Changing priors

One question that  is pertinent to politics as well as psychology is the nature of moral progress. When I say moral progress, I mean the process by which individuals end up updating or modifying their basic moral beliefs (or priors). This process usually is a slow one, and at the micro level involves one’s reaction [...]

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How clueless can you be, Adam Kirsch?

Adam Kirsch’s NY Times oped on Ayn Rand is a perfect example of a commentator having absolutely no idea about the person he is writing about. In particular, it contains the following gem: When Bennett Cerf, a head of Random House, begged her to cut Galt’s speech, Rand replied with what Heller calls “a comment that [...]

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An alien morality

I love reading Paul Krugman’s NY Times columns and especially the comments that follow because they offer a fascinating glimpse of certain moral principles that are completely alien to my personal philosophy. It is like going into a country where they seem to speak the same language; yet their words mean completely different things than [...]

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A discussion on morality and the nature of values

To make up for my lack of posting, let me link to a discussion over at Aristotle’s blog. It started off with Rawls but has evolved into topics like the nature of morality and the objectivity (or lack thereof) of values. — To a casual reader of the thread linked above, I might come across [...]

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Utopia and reality

Will Wikinson says: Yet I hear again and again that, since the state should not be in the business of marriage, one should not, as a libertarian, have an opinion about how this business is to be carried out. Increasingly, I find this an obnoxious and shameful form of moral recusal. One cannot use an [...]

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A ski helmet rant from ten years ago

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An old Obama speech on religion

[Post edited] I discovered this video today. It is a recording of a speech Obama made more than an year ago. The familiar themes of collectivist altruism (this is Obama after all!) have their place but the speech is mainly about religion in a political context. Having heard many good and not so good Obama [...]

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Bitterness, happiness and Browne’s resolutions

Of the Browne resolutions, I find this one particularly important: I resolve to cleanse myself of hate, resentment, and bitterness. Such things steal time and attention from the work that must be done. Related to which I’d like to resolve: I will not let myself be poisoned with negative emotions by things I view as [...]

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Can’t get out of Carmen mode

What’s so special about Carmen? For one, the truly great music. Carmen is magical melody after magical melody. As for the orchestration, this is what Richard Strauss had to say: “If you want to learn how to orchestrate, don’t study Wagner’s scores, study the score of Carmen. What wonderful economy, and how every note and [...]

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Britain wants to make it illegal to pay for sex

Britain, where prostitution is now legal, wants to turn back the clock and criminalize it again. And like the Swedish, they have taken a bizarre but politically correct position — it will now be illegal to pay for sex but legal to sell it. As Home Secretary Jacqui Smith put it: Basically, if it means [...]

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The personal is not the political

1. And the moral is not the legal. It is a distinction that often seems to be lost. Admittedly, most people, when faced with the distasteful, the unpleasant or the unfair have a natural impulse to ‘ban it’. That is an emotional response. As we grow up, we learn to separate the emotional from the [...]

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The lure of mainstream happiness

Sometimes I am tempted to modify my moral premises so that I can be more at peace with the world. I am always saved by the realization that I cannot do such a thing deliberately and retain my self-respect.

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Neutrality in crisis

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” – Dante Alighieri [Edit: A reader points out that this quote is actually due to JFK, who (incorrectly) attributed it to Dante]

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Milton Friedman on the war on drugs

Milton Friedman, Nobel prize winning economist  — and one of my personal idols — was among the most influential libertarian thinkers of the last century. Friedman was primarily a consequentialist, meaning he advocated libertarian policies based on the fact that they work better. Such an approach has the great advantage of political effectiveness. If you [...]

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Money, power elites and morality

Eliezer Yudkowsky writes: One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood into the real world, was the degree to which the world is stratified by genuine competence. Now, yes, Steve Jurvetson is not just a randomly selected big-name venture capitalist.  He is a big-name VC who often shows up at [...]

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