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"As for the dairy lobby’s arguments about confusing consumers, they are in danger of looking out of date, given the tremendous changes in eating habits that have taken place in recent years."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

Comments

Should We Use Neuroenhancement Drugs to Improve Relationships?

A version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , July-August, Vol. 147 (2014) L ove, it is fair to say, is probably the strongest emotion we can experience. It can come in many different forms: love of one’s parent, sibling, or child. Though most people consider romantic relationships—which include companionship, sexual passion, intimacy, warmth, procreation and child-rearing—as the most significant component of one’s life; and it is probably the thing we find discussed more than anything else in novels, films and music. Committed romantic relationships tend to occur within the institution of marriage—something that is ubiquitous to most, if not all, cultures. Indeed, relationships today, which are primarily love-driven, are not just confined to marriages, as many couples sustain relationships outside of wedlock. Being in a love-driven relationship is considered important for most people, as it contributes to happiness—something we a...

Is Adult Incest Wrong?

An version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , March-April, Vol. 151 (2015) Incest is something most people find morally objectionable and it's one of the most common of all cultural taboos. The British Medical Association’s Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia (1990) defines incest as “ intercourse between close relatives,” that usually includes “intercourse with a parent, a son or daughter, a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a nephew or niece, a grandparent or grandchild.” The Oxford English Dictionary ’s definition is a little broader: it doesn’t confine incest to just intercourse, but to “sexual relations between people classified as being too closely related to marry each other.” Most countries have some kind of law against incest—though consensual adult incest is not a crime in France, Spain, Russia the Netherlands, and a host of countries in South America. In England and Wales, however, t he Sexual Offences Act 2003 ...

Intuitions and Ethics

A version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , May-June, Vol. 146 (2014) The notion that our moral intuitions possess epistemic authority has been associated with a number of philosophers within the canon of Western thought. Roughly speaking, these thinkers have argued that our intuitions have recourse to a unique authority of perception that yields special access to a sphere of moral legitimacy. Others, however, have claimed that our intuitions are incredibly diverse and often conflict with each other—for example, your intuition says assisted suicide is morally permissible and my intuition says it’s wrong. But it seems the two contrasting intuitions cannot both be right. At the same time, most of us think our own moral intuitions are right : they do not seem inconsistent to us, and we have a strong sense to believe them. Accordingly, they strike us as correct. Undoubtedly, moral intuitions can be shaped by our particular culture, environment or co...

Nothing as It Seems

Search This Blog