with oracle bone characters on it? This guy!
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White guy on left waves AR-15 in face of innocents, taken alive. Black guy on right running away, shot in back. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM NOW?
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Folks, I cannot stress this enough: pick your cult leader carefully.
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@neilsinhababu "Uh oh! He's against the bounds of sense. She hits him with a thesis, then an antithesis. Now a synthesis! It could be all over.".
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Good news!.
VICTORY! MY CHANNEL IS BACK UP! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE SOLIDARITY EVERYONE SHOWED ME! Overnight YouTube restored my channel and simply removed the disputed clips. I will post a thread with details and lessons learned later, but for now I am backing up my files! THANK YOU ALL!
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@Irish_Atheist My distant cousin Warner M. Van Norden was an early 20th century opponent of anti-Chinese bigotry who wrote a book to showcase the achievements of Chinese immigrants.
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The story that Alexander the Great's mistress Phyllis was Aristotle's dominatrix was popular in the late middle ages and early Renaissance. It was supposedly a cautionary tale about seductive women, but was probably also a reflection of burgeoning anti-Aristotelianism.
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Just a reminder that I I routinely share my PowerPoint lectures, syllabi, and other teaching materials for Chinese philosophy with others. Let me know if you are interested in any of the following but are having trouble accessing or downloading anything. Links follow. 1/10.
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You're missing the key point. His dress was part of the scam. His look shouts: "I'm a boy genius! I'm too outside-the-box brilliant to obey social conventions! I see an easy way to make money The Suits missed!".
I dont like dress formalities but seeing this dork swindle investors while dressed in basically what are pajamas solely because hes a white boy in tech is making me like suits and ties again.
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I confess that I sent this photo from the Acropolis Museum to my friends and said it showed someone "hellas thicc." For this heinous pun I accept whatever punishment the community deems appropriate.
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I'm teaching a new course for the first time today, and I am nervous about it going well. I am posting about this because I think we need to normalize feeling anxious or unsure about yourself. Even people who are "successful" feel this way.
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The exams lasted days, and the examinees stayed in stalls like these.
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I'm working on a proposal for a "popular" book about philosophy, so I'm reviewing the current best seller lists. It is shocking (and disheartening) how many books that are absolute trash are selling very well.
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If this were Obama, conservative headlines would read: @POTUS BOWS TO SAUDI KING!!! #maga #trumptrain #Deplorable
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Reminder: Fewer than 10% of doctoral programs in the English-speaking world offer any training in East Asian, South Asian, Indigenous American, or African philosophy. Thus, few scholars work in these areas. Thus, ignorance of these fields continues.
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Actually, I am a Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University, one of the top universities in China. Among the courses I have taught are Comparative Anglo-Confucian Political Philosophy.
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In China, hosting a documentary about Laozi. My life is very. interesting.
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Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.
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My Wife: That book looks interesting. Was he murdered by his wife?. Me: No, and I'm worried that that was your first guess.
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My Wife: You're kind of attention-seeking. Me: I am a teacher. My literal job is standing in front of people and then evaluating THEM on how much attention they paid to me.
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If anyone is interested in Chinese philosophy, here is a link to the (newly restored) playlist of video lectures. (I am also downloading them and will be backing them up somewhere else.).
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This has been a week of many losses. Our cat, Ms. Pinky Ann Van Norden, 2011-2021.
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Daddy Dog and Baby Dog, both recovering from eye surgery, are showing off their matching protective eyewear.
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Well, imagine a man who once had a good reputation as a biologist, but who awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into an intolerant philistine and pseudo-scientific huckster. .
Kafka’s Metamorphosis is called a major work of literature. Why? If it’s SF it’s bad SF. If, like Animal Farm, it’s an allegory, an allegory of what? Scholarly answers range from pretentious Freudian to far-fetched feminist. I don’t get it. Where are the Emperor’s clothes?.
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"Studying Philosophy Is Useless: Except to Scientists, Businesspeople, Attorneys, Physicians, Clergy, Artists, Influencers, Activists, War Heroes, and Citizens of a Democracy". by Prof Bryan Van Norden.
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Dear Secondary School Teachers — Please stop teaching students to not use "I" in writing, and please stop making them take Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs seriously. Thanks! — College Teachers.
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I was turned down by Harvard both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student. How is this a story?.
Kaitlyn Younger applied to five Ivy League schools, plus Stanford and Berkeley, with a 1550 on her SAT. None accepted her.
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Analytic Philosopher: Too much of Chinese philosophy is commentary, which is not real philosophy. Me: And what is your area of philosophical research?.Analytic Philosopher: Davidsonian semantics.
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YouTuber @ElvisTheAlienTV points out the irony that @LoganPaul does not understand @nopemovie which is @JordanPeele's parody of people like Logan Paul. 😂🤣😂🤣.
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Me: "Do you think I count as a micro-influencer?". My Wife: "I think you count as a macro-annoyer.".
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Conservatives: Foucault has credibly been accused of pedophilia, therefore the entire left is discredited. Also Conservatives: It is the ad hominem fallacy to even mention that Thomas Jefferson raped his slaves.
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I'm taking one for the team by reading this book. It is mostly gossip about the personal lives of philosophers they dislike, like here where they "explain" Hegel by quoting Schopenhauer's catty complaints and Popper's casual reductionism.
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I think many young people today are spiritually lost because modernity has left them without a sense of the purpose of life.
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True Story: At a multidisciplinary conference, an MD gave a talk about "the myth of female orgasms," and in Q&A actually provided as "evidence" the fact that none of his three wives (!) had ever had an orgasm.
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Apparently the way to refute Kant is to call his work "garbage," mock a sainted Pope for reading him in the original German, and draw a caricature of him with a big nose and a cowlick. Touché, sir!.
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Can someone do this but with good books?.
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The right has a vague sense that anything other than naive, ahistorical, direct realism is a philosophical threat, and given how fragile their position is, that's kind of true.
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My sense is that most doctoral programs in philosophy in the US have abandoned language requirements. This reflects the mistaken beliefs that the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophy outside the Anglophone world are worthless.
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One of my best students told me this is how they imagined me on the internet.
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As a result of the notoriety from the YouTube issue, I am now technically a "nano-influencer." 🤣
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Everyone considering a career in philosophy should read these paragraphs (published in 1983, when things were not as bad).
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Have the people who object to criticizing Kathleen Stock on the grounds of "Academic Freedom" actually read Mill's On Liberty? One of Mill's main points is that we have a right to publicly criticize what others say and do, even if they don't like being criticized.
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As someone who went from a small town public high school to an Ivy League college, then a PhD at one of the top universities in the world, and has lectured and taught at dozens of great schools—they were already too full of lazy, rich, white kids like G. W. Bush and Trump.
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I wish so much that everyone who is interested in philosophical Daoism in general or Zhuangzi in particular would listen to this podcast episode.
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And not a single East Asian or South Asian philosopher on the list!.
For #WorldPhilosophyDay 2023, eleven leading thinkers nominate philosophers you probably haven't heard of, but you should know about - from Ancient Greece all the way to the present day. Tap here to read their suggestions:
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Getting laser treatment in a few minutes for PCO (complication of cataract surgery). Thoughts and prayers welcome!
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If you enjoy my tweet about tools for cheating on the Chinese imperial civil service examinations, you will probably also be interested in my article about Chinese philosophy:
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I think Richard Feynman had a bad influence on the American physics community by convincing many of them that it was "cool" to be a philistine about philosophy.
I actually think something like this is true - our best thinkers tend to have a variety of interests across what we'd call the humanities/sciences divide. Doesn't mean they're good at everything, just means they tend to take more than one thing seriously.
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So you are admitting that you have not read the work they are commenting on, yet you accept--on faith--that what they are saying is accurate. Ok.
Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay (‘Cynical Theories’) have done us a service. They sacrificed themselves to read, on behalf of the rest of us, the stupefyingly boring, pretentious & deliberately unclear literature of postmodern metabullshit. Now we can get on with real science.
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Should I respond to the article in a recent issue of Philosophy East and West that critiques my work? I'm not sure I should, and here's why.
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