Blade Runner 2049 is a provocative visual and aural treat. It sparked many thoughts, two of which I make note of here; the relationship between the two should be apparent. What is the research project called ‘artificial intelligence’ trying to do? Is it trying to make machines that can do the things which, if doneContinue reading “Blade Runner 2049: Our Slaves Will Set Us Free”
Tag Archives: Ancient Greece
Sam Harris Should Read Bernard Williams
In Shame and Necessity (Sather Classical Lectures, University of California Press, 2nd ed., 2008, pp. 68-69) writing on the ancient Greeks’ conceptions of responsibility and human agency via the tale of Oedipus, Bernard Williams writes: [T]here is another aspect to responsibility, which comes out if we start on the question not from the response that the publicContinue reading “Sam Harris Should Read Bernard Williams”
Aristophanes’ Sausage-Seller and the Tea Partier
I have just finished writing a draft review of Lee Fang‘s The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right (New York: The New Press, 2013); it will appear shortly in The Washington Spectator. As I read Fang’s depressing history of the corporate-funded ‘New Right’ that has derailed the Obama presidency, looked over its roguesContinue reading “Aristophanes’ Sausage-Seller and the Tea Partier”