May monthly round-up

Published about 1 year ago • 1 min read

In May, I only published one summary, and one (rather long) blog post. But I did some work behind the scenes — I moved the site to a new server and tidied up the Blog Archive page so that it's easier to navigate.

Book summaries

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt - Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory suggests that there are at least 6 different moral foundations we draw upon to judge moral issues. Liberals and Libertarians rely heavily on 2 or 3 of these, while Social Conservatives rely on all 6.

Blog posts

Criticisms of The Righteous Mind - while I generally enjoyed Haidt's book, I had three main criticisms of the book:
- More is not necessarily better when it comes to moral foundations, despite what Haidt suggests.
- Haidt dismisses rationalism unfairly, and was too defeatist about our ability to become more rational.
- Haidt overemphasises the differences between Conservatives and Liberals, and paints them as being more fundamental than they actually are.

My next summary will be for Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World, which I expect to post early next month. But I'll be travelling soon so June may be yet another one-summary month.

Thanks and until next time,

To Summarise

June monthly update

Hope you've all had a good June. I've only posted 1 book summary and 2 blog posts: Book summaries Deep Utopia by Nick Bostrom (22 mins) — this weird book explores the question of what utopia could look like and what problems might be left after we've reached a state of technological maturity. Blog posts — both posts this month came about as I've been thinking and reading about the economics of AI. I'm planning to do a third post that will address that more directly, but these two lay the...

12 days ago • 1 min read

New Book Summary: Deep Utopia

My latest summary is for Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World by Nick Bostrom, a former Oxford professor in philosophy. The books explores the question of what utopia could look like if technological progress goes as well as it possibly could, and what problems might still be left. As usual, the key takeaways are below, and you can find the full summary by clicking the link above. KEY TAKEAWAYS Bostrom explores what utopia could look like if we reached a state of technological...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read