Caro Flores

Assistant prof in philosophy @ U Lisboa. I write about why it's hard to change people's minds, social identities, ideology, ignorance, etc. Beyond philosophy and psychology, I'm interested in feminism, radical politics and history, wonky public policy (esp. About housing, cities, and education), technology and politics, and getting lost in Wikipedia. (EN/PT/ES)

Web: www.carolinaflores.org
Pronouns: they/she

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Last Notes

2026-02-17 17:25:05 UTC

Is it important to have a unified narrative for your life? This wonderful piece argues it can be better to think of life as a series of eras.
"Eras lower the stakes without draining the meaning. And in lowering the stakes, they make room for a much-needed playfulness and flexibility."
https://nickriggle.substack.com/p/the-eras-tour-through-life
#philosophy

2026-01-27 15:12:38 UTC

If you've heard terms like "affordances", "scaffolding", "extended mind", or "niche construction" thrown around but don't quite know what they mean, this paper is an extremely helpful reference.
And these concepts are very useful for understanding problems in our relationship with #technology - this piece gives lots of nice examples.
https://philpapers.org/rec/LIACEC-2
#philosophy #psychology

2026-01-25 20:14:21 UTC

"If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as if he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror"
Arendt wrote this about mid-century totalitarianism, but it also sounds like it's about #Venezuela to #minneapolis.
#philosophy #politics #usa

2026-01-21 12:14:49 UTC

For social media moguls, "the fact that relationships are irreducibly qualitative is a serious bug. So Zuck... incinerated all the qualitative elements by quantizing them, and then did math on the dubious residue that remained".
Hence the replacement of friends with content creators that maximize Z's numbers, says @npub1fdr…lvhs
But there is a more intimate danger, I think 1/2
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/19/billionaire-solipsism/
#tech #technology

2026-01-10 16:47:52 UTC

"Sexual “agency” differs from sexual consent in much the same way that a walkable neighborhood differs from a gated community. If consent is our right to briefly release other people from their obligation not to touch us, agency is our right to live under conditions where we can freely pursue our desires."
Go read this wonderful piece on sex, consent...and their surprising connections with urban design!
https://archive.is/20260105114837/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/01/12/how-consent-can-and-cannot-help-us-have-better-sex
#philosophy #feminism #lgbtq

2026-01-09 18:42:52 UTC

Yes, it's important to make sure that universities are focusing on the classics of Western Civilization, as opposed to any of new-fangled woke gender ideology like... Plato!
(The professor is also an older white man with research in engineering ethics, to add to the absurdity)
https://dailynous.com/2026/01/06/texas-am-bans-plato/
#education #philosophy #usa

2026-01-09 18:31:46 UTC

Have you ever felt that being graded or tracking yourself with apps made the value of what you're doing disappear and be replaced with "winning the game"? This book is about that experience, and also about gamification and how scoring systems pervert public policy. Thi Nguyen is one of my favorite philosophers writing now - this is going to be unmissable!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2026/01/08/score-c-thi-nguyen-review/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzY3ODQ4NDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzY5MjMwNzk5LCJpYXQiOjE3Njc4NDg0MDAsImp0aSI6ImVlZTYzOGM5LTAzNzYtNDJkYy05YTg4LWQ4MGQ5MzkxODY0YSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9ib29rcy8yMDI2LzAxLzA4L3Njb3JlLWMtdGhpLW5ndXllbi1yZXZpZXcvIn0.yVL7acUnduVrNRTEy-DhbpsPfB6Nsed87vJooDsQc1s
#philosophy

2026-01-08 11:07:57 UTC

"When precise terms change their meaning, we lose a tool for understanding and communicating about an idea or experience because the words that previously helped us to do this are no longer suitable. In my research, I call this process 'hermeneutical disarmament'." Nice analysis of the dangers of meaning change!
https://theconversation.com/woke-and-gaslight-dont-mean-what-you-think-they-do-heres-why-thats-a-problem-230488
#philosophy

2026-01-07 10:53:57 UTC

PSA: Stop reading hot takes by pundits on the current political moment and go read chapters 10 and 11 of The Origins of Totalitarianism. It is uncanny how much of the current moment Arendt's analysis captures.
#philosophy #politics

2025-12-27 16:44:14 UTC

Eu e a @npub1xgt…7ser estamos a organizar um ciclo de leitura de As Origens do Totalitarianismo de Arendt em #Lisboa na maravilhosa livraria feminista Greta. Junta-te a nós! Mais detalhes e formulário de interesse aqui: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/5GuPFqOpfDJ+KAbQ6jqAvumzVFRNhbW5Zl7el5pOroo/
#philosophy
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/792/525/481/044/395/original/7ec02e15cea0c0d1.jpeg

2025-12-19 11:26:56 UTC

Proud of my very basic newly minted professional website with a very 90s DIY aesthetic!
I wanted to stop paying Squarespace's high fees, so I made this static page using basic html/css and GitLab. It was a rewarding project and not hard!
It's a repository for my writing and also teaching and mentoring materials, if you're interested in that stuff :)
https://carolinaflores.org/
#philosophy #technology #internet #html

2025-12-17 11:47:49 UTC

Love it when students write cool papers, Fall 2025 edition!
Here are some of the fascinating topics students chose to write about for my grad seminar on the attention crisis:
- Social anxiety is not just about beliefs but about deep-seated attention habits
- Why is being mentally bored and physically engaged good for creative mind-wandering?
- ADHD is not an attention deficit but being attuned to too many things 1/2
#philosophy #psychology

2025-12-16 10:14:32 UTC

What is freedom?
One common answer: it's the ability to choose according to your preferences (among a menu of options that others laid out).
But this idea has a history, and it's tied up with the rise of global capitalism and liberalism. This book traces its history, with a focus on the objects and practices that got us used to that idea, from voting booths to 19th century dance halls to supermarkets.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/06/26/my-freedom-my-choice-the-age-of-choice-rosenfeld/
#history #philosophy #politics

2025-11-28 18:48:01 UTC

Tudo a ler este ensaio sobre a enshittification do Substack! Nao é mais uma plataforma comercial que vai criar a internet boa que merecemos.
"A promessa da total independência de jornalistas não só é um mau negócio para quem o subscreve, como reforça uma tendência de individualização dos espaços mediáticos — onde toda a mediação do discurso é feita por algoritmos que têm como objectivo a retenção de utilizadores e a eficiência."
https://shifter.pt/2025/11/substack-anti-braint-rot/
#tech #technology #enshittification

2025-11-19 19:19:22 UTC

Interested in what exactly is the problem with attention markets and the attention economy? Go read this fantastic paper! It argues that attention markets undermine autonomy.
It does so without misleading appeals to "internet addiction" and based on a subtle understanding of what attention is. And it really clarifies what attention markets are, what is special about recent ones, and why the problem is not only "bad actors".
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-025-02436-3
#philosophy #psychology #technology #tech

2025-11-13 18:13:34 UTC

The perfect reply to student grade complaints doesn't exi-
(from Simone Weil, Reflections on the right use of school studies with a view to the love of God)
#philosophy #education
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/543/739/603/232/600/original/0980d0b86a1b83e4.jpg

2025-10-05 20:11:26 UTC

This interview with the developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik is brilliant!
Listen for fascinating ideas on learning, play, children’s and adults’ minds, the explore-exploit and imitate-innovate trade-offs, varieties of consciousness and attention, cultural change, the limitations of AI, among others.
(And decidedly not endorsing Ezra Klein’s recent political takes)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-alison-gopnik.html
#psychology #philosophy #ai

2025-10-04 18:23:42 UTC

This study finds that a large number of citizens in 🇩🇪, 🇳🇱, 🇬🇧, 🇵🇱 and 🇪🇸 think that public institutions are ideologically biased - and pretty much always against their own views.
Maybe what comes first is a lack of trust in institutions - and then we rationalize this distrust by thinking they represent “the other side”. If that is right, it's more evidence for the importance of trust in democracy.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-political-research/article/citizen-perceptions-of-ideological-bias-in-public-service-institutions-a-crossinstitutional-analysis-in-five-countries/9783F56E6C68D255A7FC2CB829F54EDE
#politics #philosophy

2025-10-03 19:29:38 UTC

Wild how I have a job that involves standing in front of 300 teenagers going "Maybe you're living in a simulation! What if other people don't actually have any thoughts and feelings? What if you don't have hands?" and there is actually no convincing reply.
#philosophy

2025-09-17 18:59:32 UTC

Are we living through an attention crisis? And what does that mean in the first place?
Just designed a seminar on the philosophy (and psychology) of the attention crisis. We'll read about:
- what attention is
- sustaining attention
- the idea that we are addicted to social media or lack control over our use
- loss of mind-wandering and creativity
- why attention matters and what the problem is with commodifying it.
#technology #psychology #tech #philosophy
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/221/162/909/104/336/original/9db35fa36d804891.jpg

2025-09-12 17:19:21 UTC

This brings me so much joy
#language
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/192/462/558/517/047/original/15803006dd82459b.png

2025-09-04 15:54:07 UTC

My new article, "Calling Trauma, Elite Capture, and Hermeneutical Injustice," is out in Phil Quarterly! Full article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaf076
It's a deeply personal project, drawing on family history to examine how privileged groups use claims of trauma to control narratives and to suggest a new way to think of epistemic injustice. 🧵
#colonialism #philosophy #psychology #politics
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/115/146/826/200/553/348/original/d38a0d0e8ad3410a.jpg

2025-08-21 17:13:36 UTC

Why are liberal market democracies struggling and authoritarianism becoming more appealing? Because our political systems have not provided any sense of stability (in housing, health, and so on) and "freedom is meaningless if you cannot count on a stable connection between the work you put in today and a good life tomorrow. But this is precisely the connection that has become severed for so many." https://aeon.co/essays/why-liberals-fear-mongering-about-trump-should-read-hobbes
#politics #philosophy #authoritarianism

2025-08-03 10:24:12 UTC

Worried about research and universities in #Portugal being DOGE-d: the government just extinguished the country's main public #research and #science funding body, without consulting researchers at all, to merge it with an agency focused on "innovation". Looks like a way to move funding from public universities and basic research (already under-funded) to start-ups and "unicorns" coming up with dodgy apps. #politics #highered https://cnnportugal.iol.pt/fct/governo/e-uma-tragedia-que-caiu-que-nem-uma-bomba-cientistas-chocados-com-extincao-da-fct-sem-aviso-previo/20250731/688bbcdfd34e3f0baea1297d

2025-08-03 10:18:36 UTC

"Much like what Americans now remember about early-20th century communism in their country was its persecution by McCarthy, what I think shall stand out about woke censoriousness is that the populist reaction to it was far far far more censorious." https://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/wokeness-retrospective.html #politics #philosophy

2025-07-21 14:39:18 UTC

For my birthday, a short piece out on one of my favorite topics: style and persuasion, with a gratuitous dig at astrology queers and so-called rationalists. https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/openfordebate/in-persuasion-ignore-style-at-your-peril/ #psychology #philosophy

2025-07-18 13:16:00 UTC

A leftist case *against* family abolition - worth checking out! Key points: (1) Capital does not actually *need* the family (see: migrant women from the Global South abandoning their families to take care of rich women's families) and (2) the family is, in Nancy Fraser's words "a 'reservoir of non-economic normativity': a sphere of values, care, and relations that capitalism exploits but cannot fully incorporate." https://jacobin.com/2025/06/family-abolition-capitalism-social-reproduction #family #politics

2025-07-15 18:04:46 UTC

Eu e a @npub1e6a…h0tk recomendamos leituras de verão na melhor revista de Portugal, juntamente com os autores do meu newsletter de senhores de esquerda favorito (república dos pijamas) 🥰🥰🥰 (as nossas sugestões: Enemy Feminisms e Martyr!, dois livros de explodir a cabeça de aprendizagem e estilo). https://shifter.pt/2025/07/10-livros-para-te-dar-que-pensar-neste-verao/

2025-07-01 09:25:03 UTC

Very stoked for this workshop with some of my favorite people in Berlin in a couple of weeks - stop by if you're around! I'll be talking about the capture of trauma narratives, post-colonialism, and epistemic injustice. https://bwsah.org/ #philosophy #language #berlin
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/777/247/410/946/848/original/6a33fdb86bd1ff63.png

2025-06-27 10:15:40 UTC

Extremely disappointed that philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT) cocollaborated with the Trump administration in co-authoring the HHS report recommending against gender-affirming care for trans youth. Please sign on this measured, well-argued letter criticizing this collaboration.
As the letter notes, "it is deeply myopic for any academic to collaborate with the Trump administration in this moment, regardless of one’s particular views about gender". https://dearprofessorbyrne.wordpress.com/ #trans #philosophy

2025-06-23 11:07:14 UTC

Words can be appropriated for the better and their meaning can change over time. But words can also be stolen. This happens when useful words get taken up by bad actors in ways that that distort their meaning, so that we can no longer use them to think and communicate. It’s happening with “efficiency”, “merit”, and many others. How does this happen and what can we do about it? Nico Orlandi and I wrote about it here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/when-words-are-stolen/ #politics #musk #philosophy #language

2025-06-16 14:10:21 UTC

Yesterday, protesting in Lisbon against touristification. The area where the march happened is now over 70% AirBnBs, while anyone on a Portuguese salary is pushed out and sees little of the “economic benefits of tourism”. #15J #tourism #housing #lisboa
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/693/424/344/182/970/original/53fccdd3bcfe473e.jpeg
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2025-06-06 20:40:05 UTC

The youth are (sometimes) alright: look at the cool topics my undergrad students chose to write on for my class:
- how bottom-up audience demands are compatible with elites massively influencing public opinion
- why podcasts make for good propaganda - by building trust and collapsing the fact-opinion distinction
- how aesthetic distaste for fat bodies comes before beliefs about fat being unhealthy - and generates a market for rationalizations for this preexisting distaste 1/2 #philosophy