My book, Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny, has now officially been published! My hope is that it will be useful to anyone with an interest in anarchism, libertarianism, socialism, or classic questions in political philosophy more generally.

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But this means that when you then hear a semi-professional-quality rendition of a song sung in Homer's voice, it seems like it must be transcendence, with pure emotion being conveyed, undiminished by any perception that the singing is the product of intention and practice.

So, how does this help explain why people are moved by the Homer video? My suggestion is that Homer is deeply linked in people's minds with amateurism. One of the defining features of his character is that he is not skilled at anything!.

Alternatively, the professional might not look like the way that we expect professionals to look. For example, children are perceived as non-professionals, giving them an edge in singing contests. And, notoriously, Susan Boyle also falls into this category.

Crucially, we can sometimes trick our brains into thinking that a professional is an amateur to get that extra rush of transcendence. Most straightforwardly, you can do this by putting a professional in a disguise and in a non-professional context:

The obvious answer is that amateur singing just hits different! It can give you (or, at least, me) chills in a way that professionals rarely can. And this is because professional singing comes across as skilled/practiced rather than transcendent.

This account explains a number of otherwise puzzling phenomena. For example, why do people love watching amateur singers when they could watch more polished professionals instead? Why watch American Idol/The Voice/Karaoke when you could watch a recorded concert?.

However, this experience of transcendence is lost when singing is professionalized. If you believe that someone is particularly well-trained in the craft, their voice still sounds good, but it loses that special effect. It seems practiced rather than an authentic show of emotion.

At least part of the emotional response to music (in particular live music) comes from the sense that you are witnessing something *transcendent*—that you are seeing a normal person become a conduit for some powerful disembodied emotion or voice.

I think I actually have a general explanation for this:

Second, the premise that smart people are contingently interested in philosophy also seems questionable and isn’t argued for. It seems plausible that the distinctive subject matter of philosophy uniquely appeals to smart people.

While I might be sympathetic to the broader point here, it’s worth noting, first, that there is evidence that taking philosophy courses improves students’ test scores relative to their peers, so there is some treatment effect, not just a selection effect:

A plausible account of coercion is that you coerce someone when you remove an option that would otherwise be available to them to get them to opt for a disfavored option. So, nature can't coerce. But capitalists can by denying access to needed resources.

When people were posting about the worst songs ever written, David Shor asked ChatGPT what the listed songs all had in common and then just posted screenshots of its answer as a reply to the original tweet:

The fact that far-right parties around the world are gravitating toward the anti-vax position suggests that the Right's embrace of the view is non-accidental.

Hmm, maybe it wasn't electing moderate Democrats after all:

RT @RealVanJackson: US and EU economic sanctions have contributed to 38 million deaths between 1971 and 2021. F*cking insane .

RT @weakinstrument: The Trump Administration has cancelled the research grant of America's foremost mathematician, in case you had any ling….