วีดีโอ

You guys love Michael Huemer

Just seems like she's not really talking about the necessary implications of principles and more talking about heuristics that pragmatically help people to navigate life. That's fine but you shouldn't pretend you're doing the former.

Man...the video editor made more than five mistakes 😅

I love that Dr. Smith brings up the normal version of happiness that we expect for our lives. In my own experience, I feel happiest when I'm fulfilling my goals of adventure and travel, learning and writing. It's great to check in with one's values and find out if their actions are actually leading us there.

These aren't the men these topics should be discussed with.

It’s immoral unless it’s under the following circumstances: danger to the mother’s health, the fetus passed away in the womb, rape, incest. No other reasons are moral. You can’t justify “because it was bad time in my life” or “I just couldn’t take care of it”. Thats not a reason to eliminate a pregnancy.

The problem with the example of lying to the Nazis about hiding or hidden Jews is that honesty is not equivalent to telling the truth and dishonesty is not equivalent to not telling the truth or lying. In other words, there are contexts in which lying is honest and there are other contexts in which lying is dishonest. The moral principle is to be honest (true to reality), not to never lie. The Nazis were evil and hiding the Jews was not. Lying to the Nazis about hiding or hidden Jews would have been being true to reality, true to the fact that the Nazis were evil and that hiding the Jews was not. We all recognize the right to use lethal force in self-defense or in defense of others, against those who violate rights. Hopefully we do. It would be a strange view of morality that holds that it's moral to use lethal force in self-defense or in defense of others, against those who violate rights, but one must not lie in self-defense of in defense of others.

A Quick Look at African lets you know some of what you need to.

Wow. That was unsatisfying. She’s playing Calvinball with “self interest.”

I found this a frustrating dialog in the sense that much was left hanging. For example, Alex didn't answer the question of what is meant by continuing to live as a woman. Did he mean these people performed stereotypically feminine roles or dress, or refer to a decision they made to continue using feminine pronouns or... something else? The more flexibly a culture interprets the role, the less distress may be experienced. The other gentleman then raises a question. If "gender" is redefined as one's inherent sense of identity (and social role and external appearance, which are alterable) then what is incoherent about identifying according to these even if they appear to run counter to one's overt sex. If we allow that sex is genetic and gender amorphous, then one's gender identity may derive from things other than genetics, at least exclusively. Alex responds that the definition is circular and that Jan Morris didn't become a woman but successfully lived as one, which is an unsatisfying answer. The fact that two terms, "sex" and "gender" exist historically suggests that these are in some way distinct, yet he does not qualify his objection to this definition. Perhaps he means to say that sex is immutable, but he does not address whether there is room to allow that gender may not be intrinsically tied to it. Alex further argues that some people are able to be socialized counter to their sex without invoking distress, suggesting that this illegitimizes an inherent gender identity. However if we allow that gender identity can be divorced from sex and that, furthermore, gender expression exists on a spectrum, then it makes sense that some people would not be distressed. Possibly those people would have been transgender had they been socialized according to their sex, or they may fall closer to the center and be dispositionally androgynous by nature, or the ways in which their culture structures gendered roles may be less restrictive, minimizing distress... just to name a few of the potentially confounding factors. He also argues that an aberration during sex development does not make a third sex, but I wonder: is it just a matter of frequency which determines whether something is an aberration rather than a normal evolutionary variation? And why does he acknowledge the sexual orientation of "bisexual" rather than view it as an aberration of heterosexual or homosexual? He seems to assert that one's sexual orientation is evidence of their inherent sex, but doesn't account for cases of trans women who are attracted to men, or of exclusively lesbian women. His stipulation that no atypical psychological profile be comorbid in cases of gender dysphoria would seem to be an argument in favor of early intervention, since conditions like anxiety, depression, and, increasingly, ADD and Autism are common among the general population and much more inevitable in a child who experiences gross misalignment with social expectations. If, therefore, we force them to wait and then dismiss them as ineligible should other issues arise in tandem with the traumas that naturally accumulate through living, we've placed them in an impossible situation. And it ends abruptly on a statement that absolutely requires qualification, as one could certainly argue that female sexual experimentation does present a challenge to gay rights if those rights are contingent, for many, on orientation being innate. There is more to say but I have already gone on too long. I think it's very much worth exploring whether "rapid onset gender dysphoria" and social contagion are genuine confounding factors in the growing prevalence of this condition, and the host's observation that an advocacy movement can paint themselves into a corner is a topic worth exploring properly. If, in example, we are now prepared to say that being gay is acceptable regardless to whether it was a choice, because the choice is a personal one which creates no harm, then we must ask whether the same cannot be said of the transgender community. At the end of the day, whether or not the extended population agrees that one can adopt a gender contrary to their assigned sex, the potential for harm is limited to the individual affected, and therefore a cost-benefit analysis that only they are positioned to determine.

So what do we do about successful capitalists who use their wealth to promote socially damaging projects? Friedrich Engels was the classic example of that. He spent his own money & applied his business skills towards marketing Marxism like it was a company's product, with his friend Karl Marx as the company's brand.

Ayn Rand should have been a theist and taken Pascal's Wager because of self-interest. :)

A book of possible related interest: "Japan’s biggest bestseller is a philosophy book on “The Courage to be Disliked” Unfortunately I can't post links on TH-cam so I can only suggest you google the title of the article. It's on the Quartz website.

I have only one question: Who is John Galt? 😅

So is Nathan actually intelligent?

I felt like this whole conversation could’ve revolved around Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason”. Literally the same argument through and through 🤦🏻‍♂️😵‍💫

This is the sorry state of philosophy now. MRAs griping and calling it philosophy.

I hate when philosophers talk about physics without knowing much about physics. Also, there were so many times that his possible universes broke the laws of nature, after he admitted that possible universes couldn’t break the laws of nature. Not sure why you didn’t press him harder.

There exists genetic analyses using polygenic scores - which as of yet only explains a fraction of the total variance - that show the same rank ordering of IQ as the test scores do.

This guest really has no convincing answer, in my opinion, as to what the purpose of sport is or what constitutes fairness in sport. He says that fairness is not about preventing domination but, the crux of the argument against trans women in sport is about domination. So far, no academic or lay commentator has been able to drum up a good argument for excluding trans women from the female category given that trans domination isn't present and efforts are taken to limit the inherent benefits possessing a male body might entail. There is also no convincing argument made against the example of creating a Sub-Saharan African category for running versus a European running category based upon overwhelming physiological advantages some African athletes have. In my opinion, the current approach of imposing moderate controls is fine if it means trans athletes are allowed to compete and we don't have to inflict this obnoxious debate on trans people any longer. Also, in my opinion, an open category is not a serious solution to this problem. It's a way of nominally allowing trans women to compete but, in effect, bans them because those leagues are either going to be the new men's division plus trans people or a category which never actually takes off because not enough athletes choose to be in that category.

Is it true you are doing a show in Aus later this month?

This was, I am sad to say, one of the worst guests you've had on an otherwise excellent show. You ought to have pressed him much harder.

I wish I had her email address to tell her how much I liked this book. The twist at the end is worthy of the late Anthony Burgess.

The only thing out of control is the fact that people DO NOT BELIEVE you have the right to defend yourself. If YOU TELL ME you do not need a gun, I am going to tell you that DONT come to me for help when you get robbed, attacked, or your family is killed because you dont think you need a gun. Police have guns to protect you. We have guns to protect us. Dont rely on the police to protect you unless you live in a town of 200 people and everyone knows everyone. America has been lied to with Propaganda for way too long. We have greed people in the government who want to control us and take everything we have. Last time this happened WW2 happened. Ask the survivors of WW2 that the germans took their guns away from.

She's intelligent, nice-looking, and she says fuck. I love women who say fuck with an educated accent. ❤

This might be in my opinion the best conversation you have had on this show. Really really enjoyed that, thank you.

Never thought I'd hear someone advocate an Aristotelian view of "good erotic taste" and rattle off facts about transgender oppression in one podcast.

I wish God would come fine tune my clavichord.

Check out www.youtube.com/@PhysicsToGod and www.youtube.com/@TheRepugnantConclusion

Yeah thats because they are obese thus have higher likelihood of developing these diseases, not because there is prejudice. In fact medical staff are WAY more likely to take you more seriously if youre obese.

There's so much wrong with what she is saying...

Carnivore diet refutes this theory.

So is Manne saying that being overweight is not bad for your health and that one cannot go from overweight to normal weight in the long term through diet and excercise? Jesus, if that's true then I've been very wrong about a whole lot for my whole life and apparently so is everyone I've ever spoken to about this. I need to read more about this, she can't just be lying. But surely, surely, surely, being moderately obese is going to be bad for your health, right?

Thank you guys for another great episode!

What race invented I.Q.?

19:07 The heteronormativity of this view, the idea that sex is clearly delineated and can be no other way, is typical Foucauldian power. Byrne asserts that one can only be male or female because he sees himself as male and his experience of other genders is confined to a construct that he deems other than himself and calls female. He asserts that certain bodies are the "norm" because the majority of other bodies look the same, and collectively that gives him the power to classify bodies that are different as abnormal. The idea that there can just be bodies, in a variety of configurations, without reference to chromosomes, biology, normativity or development, is apparently heretical. That people can exist, who don't think, or look like you shouldn't be a surprise, at least not to philosopher. Yet when it comes to gender it appears we're suddenly all entitled to espouse a binary that cannot be questioned. Did anybody read Foucault?

16:32 But how can anybody on this video comment on transsexualism, given that nobody actually is transsexual? The consensus seems to be to negate the experience of modifying the body as invalid, but nobody commenting has actually done that. So how do any of you speak from a position of knowledge? All you have are assumptions. There are numerous accounts by actual transsexuals, indicating how changing their body has transformed their experience of themselves. Why would three cis-heteronormative men be more qualified to negate those accounts?

12:07 I'm not sure that's what Jen Marrion concludes in her book, Female Husbands. She makes it quite clear that many such people, even after they were exposed as the opposite sex, continued to live their lives as male. For them it wasn't a pretense, or an act to achieve some social status, it was how they saw themselves.

I'm impressed with Raj's patience in this debate. It's crazy that the debate is framed as though Israel has always existed, and as though the Palestinians have always simply been belligerent neighbors trying to conquer it. And it's crazy to act like Israel is this weak, easily bullied state, surrounded by powerful enemies. No, actually, the Israelis seized the land from the Palestinians in the first place, with the support of powerful Western nations. And they are massively more powerful than the Palestinians, again due to the support of powerful Western nations. I don't see how we can have a meaningful discussion about how to move forward, if we don't have these basic facts of the situation firmly in view.

I like this podcast first they talked about race and how some are better than others and now this destroy them fatties

You guys gotta bring on Deborah Rhode (writer on The Beauty Bias)! Now she gives a very strong defence of a similar issue!

She is just lying about the state of the empirical research regarding the link between being overweight or obese and mortality (not to mention morbidity!). This is horrible and honestly morally wrong for her to mislead the public like this. Her initial point is ignorant of good clinical medical practice. It is GOOD for doctors to advocate weight loss for their overweight patients as this is in their patients best interest regarding physical health. Depending on the patients presentation the doctor may not have even been indicated to further investigate the patients symptoms, this would depend on the fine details of course. To claim that case is paradigmatic of fatphobia is foolish. Good medical practice is weighing up the risks and benefits of any investigation. A good clinician will make that decision with knowledge of the patients pre-test probability for some disease. To say it is fatphobic for a doctor to not further investigate some symptom is stupid because the decision to investigate it further could be reasonable or not depending on how the patient presented.

This is interesting, but I'd appreciate it more if the words "big" and "fat" weren't used interchangeably. There's a difference between being big and being fat. You can be big in different ways, and fat people can be small as well. More clarity, less euphemisms, please!

All else equal, being thin is far better than being fat in every aspect of life. Lost 110lbs on the carnivore diet, best thing I ever did. Just and we want beautiful buildings, & beautiful paintings, we should want beautiful people, everyone looks better when they aren't fat.

Given that a phobia is a kind of excessive or irrational fear, I don't believe fatphobia is even a thing - I don't know anyone who is scared of fat people. The plain fact is that many people just find fat unattractive. Including many fat people, were they being honest.

Good episode! The question I wanted you guys to ask was: if fatphobia is really something analogous to racism, sexism and homophobia, and if it's structural in the same way, then isn't it morally wrong for people to lose weight for social advancement? Isn't this helping to perpetuate a system of oppression? Or take those before and after pics of people who have lost a tremendous amount of weight after a year or so. Isn't that upholding some oppressive structures? Isn't it leaving other fat people, those who can't lose the weight or can't do so as easily, in a more isolated position? I don't see how you can accept Manne's views and not think that there's at least a good argument for thinking that this is morally bad. She wants to say: "fat or thin--it's a life choice." But I'm not sure she's consistent here.

Some kind of gauge theory might be needed to bring the data in line for a realistic comparison?

Being fat is unarguably a survival edge in -40C or colder environments. I have under 5% body fat and at these temperatures I need more insulation than most people around me or I would freeze to death. Interesting video, I am looking forward to your next topics...

This podcast is a gem. Kate's philosophy is not---it's tired, insular, confounding, repetitive, protected, inverted, simplistic, and decadent: "We should be largely celebrating [people's] choices when they don't harm others." No, no we shouldn't. Kate is a modern embodiment of philosophy before truth, motivated reasoning at its finest. Her entire body of thought boils down to this axiom: If x affects anyone else besides a wealthy white Christian male, then x must be stigmatized, and if anyone else besides the wealthy white Christian male wants to do y, then y should be rationalized, destigmatized, and celebrated. To know her philosophy on a topic, just ask if the topic is antagonistic to anyone besides a white male. It also doesn't help that she's one of the censorious voices in philosophy. That said, I love the varied voices on Brain in a Vat, just giving my commentary

I love this podcast, listen to just about every episode, but man, Jason needs a new mic or better post production. The sibilance is too much.