All Thoughts Being Equal

I've informally decided to allocate roughly ten percent of my gross annual earnings to donations, in the spirit of Effective Altruism and the "Giving What We Can" pledge. As public reporting of contributions is rather in line with the EA philosophy, I'm keeping a record of what I've done. Maybe it will inspire people to imitate or critique my donation choices! I donated a total of $500 in December 2015. This year, since I didn't earn a lot of money, was mostly about starting to give , and establishing a baseline from which I can iterate and move towards a more satisfactory and effective contribution portfolio. So in future, I suspect that my contributions to, say the "De Facto Subscription" category will stay flat while donations to actual charities will increase. You might ask: why are you publishing this? The answer is: Other people have. Also, why should charity be secret ? Humanities Donations: 5% In 2015, I donated $25 to...

At the beginning of summer I decided to detach myself from Facebook—no longer would I 'like' or comment on public posts, though I did keep up a bit with certain closed groups for stuff I was doing over the summer. And yet, since most of my friends are still posting on Facebook, I still look at it. This detached observation lends itself to philosophizing, as I looked at the nature of posts in my news feed and wondered: Is there anyone working on an ethics of digital public conduct? I. Certainly the ethics of physical public conduct go all the way back to the foundations of philosophy, all over the world: what constitutes the good life, what duties do we owe to others, and so on. And seeing what gets posted, from a meta level, sparked my curiosity in this Facebook IM discussion with a friend(my comments in bold): It seems like the mocking impulse comes from a similar place to the cult mocking impulse Like, these people think they've found a deep answer and t...

Amazon just built its own physical bookstore in the University Distric of Seattle. What a twist! So why do I think it's pointless for Amazon, and indeed any "corporate" bookseller, to operate a physical storefront? And why do I think that the only worthwhile brick-and-mortar bookstores are the "anything and everything" used bookstores? Simply put: serendipity versus suggestion. You may think that my ideas about the philosophy of bookstores are unorthodox, but if you agree, you might also like... Recently New York Times Magazine ran a story about the fascinating gutter-market for ultra-cheap used books sold on Amazon.com. You know, all those books that are priced at $0.01 (+$3.99 shipping)? Turns out they're often rescued from the landfill—sometimes literally. Sort of like donations to a food bank, libraries and thrift stores often get far more donations than they can properly deal with: [Thriftbooks] , along with several other enormous used-book-sellin...

Recently the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a research arm of the World Health Organization, classified processed meat as a known carcinogen and red meat as a probable one. Some people took it as a strong argument against meat. Industry PR called it "dramatic and alarmist overreach." I think this is an example of how poor science reporting, from the original press release to mainstream and secondary follow-ups, plus public innumeracy, can lead to over-political science news. I. Let's start at the source: What did the IARC 's press release [ pdf ] actually say? After thoroughly reviewing the accumulated scientific literature, a Working Group of 22 experts from 10 countries convened by the IARC Monographs Programme classified the consumption of red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A), based on limited evidence that the consumption of red meat causes cancer in humans and strong mechanistic evidence supporting a carcinogenic ef...

This post is a follow-up to Diagnosis of an overwhelming fear, pt. 2 , and a partial-follow up to Rhetorical imperialism I. The new hotness in this micro-epoch of the Age of Outrage is at Vox, where a pseudonymous professor touts his liberality but claims that his liberal students are terrifying . "I'm a liberal college professor," cries the headline, "and my liberal students terrify me": I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students. Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes s...

I.   My friend Jon Bash is a very talented musician/composer , so it's safe to assume that he thinks very seriously about music in general. Recently he posted this article ( "How Popular Music's Lyrics Perpetuate American Idiocy" ) from a site called The Anti-Media, about a study examining the "reading level" of Billboard Top 40 songs. Stories about the study were passed around other places too, including The Guardian ( "Hip hop ain't top: new study reveals reading levels behind music lyrics" ) and The Onion 's A.V. Club ( "Popular songs are dumb and only getting dumber, says dumb study" ), with varying levels of skepticism and/or snark. Before getting in to any substantive discussion, however, I will first make fun of The Anti-Media for writing a really dumb article. Claire Bernish (Twitter handle: @ subversive_pen — Twitter bio: a Julian Assange quote) opens her turd-de-force with the following incredible paragraph-and...