The goal of public health is ostensibly primary prevention: this means a focus on anticipating, (rather than treating), disease, disorder, and injury.
MacAskill seeks to convince that not only are we in the developed world in a position to do a tremendous amount of good, but that our approach to doing good is itself tremendously important.
The entire idea of democracy is predicated on two essential assumptions, that humans will value knowledge, and humans will decide on the basis of rationality.
Overreliance on slides has contributed to the absurd belief that expecting and requiring students to read books, attend classes, take notes and do homework is unreasonable.
Perhaps our belief that the intellectual is synonymous with the political is less an eternal fact of human existence than a symptom of our own hyper-politicized times.
Oppression does indeed exist. But, oppression is complicated, far more complicated than can be distilled in an undergraduate academic setting.
It might just be that casual prejudice has become so commonplace that many of us don’t even notice it anymore.
This can be avoided with a moratorium, but then we’re back to square one. This sparks a near infinite regress of bad options.
If the critics are correct that human enhancement is unethical, dangerous or both, then yes, emergence in China would be worrying.
Humans around the world have knowledge about many things. Some of it is the kind one might write essays about, or learn about in graduate courses at university.
The situationist idea that personality is an illusion is an arresting one, but it is false.
Social media isn’t the cause of these crises in our culture; rather, there is a sense that it has betrayed its higher purpose.
Their lives were destroyed, and their lives will remain destroyed if we don’t say anything. To bring back their rights, we must speak up.
It’s about the role of ambivalence in contemporary politics, focusing on an emerging strand of feminist politics.
Marriage is casting a vote for a candidate who will help us create the kind of life we can enjoy and value.