Will Wilkinson reviews the often-unhinged John Gray’s book review of Jonathan Haidt. First paragraph below the fold (includes an amusing note on humanities scholars and “scientism”):
At LessWrong: Why a human (or group of humans) might create unFriendly AI halfway on purpose
April 30, 2012 By 16 Comments
This post that I just wrote contains some of the stuff on evolutionary psychology I’ve been meaning to write more about here: Too many people–at least, too many writers of the kind of fiction where the villain turns out to be an all-right guy in the end–seem to believe that if someone is the hero [...]
Should I try to post on weekends?
April 28, 2012 By 14 Comments
I tend not to post on weekends because (1) I’m often traveling to Seoul on weekends, which makes blogging hard and (2) I feel like I need time to build up post ideas so I have something to do during the week. But recently, I’ve been wondering if posting on the weekend would increase the [...]
From the archives: It’s not about tone
April 27, 2012 By 6 Comments
I was totally caught off guard by all the people who interpreted my criticisms of Richard Carrier in yesterday’s post as being about “tone.” Therefore I decided it might be worth reposting this post from July 2011. I’ve written before about the relationship between content and tone, but there’s an angle I didn’t cover there: [...]
Dan Savage: My priest helped me come out
April 27, 2012 By 6 Comments
Via Joe My God. Video below the fold. I’ll say in advance that I don’t think this reflects well on the Catholic Church:
Will we all be workaholics in the future?
April 27, 2012 By 6 Comments
Economist Robin Hanson has long argued that in the future, most sentient beings on Earth will be computer-simulated people (for technical background on this issue, I recommend Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap). Hanson has made predictions about the details of how this will play out that look pretty dystopian: most of these beings will be [...]
US politics in the next couple decades: the most plausible prediction I’ve seen
April 27, 2012 By 3 Comments
A couple days ago, Ed Brayton blogged about about something I’ve been thinking about for awhile, doing a really good job of expressing why American politics is so weird right now. Then one of his readers chimed in with a pretty convincing account of what happens next. First, Ed:
Dear Richard, please admit you screwed up with your review of Bart Ehrman’s latest book
April 26, 2012 By 64 Comments
So… before I get into the meat of this post, I want to say that for a long time, I was quite eager to read Richard Carrier’s books on the historicity of Jesus (actually I’ve just ordered the first one; the second one isn’t out yet). I hadn’t been impressed with most of the “mythicist” [...]
Randal Rauser explains the problems with C. S. Lewis’ view of Hell
April 25, 2012 By 17 Comments
The popularity of C. S. Lewis among fundagelicals is a bit puzzling, because he was, relative to them, a liberal. One thing he does for them, though, is give them an orthodox-sounding way to make the doctrine of Hell less odious. Lewis, you see, thought Hell was something people inflict on themselves by rejecting God. But [...]
Ross Douthat promotes myth about religious basis of morality
April 25, 2012 By 17 Comments
Ross Douthat, who inexplicably has job as a columnist at the New York Times, is doing an exchange with William Saletan at Slate that looks to be full ‘o all kinds of fail, but this entry (HT: Julian Sanchez) especially caught my eye:
I called my lawmakers to oppose CISPA, and you should too (updated and redated)
April 25, 2012 By 1 Comment
I haven’t done it, but only because I’d be paying for international long-distance. I did, however, send them an e-mail. UPDATE 2: I remembered that I have Skype, which is cheap even for long distance, so I went ahead and called all three. Calling will have a bigger impact than e-mailing, because so few people [...]
On Carrier on Ehrman’s HuffPo piece
April 24, 2012 By 53 Comments
I’m not sure what to make of Richard Carrier’s rebuttals to Bart Ehrman on the existence of Jesus (both the reply to Ehrman’s HuffPo article last month, and the review of Ehrman’s book itself). If you cut out about half of what Carrier has written, the remaining half would look like a pretty damning critique [...]
The right to say vile things
April 24, 2012 By 5 Comments
Since Taner Edis asked, I want to say that yes, I’m appalled by the Tarek Mehanna case, where a man is facing 17 years in prison for expressing sympathy with Al Qaeda and translating some Al Qaeda documents into English. Andrew Sullivan has linked to the following defense of the prosecution, which relies on citing [...]
“Would you want your daughter to be a prostitute?”
April 23, 2012 By 18 Comments
Corry Doctorow links to a defense of legalizing prostitution that, among other things, addresses the “Would you want your daughter to be a prostitute?” question:
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