Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I saw Brennan’s post; but I don’t spend much time at Crooked Timber anymore so I didn’t see what was going on there. Amusing. sean s. PS: I saw your reply to me on the other thread; I’ll take a careful look at it as soon as time…

In reply to sean samis. I sort of agree, and sort of disagree with that. It’s complicated. Let’s take the concept of “harm” as basic and taken-for-granted. If so, a “risk” is a harm of relatively high probability, re…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. Romulans aren’t part of Brennan’s political ontology. But then again, neither are human beings. LikeLike

What about Romulans? LikeLike

No, don’t expect an attempt at adjudicating the quarrel between Henry Farrell (Crooked Timber) and Jason Brennan (BHL) over public choice here. Not my lane. Just wanted to draw attention to the overall trajectory of the “debate.” May 5: Henry Farrell writes a post at Crooked Timber critiquing Public Choice theory. There’s a discussion there.…

My takeaway from this exchange is that neither “aggression” nor “force” are useful concepts in this context. It is better to rely on “harm” and “risk”; which must be evaluated in the light of real circumstances (including those …

Condolences to all involved. sean s. LikeLike

It is by looking at data on confirmed cases alongside data on testing that we get the best view of how the outbreak has developed in different countries, and how successfully countries have responded to it. In this post, we compare the approach to tes…