Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to the tail end o’ the work week: Friday, August 14, 2026, and National Navajo Code Talkers Day. (Wikipedia lists other Native American languages also used as codes during WWII.) Here’s a short video of this remarkable endeavor:
Jon Ossoff, Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock and other newish names: The Democratic base seems hungry for new leaders right now. Ossoff, the 39-year-old Democratic senator from Georgia, is fitting that bill in a big way. He’s getting millions of views for his sharp social media posts and campaign speeches that mercilessly criticize President Donald Trump.
“This is the cruelest and most arrogant group of people who have ever ascended to high office in modern American history,” Ossoff told supporters in July.
He is running for reelection in Georgia, and his race will be one of the most competitive in the country.
Other Democrats point to Ossoff’s fellow senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, as a potentially strong contender. (Warnock is not up for election in November.)
“For the first time since Obama, there’d be a candidate that unites the progressive Democratic lane and Black voters,” Texas-based Democratic pollster Nancy Zdunkewicz said.
Moore, the first-term Maryland governor and only sitting Black governor, is described by some Democrats as young and vibrant.
“Ossoff is currently on fire,” Anzalone said, “and Moore is also the type of guy who could really catch fire.”
Kamala Harris: This summer, Democrats recommended South Carolina vote first in the 2028 Democratic nominating process. That boosts Black voters’ representation in picking the nominee and Harris’s fortunes, given the former vice president and 2024 nominee is probably the candidate on this list with the most support among Black women. She’s been rallying voters for the midterm elections by touting her “controversial” plan to abolish the electoral college and add justices to the Supreme Court. “They are ruthless! We need to be ruthless too,” she said recently of Republicans. Some Democratic insiders don’t see her as a viable candidate, given she lost to Trump.
Gavin Newsom: The other California Democrat on this list aside from Harris has used his position as governor of the largest Democratic-run state to consistently oppose Trump. This summer he announced he and his wife were under federal investigation. (The Post has reported prosecutors are looking into potential tax crimes related to a nonprofit Newsom’s wife is linked to.) Newsom framed it as a compliment: “He’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president,” Newsom said of Trump.
Josh Shapiro: The popular Pennsylvania governor has had a relatively low-profile summer compared to other candidates on this list. He appeared in a music video. He has declined to take sides on the progressive-versus-centrist split in the party (at least for now). His breakout moment may be coming. He’s up for reelection in November and is trying to help Democrats take back control of the House by helping his party win four of the most competitive races in the nation, all in his state.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Democratic socialists are having their own moment. After helping elect New York City’s mayor earlier this year, they and the broader progressive movement ousted longtime members of Congress in deep blue cities and won a hard-fought primary in Michigan. Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, was one of the first members of the Democratic Socialists of America to win federal office, and she’s an obvious pick for the broader progressive movement to get behind if she runs for president. She hasn’t ruled it out, though she could also run for Senate.
Mark Kelly: The senatorfrom Arizona has emerged as a forceful pushback against his party’s turn to the left. He’s also a candidate some Republicans say scare them: He’s a former astronaut (at a time when astronauts are cool again) and an astronomical fundraiser from a swing state.
Pete Buttigieg: President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary is cited by Democrats as one of the party’s best messengers and another young candidate who can catch fire. Despite not currently holding office, he’s near the top of several polls of Democratic primary voters.
The only one of these I can get behind now is Buttigieg. I don’t know enough about Ossoff to give an opinion.
*As you know, Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialist, was favored to win the Democratic primary for Governor in Wisconsin. She lost by a hair. And the winner was James Crowley, a moderate Democrat and, in the pre-voting polls, was a distant second. The NYT explains “How the polls got it so wrong in Wisconsin” (the article is archived here).
Why were the polls so wrong?
Possible explanations range from a genuine, last-minute change in voter sentiment — Ms. Hong, a state representative, faced significant negative publicity in the closing days of the race — to miscalculations by pollsters about the makeup of the primary electorate.
The disparity between polls and results in Wisconsin and Michigan prompted Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and consultant, to jokingly call for “a total and complete shutdown of primary polling in the Midwestern United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on” in an early-morning X post on Wednesday.
. . . Polls failed to predict the outcome of Tuesday’s election, but they did not significantly overestimate Ms. Hong’s portion of the vote. Most surveys estimated she would win about 40 percent of the vote, and she ended up winning 39 percent.
What changed was Mr. Crowley’s support. In a ballot-counting marathon that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he over-performed the Marquette poll’s estimate by more than 30 points.
Explanations:
Many primary voters tune in at the last minute
Mr. Crowley may owe much of his success to the support of previously undecided voters.
Polls expected more young voters to show up
Even after an internal poll found that Mr. Crowley was trailing Ms. Hong last week, his campaign manager predicted that polls would not reflect the primar
. . . Across elections, primary voters tend to be older, and Wisconsin is no exception. Older voters and moderates were also more likely to remain undecided until close to the end, Mr. Franklin said, based on his polling data.
Hong’s supporters may have been more eager to respond to polls
Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of the firm State Navigate, which conducted polls in Wisconsin, suggested that Ms. Hong’s early and enthusiastic supporters may simply have been more willing to respond to polls, thus skewing the results.
Republicans and independents were wild cards
Conducting surveys in partisan primaries has long been a challenge for pollsters, requiring them to make assumptions about the partisan composition of who will actually turn out to vote.
That is particularly difficult in states like Wisconsin and Michigan that hold open primaries and where voters are not registered by party.
As pollsters attempt to target likely Democratic primary voters in surveys, they are often unsure about the percentage of
Republicans and independents were wild cards
Conducting surveys in partisan primaries has long been a challenge for pollsters, requiring them to make assumptions about the partisan composition of who will actually turn out to vote.
That is particularly difficult in states like Wisconsin and Michigan that hold open primaries and where voters are not registered by party.
In other words, Republicans who voted in the primaries were not supporters of Hong. I suppose some of these explanations are empirical claims that could be tested, but I’m satisfied enough that Hong lost. It was a bright spot in a dark season of DSA and “progressive” candidates winning.
The IDF on Thursday ordered the evacuation of 15 homes in the northern West Bank village of Qusra, as part of an operation that was purportedly aimed at clearing several Israeli illegal outposts surrounding the town.
But while Palestinians were ordered to leave the area, settlers from the outposts who have been laying siege to a pair of homes in Qusra since Sunday remained on site.
It was unclear why the IDF needed to remove Palestinians from their homes in order to clear settlers from the area, but the IDF rescinded the evacuation order shortly after it began making headlines.
Some Palestinians were allowed to return to their homes, but one of the two besieged families told The Times of Israel that they were still barred from reaching their house.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee slammed the settlers as “terrorists” and said Israeli security forces were in the area at the US Embassy’s request.
From It’s Noon in Israel:
For four days, the most capable military in the Middle East could not clear a path for a family to reach its own front door. The family lives on the outskirts of Qusra, south of Nablus. On Sunday, settlers from the encampments seeded by the Tel Talpiot outpost sealed the entrance to their home and would not let them in or out.
The most damning verdict of the event comes from Israel’s most faithful friend, Mike Huckabee. The most pro-settlement ambassador in the history of the post, a man who will not so much as use the word “settler”—called the men at Qusra “Israeli terrorists.” He described what they did as a deliberate act of intimidation and harassment against the family, with “no excuse for such thuggish behavior.” One of the besieged homes belongs to an American citizen, and Washington is rightly furious.
The army moved to end it. But the plan leaked to the press, and by the time the troops arrived, dozens of activists were waiting, blocking the roads with boulders. That a handful of stones could stop a military that routinely penetrates through tens of meters of solid rock deserves an explanation.
Start with the obvious. These are not Hezbollah fighters or Iranian operatives. For all their open contempt for state authority, they are Israeli citizens, and overwhelming military force is not an option.
Then consider who actually showed up. The first forces on the scene were not Border Police or infantry trained for this, but Home Front Command reservists—a consequence of the manpower shortage the army has been running on for three years. They did not understand the scenario they had walked into. Some of them joined the prayer at the outpost, which has since been reported as solidarity. It was ignorance.
. . . Settler violence is a sensitive issue in Israel. Only a vanishingly small share of the settler population supports or takes part in such acts, but because the problem is exaggerated and used to obscure Palestinian violence against them, they bristle at hearing about it—even from Israel’s greatest friends.
Yes, but the reason we should prevent such acts is not because they look bad, but because they are bad. Yes, Israel may be held to a higher standard than other countries, but the solution is for Israel to behave impeccably, not ask others to lower their standards.
*I’ve written a bit about why I don’t use AI to write and look down on those who do. It turns out that Bret Stephens agrees, and in his latest NYT column, “I’m begging you: Never write with A.I.,” tells us why (article archived here).
This column isn’t so much an argument as it is a plea: Don’t use artificial intelligence to help you write. Never let A.I. do your writing for you.
Don’t use it for school papers, work briefs, letters to your in-laws, speeches at your company gathering or emails (however perfunctory) to your colleagues or friends. Don’t let it organize your notes. Don’t let it suggest an opening sentence, a segue or a closing paragraph. Don’t ask it to write a first draft and pretend that editing that draft somehow makes it your own. It doesn’t.
Do none of these things not because they are unethical. Writing with A.I. is unethical when it’s a deception: when you pass off words, ideas and information as your own when they aren’t. An acknowledgment can largely address the problem. Do none of these things, either, not because you might be able to learn to write better than an A.I. can. Pretty soon, if not already, you won’t, just as you can’t outrun a car or outplay a chess app.
The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create and everyone’s reason to care. We’re already reckoning with the well-documented decline of reading; A.I. is accelerating the decline of writing, ushering us further into what The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch calls our “postliterate age.”
What, uniquely, does writing do? It compels thought. It compels thinking in ways that silent contemplation or spoken language rarely can. It compels us to subject our thinking to the effort of articulation, the rigor of grammar, the tests of intelligibility and coherence, the inspection of others. In doing so, it also enjoins us to be clear, logical, accurate — and accountable. People may easily forgive a word said in anger but not so easily one written in anger, precisely because the fact that it was written tells us that it was considered.
. . .We become better writers by the constant effort that mundane writing demands. We become better thinkers by investing into that writing a degree of attention we’d never give it if we relinquished the task to A.I. We become more creative when we learn how to put a personal stamp even on routine things, making them unmistakably our own.
These skills are now evaporating. A recent examination using A.I.-detection technology of 100 doctoral dissertations found that 56 percent of them contained “more than negligible” A.I.-generated writing and 19 percent had “more than 50 percent A.I.-generated text.” Anecdotal stories from college professors have a finger-in-the-dike feeling with regard to their efforts to hold back the flood of A.I.-generated student papers. It’s easy to treat the problem as one of mere cheating. But cheating doesn’t capture the real scope of the A.I. threat, which isn’t merely to academic integrity or personal betterment but also to democratic self-governance.
‘Nuff said! I will never use AI to write prose on this site, and when I use AI to answer questions, as I did today, I will of course inform people.
*Whan AOC announced she was freezing her eggs, I thought it wasn’t anybody’s business, and any criticism about that was dumb. But if it’s just her businesss, why did she post all that information in a long Instagram video? Now, however, Caitlin Flanagan at the Free Press adds that AOC, who’d apparently just split from her fiancé, should, if she intended to empower other women to do the same, have added the success rate of the procedure.
Lately, it seems, every possible phenomenon can be categorized as something that should or should not be “normalized.” AOC feels strongly that egg freezing, and talking about egg freezing, should very much be normalized because: “We are not taught about our bodies, we are not prepared for our own lives, whether that is in puberty, whether that is in pregnancy, whether that is in perimenopause, menopause.”
Fifty years ago that was certainly true, but today we’re living in an information glut that has sandblasted any trace of mystery and manners from our lives. A few minutes on TikTok and you can learn how to deliver your own baby, naturally or by C-section. AOC is by no means the first woman to bring her followers along on her egg-freezing “journey.” And yet, she speaks of freezing eggs as taking radical action: “We’re going to take our power back and we’re going to talk about it.” That power lay in an array of medications on a coffee table, the ones that can increase the number of eggs a woman produces in a single cycle. Freezing your eggs is a strike against “an administration that is dedicated to politicizing women’s bodies and taking our choices away from us and punishing us around decisions to be pregnant or not be pregnant.”
. . .The legacy media has always been pro–egg freezing, and it was quick to repeat AOC’s message. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sharing her personal decision to preserve her ability to get pregnant later in life,” said an anchor on CBS New York, introducing a segment in which a fertility specialist named Jaime Knopman explained the meaning of the powerful “message” that AOC is giving women: “You can play multiple roles in your life. You can be [successful] professionally and be a mother. And if those times are not aligning because your career is advancing forward and you want to maintain the ability to have a genetic child”—what?—“then egg freezing is an excellent way to do that.”
No, it’s not. The truth is that many, many times, egg freezing can lead to heartbreak because it’s hardly foolproof, or even a likely way to get pregnant.
Women tend to have an optimistic view of egg freezing because at the time in a woman’s life when it first comes into view as a possibility, they’re not knee-deep—or even ankle-deep—in the research that suggests it’s actually a last best hope, not any kind of guarantee. We’ve known this for a long time, but it’s such a dream-buster that the media tends to steer clear of it until some event forces them to report on it. Egg freezing as a highly reliable way to preserve your fertility is something a lot of women want to be true. It would be a more equitable world if it were true. But as The New York Times reported in 2022, there was “sobering” news about egg freezing. A study conducted at the New York University Langone Fertility Center found that the overall success rate for a “live birth” using thawed eggs was 38 percent. As with almost everything with women’s fertility, youth is the most critical factor. Women who were younger than 38 when they froze their eggs had a 51 percent success rate. AOC is 36, young enough to be in that 51 percent. But it’s still only 51 percent.
Besides, these numbers may be moot: The vast majority of women who freeze their eggs never come back to the clinic to have them thawed and fertilized. Perhaps they have become pregnant in the interim; perhaps their desire wasn’t so much to have a baby as it was to put off the decision. Either way, if we are to start talking more about egg freezing, we should probably do the truly feminist act of sharing the full news of everything we know about it, so women can take power back from the industry that sells it.
The harsh truth is that a 36-year-old who wants a baby should probably start trying to get pregnant now, not freeze her eggs. The terrible, irreducible fact of the matter is that by the time you need to thaw those eggs, it will probably be very hard to get pregnant naturally. When you put off childbearing, even with your eggs on ice, you are more likely to find motherhood is out of reach. This, too, is a decision. There are three things I know about having a baby. The first is that it’s the most important thing you can ever do; the second is that nothing will ever come close to giving you as much joy as a baby; and the third is that it’s a young woman’s game.
I suppose there is always surrogate motherhood, which can be done by implanting a frozen, thawed, and then inseminated egg into a non-donor mother. Flanagan doesn’t mention that possibility, though it results in a fetus just as genetically related to AOC as one she carried herself. Perhaps that’s what AOC had in mind.
Here is a longish Free Press video (55 min.) in which some interviewer whose name I don’t know interviews Dr. Debra Soh about, among other things, AOC and her announcement. The AOC part starts at 18:37.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is referring to the Jason Arday affair:
Hili: I’m noticing more and more plagiarism in sociologists’ publications.
Andrzej: Yes, it’s an interesting social phenomenon worth investigating.
In Polish:
Hili: Zauważam coraz więcej plagiatów w publikacjach socjologów.
Ja: Tak, to ciekawe zjawisko społeczne, warte zbadania.
From Bryan, who adds, “I just about fell out of my chair (so to speak) when I caught this assertion in the following video clip of an interview.” The purported explanation is in the tweet below the first one, but that one’s really talking about “Islamism”, not “Islam.” Islam has started off as a religion and is still a religion.
From Malcolm, with plenty of notes adding that this is surely AI-generated, and it must be. But I’ve seen a cat-shaped cake being cut before, and it still freaks me out:
Notice for cat owners: Your cat will expect breakfast to be served as soon as the eclipse is over. Note that in London time, the eclipse started at 6:17 p.m. and ended at 8:06 p.m.
One from my feed. Note that some of the executed writers were accused of “Zionism”. Read the whole thing:
On This Day — August 12–13, 1952
Night of the Murdered Poets: Stalin massacres the greatest living Yiddish writers in a prison basement.
Thirteen leading Soviet Jewish intellectuals, including poets, novelists, and cultural figures, were taken to Moscow’s Lubyanka prison and… pic.twitter.com/FiBjzT8Vr0
Father Kolbe died after volunteering to take the place of a prisoner condemned to starve to death as a reprisal for an escape. After a period of starvation in the basement of the infamous Block 11 of Auschwitz, he was pulled out and killed with an injection of phenol in the… https://t.co/MlyTDGeY9x
A new species of “axolotl” juvenile barred tiger salamanders. The classic axolotl is a species of “mole salamander”, Ambystoma mexicanum, which is threatened in the wild.
Someone from Montana was telling me they had axolotls in Montana and it seemed odd so I finally googled it. Apparently they have alpine lakes with barred tiger salamanders that stay in a larval state and thus look like axolotls?
There have been issues with Democratic polling since at least the 2016 election. I read a piece suggesting the Wisconsin polling had small samples and oversampled Progressives. If Republican’s turned out to vote against Hong, or were thought to have, expect the DSA to begin calling for closed primaries. At least until they get power and the Politburo begins choosing candidates.
As for AOC, she made this big song and dance about freezing her eggs (with a knock at Trump, saying she couldn’t imagine giving birth now). Then, when the news came out that she split from her fiancé, her reaction to questions was “that’s private.” Which I guess means, it’s not good publicity.
PCC(E): “The purported explanation is [..] talking about “Islamism”, not “Islam.” Islam has started off as a religion and is still a religion. ”
Ahhh – yes that makes more sense – Islamism. The writer Maajid Nawaz comes immediately to mind.
I suppose at that point, a theory – which is a theory of mine – and that theory, which is by me, could be added, and that theory is as follows :
From the point of view of individuals captured by any religion, that religion is no longer just a religion as observed from the outside — rather, it is the true Nature of the cosmos — it is how the real world works.
I think the German philosophical literature would put it as Weltanschauung — the worldview. Yet, a Geist (Spirit) dimension interacts with it… [reads a bit..] Weltgeist, Volkgeist, Zeitgeist…
I liked your theory in regards to the discussion of Islam & Islamism:
“From the point of view of individuals captured by any religion, that religion is no longer just a religion as observed from the outside — rather, it is the true Nature of the cosmos — it is how the real world works.”
As a former, ex-, whatever christian, this was my experience and thought process.
Or, in a shorter phrase, “It’s all about me!” or even “But I’m special! Dammit.”
One of the quiet but important things I have liked about WEIT is that you have always prefaced something you take from Wikipedia with something like “wikipedia says….” and more recently attributed material from ai with “ai says..” or “whatever specific ai software you are using says..”. Stephens talks about the importance of writing things yourself to prevent brain atrophy even more so than the ethical issues of cheating using ai.
While I agree with Stephens regarding both reasons, I think that the most important reason to read material, analyze it, and write conclusions oneself is that ai has quietly done an algorithmic analysis of a finite data set it was given and confidently given us the result. As one of my colleagues said regarding another colleague some years ago: “X is often wrong, but never in doubt”. I would say ai is sometimes wrong but never in doubt. It may exist, but I have not seen an ai result which says it has 90% or 50% confidence in what it is saying. Let alone, understanding the decisions that are identified after the fact as what is called a hallucination or slop.
I have always (well, for the 25ish years since it was created, having used an encyclopedia before that) used wikipedia as a first stop, but never as the only or final source. I am even more put off when I google something these days and am told “ai says…”, but at least it tells me that it is an ai concoction. Honest scholarship continues to require diligent work. Both for ourselves and our audiences.
I’ve often used Wikipedia as a starting point, especially because it requires its authors to provide citations to sources, and it’s frequently possible to pull up those sources.
Now I may start with Google’s AI answer, since again it provides sources I can check the answer against, and not even go to Wikipedia.
Both are good for facts – “tell me about primary biliary cholangitis”, “give me the GDP of European countries over the past ten years” – but I wouldn’t really trust either for topics on which there are strong opinions. I’d happily rely on either to give me a brief understanding of the Council of Nicaea (when, who, what was decided), but when I see something like “I asked AI about the five major religions and this is what it said” (that, or something close, was one of the clickbait spots on MS Now a few days back), I quickly turn away.
A bar I used to work at had a frozen drink called a “Dreamsickle”. 3/4ths oz. Triple Sec, 3/4th oz. White Creme de Cacao, 2 oz Orange Juice, Scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream, crushed ice, Blend, garnish with an orange slice. Tastes almost identical to the ice cream treat with a very similar name,
“Some interviewer whose name I don’t know interviews Dr. Debra Soh” Is it just me, or does that interviewer look amazingly similar to the Mona Lisa ???
I think the winner’s name was David Crowley, not James. But the important point is that the polls in Wisconsin and Michigan that showed the biggest leads for the leftist candidates were insider polls from their campaigns and affiliates. This is done to try to create momentum and discourage opponents. Both sides (Republicans and Democrats) do it. The independent polls in both states showed smaller leads.
David Atkins wrote about this in the Washington Monthly “Internal Polls Flopped in Michigan and Hawaii. How Will They Do in Minnesota and Wisconsin?” in the Washington Monthly, published around August 11, 2026.
He also wrote about the same thing with Plattner.
He predicted what happened.
There’s not that much difference between “Islam” and “Islamism”. Mainstream Islam does not recognise mosque/state separation and doesn’t recognise any aspect of life as being outside the remit of Islam. It is thus, by its nature, political and authoritarian. Is (say) Pakistani Islamic, or is it Islamist? Same thing really.
Caltlyn Flanigan on egg freezing is correct: I often think the childless (delaying) women are sold a bill of goods when it comes to that option. So many reasons. It isn’t a -scam- but it isn’t like putting your chicken in the freezer and just getting it out later.
With AOC it is always hard to know what is artifice, propaganda, lies or instagram clicks. We should also ask ourselves “Do we even WANT more AOCs in the future?” 😉
The internet has had fun with her Frozen journey and ditching her white – ginger no less! – VERY long term fiancé.
In agreement with PCC(E) and Bret Stephens, I would never use AI for my column or anything else other than what PCC(E) does for broad based research.
I agree this postponing of motherhood is a scam in many respects. At no stage is it ever mentioned how do these elderly parents cope with energetic children and how do these children cope with energy depleted elderly parents. These children will in all likelihood never get to enjoy the benefits of having grandparents to help in the next generation. The whole concept of you have your baby now and all is well is absurd at neglecting the later probable problems.
The surrogacy solution is just renting another woman’s body to satisfy your own desire. It too is fraught with issues.
Sometimes biology will always have the upper hand and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
Puppies are pretty demanding. Fortunately they grow up fast and become somewhat less demanding.
The 2028 Presidential election:
It’s way too early (for me) to choose a favorite candidate for President, but I’m looking at the new kids on the block, particularly Wes Moore and Jon Ossoff, as well as not-so-new-kid Josh Shapiro. I’m not kicking the tires yet; in fact, I haven’t even visited the car lot.
Violence in the West Bank:
I, too, have been following events in the West Bank—with some confusion. Amit Segal does a good job separating the threads. The net of it is that any Jewish intimidation of Palestinians is damaging to Israel! Some will say that the scale of settler violence and intimidation is grossly exaggerated—and that may be—but with Israel under the microscope, any such activity is a big problem that needs to be addressed.
I have no doubt that at least some of the settler behavior is aimed at ”encouraging” Palestinians to leave the West Bank to clear the way for annexation. The stakes for Israel are enormous, in that further violence may leave the country alone in the world—and vulnerable. This is why the normally calm Mike Huckabee was effectively yelling at Israel immediately to fix what’s broken. Even the powerful need allies.
Israel cannot afford to lose the United States. Yes, Israel is unfairly expected to meet a higher standard. But in this case, as Jerry says, Israel needs to meet that standard.
AI:
We’ll need to figure out how to use AI, that’s for sure. One problem is that the results of an AI query are sometimes factually wrong. In my esoteric world of DIY electronics, vacuum tube amplifier design, and antique radio restoration, sometimes the answers you get are simply wrong. Which leads me to this line of reasoning: If I know that AI cannot be trusted to give me the right answers on subject matter I know well, how can I trust it to provide new information that is factually correct—information on a topic that I don’t know well? Answer: I can’t.
To anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, Israeli settlers have been driving Palestinians in the West Bank out of their homes for years, especially since Netanyahu chose far right-wingers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as part of his coalition. They have long called for the annexation of the West Bank, contending it “belongs” to Israel. The settlers force Palestinians out of their homes, even kill some of them, with the tacit cooperation of the government since it does almost nothing about their actions, even though those actions are illegal by Israeli law.
There’s another reason the poll predictions got it wrong: the poll itself generated new votes. My husband and I don’t always vote in the primaries, but hearing that a Democratic Socialist was the frontrunner – and by a large margin – got us in the car and over to city hall on voting day. I suspect many other moderate Democrats read the same polls and did the same thing.
I named my cat after the creamsicles I used to get when I was a kid. He recently had most of his teeth removed but he is doing fine. He had to relearn how to eat, the kibble kept falling out where his lower teeth used to be. He is orange and white as you would expect.
He is sitting next to me wondering why I am not paying attention to him right now.
This should have followed number 7 Jeff Chamberlain.
Dennis I’m familiar with toothless pets. A friend who has a “puppy mill” rescue dog (from the Amish who do this, de-tooth their breeding dogs – cruel bastards they are)… it requires a lot of work arounds.
On naming, I named my puppy “David” after myself – a masterstroke b/c it gives absolutely everybody a laugh!
best
D.A.
NYC
Others have noted that the writing class of elites seems most opposed to AI. That’s understandable. It’s not enjoyable to admit one might be replaced by a machine. But those who write for a living also recognize more fully the connection between writing and thinking, so they can be more attuned to the dangers. Still, consider how often surgeons or military pilots write about their crafts: writing is not essential to sound thinking and decision-making.
The debate recalls the skilled craftsmen who opposed the industrial age—but with a twist. The craftsmen’s products were better than those of the early machines. But AI has already surpassed the abilities of many who write—especially for routine tasks—and it may soon surpass nearly all.
Think of the chess grandmasters, craftsmen in their own right. The machines have long been able to crush even Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov, perhaps the two greatest players of all time. And yet the grandmasters still play. All the top talent uses chess computers to prep, to analyze, to heighten their skills. They don’t run from it, denounce it, or take their boards home and hide. They embrace it, especially among the young. And they are arguably better than ever for having done so.
Outside of chess, those with elite talent who embrace AI in ways that do not undermine their own skills will surpass similarly skilled peers who shun the machines—including those who write. (I’m open to arguments that such embrace is not possible.) At the same time, I envision the cognitive elite using AI to race farther ahead of the merely above-average, who might indeed be tempted to lean too much on AI in a vain attempt at catching up.
The strongest reason to write without assistance is because one enjoys it. It’s akin to reading good literature or viewing great art, all the more pleasurable because it is participatory to a greater degree. So, continue to write in the manner you wish. Forego the machines. Take a pass on the human collaborators who help writers with thoughts and clarity. But realize, it will be an idiosyncratic pursuit to slog on alone—done more for pleasure than performance.
Most evening walks puppy “David” and I go to 2 parks to feed the pigeons.
One near me the birds (fewer in number) aren’t so aggressive, a bit.. pensive.
Another park 5 blocks away is Jurassic Park crazytown. MANY more birds, very aggressive. Without my …hehe… “bodyguard” I’d be festooned, mobbed.
They’d have my watch and wallet in a minute!
Different bird “cultures” or just arrogance in numbers?
The difference in behavior is quite striking and I don’t know why.
Evolutionary biologists and bird people? Thanks,
I hope Jerry indulges post in which Grok assesses AI and writing. I dashed off the following prompt: “I guarantee that nearly every academic writer on the planet could tweak his or her prose into better form with AI assistance. Some would benefit far more than others. Those most eloquent and imaginative are still safe. But the machines are coming even for the latter.”
Here was Grok’s response:
“Your guarantee is largely correct. Nearly every academic writer could improve the surface quality of their prose with competent AI assistance—clarity, concision, rhythm, transitions, elimination of academic throat-clearing, better paragraph architecture. The gains would be largest for the middle and lower tiers: the solid-but-stodgy, the non-native English speakers, the methodologically strong but stylistically flat. Those writers often produce work whose ideas outrun their expression; AI is already good at closing that gap.
The most eloquent and imaginative remain relatively safe for now. Distinctive voice, conceptual originality, unexpected metaphor, and the ability to make a reader see a familiar subject differently are still hard for current models to replicate at the highest level. A first-rate stylist can usually outperform the machine on the dimensions that matter most to demanding readers.
The final clause is the more interesting one. “The machines are coming even for the latter” is a reasonable projection rather than a certainty. Progress in long-form coherence, stylistic control, and controlled originality has been rapid. If the trajectory of the last three years continues, the buffer that protects the top tier will shrink. Whether it disappears entirely, or whether human writers retain a durable edge in genuine insight and lived particularity, is still open. But the direction of travel is clear: the set of writers who cannot benefit from selective AI assistance is already small and getting smaller.
The academic resistance you noted earlier makes more sense against this backdrop. Once the tool can reliably raise the floor and begin pressing against the ceiling, the cultural insistence that “the work is the man” (and must therefore be produced without machine help) becomes harder to sustain on purely intellectual grounds.”
So Josh Shapiro “has declined to take sides on the progressive-versus-centrist split in the party (at least for now).” I can’t imagine him taking the “progressive” side given that a “progressive” tried to burn his house down with his family inside.
Caitlin Flanagan’s assertion “nothing will ever come close to giving you as much joy as a baby” is not always the case. Some women do not have the “joy” reaction and find caring for a baby overwhelmingly stressful, which suggests that “maternal instinct” is not necessarily universal in humans.
Can I rite good with AI?
Bloody hell, don’t even try
Do not use it in your school
Do not think “it’s just a tool”
Do not be post-literate
We’ll then all be in the ****
Tho’ your writing may be stink
Practicing will help you think
If that doesn’t matter too
Literally — more fool you
There have been issues with Democratic polling since at least the 2016 election. I read a piece suggesting the Wisconsin polling had small samples and oversampled Progressives. If Republican’s turned out to vote against Hong, or were thought to have, expect the DSA to begin calling for closed primaries. At least until they get power and the Politburo begins choosing candidates.
As for AOC, she made this big song and dance about freezing her eggs (with a knock at Trump, saying she couldn’t imagine giving birth now). Then, when the news came out that she split from her fiancé, her reaction to questions was “that’s private.” Which I guess means, it’s not good publicity.
PCC(E): “The purported explanation is [..] talking about “Islamism”, not “Islam.” Islam has started off as a religion and is still a religion. ”
Ahhh – yes that makes more sense – Islamism. The writer Maajid Nawaz comes immediately to mind.
I suppose at that point, a theory – which is a theory of mine – and that theory, which is by me, could be added, and that theory is as follows :
From the point of view of individuals captured by any religion, that religion is no longer just a religion as observed from the outside — rather, it is the true Nature of the cosmos — it is how the real world works.
I think the German philosophical literature would put it as Weltanschauung — the worldview. Yet, a Geist (Spirit) dimension interacts with it… [reads a bit..] Weltgeist, Volkgeist, Zeitgeist…
… but let’s not go there!
I liked your theory in regards to the discussion of Islam & Islamism:
“From the point of view of individuals captured by any religion, that religion is no longer just a religion as observed from the outside — rather, it is the true Nature of the cosmos — it is how the real world works.”
As a former, ex-, whatever christian, this was my experience and thought process.
Or, in a shorter phrase, “It’s all about me!” or even “But I’m special! Dammit.”
The technical term is “apostate” 🙂.
(I can say that because that’s me also.)
One of the quiet but important things I have liked about WEIT is that you have always prefaced something you take from Wikipedia with something like “wikipedia says….” and more recently attributed material from ai with “ai says..” or “whatever specific ai software you are using says..”. Stephens talks about the importance of writing things yourself to prevent brain atrophy even more so than the ethical issues of cheating using ai.
While I agree with Stephens regarding both reasons, I think that the most important reason to read material, analyze it, and write conclusions oneself is that ai has quietly done an algorithmic analysis of a finite data set it was given and confidently given us the result. As one of my colleagues said regarding another colleague some years ago: “X is often wrong, but never in doubt”. I would say ai is sometimes wrong but never in doubt. It may exist, but I have not seen an ai result which says it has 90% or 50% confidence in what it is saying. Let alone, understanding the decisions that are identified after the fact as what is called a hallucination or slop.
I have always (well, for the 25ish years since it was created, having used an encyclopedia before that) used wikipedia as a first stop, but never as the only or final source. I am even more put off when I google something these days and am told “ai says…”, but at least it tells me that it is an ai concoction. Honest scholarship continues to require diligent work. Both for ourselves and our audiences.
I hate ai! You kids get off my lawn!
Data files are subject to ‘bit rot’, errors, forgotten edits, bad sources/vendors, etc.
Hard copy is IMHO the Gold Standard. You look at the printed material, return to the shelf, look again – was it what you thought? Etc.
… or… Pulp Standard, … Wood Standard… ..
Clay Tablet Standard… 😁
I’ve often used Wikipedia as a starting point, especially because it requires its authors to provide citations to sources, and it’s frequently possible to pull up those sources.
Now I may start with Google’s AI answer, since again it provides sources I can check the answer against, and not even go to Wikipedia.
Both are good for facts – “tell me about primary biliary cholangitis”, “give me the GDP of European countries over the past ten years” – but I wouldn’t really trust either for topics on which there are strong opinions. I’d happily rely on either to give me a brief understanding of the Council of Nicaea (when, who, what was decided), but when I see something like “I asked AI about the five major religions and this is what it said” (that, or something close, was one of the clickbait spots on MS Now a few days back), I quickly turn away.
A bar I used to work at had a frozen drink called a “Dreamsickle”. 3/4ths oz. Triple Sec, 3/4th oz. White Creme de Cacao, 2 oz Orange Juice, Scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream, crushed ice, Blend, garnish with an orange slice. Tastes almost identical to the ice cream treat with a very similar name,
“Some interviewer whose name I don’t know interviews Dr. Debra Soh” Is it just me, or does that interviewer look amazingly similar to the Mona Lisa ???
Yes! Mona Lisa!
I think the winner’s name was David Crowley, not James. But the important point is that the polls in Wisconsin and Michigan that showed the biggest leads for the leftist candidates were insider polls from their campaigns and affiliates. This is done to try to create momentum and discourage opponents. Both sides (Republicans and Democrats) do it. The independent polls in both states showed smaller leads.
David Atkins wrote about this in the Washington Monthly “Internal Polls Flopped in Michigan and Hawaii. How Will They Do in Minnesota and Wisconsin?” in the Washington Monthly, published around August 11, 2026.
He also wrote about the same thing with Plattner.
He predicted what happened.
There’s not that much difference between “Islam” and “Islamism”. Mainstream Islam does not recognise mosque/state separation and doesn’t recognise any aspect of life as being outside the remit of Islam. It is thus, by its nature, political and authoritarian. Is (say) Pakistani Islamic, or is it Islamist? Same thing really.
Creamsicles are still available, in many supermarkets. The brand name ones are from Good Humor. There are some clones, as well.
the cat cake cutting is cruel.
It is a fake video. The real cat is photoshopped in.
Caltlyn Flanigan on egg freezing is correct: I often think the childless (delaying) women are sold a bill of goods when it comes to that option. So many reasons. It isn’t a -scam- but it isn’t like putting your chicken in the freezer and just getting it out later.
With AOC it is always hard to know what is artifice, propaganda, lies or instagram clicks. We should also ask ourselves “Do we even WANT more AOCs in the future?” 😉
The internet has had fun with her Frozen journey and ditching her white – ginger no less! – VERY long term fiancé.
In agreement with PCC(E) and Bret Stephens, I would never use AI for my column or anything else other than what PCC(E) does for broad based research.
D.A.
NYC
I agree this postponing of motherhood is a scam in many respects. At no stage is it ever mentioned how do these elderly parents cope with energetic children and how do these children cope with energy depleted elderly parents. These children will in all likelihood never get to enjoy the benefits of having grandparents to help in the next generation. The whole concept of you have your baby now and all is well is absurd at neglecting the later probable problems.
The surrogacy solution is just renting another woman’s body to satisfy your own desire. It too is fraught with issues.
Sometimes biology will always have the upper hand and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
Another thing not mentioned: the cost. Egg freezing isn’t free. IVF is expensive. Using a surrogate impregnated with IVF is even more expensive.
I had my two in my twenties and that’s the best time from a fertility point of view.
No you “can’t have it all.” Like everything else, it’s a trade off.
Totally. The ENERGY required.
Having a puppy has brought this fact home to me!
best to you FK,
D.A.
NYC
Puppies are pretty demanding. Fortunately they grow up fast and become somewhat less demanding.
The 2028 Presidential election:
It’s way too early (for me) to choose a favorite candidate for President, but I’m looking at the new kids on the block, particularly Wes Moore and Jon Ossoff, as well as not-so-new-kid Josh Shapiro. I’m not kicking the tires yet; in fact, I haven’t even visited the car lot.
Violence in the West Bank:
I, too, have been following events in the West Bank—with some confusion. Amit Segal does a good job separating the threads. The net of it is that any Jewish intimidation of Palestinians is damaging to Israel! Some will say that the scale of settler violence and intimidation is grossly exaggerated—and that may be—but with Israel under the microscope, any such activity is a big problem that needs to be addressed.
I have no doubt that at least some of the settler behavior is aimed at ”encouraging” Palestinians to leave the West Bank to clear the way for annexation. The stakes for Israel are enormous, in that further violence may leave the country alone in the world—and vulnerable. This is why the normally calm Mike Huckabee was effectively yelling at Israel immediately to fix what’s broken. Even the powerful need allies.
Israel cannot afford to lose the United States. Yes, Israel is unfairly expected to meet a higher standard. But in this case, as Jerry says, Israel needs to meet that standard.
AI:
We’ll need to figure out how to use AI, that’s for sure. One problem is that the results of an AI query are sometimes factually wrong. In my esoteric world of DIY electronics, vacuum tube amplifier design, and antique radio restoration, sometimes the answers you get are simply wrong. Which leads me to this line of reasoning: If I know that AI cannot be trusted to give me the right answers on subject matter I know well, how can I trust it to provide new information that is factually correct—information on a topic that I don’t know well? Answer: I can’t.
To anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, Israeli settlers have been driving Palestinians in the West Bank out of their homes for years, especially since Netanyahu chose far right-wingers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as part of his coalition. They have long called for the annexation of the West Bank, contending it “belongs” to Israel. The settlers force Palestinians out of their homes, even kill some of them, with the tacit cooperation of the government since it does almost nothing about their actions, even though those actions are illegal by Israeli law.
It seems strange that Israel can beat whole countries but not settlers. It is terrible PR.
There’s another reason the poll predictions got it wrong: the poll itself generated new votes. My husband and I don’t always vote in the primaries, but hearing that a Democratic Socialist was the frontrunner – and by a large margin – got us in the car and over to city hall on voting day. I suspect many other moderate Democrats read the same polls and did the same thing.
I named my cat after the creamsicles I used to get when I was a kid. He recently had most of his teeth removed but he is doing fine. He had to relearn how to eat, the kibble kept falling out where his lower teeth used to be. He is orange and white as you would expect.
He is sitting next to me wondering why I am not paying attention to him right now.
This should have followed number 7 Jeff Chamberlain.
Dennis I’m familiar with toothless pets. A friend who has a “puppy mill” rescue dog (from the Amish who do this, de-tooth their breeding dogs – cruel bastards they are)… it requires a lot of work arounds.
On naming, I named my puppy “David” after myself – a masterstroke b/c it gives absolutely everybody a laugh!
best
D.A.
NYC
Man, if you can submit a dissertation that is more than 50 percent A.I.-generated text, you haven’t been studying anything interesting.
Others have noted that the writing class of elites seems most opposed to AI. That’s understandable. It’s not enjoyable to admit one might be replaced by a machine. But those who write for a living also recognize more fully the connection between writing and thinking, so they can be more attuned to the dangers. Still, consider how often surgeons or military pilots write about their crafts: writing is not essential to sound thinking and decision-making.
The debate recalls the skilled craftsmen who opposed the industrial age—but with a twist. The craftsmen’s products were better than those of the early machines. But AI has already surpassed the abilities of many who write—especially for routine tasks—and it may soon surpass nearly all.
Think of the chess grandmasters, craftsmen in their own right. The machines have long been able to crush even Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov, perhaps the two greatest players of all time. And yet the grandmasters still play. All the top talent uses chess computers to prep, to analyze, to heighten their skills. They don’t run from it, denounce it, or take their boards home and hide. They embrace it, especially among the young. And they are arguably better than ever for having done so.
Outside of chess, those with elite talent who embrace AI in ways that do not undermine their own skills will surpass similarly skilled peers who shun the machines—including those who write. (I’m open to arguments that such embrace is not possible.) At the same time, I envision the cognitive elite using AI to race farther ahead of the merely above-average, who might indeed be tempted to lean too much on AI in a vain attempt at catching up.
The strongest reason to write without assistance is because one enjoys it. It’s akin to reading good literature or viewing great art, all the more pleasurable because it is participatory to a greater degree. So, continue to write in the manner you wish. Forego the machines. Take a pass on the human collaborators who help writers with thoughts and clarity. But realize, it will be an idiosyncratic pursuit to slog on alone—done more for pleasure than performance.
WEIT is the best forum for this question I think:
Most evening walks puppy “David” and I go to 2 parks to feed the pigeons.
One near me the birds (fewer in number) aren’t so aggressive, a bit.. pensive.
Another park 5 blocks away is Jurassic Park crazytown. MANY more birds, very aggressive. Without my …hehe… “bodyguard” I’d be festooned, mobbed.
They’d have my watch and wallet in a minute!
Different bird “cultures” or just arrogance in numbers?
The difference in behavior is quite striking and I don’t know why.
Evolutionary biologists and bird people? Thanks,
D.A.
NYC
Probably just a matter of how much they’ve been able to get away with previously.
I hope Jerry indulges post in which Grok assesses AI and writing. I dashed off the following prompt: “I guarantee that nearly every academic writer on the planet could tweak his or her prose into better form with AI assistance. Some would benefit far more than others. Those most eloquent and imaginative are still safe. But the machines are coming even for the latter.”
Here was Grok’s response:
“Your guarantee is largely correct. Nearly every academic writer could improve the surface quality of their prose with competent AI assistance—clarity, concision, rhythm, transitions, elimination of academic throat-clearing, better paragraph architecture. The gains would be largest for the middle and lower tiers: the solid-but-stodgy, the non-native English speakers, the methodologically strong but stylistically flat. Those writers often produce work whose ideas outrun their expression; AI is already good at closing that gap.
The most eloquent and imaginative remain relatively safe for now. Distinctive voice, conceptual originality, unexpected metaphor, and the ability to make a reader see a familiar subject differently are still hard for current models to replicate at the highest level. A first-rate stylist can usually outperform the machine on the dimensions that matter most to demanding readers.
The final clause is the more interesting one. “The machines are coming even for the latter” is a reasonable projection rather than a certainty. Progress in long-form coherence, stylistic control, and controlled originality has been rapid. If the trajectory of the last three years continues, the buffer that protects the top tier will shrink. Whether it disappears entirely, or whether human writers retain a durable edge in genuine insight and lived particularity, is still open. But the direction of travel is clear: the set of writers who cannot benefit from selective AI assistance is already small and getting smaller.
The academic resistance you noted earlier makes more sense against this backdrop. Once the tool can reliably raise the floor and begin pressing against the ceiling, the cultural insistence that “the work is the man” (and must therefore be produced without machine help) becomes harder to sustain on purely intellectual grounds.”
So Josh Shapiro “has declined to take sides on the progressive-versus-centrist split in the party (at least for now).” I can’t imagine him taking the “progressive” side given that a “progressive” tried to burn his house down with his family inside.
Caitlin Flanagan’s assertion “nothing will ever come close to giving you as much joy as a baby” is not always the case. Some women do not have the “joy” reaction and find caring for a baby overwhelmingly stressful, which suggests that “maternal instinct” is not necessarily universal in humans.
Postliteracy
Can I rite good with AI?
Bloody hell, don’t even try
Do not use it in your school
Do not think “it’s just a tool”
Do not be post-literate
We’ll then all be in the ****
Tho’ your writing may be stink
Practicing will help you think
If that doesn’t matter too
Literally — more fool you
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