Suggested readings, 14th March 2021

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

Saloni Dattani, “Where will the next pandemic come from and how can we prevent it?” 12 Mar, New Statesman.

"We can implement measures that reduce the chances that entire classes of pathogens will lead to a pandemic. Perhaps we won't be able to prevent pandemics from ever happening again, but we certainly can make them less frequent and devastating."

Peter Singer, “When Vaccination Is a 'Crime'” 8 Mar, Project Syndicate.

Did Hasan Gokal do anything wrong when he used an about-to-expire dose of the vaccine against Covid-19 to inject his wife?

Pau Bloom, “When Intentions Don’t Matter.” 11 Mar, Wall Street Journal.

"There are all sorts of cases where we ignore intention, or at least don’t see good intention as fully exculpatory."

Laith Al-Shawaf, “Should You Trust the Myers-Briggs Personality Test?” 9 Mar, Areo.

"The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It’s a favourite among Fortune 100 companies, government agencies and regular people. More than 1.5 million people take it every year. It is a thriving multimillion-dollar-a-year industry. And as any psychologist worth their salt will tell you, it’s bullshit."

Tom Chivers, “Why don’t women feel safe?” 13 Mar, UnHerd.

"[I]n both the USA and UK, most people believe that crime is increasing. The percentage who think so has dropped in the UK over the last 10 years, but still, nearly two-thirds of adults think that crime is more common now than it was a few years ago. Almost 80% of US adults think there is more crime now than a year ago. People’s perception of the risk of crime is only very loosely tied to the actual risk of crime in their country. Bringing it down -- making people safer -- will probably only have a relatively small effect on how safe people feel."

Tom Chivers, “The Fukushima ‘disaster’ was hardly worth the name.” 12 Mar, UnHerd.

"Nuclear power is scary; it seems unnatural somehow, in a way that burning the compressed remains of ancient plants in huge combustion engines apparently isn’t. But it is orders of magnitude safer, and contributes far less to global warming."

Neil Levy, “Why is the deathbed perspective is considered so valuable?” 8 Mar, Aeon.

Are deathbed perspectives epistemically privileged? Philosopher Neil Levy is not fully convinced.

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