This is amusing; an excerpt:
There was that one tech-bro, for example, who said that novels are a waste of time because they do not have sufficient per-page “information density” to justify the effort. There was that other tech-bro who said it’s not so important what happens to films from before 1995 or so, in the uncertain future of digital archiving, since they were far too slow and nothing really happens in them anyway. SBF himself made the ultimate contribution to this rich new genre when he observed that Shakespeare is unlikely to be as “good” as everyone says he is, since there were so few people in the 16th century and it is therefore highly improbable that that century, rather than, say, this one, should have hosted history’s greatest English stylist.
I could keep adducing such examples until I hit my word-limit, but you get the idea. What I want to emphasize here is that my own parent discipline, philosophy, has by no means proved resistant to this new sensibility. In fact —credit where it’s due, I suppose— philosophy, or something calling itself by that name, has for once managed not to be irrelevant, and has played a key role in the birthing I am here attempting to describe. Until recently, as is well known by now, SBF had his own retinue of philosopher-courtiers from the “effective altruist” community. Finance capitalists, it turns out, absolutely love to hear articulate people explain to them new and theoretically sound ways to convert their wealth, after the manner of the potlatch, into even more status or an even clearer conscience. Yea, not since Descartes whispered his Papist plots in Queen Christina’s ear, and caused her to abdicate to Rome,1 have philosophers had so much influence in public life.
Have you not noticed this new cohort of cocky lads, who so proudly speak the language of the calculus of expected utility, who will not hesitate to tell you when it’s time to update your priors, or which path is most likely to help you max out your utils?2 What is all this? Why did they have to start talking this way? I mean, I like Bentham and Mill well enough —in fact Bentham is the sort of absolute freak who cannot fail to win my heart—, and I would not begrudge anyone their commitment to the tradition these men founded, were it not accompanied today by a scorched-earth revolutionary fervency that sincerely believes this single school of thought is rich enough by itself to go it alone indefinitely into the future, and that we can therefore dispense with any idea of philosophy as living tradition, involving, in part, like all traditions, due reverence to ancestors.
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