So the conclusion is "USA is bad and should stop destroying the world." It's good a thing you wrote this since I would not be able to find this sort of high-minded, utilitarian philosophical thinking elsewhere.
It's important, yes. But it has zero connection to utilitarianism, which is what I would expect from reading your newsletter for some time now. How hard would it have been to connect this piece to something about philosophy? It would have made the work a lot more interesting and a lot less singing to the choir.
I write about things other than utilitarianism. I don't think that adding "and moral philosophy says it's bad to kill lots of people and overthrow Democracies" is interesting.
I don’t think he is singing to the choir. I don’t share his perspective and found his piece worth thinking about. I expect the majority of utilitarians are not very aligned with a Chomsky-esque view of US foreign policy.
It's true, I was turned off by the Chomsky citation and you may have picked up on that. Maybe "singing to the choir" is a poor choice of phrase. I might modify that to "off topic" because, in my mind, this newsletter is about philosophy.
But I'm not the author and Mr. Bulldog is certainly free to write about whatever he chooses, so it can't really be off topic. I guess I'm still searching for the right turn of phrase for my reaction.
Great article as usual! Dude, where is that article you wrote not a long time ago, I think it was called 'The banality of people' or something to that effect. I had read halfway through it and was trying to find it again for I was really loving it - but I couldn't find it. Did you delete it or something?
Why are you focusing on casualty numbers. Isn’t the impact of U.S. interventions on existential risks or S-risks far more important by dozens of orders of magnitude?
So the conclusion is "USA is bad and should stop destroying the world." It's good a thing you wrote this since I would not be able to find this sort of high-minded, utilitarian philosophical thinking elsewhere.
The conclusion that the USA has a generally bad foreign policy is important.
It's important, yes. But it has zero connection to utilitarianism, which is what I would expect from reading your newsletter for some time now. How hard would it have been to connect this piece to something about philosophy? It would have made the work a lot more interesting and a lot less singing to the choir.
I write about things other than utilitarianism. I don't think that adding "and moral philosophy says it's bad to kill lots of people and overthrow Democracies" is interesting.
The moral philosophy connection would indeed be boring.
To each their own. I'm just one member of your audience.
I don’t think he is singing to the choir. I don’t share his perspective and found his piece worth thinking about. I expect the majority of utilitarians are not very aligned with a Chomsky-esque view of US foreign policy.
It's true, I was turned off by the Chomsky citation and you may have picked up on that. Maybe "singing to the choir" is a poor choice of phrase. I might modify that to "off topic" because, in my mind, this newsletter is about philosophy.
But I'm not the author and Mr. Bulldog is certainly free to write about whatever he chooses, so it can't really be off topic. I guess I'm still searching for the right turn of phrase for my reaction.
Great article as usual! Dude, where is that article you wrote not a long time ago, I think it was called 'The banality of people' or something to that effect. I had read halfway through it and was trying to find it again for I was really loving it - but I couldn't find it. Did you delete it or something?
I deleted it.
Was there any specific reason why? I was finding it really insightful
Gandhi said, western civilization is a great idea? Sounds like you'd agree
Why are you focusing on casualty numbers. Isn’t the impact of U.S. interventions on existential risks or S-risks far more important by dozens of orders of magnitude?
They're easier to quantify. In addition, I think that killing millions of people is a good way to get a more violent world that increases S risks.