[See here for MacIntyre’s initial definition of a practice] A practice involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement of… Read More »Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue and practices (3): Practices, virtue and learning
Andreessen’s Why AI Will Save the World (echoing the title of his prescient 2005 essay Why Software is Eating the World) is well worth reading,… Read More »Recommendation: Marc Andreessen on possibilities for AI
I’ve been listening to a lot of early recordings and these three are favourites. Gus Cannon – He’s in the Jailhouse Now Gus Cannon was… Read More »Roots of Rock and Roll: Gus Cannon; Leadbelly; Blind Willie Johnson
Gregor’s quest reunites him with his bat, Ares, and the rebellious princess Luxa. They descend into the dangerous Waterway in search of the Bane. If… Read More »Never the same
… the range of practices is wide: arts, sciences, games, politics in the Aristotelian sense, the making and sustaining of family life, all fall under… Read More »Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue and practices (2): Internal and external goods
In the Homeric account of the virtues — and in heroic societies more generally — the exercise of a virtue exhibits qualities which are required… Read More »Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue and practices (1): What is a practice?
For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do… Read More »Inheritance: unearned
“Sure,” Lucy has been taught, “everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and… Read More »The Unicorn of Despair: Tim Urban on intergenerational differences in defining success
Expect the unexpected… Gunpowder was invented in China sometime during the first millennium AD. The earliest possible reference to gunpowder appeared in 142 AD during… Read More »Fire medicine: Gunpowder and the elixir of life
Back before 1870, there’s no possibility at all that humanity is going to be able to bake the economic pie sufficiently large that everyone can… Read More »Brad DeLong on Proudhon, property and coercion, and the Royal Society’s cornucopia