“Let your memory be your travel bag”
The great physicist, Albert Einstein, is credited with having said: “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Today, with all manner of information at our fingertips, it is unclear whether there is anything worth memorizing at all—everything, it seems, can be “looked up.” And so, it would be natural if you were to wonder […]
Rahab’s lie
Our final thought experiment this week is no thought experiment at all – it is the true story of Rahab, from the Book of Joshua. After God had promised the Israelites the land of Jericho, Joshua sent spies to check it out: “And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged […]
Cicero’s grain merchant
Today’s thought experiment comes from Marcus Tullius Cicero, who considers in his book On Duties, circumstances “when utility seems to conflict with honorableness.” From our very own Dr. Newton’s translation, Cicero writes: “[I]f a good man sets out from Alexandria to Rhodes conveying a great amount of grain at a moment when scarcity and famine in […]
Singer’s drowning child
Peter Singer, the atheist, moral philosopher, poses the following thought experiment about the moral obligation to save another human being: A man wearing a thousand dollar suit sees a child drowning in the ocean and being pulled away by the currents. He doesn’t have time to take off his suit and save the child. Is […]
Nozick’s experience machine
Yesterday’s thought experiment was about identity—once all of its parts were replaced, was the Ship of Theseus still the same ship? Today, we consider value theory and whether happiness or pleasure is really the highest good. In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, philosopher Robert Nozick famously posed the following thought experiment: A mad scientist invents […]
Can AI Make Us Virtuous?
One afternoon, a couple of months ago I came across an advertisement for a new school concept that uses AI-based education paired with practical life skills workshops – and have been thinking about it ever since. At the AI-based school students spend two hours a day working on content courses at their own pace on […]
