There are bad incentives for journalists to appeal to the irrational knee-jerk emotions and unfortunately what sells is negativity in news particularly in TV news which prioritizes emotional interviews and vivid images of disasters over less sensationalist issues that are…
Blog Archives
Abolish Daylight Wasting Time
Today begins the season of Daylight Wasting Time which wastes daylight for most Americans. The median American gets out of bed a little after 6:30AM and goes to bed around 11PM according to Jawbone’s sleep sensors. Daylight Saving Time extends daylight…
Posted in Culture
Myth, religion, and fascism
Yuval Noah Harari is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. The basic thesis of the book is: The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics, Public Finance
Why is extreme selfishness funny?
Here is a screenshot of a to-do list that the author undoubtedly meant as a joke, but I wonder why some people would post this kind of thing or find it funny. The first point is being spiteful to his…
Posted in Culture, Philosophy and ethics
#Pence2018: What gay bunnies mean for a Pence administration.
Whereas in 2009 nearly 50% more Americans opposed gay marriage than supported it, as of the latest poll, a mere eight years later, there are nearly twice as many Americans who support gay marriage than those opposed according to Gallop.…
What about Honor?
I was chosen to be Bluffton’s Civic Engagement Day scholar for 2018 and so I’ll be lecturing about honor for Civic Engagement Day and at the Presidential Scholarship Competition next week. I had to assign a reading about honor to the prospective…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics
Announcing The Positivist Fallacy
I was just updating my Introduction to Mmutilitarianism for my public finance students to read today and I added a new page about The Positivist Fallacy which explains why positivism is impossible and the whole normative-positive distinction is illogical and useless at best…
Posted in Medianism, Philosophy and ethics
