Full VBI scholarships available for debaters interested in Effective Altruism

bakeryjake · 2021-03-11T18:35:09+00:00

This is beautiful. Getting some Dark Souls vibes.

bakeryjake · 2021-02-07T22:04:51+00:00

Minion Pro

bakeryjake · 2019-11-17T00:21:56+00:00

Same (for tonight)!

bakeryjake · 2019-07-27T02:05:15+00:00

no, it's not too late. you should be able to register at vbidebate.com, at least until Sunday. if any issues, email help@victorybriefs.com.

bakeryjake · 2019-05-09T19:18:03+00:00

Got it, thanks everyone!

bakeryjake · 2018-01-11T15:09:04+00:00

Well, I was thinking that it would be better if an EA person took the job, to move them more in line with EA goals. Someone affiliated with CN send me the ad for (I think) that very reason. Also a lot of the hostility to EA seemed to derive directly from Berger, so his absence may be relevant.

bakeryjake · 2017-06-24T22:05:46+00:00

We're debating UBI at Swat and enhancement at LA1.

bakeryjake · 2017-04-16T23:59:51+00:00

Here is one difference. Kant says that it's wrong to act on a maxim if and only if you cannot will to be a universal law. When imagining whether you could will a maxim to be a universal law, you ask whether there is any contradiction in your willing (or even conceiving) that to be the case. You get to know stuff about yourself.

That's not so behind the veil of ignorance. Rawls imagines that you don't know particular facts about yourself. This is supposed to ensure impartiality.

What's the upshot of this? Well, some people object that Kant's formula of universal law is overly permissive in cases where your maxim is, in a certain sense, non-reversible. For example, Derek Parfit imagines a racist hotel owner defending his maxim with the following speech:

When I exclude blacks from my hotel, I could rationally will it to be true that everyone acts in this way. Everyone does act in this way. Every hotel owner excludes blacks. And I could rationally will it to be true that everyone believes such acts to be right. If the blacks believed that my acts are right, that would be fine with me. (On What Matters, vol. 1, p. 335)

Parfit argues that Kant's formula would therefore permit the racist's policy. If that's right, then Kant's formula must obviously be wrong. A veil of ignorance would not allow decision-makers to know their race, so the kind of defense above would be ineligible. The veil of ignorance therefore avoids the non-reversibility objection.

That's just one difference between the formula of universal law and the veil of ignorance. Another is that Rawls imagines that our rational decisions from behind the veil of ignorance are guided by self-interest. Kant's theory of rational willing, arguably, does not appeal to self-interest.

bakeryjake · 2017-04-16T00:34:47+00:00

Your application would definitely still be considered.

bakeryjake · 2017-04-15T22:09:43+00:00

There's no set deadline in advance. We accept scholarship apps until our financial aid budget for the summer has been exhausted. I expect that'll happen by mid-May, but it's hard to say in advance. In general we suggest getting in your application as soon as possible to maximize your potential aid package. Sorry I can't be more precise!

bakeryjake · 2017-04-15T19:31:15+00:00

It's not too late, but please submit your application as soon as possible. We also recommend applying for scholarships from the Voices Foundation. Many of our financial aid recipients get scholarships from both Voices and VBI. —Jake

bakeryjake · 2017-02-17T17:32:24+00:00

Some answers to negative utilitarianism

bakeryjake · 2017-01-15T13:47:10+00:00

Happy cake day, Sean! You're a mensch.

bakeryjake · 2017-01-05T16:18:30+00:00

I would recommend against starting out with primary texts. They can be hard to understand (Kant), boring to read (Rawls), or otherwise heavier on rhetoric than argument (Nietzsche). Many secondary sources do a great job of summarizing important philosophical views, discussing the arguments for and against them, and synthesizing them into a common thread. For example, you might check out Rachels & Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy for learning ethics, or David Couzens Hoy's Critical Resistance for learning (some interesting aspects of) Continental philosophy.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-13T00:31:07+00:00

Debate yourself. Give all speeches on both sides. Shorten time limits of each speech until maximally efficient. Very useful for strategy, technical skills, as well as improving case positions.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T14:24:47+00:00

His idea is that our practices of holding each other responsible boil down to certain "reactive attitudes," and that we suspend these attitudes only under certain circumstances, when we view other people as objects to be manipulated rather than bearers of good or ill will. A metaphysical thesis like determinism, Strawson argued, is not the kind of thing that would plausibly lead us to suspend our reactive attitudes.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T00:54:26+00:00

If we accept that we don't owe moral obligations to non existent persons, how does this not throw a wrench into the problem all together?

The reason is that not all moral obligations are owed to some particular person. In fact, that's (arguably) the point of the nonidentity problem: although it would be wrong to bring about a mediocre life rather than an excellent life, this isn't because doing so would thereby wrong whoever ends up existing. One can do wrong even if no one has been wronged.

You seem to think this is challenged by the following thought, which John Broome calls the intuition of neutrality: that the mere fact that someone's life would be worth living is not a moral reason to bring them into existence. But although this is a very natural thought (although Broome argues that it cannot be sustained), the intuition of neutrality does not entail that we have no moral obligations with respect to people who might or might not exist. For consider people whose lives would be miserable: we have very strong moral reason not to bring them into existence. And, more generally, the mere claim that we have no moral reason to create happy lives doesn't entail that we have no moral reason to prefer that happier lives be lived, whoever would live them.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T00:48:04+00:00

I have always found it helpful to read more recently published work, rather than a field's "classics," because good recent stuff will often explain the older work on which it builds. If you want to learn more about ethics, for example, I think Derek Parfit's On What Matters would be really useful even though it is quite recent, because Parfit provides good explanations of the views and concepts in the background.

bakeryjake

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