Month: February 2021
-
Evolution, belief, and manipulation: A discussion with Hugo Mercier
by Robert Gressis ____ In this dialogue, Hugo Mercier (French National Center for Scientific Research, Not Born Yesterday) and I discuss how human belief and manipulation work, and Hugo’s research about why people aren’t as manipulable as we sometimes think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcMWlU6jzA&list=PLFBaXJ7yNOYERObvjSkJfoDOgtMWVhWse&index=2&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 01:24 Hugo’s thesis: When it comes to communication, people are not easily manipulated, but […]
-
Viewpoint Diversity and the Idea of Neutrality
by Luke Cuddy ___ Neutrality is a Laudable Goal: A Clarification of Viewpoint Diversity Critics of neutrality abound. For one thing, neutrality is boring compared to the hot, partisan take that gets the most clicks. In social settings, people who take the path of least resistance and don’t have an opinion on anything are often […]
-
Life of a philosophy youtuber … and postmodernism
by Kevin Currie-Knight ____ In this wide ranging discussion, Kevin talks with YouTuber Lewis Waller, of the philosophy/history YouTube channel Then and Now (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkS_…). They talk about YouTube as a venue for intellectual content, how and why Lewis does what he does with his channel, how Postmodernism influences his (and Kevin’s) intellectual approach, and more. […]
-
end of an era
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ My relationship with Robert Wright’s “BloggingHeads.TV” goes back some ten years or so, when I was nothing more than a regular contributer to the comments section. So involved was I that when Bob first recorded a conversation with regular commenters in 2013, I was one of them. [Though the link […]
-
The Grade Economy
by Robert Gressis and Kevin Currie-Knight ____ Robert Gressis and Kevin Currie-Knight have a wide-ranging conversation about the (fraught?) relationship between schooling, learning, and A-F grading. The discussion centers around an essay Currie-Knight wrote called Against the Grade Economy: https://theelectricagora.com/2020/12/26/against-the-grade-economy/ Streaming Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK-zUSFJ4Uc&list=PLFBaXJ7yNOYHdqzsJXrJD0aoiCD9H4iJS&index=2&t=16s&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 00:02:36 Rob and Kevin make small talk 00:07:01 Kevin describes and laments […]
-
Information, Communication and Insecurity
by Mark English ____ There are, these days, countless new and improved ways of losing documents and missing messages. If I and my friends are in any way typical, one routinely loses a large proportion of one’s stored data without even trying; whereas in the past we generally lost only what we deliberately threw away […]
-
Free Speech and Academic freedom in 2020: A Conversation with David Ottlinger
by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ EA’s own David Ottlinger and I discuss the ongoing efforts to silence, de-platform, and otherwise “Cancel” Professor Kathleen Stock, of the University of Sussex for her work and activism on sex and gender related issues; the Daily Nous’s treatment of this subject; and the more general question of the capacity […]
-
Three Lectures in Aesthetics
by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Three lectures from this semester’s upper-division course in Aesthetics [PHI 320] at Missouri State University. My topics include: Formalism; Clive Bell; The Wittgenstein-inspired view that ‘art’ cannot be defined; Morris Weitz; Maurice Mandelbaum; Relational Definitions; and The Institutional Theory of Art. Following the video lecture links are the three sets […]
-
Introducing: EA Podcasts!
by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ The Electric Agora is adding a podcast/video streaming “wing” to our site! It can be accessed via the “Podcast” tab at the top of EA’s homepage. Videos are hosted on YouTube, on a dedicated channel to which you can subscribe. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmifc5HsTq0xpiDg3zEAZeQ Right now, the links will take you to YouTube. […]