Academic Edgelords

In this episode I spoke to Jason Brennan, philosopher at Georgetown University, likely best known for the provocatively titled Against Democracy. We discuss many topics, including fallibility, moral judgment, and what we owe each other across deep disagreement.

We cover his case against democracy, his work on when bad beliefs should disqualify someone from friendship, and the moral risks of doing moral philosophy. We also discuss his forthcoming book Glass Houses, which defends grace, or the withholding of moral judgement against others as a practical response to our own unreliability as moral judges.

Relevant Links:
Brennan, “Friendship and Blackballing for Bad Beliefs”
Brennan & Freiman, “Moral Philosophy’s Moral Risk”
Brennan, Glass Houses
Deeyah Khan documentary
The Enemies Project

The post EP32: Should We Blackball People With Immoral Views? (Interview With Jason Brennan) appeared first on Academic Edgelords.

After a long hiatus, we are back! This time Victor talks with Alex Guerrero about his recent book, Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections. According to Guerrero, elections systematically reward ambition, status-seeking, and elite competition rather than good democratic judgment. This, he argues justifies replacing electoral legislatures with randomly selected single-issue legislative lotteries, or SILLs.

We discuss the project’s main influences, the core case for replacing elections in this way, and some of the main objections against the idea. If you are inspired by the idea of lottocracy or just want to learn more, please visit lottocracy.org

Alex Guerrero is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

The post EP31: Should Random People Rule Us? (Interview With Alex Guerrero on Lottocracy) appeared first on Academic Edgelords.

Critics like Shoshana Zuboff call Big Tech a parasitic system of control—but philosopher Peter Königs thinks that story is overblown. His 2024 Philosophy & Technology paper argues that the panic around “surveillance capitalism” exaggerates its harms and ignores its benefits.

We discuss his case that targeted ads aren’t especially manipulative, that social media’s political and mental-health effects are far less dire than claimed, and that data collection doesn’t necessarily destroy privacy or freedom.

Is Königs offering a reasonable correction to digital-age hysteria, or just apologizing for the algorithms that rule us? To help answer this, we are joined by STS scholar Michelle Charette

The post EP30: Is Surveillance Capitalism Really That Bad? (On Königs “In Defense of ‘Surveillance Capitalism”) appeared first on Academic Edgelords.

In this episode, we read “In Defense of Cultural Appropriation”, by Stephen Kershnar and Nathan Bray. In it, they argue that cultural appropriation is neither morally wrong nor socially harmful. They reject claims that it constitutes theft, disrespect, or oppression, insisting that no one owns cultural ideas or symbols and that cultural mixing often benefits everyone.

In this episode, we debate whether a property-rights-based argument for it holds up, whether offense and inequality matter morally, and if there are cases where cultural appropriation really is wrong. Ultimately, we agree that in cases when it seems bad, it’s usually bad for reasons other than the fact of it’s cultural appropriation.

The post EP29: Is Cultural Appropriation Really That Bad? (On Kershnar and Brey’s “In Defense of Cultural Appropriation”) appeared first on Academic Edgelords.

Is moderation just fence-sitting, or is it a forgotten virtue? In this episode, we sit down with philosopher Marcus Arvan to discuss his new book Why It’s OK to Be a Moderate. We dig into why radicals often steal the spotlight, how moral certainty can slip into fanaticism, and why history may vindicate moderates more than we think. We also debate Arvan on the moral permissibility of centrism.

Marcus also runs the Philosophers’ Cacoon, a philosophy blog dedicated to early career philosophers. Check it out here.

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