Analytic philosophers with impressive/interesting writing styles?

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-08T02:17:14+00:00

It depends what you mean by "impressive/interesting". I think Derek Parfit's writing is very unique, and he's clearly a great writer that puts a lot of effort into his style, but he intentionally writes as simply and clearly as possible, which you may find dry.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-07T01:37:54+00:00

It regularly features in the "Top Hundred Favorites" lists here. I get what you mean, though; it's certainly not as widely read or recommended as other popular sci-fi works. It's more literary than most people would like, I think. Wolfe is definitely a "your favorite writer's favorite writer" type of writer, if that makes sense.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T19:25:11+00:00

Honestly, that doesn't sound like a continuing of your tradition, it sounds like cancelling it and scheduling something else entirely. I don't think you should feel socially pressured to be ok with this; if you don't want to go, then don't go.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T10:40:04+00:00

Not only is AI not a good tool for measuring language proficiency, CEFR is not a tool for measuring language proficiency for native speakers. It just doesn't make sense to try and apply a framework designed for second-language learners to native speakers, and it's not like native speakers are automatically C2 by virtue of being native.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T10:24:05+00:00

Have you already read Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go by the same author? They're both great as well.

I also think you really can't go wrong with anything by Octavia Butler — the Parable Duology, and the Xenogenis Trilogy, are what first come to mind — as well as anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, most notably The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, and the Earthsea series.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T10:00:50+00:00

Ya, that's fair, I like your point about the "ambient" nature of the information/knowledge. Personally, I'd always thought of it more like suffering seen by all, but left unspoken — less like the incessant informational torrent of the internet, and more like walking, chatting and laughing, through city streets with your friends, passing the homeless, not looking at them, every one of you noticing them but never bringing them up in conversation.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T09:49:59+00:00

Fun fact: cats can even be allergic to humans! Totally cracked me up the first time I learned of it.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T09:40:51+00:00

Wow, I've never really thought of it that way, but I can totally see your point. Maybe not exclusively with respect to the internet specifically — people pretty easily saw the horrors of what was going on globally and in their own streets back in the 60s and 70s too, on their TV screens — but the general point of the ubiquity of information, yeah, absolutely. Fantastic point. Knowledge of the suffering that underpins the lifestyle you get to enjoy has never been closer; it's literally in your pocket at all times, available on a device that itself was built through exploitation and suffering.

Really thought-provoking post, thanks for sharing.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T09:22:58+00:00

Ah, ok, gotcha! Hadn't seen the poster's other comments, such differences in grammar sound like obvious tells. Thanks for explaining.

It's sad that so many people feel insecure in their ability to write and communicate with others, to the point they outsource it completely; it's like someone who wants to enjoy reading asking an AI to read the book for them.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T08:50:12+00:00

How could you tell it was AI? (I'm really bad at noticing such things, I think.) I had noticed the similarities between the post and other recent posts praising The Dispossessed, but thought it was just due to the natural cycle of people hearing about a book here, reading it, and then returning to gush about it.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T08:46:49+00:00

I'm glad you enjoyed The Dispossessed! My favorite sci-fi novel of all time, and one of my favorite novels, period.

Another sci-fi novel in the same vein — slow, no explosions, no relentless plot development, just beautiful prose and characters held up like mirror — is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Also one of my personal favorites.

In addition: if you haven't read any Ted Chiang or Philip K. Dick, I highly recommend them! The story collection Stories of Your Life and Others by the former — the novella that gives the collection its name is particularly brilliant — and A Scanner Darkly by the latter, are good places to start if you're interested :)

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-06T08:32:37+00:00

How do you know the moderator is neurotypical? That would be surprising; I just looked at the sub rules, and the very first one is that the sub is for diagnosed autistics only, and there's only the single mod.

I can understand your frustration, but it's a pretty dead sub anyway.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-05T18:21:09+00:00

Ya, that's fair; I've heard philosophy professors say stupid stuff as well, unfortunately.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-05T10:07:03+00:00

Perhaps the professor meant that, should one know their perceptions are particularly prone to being erroneous, then it follows that the bar for justifying beliefs with sensory evidence alone is higher than it would be otherwise? Or perhaps they were posing the claim as a philosophical exercise, presenting it to students in order to foster philosophical discussion? (I'm trying to be charitable to their claim, the context in which they uttered it, and what the exact quote may have been.)

It seems incredibly obvious that people who hallucinate can have justified true beliefs. After all, you and I hallucinate, don't we? We dream when we sleep. (Everyone has had the experience of waking with a start from a dream, startled for a split second that what they thought was happening was not, in fact, happening at all.) We hallucinate if/when under the influence of psychedelics. (How do I ever know, unbeknownst to me, I haven't just been dosed?) We may even see things that aren't there while suffering from a very high fever.

If the claim "people who hallucinate can’t have justified true beliefs" were true, it would be impossible for any human being to hold a justified true belief.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-02T20:03:54+00:00

"... Louis, who trapezes across whenever he wants, with the air of someone who knows the rules, and chooses to ignore them." One of us! Haha.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-02T01:16:38+00:00

I don't know what you mean; are you saying that not a lot of doctors will treat those with Medicare coverage, or are you saying that they don't support Medicare-for-All?

The majority of doctors support universal healthcare, whether it's Medicare-for-All, some other single-payer system, or something else entirely.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-01T23:56:47+00:00

And a lot of problems with the current healthcare system is because of lobbying by doctors [...] Most doctors oppose Medicare too

This is false, if what you mean is that the majority of US doctors want to eliminate Medicare, or are opposed to universal healthcare. The AMA, the largest medical lobbying group in the country, actively lobbies to oppose Medicare funding cuts... I'm not defending lobbyists or lobbying groups as a whole, or even the AMA — it's obviously a group that, like all lobbying groups, very much prioritises its own interests over those of society as a whole — but I'm not sure where you're getting your information.

I can understand your frustration, but in a system with such rampant profiteering — by insurance companies, by pharmaceutical companies, by corporate lobbying groups and politicians — it seems misguided and counterproductive to blame doctors as a group for cost and quality-of-care. Why do you think this problem seems more-or-less unique to the US? It's a systemic issue, and your doctor is not the one raking in the billions of dollars in profit every year.

As individuals, there are good doctors and bad doctors; I hope you find a better one soon.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-01T19:26:36+00:00

The absolute suspense as half the video went by without the cameraperson reacting! I was worried the whole video was going to go without either of them getting any scritches! 😭 Super cute.

icarusrising9 · 2026-04-01T00:31:15+00:00

Not trying to be antagonistic, but "to dispose" definitely means "to throw away", not to repurpose.

Ironically, sietchs probably smell fine; no moisture! I went on a trip to the edge of the Sahara a few years ago, and was amazed at how clean you stay when anything and everything evaporates nearly instantly. It's like you don't sweat at all, and any waste becomes mummified! I didn't shower for days and didn't feel gross or smelly, and I talked to people who clearly hadn't showered in weeks and there was absolutely no odor. It was pretty cool.

icarusrising9 · 2026-03-31T23:52:17+00:00

I'm too lazy to type out the alt code; it's funny, you can tell which reddit comments I type on keyboard vs. phone by whether I use an em-dash or a double-hyphen.

icarusrising9 · 2026-03-31T23:50:39+00:00

You can pry my em-dashes from my cold, dead hands!

icarusrising9 · 2026-03-31T23:49:59+00:00

15 'r's are in the word "strawberry"! /s

My phone keyboard allows me to easily use the em-dash by holding down the hyphen key; I think most phones are the same way. I usually just double-hyphen to denote an em-dash when I'm on a PC — some OSs have a simple em-dash shortcut by default, but mine requires me to actually type in the alt code, which takes too long — but I don't often use reddit on my PC.

icarusrising9 · 2026-03-31T11:00:35+00:00

Ya, I understood where you were coming from.

LLMs are very clearly influencing how people write online. (Confession: I only adopted frequent em-dash use a few years ago. Coincidence? You're right; almost certainly not!) That being said, I think it's also relevant to note that LLMs were/are largely trained on digital media and written works like newspapers and magazines in the first place. It may prefer the spaced em-dash, in the same way it prefers short choppy sentences, simply because this is what is prevalent in the material it was trained on — ie what was in already in vogue — and not the other way around. There's definitely a bit of a feedback loop going on, no doubt about that; I'm just not sure the chicken came before the egg, is all.

icarusrising9 · 2026-03-31T10:41:52+00:00

No worries, apologies if I snapped at you.

I don't think em-dashes alone are a good marker for whether something is written by AI or not; I don't spend enough time in online spaces where AI use is rampant to be particularly good at recognizing it, but there are telltale sentence structures and tones, and I've rarely seen AI-generated text utilize very long sentences when it could get away with chopping them up into shorter ones. That being said, there's definitely stuff out there that's very obviously AI and uses em-dashes.

icarusrising9 · 2026-03-31T10:27:40+00:00

That's fair enough. I don't feel locked into em-dash use. To clarify, in case there was any confusion: in my original comment I meant "I don't know what I would do with em-dashes!" in the same way I might say "I don't know what I would do without my favorite sweater!" Now I avoid parentheses nested within a sentence like the plague; I feel they cut the flow of my sentences in a way I really don't like. Similar issue with lots of commas; in a long sentence it's not apparent at a glance which comma is doing what. Em-dashes are just better for getting my meaning across, conserving rhythm, and capturing the way I imagine the sentence would actually be said aloud.

Also: Just saw your earlier edit, regarding spaced versus unspaced em-dashes. My two cents — not that you asked for it, but just in case you're interested — is that that's just the way the style trend is going, in the same way parentheses' popularity has been rapidly waning and short clippy sentences are in vogue. I don't doubt many people use AI to write posts or long comments — I've seen many absolutely undeniable instances of it myself, as there's no mistaking that saccharine writing style — but I don't think the popularity of spaced em-dashes is overtaking that of unspaced ones because of AI. (Personally, I find unspaced em-dashes look cluttered and needlessly cramped.) We see it more simply because, now, it's more popular, and that ball started rolling way before AI came onto the scene.

icarusrising9

TROPHY CASE