Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer are two people who's work I wasn't overly familiar with until recently, but have really come to admire over the course of the last year.
Dawkins probably needs no introduction on these forums, but I found his book on religion (The God Delusion) one of the few books I have ever read in which I 100% agreed with everything in it, and I also found his works on evolutionary theory (The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype and The Blind Watchmaker) excellent as well.
Peter Singer is maybe less well known around here than Dawkins, and he is an Australian moral philosopher who's book in the 70s, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals basically singlehandedly began the modern animal rights movement, popularizing veganism and vegetarianism, and the ethical treatment of animals. He has also long argued that people are morally obligated to give the most they possibly can to help save the lives of people in the 3rd world, and in the last few years has pioneered the new movement of "Effective Altruism" which is about carefully choosing charities that do the most good and working out exactly how to live our lives to maximize the amount we can help others and the number of lives we can save (See The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty and The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically).
So I was thrilled to stumble across this video this week in which these two of my favorite intellectuals have a discussion with each other. Having watched it a few times myself I thought I'd share it here so others can enjoy. They discuss a variety of subjects including evolution, meat-eating, and effective altruism. Well worth a listen:
If anyone has some interesting comments to make or questions to ask about either of these people or their ideas, hopefully we can have some good discussion in this thread.
Dawkins probably needs no introduction on these forums, but I found his book on religion (The God Delusion) one of the few books I have ever read in which I 100% agreed with everything in it, and I also found his works on evolutionary theory (The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype and The Blind Watchmaker) excellent as well.
Peter Singer is maybe less well known around here than Dawkins, and he is an Australian moral philosopher who's book in the 70s, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals basically singlehandedly began the modern animal rights movement, popularizing veganism and vegetarianism, and the ethical treatment of animals. He has also long argued that people are morally obligated to give the most they possibly can to help save the lives of people in the 3rd world, and in the last few years has pioneered the new movement of "Effective Altruism" which is about carefully choosing charities that do the most good and working out exactly how to live our lives to maximize the amount we can help others and the number of lives we can save (See The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty and The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically).
So I was thrilled to stumble across this video this week in which these two of my favorite intellectuals have a discussion with each other. Having watched it a few times myself I thought I'd share it here so others can enjoy. They discuss a variety of subjects including evolution, meat-eating, and effective altruism. Well worth a listen:
If anyone has some interesting comments to make or questions to ask about either of these people or their ideas, hopefully we can have some good discussion in this thread.
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