“It has published on a range of topics that perhaps seemed controversial to someone at some time (specifically, academics in the early 2020s) but certainly not to the broader culture in 2025.”
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Author: Peter Clarke
Has the “Journal of Controversial Ideas” Become Irrelevant?
Start Making Sense: “Say Hello to Metamodernism”
“Just as [Greg] Dember’s generation inherited modernism and felt a need to rebel, today’s younger generations have inherited postmodernism and no doubt feel the same urge to keep the sense of cultural evolution progressing.”
Richard Dawkins Wins in the End
“Admirably, Dawkins continually made it clear that his objective was to promote a clear understanding of the world as discovered through the scientific method, and if scientific facts caused offense with anyone, then so be it.”
America’s Housing Dilemma: Building for a Future with Fewer People
“Bringing this back to the United States: While we need to address our current housing crisis, the goal should not be to build, build, build anywhere at any cost.”
Optimism vs. Reality in Longevity Science: Analyzing Zoltan Istvan’s Senescence Inference
“Although [Zoltan] Istvan’s general pessimism is understandable, the Senescence Inference takes the pessimism too far for a number of reasons.”
The Power of Chicken Soup for the Anti-Woke Soul: Nellie Bowles’s “Morning After the Revolution”
“While it might be intellectually fascinating to dig into the Marxist or postmodern roots of wokeness, Bowles’s book is a welcome reminder that sometimes things are simply crazy on their face. And maybe all that is required to defeat the crazy is to point it out.”
Chasing Immortality, Living on the Edge: A Review of “Transhuman Citizen,” the Biography of Zoltan Istvan
“Although the project to end death is clearly important to Istvan, his forthcoming biography, ‘Transhuman Citizen: Zoltan Istvan’s Hunt for Immortality’ by Ben Murnane, reveals that he has arguably lived his life in response to a related but slightly different question…”
Jerry Seinfeld Understated the Death of Comedy
“In Carlin’s time, it was edgy and cool to push back against the prudish ideas about obscenity, so playing with the boundaries of the metanarrative was practically encouraged (at least from audiences). Today, quite the opposite.”
In Defense of the Bugmen
“But I am not interested in chiding Bronze Age Pervert—as other publications, such as National Review, have done—for his use of dehumanization. Instead, I want to offer a full-throated defense of these nasty bugmen.”
The Freedom to Be Religious as an Atheist
“In other words, now that I have become an atheist, I feel free to appreciate and even dabble in various religions. To put this in terms of Waits Paradox: Once one has quit religion, he is free to be religious.”
The Other Victims of the Surveillance State
“No doubt [Araya] Baker’s experience is legitimate, and, of course, it is true that state surveillance is a very serious problem, but paranoid delusions are real, too.”
The Age of Unnecessarily Complicated Academic Writing Is Over
“The fact is that effective communication is hard. Clear writing is hard. For the typical undergraduate—and no doubt the typical academic scholar or scientist—it is easier to string together vague buzzwords in meandering sentences than it is to say something clearly and concisely.”
What Elon Musk and Bill Gates Might Have in Common
“Musk still seems to have his wits about him when managing his other companies, when speaking on longform podcasts, or when staying conveniently on message with regard to China. So what is it about X that is specifically causing Musk to lose his composure and his business sense?”
How Jesse Singal Became the Symbol of Polarization on the Left
“Whether or not Singal is wrong in his conclusions does not matter. He dared to question the truisms, the sacred cows, and that brands him irredeemably transphobic.”
Aliens and America’s Crisis in Meaning
“What gives? Why are people so eager to believe wild tales despite a lack of hard, clear evidence?”