2025 Superlatives From Constructive Skepticism
Best Interaction, Best Reply Guy, Best Newcomer, And More!
For a hot minute, I thought I’d close out the year by writing another long and well researched post, but then life happened. I went on my honeymoon (which was great) and then I caught the flu (which was not great).
The flu knocked me on my ass, and even though I’m feeling much better due to pharmaceutical interventions, I’m likely going to be on my ass for a couple more days.
Between that and the upcoming holiday (I’m getting Christmas through the first Sunday of the year off work), I’ve decided to spend the next couple of weeks:
Trying to restore my prior running fitness (a low bar, considering how not-spectacular of a runner I am, but I have only run 3 miles in 3 weeks when I try to run at least 9 per week)
Watching some college football bowl games and playoffs (Go Dawgs!)
Reading some books I’ve been trying to finish
Arguing (still) with some of you On Here because I can’t help myself
Spending my undivided attention on my wife and chinchilla
Sitting a couple dogs with my wife
Practicing guitar
And generally just enjoying time off without having to watch the clock or without the need to do anything.
As you’ll notice, none of these include “writing a long post on substack.” So this will be my last post of 2025.
General Thoughts On Substack And My Writing
At heart, I am a posting addict. I started posting on online forums, Twitter, and Tumblr in high school at a time when I was socially isolated. It was cathartic and habit-inducing. I noticed about 5 years ago that I really like to just yap on the internet for fun and that’s also kind of atypical of the people I hang out with in real life.
I’ve always been the kind of person who could write a text wall at the drop of the hat, because writing was my way of getting all of my thoughts out of my brain.
At a certain point, this had diminishing returns for my mental health; just posting all the time in this manner amounted to ruminating in public, which isn’t good. I deleted Tumblr well over a decade ago (because it was cringe), and deleted Twitter before Elon acquired it (before it was cool). I had created and deleted multiple blogs over the years because no one read them, and it felt odd to spend so much energy and emotion on them only for them not to be read. Substack feels different because people actually read me, even if there’s “only” a few dozen or hundred of you.
Substack has been great for me. I like this platform because it matches me with readers who will at least read my writing. In the past when I’ve tried blogging, it felt like I was shouting into the void. In a weird way, it felt worse than having a bad opinion; it’s one thing to spend all this time writing something that ends up being wrong (like my senior philosophy thesis as an undergraduate), but when something is good and only like five people read it, it feels almost pathetic. Why waste the time?
Anyway, I like substack because I can crank out a few posts a month and it’ll be read a couple hundred times. Many of my posts have over 500 reads, and one has been read over 1000 times.
I would love to one day be a full time writer, but I’m not deluding myself: I’m nowhere close to that level and I may never reach that level of popularity. I have always looked at writing as a hobby, and having people read what I write feels good, even if I’m small potatoes.
Some Superlatives
Best Interaction
Bill Vanderburgh finding my posts about Hume on miracles
One of the cooler things about Substack is that some philosophers and academics actually use it.
Earlier this year when I wrote my Hume posts, Bill Vanderburgh found my first post and (funnily enough!) recommended to me his book, which I had already read and wrote a post about. Predictably, I referred him to the post I made covering the book and he said I did a good job.
It’s good to hear validation for something I worked hard on, so I also know it probably felt good to him as well, as he no doubt worked probably 100 times harder than I did on the actual book.
Best Reply Guy
Reply guys have a bad reputation, but that need not be the case! Reply Guys are simply the kind of people who post on the internet in response to original content. Their comments are derivative; if other people did not post, they would not post. Part of the reason I write a substack is to fight my own Reply Guy inclinations.
Here I want to commend the best Reply Guy on Philosophy substack. Plasma’s replies very very very very very very often can be their own posts. They even have footnotes!
With the end of year coming up, I felt like Plasma needed a shout out for his feedback. There’s no question in my mind Plasma Bloggin deserves Reply Guy of the year. If you’re on this corner of substack, you know he deserved it too. Give him a follow!
Best Newcomer:
This award is a little goofy for me to award someone else because I myself have only posted on substack for about a year. Still, Arthur T only starting posting since October, and I think that’s late enough for me to consider him a newcomer. Arthur always posts about interesting subjects concerning religion and the history of Christianity from a skeptical perspective. He’s humble about his (lack of) philosophy education, but he reasons sharply and communicates clearly, making up for whatever deficits he may have in those subjects.
I think we are kindred spirits, both having an interest in the history of Christianity, scripture, and so on from a skeptical point of view. Give him a follow!
Users I’m Totally Not Jealous Of For Starting After Me And Having More Followers Now
Kyle Star - Kyle hasn’t posted in the last few months, but he’s a smart guy. He’s definitely in the EA/utilitarian school of thought, but he seems to be one of the few I’ve interacted with who just seems to be a profoundly normal person. I don’t mean that as a shot at EAs, but Kyle has a good sense of humor and likes sports, which makes him an outlier in my experience of most utilitarian bloggers. Give him a follow, when he comes back and posts more, you won’t regret it.
Dylan - Dylan has written posts about various topics from poker to chess to fitness to probability theory. He popped up on my radar because I thought he put forward some valid criticisms of everyone’s favorite utilitarian canine and one of his confederates, to which they responded poorly, to which he responded poorly, yet the canine and confederate pretended like their poor responses wouldn’t provoke a poor response. Sigh. Regardless, Dylan writes good stuff, give him a follow.
Special Shout Outs:
Katelynn Bennett Katelynn gave good copyediting feedback on my Hume posts. She also painted an adorable picture of my Chinchilla, Margaux.
Ian Jobling - Ian is a smart dude who posts about science and philosophy. We agree on quite a bit, and I admire how thorough he is with his research.
Both Sides Brigade - I disagree with BSB on moral realism, but I appreciate the way he dialogues on the issue because it helps me communicate my own position (which I admittedly need to improve on). He has many good takes.
Paul S - Paul is a scholar in the UK and writes about various Enlightenment thinkers that I also write about (except, you know, he’s an actual expert on them). I appreciate that he gives me positive feedback when I’m moving in the right direction on one of the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment (Hume, Smith, etc). He also is very kind in offering access to some of his peer reviewed articles. I try my best to not oversell an argument unless I’m certain someone smarter than me has made it (which is why I use lots of quotes!), and it feels good that someone who does know what they’re talking about affirms my assessment of a thinker.
Tibor Rutar - This is one of the few political/economic writers I’ll shout out here (see my previous comments about not getting too explicitly political). Rutar posts are empirically informed, extremely interesting, and most importantly, confirm my center-left priors (okay maybe not all of them).
Bryan Frances - Remember how the writers of Avengers Infinity War took the Incredible Hulk out of the story for plot reasons? Likely because he’s an overpowered character and having him in the story would make it way too easy for the Avengers? Well, Bryan Frances is the metaphorical equivalent for skeptic-ish philosophers on substack. The plot reasons for why he’s not around a lot is that he has a life. Sometimes on substack we’ll be arguing about the most inane and stupid bullshit and Dr. Frances will just stick his head in and dismantles an argument in what seems to be effortless work (which is actually just a product of him doing philosophy longer than I have been able to read).
Stan Patton - Stan is a cool guy and finds innovative ways to communicate or simplify complicated philosophical problems. He’s also good at cutting through bad philosophical rhetoric and communicating why it’s bad philosophical rhetoric.
Jordan Meadows - Jordan is another political blogger I’ll recommend. One of his many virtues is that he, like Tibor Rutar, confirms my priors. But also he writes good takes. Those who support his kind of politics should give him a follow. He’s from the southeast as well, which is another feather in his cap.
Silas Abrahamsen - I was tempted to not shout out “the cool kids” of philosophy substack (you know how they are) but I have to tip my hat to Silas. He’s a smart, curious, good humored guy. He “only” has about 600-700ish followers, yet he writes with clarity, frequency, and quality that surpasses writers with far higher readership. I’m not brown-nosing because he has more followers than me, but I think he has a top 5 philosophy substack.
Matt Whiteley - One of the most unique Christian voices on substack. One of the more annoying things about being a non-believer who is well versed in American Christian Culture and the history of Christianity is that so much online Christian commentary is just so…predictable? But not Matt’s. Of course, he’s British, so as an American I naturally think he has interesting things to say, just because of his accent (I presume he has an accent, right?).
I have numerous other positive interactions On Here. There’s a lot of philosophy undergraduates on here that post frequently, and I want to give them a shout out. Keep writing, keep posting, keep thinking!
What I’m Doing in 2026:
My wife and I are moving across the country in a few months (that’ll be expensive)
I need to make a little bit more money. I’m optimistic positive things could happen at my work, but given the economy and other factors surrounding my industry, I’m not as confident as I’d like to be, so I’m taking some things in my own hands with side hustles.
Given the amount of time I spend writing/on substack, it doesn’t make sense for me to completely close off the possibility of making money on substack. I’m thinking about turning on pledges, just to gauge how much interest there is in paying for my content. I don’t think I’ll ever paywall my writing, but I am thinking about starting a monthly or bi-weekly paywalled podcast1 about things written on philosophy substack. The podcasts would all be paywalled outside of a preview, but the written posts would still be free. That’s just an idea!
I am also thinking about using my substack to promote other services I’m equipped to provide. These include writing tutoring, copyediting, or consulting using my day jobs skills (email marketing/advocacy, data analysis, etc). If you are interested in using these services from me, send me a DM or comment, and we can chat. My day job has restrictions on when I can do side hustles (as in, I obviously can’t do them during the work day!), and all of this is more of a concept of an idea than anything.
I’m thinking about making an e-book of all my posts from this year. Funny enough, this was the plan all along, before I started posting regularly. I’ll give you more information in the coming months, but if you’ve liked my substack, I’d really appreciate you buying a copy. If I do end up monetizing and growing, the business model would be posts are free, podcasts are paywalled, but a yearly or bi-yearly e-book would be published (at a reasonable price) as a sort of recap from the previous year. At this moment I don’t anticipate making more than $100 at best on this (but likely much less).
Don’t interpret any possible pay-walling to make the current experience worse. If anything, I’m going to use it to make it better. I probably spent $200 on research for my David Hume posts. If I could roughly that income on a monthly basis, I could more easily write posts of similar quality. What’s more, pay walling additional content like podcasts would bring in extra income that would enable other posts of similar quality.
Anyway! 2025 was a good year for me, especially on substack. I thank everyone for the readership, and look forward to writing for you in 2026.
Have a Happy New Year!
Oh no, another Podcast Bro!
I’m flattered by the shout out. Here’s to another year of arguing about the divine
You saying that my book was your favorite read of the year was a highlight for me, too. Happy New Year!