Today is Election Day in the United States, and many people will have the close presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on their minds.
So I thought I’d share my predictions, and I invite readers to do so as well.
But…
Not predictions about the elections, though.
Obsessing about election results is a terrible way to spend the day. In fact, for most people, today is probably the worst possible day to spend thinking about election results (apart from whatever thinking about it that’s involved in voting, if you’re eligible to do so and haven’t voted already), since it’s too late for such thoughts to lead to any action that will affect the outcome of the election, and it’s too early to know what the outcome will be.
There are plenty of things to make predictions about besides today’s election results, though, and I encourage you to share up to three predictions per comment. I’ll go first.
- Us, them… someday we’re all going to die.
- We can see from the fact that the problem of induction hasn’t been solved that it never will be.
- You will see or hear or feel something beautiful today.
Your turn…
1. American citizens have turned a corner and will strive for more open, fair, and honest dialogue across partisan lines in the coming years, individually and collectively, and this will put pressure on old and new media and information outlets to meet a growing demand for nonpartisan reporting and bipartisan political action.
2. Owing to this striving on the part of the American people, the social and political institutions of American life will undergo a period of adaptive adjustment over the next decade, but they will survive and flourish.
3. It will be harder and harder for more and more people to take the fanatical extremists of any political or ideological persuasion in the U.S. seriously, and this will have knock-on effects across the globe.
Hey, a fella can hope in his predictions, right?
I’ll have a Czech Budweiser in celebration of the American Experiment today, in solidarity with Americans everywhere. Every one of them.
I predict that Tommy will need drinky very soon!
Okay, now THIS is epic!
1.) I predict that you will read this prediction.
2.) I predict that I will be right about my last prediction.
3.) I predict that even now you are rolling your eyes and thinking that philosophers tell some of the worst jokes.
You got 2/3, only missed the last one!
1/3, if you read “last prediction” as “the final prediction in this list” rather than as “the previous prediction in this list.” Checkmate, soothsayers!
1. I predict that either Harris or Trump will win the election.
2. I predict that both of them will claim they won.
3. I predict that we will stop talking about this in about 2-3 months
I predict others will also fail to read the instructions
Public philosophy will be what saves philosophy at institutions of higher education where it might have otherwise been under threat (so I’m not talking about places with graduate programs that have very strong research profiles, which are safe).
This is impossible to operationalize, I know. But the thinking is that public philosophy can give philosophy a kind of cultural cache that can help sustain or supplement the idea that it is important. And cultural cache affects curricula, at least at the margins.
Since keeping philosophy alive at those institutions where it’s threatened is important for many reasons (including reasons relevant to those doing philosophy in very secure, highly polished, and tall ivory towers), we should support and encourage public philosophy.
1. No living philosopher writing in English will still be part of the canon in 200 years. 2a. We will not see anything resembling AGI in my lifetime. 2b. This will not shut down the EA “if you don’t give us money you will get the robot devil but if you do you can get the robot messiah” grift. 3. “Materialism” and “physicalism” in any meaningful senses of those terms is false since whatever the scientists of 3024 will say about the stuff that makes up the universe it will be as different from what we say about it is from Aristotelian science.