Suggested readings, 31 January 2021

Here are some interesting articles I've read over the past week I think are worth checking out.

Gideon Rachman, “Alexei Navalny is a real threat to Vladimir Putin.” 25 Jan, Financial Times.

"The Russian state’s machinery of repression is swinging into action. But beneath the tough exterior, the underlying fragility of President Putin’s regime is once again apparent."

Enrico Bonadio and Andrea Borghini, “Vegan ‘dairy’ products face EU ban from using milk cartons and yoghurt pots – and UK could be next.” 25 Jan, The Conversation.

"As for the dairy lobby’s arguments about confusing consumers, they are in danger of looking out of date, given the tremendous changes in eating habits that have taken place in recent years."

Ralph Leonard, “Why the West isn’t racist.” 28 Jan, UnHerd.

"Radical Enlightenment values are still the best tools humanity has crafted to create a better world. The challenge then is not to negate them but to build upon them, expand them, and ultimately raise them to a higher level never before seen."

Stuart Ritchie, “Will vaccines protect against all international Covid-19 variants?” 27 Jan, New Statesman.

"Throughout the pandemic there has been a strange tendency to think in absolutes. Do masks provide 100 per cent protection from Covid-19? No? Well, there’s no use in wearing one. Do lockdowns produce only positive effects? No? Well, they must be pointless. We can’t let such absolutist thinking -- 'The vaccine is less effective, so there’s probably no point in me having it' -- affect our vaccine roll-out."

Ben Burgis, “The Left Should Oppose Censorship by Big Tech Companies.” 28 Jan, Jacobin.

"As satisfying as it can be on a visceral level to see racists, fascists, and reactionaries de-platormed, the Left shouldn’t adopt the libertarian 'only government censorship counts' definition or cede the issue of free speech to our ideological enemies."

Scott Alexander, “Contra Weyl On Technocracy.” 29 Jan, Astral Codex Ten.

"I think it's important not to collapse everything into just 'technocracy bad, details to be provided later'. You can't just present Brasilia and use that as an argument against randomized controlled trials! You can't just argue that forced collectivization of farms caused famines, therefore people shouldn't voluntarily assess where to donate their charity money to best meet their own goals! Maybe I'm being too technocratic here, but at some point you need to break things down, look at this (social) scientifically, and try to figure out which parts of things are consistently bad and which parts sometimes seem to help."

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