Founding Editor @the_point_mag
New York, NY
Joined November 2013
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"There is only one political virtue common to the ancient Greeks and the first sentences of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was not mentioned once in our secretary of state’s address." @manaafsari on Rubio in Athens realclearpolitics.com/articl…
Jon Baskin retweeted
Word on the street is that if the Harbach novel doesn't sell at least 200k copies, it will be the official end of the literary man. Lots of pressure on old Chad. Doesn't look good right now.
Jon Baskin retweeted
"It is not much more or less than the rediscovery of the ancient ambition to help the downtrodden, updated for a ruling class accustomed to statistics. Like any religious practice, it can be more or less stringent or bonkers, depending on who you ask." thepointmag.com/examined-lif…
From his major essay in The New Critic, on AI, SF, EA, safety, mythology, and "the great battle over our civilization" substack.com/home/post/p-221…
"AI safety researchers are heavily vetted, heavily autistic, heavily sincere, and heavily cracked. Many of the movements’ leaders are well-known polygamists... The public success of their movement would mean the sacrifice of an entire way of life." thenewcritic.com/p/coxon-day
Jon Baskin retweeted
Tomorrow is the start of the H.S.A. conference. Plenary Address by Robert Pippin at 5:30pm, "Hegel After Heidegger"! More info at hegel.org.
Jon Baskin retweeted
Grateful for the chance to argue that when it comes to AI monitoring in schools, no matter how high the cost of the purported “erosion of trust” may be, it will always be dwarfed by the cost of not ensuring students read, think and write themselves.
To steer them away from AI professors are tethering themselves to students like never before.
It's a fraught battle, one that they say undermines their relationships with students, eats up tons of time, and limits the freedom undergrads need to become fully formed adults. chroni.cl/4B50yuf
Jon Baskin retweeted
"Woodworking, building computers, photography — why is so much of Francis Fukuyama’s memoir concerned with his hobbies?": thepointmag.com/criticism/fl…
Jon Baskin retweeted
I wrote a few words about the 2024 Chicago White Sox, now officially the worst team in modern baseball history thepointmag.com/forms-of-lif…
Jon Baskin retweeted
Anton Jäger with a new piece on what comes after hyperpolitics: jacobin.com/2026/10/hyperpol…
Jon Baskin retweeted
“I’d started to dismiss my own inner life, somehow, almost unconsciously, because it is just the water in which we swim,” Meghan O’Gieblyn tells John Palattella. “But there are real costs to discounting the mind and what happens there.”
thepointmag.com/dialogue/rej…
Jon Baskin retweeted
We already have them because most people's jobs place no real demands on their intellect. Places like @BklynInstitute, @CatherineProj, and the Matthew Strother Center give people a place to think together with others in ways that mostly aren't available elsewhere.
Jon Baskin retweeted
On the campaign trail and behind the scenes with Hasan Piker as he blew up into the most volatile and argued over force in American politics. My story in the latest issue of @nymag
nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…
Jon Baskin retweeted
For @NYMag, I wrote about how college campuses are reacting to Cornell: nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…
Jon Baskin retweeted
thepointmag.com/criticism/fl…
I've written about my relationship to the books of Francis Fukuyama for @the_point_mag. And about my flower arranging hobby.
Proud to report that there is now a Public Thinking minor at @UChicago. A milestone for the program and something we hope will inspire more creative thinking at universities about the relationship between humanistic education and public discourse
"Fukuyama is indirectly a student of the political philosopher Leo Strauss, and any good Straussian knows that when an author makes a seemingly unjustifiable writing decision, he’s really trying to point you to a secret." thepointmag.com/criticism/fl…
Jon Baskin retweeted
I strongly agree with the "anti-AI humanism" finely depicted here.
Even if AI (implausibly) were made perfectly safe and led to no job loss, I would oppose it. Because I see no future in which it does not leave us ignorant, passive, uncreative, & atomized.
newyorker.com/culture/the-le…
