I’ve long heard vegans trumpet alleged links between milk and prostate cancer as a way of discouraging people from drinking milk. My reaction to that has tended to be that, prima facie, vegans have a point about the ethics of milk (or at least how we currently produce it), but it’s probably just wishful thinking [...]
Another anti-Batman post (or: why I like graphic violence in my superhero comics)
April 25, 2013 By 7 Comments
I realize my last anti-Batman post was less than a month ago (see also: the original “Batman sucks” post), but this interview with Sam Harris has reminded me of another huge problem I have with Batman. First, from the interview:
The (technological) revolution will not be televised
April 25, 2013 By 3 Comments
Last week, Randal Rauser posted a 1956 ad for long-distance phone service:
Thoughts on religion after a year in Asia: separating “religion” from “Abrahamic monotheism”
April 24, 2013 By 8 Comments
I have now spent a year of my life in Asia. I have seen the world’s largest solid-gold Buddha statue (so shinny, I failed to take a glare-free picture of it!):
I need to read more Derek Parfit
April 23, 2013 By 4 Comments
Brian Leiter links to a fascinating interview with Larissa MacFarquhar, who has among other things profiled philosopher Derek Parfit. I’ve become acquainted with Parfit’s ideas on personal identity through the classes I’ve taken on metaphysics as well as Chalmers’ paper on the singularity, but I confess I’ve never read any of Parfit’s books before. From [...]
The problem with libertarianism in a nutshell
April 23, 2013 By 13 Comments
I’ve previously written about how I’ve gone from being draw to the “libertarian” label to being comfortable calling myself a liberal. But lately, I think I’ve been putting together some pieces about what, exactly, is wrong with libertarianism.
Chalmers on philosophical progress, part 1
April 23, 2013 By 15 Comments
In the comments on my post where I summarized the problems I see with philosophy, Alexander Johannesen very helpfully linked to a paper by David Chalmers on progress in philosophy. I hadn’t seen this paper before, so let’s have a look at it.
Tracking progress in AI is really hard
April 22, 2013 By 4 Comments
A lot of the work I’ve done for MIRI has involved trying to track progress in artificial intelligence. Not so-called “general intelligence,” but specific things ranging from playing games like chess and Scrabble to recognizing faces and objects to understanding and translating human language. And it turns out that figuring out how much progress there’s [...]
A shift of emphasis
April 22, 2013 By 4 Comments
For awhile now, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to spend less time criticizing religion, and more time working on issues related to AI and existential risk. I don’t currently have any plans of going as far as Luke Muehlhauser of Common Sense Atheism did, and abandon writing about religion entirely, but you may notice [...]
A summary of the problems I see with philosophy–and why I’m thinking of going back anyway
April 21, 2013 By 35 Comments
This is a post I’ve been struggling to write for awhile. It’s a response to a couple questions I got in the March open thread, one by someone who wanted to have a “link handy when I want to show people just how crappy (analytic) philosophy is,” while the other asked, “Since you spend a [...]
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