Peter Gratton

Peter Gratton

@petergratton.bsky.social

Peter Gratton, PhD, is an editor at Investopedia, book author, and professor of philosophy. He covers political theory, technology, finance, and political economy. Views are definitely my own.

2.2K followers781 following5.5K posts

Peter Gratton reposted

Stephen Bush
@stephenkb.bsky.social

My most joyless leftwing opinion is that any homework that is, explicitly and obviously, homework for parents is bad pedagogy, unfair on parents, particularly on mothers, bad use of the teacher's time and bad for social mobility.

ghost malone ergo propter bones@proptermalone.bsky.social

also and respectfully "the teacher sent home a prompt for you to come up with three things that describe your kid" is not some beautiful opportunity for human connection and growth it is a mildly annoying task

Peter Gratton reposted

ProPublica
@propublica.org

We’ve reported on how easily people have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hurdles to open a school were so low, could we do it? And what would we learn along the way?

propublica.orgAlmost Anyone Can Start a Private School. We Put This to the Test.Our reporting has shown how easily people — some with questionable backgrounds — have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hur...

Peter Gratton reposted

Jeremy Diamond ☕️
@dmnd.me

Trying to imagine the inverse of this where people assume that all Americans are cartoon versions of Amish people

jamelle@jamellebouie.net

the other thing is that these people — who are, again, racists — have this image of modern africa as hopelessly backwards. but the entire continent is a pressure cooker of technological innovation! its economies and populations are growing incredibly fast!

Peter Gratton
@petergratton.bsky.social

This comes perilously close to just being “Orange man fantasizes about two American cities being nuked—critics say that’s bad.”

Forbes@forbes.com

Trump’s earlier comments about Iran potentially striking cities in California drew strong backlash from Democratic leaders from the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

forbes.comTrump Clarifies ‘Let Them Hit Los Angeles’ Iran War Comment—Says He Won’t ‘Let That Happen’Trump’s earlier comments about Iran potentially striking cities in California drew strong backlash from Democratic leaders from the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Peter Gratton reposted

Ann Monster Lipton
@annmlipton.bsky.social

The article points out the political economy. Donate stock to the accounts and then you can point to all the kids who would be harmed by a new regulatory proposal

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com

Trump Accounts look entirely different after the Treasury Department turned on auto-enrollment and enabled stock donations. on.wsj.com/4rSmPHx

Peter Gratton
@petergratton.bsky.social

NBER: authors of the 29% of STEM dissertations written at least in part by AI are less likely to fare well on the job market. www.nber.org/papers/w35859

nber.orgHow Heavily Are PhD Students Offloading Their Scientific Writing to AI? Evidence from US STEM PhD DissertationsFounded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
Peter Gratton
@petergratton.bsky.social

Really monkey's paw thing being a philosophy PhD and watching people again and again try to reverse engineer a whole set of debates they know nothing about.

Tommaso Sciortino@sciortino.bsky.social

Current AI model are almost certainly not conscious. But bad arguments are still bad. Math is how *we* understand LLMs. But these systems are real physical machines made out of real atoms following the same laws of physics human brains follow.

Peter Gratton
@petergratton.bsky.social

Scammers now using AI to keep going in coursework to get aid semester after semester. (Imagine starting as a fraudster but getting a degree in counseling or something.) www.investopedia.com/congress-tak...

investopedia.comFinancial Aid Scams: ‘Ghost Students’ Transition From Disappearing to GraduatingColleges and the government are fighting the evolving problem of “ghost students,” trying to prevent scammers from receiving financial aid while keeping that money accessible to actual students.

Peter Gratton reposted

Don Moynihan
@donmoyn.bsky.social
BK. Titanji@boghuma.bsky.social

"I’m saying that I would personally mouth-pipette a solution of pure chloroform right now, today, in front of God and the NIH Director and the entire Office of Research Safety, if it meant a young scientist in my department could get a payline above 20%." substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.comOpinion: I Miss When The NIH Payline Was 40% And We All Mouth-Pipetted PhenolBy Dr. Douglas R. Waverly, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Yale University

Peter Gratton reposted

Tom Ellison
@123tomellison.bsky.social

Imagine the vibes in the student newspaper bullpen during these email exchanges. Delectable.

Jeff Sharlet@jeffsharlet.bsky.social

The provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...

thedartmouth.comOp-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector PangramSchnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”

Peter Gratton reposted

open borders now
@radtranslib.bsky.social

Carlo Rosseli wrote the book Liberal Socialism while he was imprisoned on Lipari. By Mussolini.

grave grace 🪦@garbagefriend.bsky.social

Its pretty funny how many writers for this publication describe themselves as "liberal socialists" without realizing that sounds like how Mussolini described his politics. Think of the optics, folks!

Peter Gratton reposted

Dan Davies
@dsquareddigest.bsky.social

Replying to @kjhealy.co

I think the twist in the show is that half of the prisoners drop out halfway through and set up a startup prison experiment of their own

Peter Gratton reposted

Stephen Nuñez
@socio-steve.bsky.social

Bringing Emily Wilson back for one final job.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

JD Vance: "I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a trojan horse."

Peter Gratton reposted

Nolen Gertz
@ethicistforhire.bsky.social

Breaking the law once makes you a criminal. Breaking the law as a business model makes you of "national interest"... #NihilismAndTechnology

Kashmir Hill@kashhill.bsky.social

"The Justice Department told a Manhattan federal court that it was in the national interest for the judge to find that OpenAI did not violate copyright law when it used articles by The New York Times and other publishers to develop artificial intelligence systems." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/t...

nytimes.comJustice Dept. Sides With OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Suit (Gift Article)The department argued in a court filing that OpenAI legally used articles by The New York Times to develop A.I., adding that national security depended on American tech dominance.

Peter Gratton reposted

Ana Marie Cox
@anamariecox.com

Extremely funny that this retracted study claimed to prove that you can’t trust people to police their own behavior without external consequences.

KetAnthropic JoshAI@ketanjoshi.co

Who would like to guess why UK, US and European media outlets are not publishing 3,000 articles per minute about this www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

dukechronicle.com‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraudNew evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...

Peter Gratton reposted

Micah
@rincewind.run

donald trump is about to preside over one of the all time midterm shellackings for an incumbent party in the united states and somehow he did less electoral damage to american conservatives than canadian ones

Polling Canada@canadianpolling.bsky.social

(Models Available For Subscribers) Federal Polling: LPC: 49% (+5) CPC: 29% (-12) NDP: 9% (+3) BQ: 5% (-1) Others: 8% Spark Insights / August 30, 2026 / n=6535 / Online (% Change w 2025 Federal Election) Visit @338canada.bsky.social for polling details: 338canada.com

Peter Gratton reposted

mcc
@dryad.technology

This is the single biggest physics discovery of my entire lifetime. Or something's wrong with one of the cables. One of the two

Michael Greshko@michaelgreshko.bsky.social

BREAKING: The world's most sensitive dark matter detector has announced it has spotted something it can't easily explain: a single event that's tantalizingly consistent with a type of theorized dark matter particle. Very early days yet, but pretty wild. 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

science.orgWorld’s biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particleIt’s far too early to declare a discovery, physicists with the LZ detector say

Peter Gratton reposted

Matt Novak
@paleofuture.bsky.social

This is pretty fucking wild. I had assumed in a worst case scenario he would target blue zip codes and toss ballots based on technicalities but this is even worse than I imagined.

SpacePrez@spaceprez.bsky.social

The polls are super bad for Trump so he's definitely going to try to cheat www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/u...

nytimes.comWhistle-Blower Says USPS Is Secretly Proceeding on Trump’s Mail Voting Plan Before MidtermsA report detailed “grave concerns” that a new system being rushed into use by the U.S. Postal Service could imperil millions of mail ballots ahead of the midterm elections.

Peter Gratton reposted

Hansi Lo Wang (he/him)
@hansilowang.bsky.social

SCOOP: After the Census Bureau issued a highly unusual report tied to a President Trump-aligned think tank, the bureau’s parent agency, the Commerce Department, cut language banning political interference from its scientific integrity policy, @npr.org has learned www.npr.org/2026/08/31/n...

npr.orgTrump officials cut political interference ban after unusual Census Bureau reportAfter the Census Bureau issued a report tied to a Trump-aligned think tank, the bureau's parent agency cut language banning political interference from its scientific integrity policy, NPR learned.
Peter Gratton
@petergratton.bsky.social

While on the topic—if the point is that a political party is making things onerous to get people to dislike programs as inefficient, why help that message instead of on the various ways private firms waste your time and are incredibly inefficient? www.investopedia.com/how-the-anno...

investopedia.comHow the 'Annoyance Economy' Is Costing Americans Billions in Hidden Fees and Wasted TimeSpam calls, junk fees, and customer service hassles are draining $165 billion a year from Americans. Here’s what you can do about it.