John L. Taylor @johnnylogic@qoto.org

Friction, a YouTube channel devoted to philosophical interviews, has posted a supercut of philosophers (and Steven Pinker) explaining the value of philosophy.

#Philosophy, #Value, #Video

The first is a reflection on Seduced by Story: the Use and Abuse of Narrative by Peter Brooks. Brooks argues, in short:

“[W]e’ve relied too heavily on storytelling conventions to understand the world around us, which has resulted in a “narrative takeover of reality” that affects nearly every form of communication—including the way doctors interact with patients, how financial reports are written, and the branding that corporations use to present themselves to consumers. Meanwhile, other modes of expression, interpretation, and comprehension, such as analysis and argument, have fallen to the wayside.”

The second, Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project, challenges the value of compressing your life (and self-concept) into a story:

“Projects fail and people fail in them. But we have come to speak as if a person can be a failure—as though failure were an identity, not an event. When you define your life by way of a single enterprise, a narrative arc, its outcome will come to define you…. What makes the narrator’s life worth living is not some grand narrative, running from conception or birth to inevitable death; it is the countless little thoughts and deeds and gentle, joking interactions that occupy day after day after day. If you pay attention… there’s enough in a single lunch hour to fill a book.”

#Books, #Criticism, #Internet. #Narrative, #Philosophy, #Self, #Story

Political scientist and philosopher, Eric Schliesser offers further critique of MacAskill’s longtermism:

“I offer two (kinds of) criticisms of What We Owe the Future. First, I discuss its cavalier attitude toward injustice. This criticism will be extrinsic to MacAskill’s own project. Second, I argue it treats a whole number of existential risks as uncorrelated which are, almost certainly correlated. (This I consider an intrinsic problem.) And this exhibits two kinds of lacunae at the heart of his approach: (a) his lack of theoretical interest in political institutions and the nature of international political coordination; (b) the absence of a disciplining social theory (or models) that can help evaluate the empirical data and integrate them.”

Part two is forthcoming.

#EffectiveAltruism, #Ethics, #Longtermism, #Philosophy, #PoliticalScience

By way of #introduction, I am a Director of Research working on online #fraudprevention. I aim to protect people from fraud while establishing trust and safety for businesses.

My professional interests include #datascience, #machinelearning, #dataengineering, #designthinking, #innovation, #research, and #dataethics. My personal interests are numerous and include #philosophy (esp. #ethics, #science, and #epistemology), #psychology (esp. #cognition, #positivepsychology, #therapy), and philosophies of life (esp. #buddhism, #humanism, #stoicism, #taoism).

Hobby-wise, I am an #exercise and #martialarts enthusiast. I also enjoy #nature, #hiking, and the #outdoors, generally.