Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Theoretical Case Against Education

Asking some very tough questions about school.

Most of these are the kinds of facts that I would expect school to teach people. Some of them (eg the branches of government) are the foundations of whole subjects, facts that I would expect to get reviewed and built upon many times during a student’s career. If most people don’t remember them, there seems to be little hope that they remember basically anything from school. So what’s school even doing?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-theoretical-case-against-education

The questions about identity raised by semaglutide

…imagine there’s a drug that will quash your love of online shopping. Should you take it?

According to philosophers who study decision-making, our ability to make that choice rationally depends on whether the change is “transformational”—that is, on how deeply it affects our underlying preferences. We are what we want; our preferences define who we are. When we deliberate over a choice, whether it’s between cereal boxes or life partners, we weigh our options against our current preferences, and we try to imagine which outcome will make us happiest. But when faced with decisions that have the potential to transform those very preferences, we’re necessarily at a loss. Which set of preferences should serve as the basis for making the choice?

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ozempic-reshaping-desire-since-2023

The Far Out Initiative

I’ve been a fan of David Pearce’s work for many years; I’m glad to see it getting more attention.

There’s more to life than just not being in pain. There’s love, family, beauty, knowledge, community, etc. But there’s also more to life than having money. And most of us realize that very poor people struggling to put food in their mouths can’t fully enjoy love, family, beauty, etc. The world is on fire, and although some of us live on nice little islands of bearability, it’s hard to enjoy them when you can look just off your island and see everyone else on fire. If the fires got put out, maybe we could enjoy the other stuff more whole-heartedly instead of always looking over our shoulder at a world full of endless misery.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/profile-the-far-out-initiative

Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous

Predictably, not everyone has been happy about it. Critics have included local planners, politicians and, especially, residents of Kitsilano Point, a rarified beachfront neighbourhood bordering the reserve. And there’s been an extra edge to their critiques that’s gone beyond standard-issue NIMBYism about too-tall buildings and preserving neighbourhood character. There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.” 

https://macleans.ca/society/sen%cc%93a%e1%b8%b5w-vancouver/

How technology has changed the world since I was young

If I were to write my take on how radically I feel the world has changed, it would have a lot of overlap with Noah’s, although it probably wouldn’t be as well written.

But when I look back on the world I lived in when I was a kid in 1990, it absolutely stuns me how different things are now. The technological changes I’ve already lived through may not have changed what my kitchen looks like, but they have radically altered both my life and the society around me. Almost all of these changes came from information technology — computers, the internet, social media, and smartphones.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-technology-has-changed-the-world