Dialogues #61 Read in browserâď¸ "Instead of validating products, I think about validating problems.â - Jay Clouse Iâve said this before, but I am excited for you all to see and hear the next season of the podcast, starting next month. I canât believe that some of these people take the time to talk to me about their work and some bigger, philosophical questions. If youâre not yet subscribed, hit subscribe here on YouTube to get notified when theyâre released, and if you prefer to listen, just...
15 days ago â˘Â 5 min read
Dialogues #60 Read in browserâď¸ "âmainstream feminism has morphed from a movement with both communitarian and libertarian strands, to one focused almost entirely on individual freedom, imagined as the property of functionally interchangeable âhumans'.â - Mary Harrington Last week I introduced the first part of a two-part piece, where I talked about how men are doing generally. (Spoiler: not great.) In this piece, I'll give a few more recommendations for books that evaluate whether some of the...
22 days ago â˘Â 4 min read
Dialogues #59 Read in browserâď¸ "Increasingly today, young men are the second sex in education...The gender equity movement deploys an unusual logic: gaps favoring men, those are evidence of invidious discrimination. They demand massive attention, including national legislation. Gaps favoring women, no matter how large, no matter how momentous or devastating to men's progress, those go unmentioned, unaddressed." - Christina Hoff Sommers A friend of mine recently told me he is in the early...
29 days ago â˘Â 4 min read
Dialogues #58 Read in browserâď¸ "Wonder is where philosophy begins." - Alex Byrne When someone starts connecting with philosophical ideas, you can bet one of their first questions is, What's the best book for someone who wants to get started learning philosophy? Before recently, I usually had some answer to this question that involved explaining how enormous philosophy is as a field, and a few suggestions that included a hodgepodge of books, depending on the person's interests. But these...
about 1 month ago â˘Â 2 min read
Dialogues #57 Read in browserâď¸ "Logic is part of our shared language and inheritance." - Ted Sider I am really pumped about the next season of the podcast. I have just started scheduling episodes, and so far I have a musician/podcaster, a philosopher at UNC, a scholar specializing in the second century, and a journalist. More to come. Subscribe here đđť In honor of Prime Day, I just launched the biggest sale Iâve ever put on for my Introduction to Logic course: a $4.99/month subscription for...
about 1 month ago â˘Â 5 min read
Dialogues #56 Read in browserâď¸ "My aim in this book is to defend the view that, when it comes to which highly visible objects there are right before our eyes, things are more or less the way they seem. There are tables, trees, trunks, dogs, and all manner of other ordinary objects, and there are no dogâtrunk composites or other such extraordinary objects...Outsiders to the debates over the metaphysics of material objects will likely find my view so obvious as to hardly be worth stating. Let...
about 2 months ago â˘Â 4 min read
Dialogues #55 Read in browserâď¸ "We can set aside the Rosetta Stone and just speak English to a computer. They will likely understand just as well as when speaking to them in Python. This immediately presents two choices: We can get lazy, or we can elevate our thought." - Marco Argenti âIf you want to pursue a career in engineering, you should focus on learning philosophy in addition to traditional engineering coursework.â Thatâs Marco Argenti, the Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs,...
about 2 months ago â˘Â 5 min read
Dialogues #54 Read in browserâď¸ "One of the most damaging and widespread social beliefs is the idea that most adults are incapable of learning new skills." - Naval Ravikant Congratulations to Joshua, who won a free year of my Introduction to Logic course in last week's one-year anniversary giveaway! I created the Introduction to Logic course because I think greater logic literacy would be a net good for society. But it isn't easy to capture those sweet mental gains that come from learning...
2 months ago â˘Â 5 min read
Dialogues #53 Read in browserâď¸ "Do good work. Work that youâre excited about, that challenges you, makes you better, and creates value for other people. Work that you're proud of, not just work that pays you well." - Justin Welsh It has been one year since I officially started this Selling Plato project. My YouTube channel just reminded me of its 1st birthday, and a couple coupons from my logic course just expired. To celebrate this anniversary, I am giving away an entire year of my...
2 months ago â˘Â 4 min read