Utilitarian

In this shorter episode of the Utilitarian Podcast, I talk with Samo Burja about the war in Ukraine. Samo is the founder of the geopolitical analysis firm Bismarck Analysis.

We talk about Western sanctions and their effects of Russias relationship to China, what a remilitarization of Europe will mean, whether Putin will be able to control Ukraine, avoiding nuclear war, possible tactics for winning the war, potential diplomatic solutions, the longer term implications of this war, and the importance of European energy independence.

TIMESTAMPS: 

[00:00:47] Overview of the situation

[00:04:14] Sanctions - Russia and China

[00:06:33] A remilitarized Europe

[00:10:42] Will Putin be able to control Ukraine?

[00:14:33] Insurgencies in Ukraine

[00:16:23] Tactics for winning the war

[00:22:23] Potential diplomatic solutions

[00:24:12] Longer term implications

[00:28:18] Energy independence

On today’s episode of the Utilitarian Podcast, I talk with Krister Bykvist. Krister is a Professor of Philosophy at Stockholm University and Institute for Futures Studies.

We talk about the approach to moral uncertainty laid out by Krister and his co-authors in a recent book. We discuss whether we can gain evidence for moral theories, whether moral uncertainty leads to an infinite regress, the metaethical and practical implications of moral uncertainty and how to think about moral information.

We briefly touch upon whether the philosophy and mathematics of moral uncertainty might be interesting for AI safety research.

Then we move on to discussing future lives, impossibility theorems in population ethics and metaethics more generally.

This is a nerdy philosophical discussion, so I do my best to introduce unfamiliar terms throughout the conversation.

On this episode of the Utilitarian Podcast I talk with Milan Cirkovic. Milan is an astrophysicist at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and a researcher at The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. We talk about an effective altruist framework for thinking about aliens, astrobiology, the generalisability of physics and evolution, the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox, civilizations at different Kardashev levels, the current search for extraterrestrial life, the sociology of alien civilizations, the risk of spreading suffering in the universe, and the more near-term search for microbial life on Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa. 

On this episode of the Utilitarian Podcast I talk with Michael Huemer. Michael is a professor of philosophy at the university of Colorado. We talk about how to build a worldview, epistemology and intuitions, metaethics and consciousness, utilitarianism and effective altruism, belief clusters and rationality, the value of philosophy, infinite ethics and whether there can be experience without a self.

On this episode of the Utilitarian Podcast I talk with Kent Berridge about the science of pain and pleasure. Kent Berridge is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Michigan and the leader of the Berridge Lab for Affective Neuroscience & Biopsychology. His more than 200 academic publications have collectively been cited 69.000 times.

I ask Kent about the difference between wanting, liking and learning, whether all pleasures share a common brain basis, whether there is a pain-pleasure spectrum, how there can be wanting without liking, how we come to associate things with pleasure through learning, how advanced our understanding of pleasure and pain is and what the biggest opportunities for applications might be.

Simon Rosenqvist recently completed his PhD in philosophy at Uppsala University and we cover his conclusions in this podcast.

We talk about consciousness in humans, animals and machines

We discuss the best formulation of utilitarianism

And we talk about two problems for utilitarians: the problem of conflicts between the utilitarian judgements and moral intuitions and the problem of action guidance, which is roughly the problem that utilitarianism is not useful when deciding what we should do, since what we should do depends on the consequences of our actions millions of years into the future. 

I talk with Torbjörn Tännsjö about his personal relation to moral philosophy and utilitarianism, moral methodology and the role of intuitions in ethics, moral realism, nihilism and religion, the repugnant conclusion and factory farming, the standing of utilitarianism in academic philosophy and the biggest challenges of the future.