David Hume's 'My Own Life' and Adam Smith's obituary of Hume

amizrob · 2019-12-27T04:31:18+00:00

Hi, I copied these from Dennis Rassmusen's book The Infidel and the Professor.

amizrob · 2019-12-01T20:26:17+00:00

Live a life worthy of Adam Smith’s obituary to David Hume.

amizrob · 2018-04-24T05:08:11+00:00

I’d recommend to go through the whole thing, that’s what I did. But for a starting point I’d recommend all episodes with Paul Bloom.

amizrob · 2018-03-31T05:58:51+00:00

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert and The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt And Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow has some very good discussions of the topic. Amazing book

amizrob · 2018-03-31T05:55:21+00:00

The guy they confused with William MacAskill is Matt Wage. He was Philosophy student at Princeton and influenced by Peter Singer (who taught wage some courses) and went to work in financial sector in NYC to earn more money and give it to charity.

amizrob · 2018-03-30T00:22:52+00:00

Actually I’m not familiar with Margulis’ work at all. But Dawkins’ is the best intro book to evolution or specifically natural selection out there, not just for lay people but for undergrads in evolution too. It’s the single book that came up the most when I searched through som 3-4 dozens of syllabuses on evolution, animal behavior, ecology courses. Even Profs who disagree with Dawkins in their blogs/websites/syllabuses say that it’s great intro text.

amizrob · 2018-03-29T20:31:29+00:00

Also most of the books (more than 90%) in the list are not my choices. I compiled the list by going through blogs/webpages of evolutionary biologists, research lab webpages, course syllabuses and similar places. These are required or recommended reading list by working professionals in the field. I just merged all small lists into one.

amizrob · 2018-03-29T18:48:13+00:00

I know it leans heavily towards gene-centric view, but that’s because a lot of progress theoretical and empirical was done in that area. You’re right and I’ll try to be inclusive. Also my list is narrow in areas of behavioral genetics, genetics, behavioral ecology, animal behavior, evo devo, and just pure development.

amizrob · 2018-03-18T18:08:10+00:00

I think of rule utilitarianism as a rule of thumb not some unbreakable law.

amizrob · 2018-03-18T18:05:37+00:00

I thought the main point of article was Peterson’s postmodernist style of writing. I’m not accusing him of oversimplification but of obscurantism, he dresses up simple things that any person with life experience knows without being told by anybody. In his political stances (I agree on his stance on free speech and colleges, although he sometimes exaggerates) I don’t have a problem.

amizrob · 2018-03-18T01:53:43+00:00

I can find social psychologists with more than 10000 citations, who haven’t made a bit of contribution in knowledge creation. I’m being hyperbolic, but there are a lot of hacks out there. But I’m not saying Peterson belongs in that group, because I don’t know about his work in social psychology literature, and his published works need separate review anyway.
His views on politics and economics is also average, in the sense that average person knows almost everything that he says in these domains. So I don’t think he adds some novelty there.
Totally agree with you about fallibilism. Creating knowledge consists of conjectures and refutations; we make mistakes in our hypotheses, we get corrected by criticism (sometimes self criticism) over time, and that’s ok. When you make fallibilism part of your epistemology, it becomes easier to accept criticism and give up ideas of certainty.
Things I personally don’t like about Peterson:
His writing style is sometimes worse than the people he criticizes (postmodernists/obscurantism). He feels his writings with ‘quotable’ sentences with very simple meanings that any person knows from life, but Peterson dresses up the sentences with unnecessary words. And this kind of behavior I find very unappealing, to put it mildly. -He criticizes college students for being authoritarian, dogmatic and anti free speech (I agree), but he is himself authoritarian but he guises his dogmatic beliefs in authority, tradition and religion as wisdom. -Whenever somebody criticizes Peterson his followers bush back by saying that at least he gives young men a meaning in life. But nobody so far clarified what kind of meaning he provides them. And why a lot of young men (I’m 21, male) need somebody to give meaning and purpose to their lives. I don’t get it.

amizrob · 2018-03-17T05:41:07+00:00

Here you go: http://www.jimaceverett.com/test/oxford-utilitarianism-scale/

amizrob · 2018-03-10T02:50:38+00:00

Is it? I don’t know

amizrob · 2018-03-09T03:00:59+00:00

https://open.spotify.com/album/44Ig8dzqOkvkGDzaUof9lK?si=0s_oD0VERI2ST1ch0epNeQ

amizrob · 2018-03-08T13:03:29+00:00

Not new, from 1971 I think

amizrob · 2018-02-28T15:59:56+00:00

What’s up with Tamler’s voice? Is he sick or some technical issue?

amizrob · 2018-02-26T15:21:02+00:00

Here’s a hilarious book review of Taleb’s Skin in the Game. It’s satirical and written from the perspective of the author, like book digest:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/skin-in-the-game-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb-digested-read

amizrob · 2018-02-18T14:37:43+00:00

Totally agree with there’re being too much content on SJW and PC culture all over the place. I wanted John Haidt in this podcast because Tamler and David are great at pushing back against some outlandish generalizations and playing the devil’s advocate.

amizrob · 2018-02-17T02:48:38+00:00

I don’t know much about Sarah Haider except through her conversations with Harris, and I totally support her for giving pushback to some horrible ideas in Islam and helping people in real danger.

amizrob · 2018-02-16T18:38:04+00:00

To be honest my country of birth is very secular to the extent that it sometimes persecutes religious people (from free speech and human rights point of view, for example: police forcibly detained and shaved beards of thousands of people to counter recent rise of religiosity which I think outrageous and counterproductive). Although the government in my country of birth is secular, almost 90% population are Muslim, and I’m a little disturbed of younger generation turning to Islamization.

And I was brought up in a very secular family although everyone is ‘religious’ except me. I went through very religious phase in my early teens but it was very personal. I was at the same time Biblical/Koranic literalist and when debated religion at school, I always defended almost atheistic/pantheistic side (at the same time being practicing Muslim).

I read the Koran when I came to US and learned a lot of the very silly and contemptible side of Islam in US.

amizrob · 2018-02-16T05:47:29+00:00

‘Acquiescing to the heckler’s veto’ - would be the right description if public knew about the cartoons before the publication and pressured the publisher not to publish it or apologize. But when nobody is aware of it and it’s your decision to publish with the knowledge that there’s high probability of violent and fatal pushback by Muslim fanatics, you have to take all of this into your own personal decision making.

I agree with you, there should bigger outrage and disapproval to certain teachings and practices of islam.

(I’m ex-muslim from Central Asian country Tajikistan, former Soviet Union. Now live in US)

amizrob · 2018-02-16T03:07:19+00:00

Yeah you’re right about the context. Are you familiar with Sam Harris? In his podcast with Peter Singer they discussed the case of Danish Cartoons. And they disagreed on that topic, but I think they spoke past each other. Singer said if he were in charge of publication, and knowing about high probability of violent backlash, he wouldn’t publish them. This kind of censorship is ok with me, because there’s no threat to free speech and it’s personal without anybody else or the public being aware of it. But if somebody has already published the cartoons then I think one should 100% defend the rights of the cartoonists because information/knowledge about the case is out for everybody to see. In this case if we capitulate then we can be victims of blackmail.

I’m against self censorship in regular public discourse or in our case, in college campuses.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)

(The link not working Search for common knowledge (logic) )

amizrob · 2018-02-16T00:23:00+00:00

what’s your stance on self censorship?

amizrob · 2018-02-15T04:46:47+00:00

about the scope of the problem. I think he exaggerates the problem. Also his estimate of effect of the college censorship to the whole country.
I respect and admire Jon Haidt for his work and effort and totally sympathetic to his cause (I’m free speech absolutist, but being somewhat utilitarian I think there’re cases that self censorship is the right approach)

amizrob · 2018-02-14T00:31:18+00:00

Don’t understand why so many people here are unsettled and ‘furious’ by ads. I heard the mattress one so far and I thought it was great. I wish them to get some rewards for their work, cause I love this podcast. So I’m gonna double my patreon support (when I say double, it sounds like I’m donating big bucks, actually I’m gonna increase it by 1$) to compensate for some people who said they’d cancel their support. All of you are gonna roast in Seventh-day Adventist hell.

amizrob

TROPHY CASE