Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler talk about the perils of trying to step outside of your own perspective in ethics, science, and politics. What do Rawls' "original position" thought experiment, Pascal's Wager, and Moral Foundations Theory have in common? (Hint: it involves baking.) Plus, what movies (and other things) would serve as a litmus test when deciding on a potential life partner? What might liking or not liking a certain film, book, or TV series tell you about a person, and whether or not the relationship would work? And what sexual position is it rational to choose under the veil of ignorance? (It's a night episode...) Links Part 1: Litmus Tests The Bad News Bears (1976) [imdb.com] A Confederacy of Dunces [wikipedia.org] Drive [imdb.com] Every Frame A Painting--Drive: The Quadrant System [youtube.com] Ferris Bueller's Day Off [imdb.com] The Far Side [wikipedia.org] Frank [imdb.com] Hustle and Flow [imdb.com] Jackie Brown [imdb.com] Key and Peele [imdb.com] Miracle of Morgan's Creek [imdb.com] The Office (UK) [imdb.com] Pulp Fiction [imdb.com] Spaghetti Western [wikipedia.org] ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement/Dubbing) [wikipedia.org] Sullivan's Travels [imdb.com] Spellbound [imdb.com] Slapshot [imdb.com] What We Do in the Shadows [imdb.com] Part 2: Williams, B. (1981). Rawls and Pascal's Wager. Moral Luck, 94-100. [verybadwizards.com] Moral Luck [amazon.com affiliate link] Moral Foundations Questionnaire (30-item) [moralfoundations.org] Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler continue their series of breaking down a classic essay/article in their fields. For this installment, David assigns Tamler Anthony Greenwald's fascinating 1980 review article "The Totalitarian Ego." What do totalitarian regimes, scientific theories, and your own cognitive biases have in common? As it turns out, quite a bit. Why do egos rewrite our memories, preserve our beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, and make us think we're way more important than we are? And how does Thomas Kuhn fit into all this? Plus, we read a few of our favorite iTunes reviews. Links Audience video of Society for Personality and Social Psychology 2016 Session on Moral Purity with Kurt Gray, Jon Haidt, David Pizarro (courtesy of Kate Johnson) [youtube.com] Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American psychologist, 35, 603. [verybadwizards.com] Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler take a break from their main jobs as TV critics to talk about a masterpiece in political philosophy: "Two Concepts of Liberty" by Isaiah Berlin. While they both celebrate the style and substance of this classic essay, in a startling twist Tamler praises conceptual analysis and David expresses a few misgivings about his Kantianism. What is the elusive idea of positive liberty, and how can its pursuit lead to totalitarian rule? When is it more important to buy boots than read Russian poetry? And why is David still so depressed by pluralism? Plus, coddling in Wisconsin? And another famous set of social psych studies is accused of biting the dust. Links In Wisconsin, Efforts to End Taunting at Games Lead to Claims of Coddling By Mike McPhate [nytimes.com] Take my Breath Away by Berlin [youtube.com] Cortex Podcast Episode #20 [relay.fm] Amy Cuddy "Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are" TED Talk [ted.com] "The Power of the Power Pose: Amy Cuddy's Famous Finding is the Latest Example of Scientific Overreach" By Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung [slate.com] Berlin, I. (1958) "Two Concepts of Liberty." In Isaiah Berlin (1969) Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [verybadwizards.com] Positive and Negative Liberty [plato.stanford.edu] Freedom: Block Distractions Support Very Bad Wizards

Hello, listener. Hello, listener? That's lame. Maybe I should give you a name, but that's a slippery slope. You're only in my head. Or maybe we're in your head. Are you listening to this with headphones? Shit. It's actually happened, I'm talking to imaginary listeners. What I'm about to tell you is top secret, a conspiracy bigger than all of us. There's a powerful group of people out there that are secretly running the world. I'm talking about the guys no one knows about, the guys that are invisible. The top 1% of the top 1%, the guys that play God without permission. That's right, it's the Partially Examined Life guys. And now I think they're following me. Special guest Yoel Inbar joins us to talk about the best show of last year. Warning: This episode is full of spoilers. Do not listen until you've seen Season 1 of Mr. Robot. Links Mr. Robot IMDB Wikipedia Special Guest: Yoel Inbar. Support Very Bad Wizards

It's our last episode on campus protests and political correctness for a while, we promise! But it's a fun one. David and Tamler welcome two guests on the opposite side of the debate spectrum. Recent Yale Alum, cognitive scientist, freelance writer, (and writer of novel-length emails) Vlad Chituc joins both of us to defend the Yale protests, provide some context, and explain why the good people at FIRE are hypocritical about free expression. In the middle segment, Tamler talks with his notorious stepmother and "factual feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers (author of "Who Stole Feminism?" and "The War Against Boys"). They argue over whether the new political correctness poses a serious threat to campus climate, whether it is even "new," and over whether one is obligated to smoke weed on Joe Rogan's podcast. Plus, Tamler gets all huffy about the panic over terrorism, and we read some email responses to VBW Episode 78 ("Wizards Uprising"). Oh, and we have a recording a date set for the Mr. Robot episode! Links Vlad Chituc [vladchituc.com] Christina Hoff Sommers [aei.org] "Fear in the Air, Americans Look Over Their Shoulders" [nytimes.com] The Coddling of the American Mind [theatlantic.com] Who Stole Feminism by Christina H. Sommers [amazon.com affiliate link] The War Against Boys by Christina H. Sommers [amazon.com affiliate link] "CDS Appropriates Asian Dishes, Students Say" [oberlinreview.org] (ht/@brittanyepage) Special Guests: Christina Hoff Sommers and Vlad Chituc. Support Very Bad Wizards

Special guest Valerie Tiberius joins us to talk about values, well-being, and friendship. What role should reflection play in the good life? What about emotion? How can we make our values more consistent and sustainable? Do we know our friends better than we know ourselves? Plus, are philosophers experts? Experts of what? What are the boundaries of our discipline? And what motivates a gay Mormon to stay in the Church? In the first segment, David and Tamler list a few things they're grateful for on Thanksgiving, including you, the listeners (awwwwww...) Links National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation [wikipedia.org] Valerie Tiberius personal website [sites.google.com] Tiberius, V. (2012) Cell Phones, iPods, and Subjective Well-Being. In Brey, P., A. Briggle & E. Spence (Eds.). The good life in a technological age. Routledge. [verybadwizards.com] Desire theories of well-being ( from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Well-Being) [plato.stanford.edu] Special Guest: Valerie Tiberius. Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler return to the minefield of campus politics and talk about recent events at Yale, Missouri, and Amherst. Are the protests are long overdue response to systematic oppression and prejudice? Or is this new generation of students coddled, hypersensitive, and hostile to free speech? A little bit of both? Can our hosts get through this episode without fighting? Links The New Intolerance of Student Activism by Conor Friedersdorf [theatlantic.com] President Peter Salovey's statement to Yale community [news.yale.edu] 2015 University of Missouri Protests [wikipedia.org] Amherst College Uprising (with list of demands) [amherstuprising.com] Vlad Chituc (@vladchituc) [vladchituc.com] Support Very Bad Wizards

Special guest Eric Schwitzgebel joins David and Tamler to discuss the moral behavior (or lack thereof) of ethicists. Does moral reflection make us better people, or does it just give us better excuses to be immoral? Who's more right about human nature--Mencius or Xun Zi? What did Kant have against bastards and masturbating? Plus, we talk about jerks, robot cars, and killing baby Hitler. (Godwin's Law within 1:42--might be a new record for us). Links Eric Schwitzgebel publications. (Has links to all the discussed papers). Why Self-Driving Cars Must be Programmed to Kill [technologyreview.com] Bonnefon, J. F., Shariff, A., & Rahwan, I. (2015). Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars? [arxiv.org] Mencius [wikipedia.org] Xun Zi [wikipedia.org] "The Philosophical Problem of Killing Baby Hitler." [vox.com] Why it's Unethical to Go Back in Time and Kill Baby Hitler. [forbes.com] Special Guest: Eric Schwitzgebel. Support Very Bad Wizards

David and Tamler list three things they've changed their minds about in their careers. (This episode was recorded before Episode 75, but that one was way too long already.) What does Tamler think about X-phi these days? Has Dave lost his faith in the power of reason? What the hell is 'non-cognitivism'? Plus, Dave disagrees with John Hodgman about the metaphysical property of a hot dog. And a couple of listener shout-outs, including giving credit to a listener for giving us a topic idea we discussed without realizing she had suggested it in an email weeks ago. Links Ethical Expressivism (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Moral Anti-Realism (Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy) John Hodgman on the hot dog/sandwich debate. (NY Times Mag) "Perspectives on P.F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment." (Really good introduction by Michael McKenna and Paul Russell.) Support Very Bad Wizards

Dave and Tamler celebrate their 75th episode by welcoming six BFFs of the podcast and asking them to share the biggest thing they've changed their minds about in their professional careers. You'll hear Dan Ariely on our moral duty to take science into the real world, Laurie Santos on the the role of neuroscience in explaining psychological findings, Yoel Inbar on what it means to do good science as a psychologist, Eric Schwitzgebel on his metaphysical epiphany about materialism, Nina Strohminger on breaking-up with priming research, and Sam Harris on Artificial Intelligence and its perils, and his recently changed views about vegetarianism. (Sadly, we had a technical glitch with the audio when we recorded our most-frequent guest Paul Bloom, but we'll bring him on again soon.) Plus we play some hilarious mash-ups, raps, and voicemails sent in from listeners. Links to info about our Guests Dan Ariely Laurie Santos Yoel Inbar Nina Strohminger Eric Schwitzgebel Sam Harris  Listener-Created Music in this Episode Special Guests: Dan Ariely, Eric Schwitzgebel, Laurie Santos, Nina Strohminger, Sam Harris, and Yoel Inbar. Support Very Bad Wizards