Proponent For Sentience

Notes on What's What, and What It Might be Reasonable to Do About What's What

A Defense of Instrumental Deontology

Most philosophers today are consequentialists, arguing that what matters is the preferences or quality of experiences of sentient beings, and there is no such thing as a moral rule that must always be followed. In order to pass moral judgment on an act, one must calculate its expected positive and negative effects and predict its…
Demystifying Political Economy

What’s the difference between capitalism and socialism? Some might reflexively reply that the dominance of capital defines the former. But this is not only the case for capitalism. Understood in appropriately broad terms, capital, or investment in future economic capacity, is inherent to every human society that has existed and will ever exist. Only when…

Blame the Agricultural Revolution: A Global Political and Economic History

“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” -Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens RENT Before rent, you couldn’t walk a quarter-mile without finding a tree you considered sacred, harvested nuts from, or climbed as a child. You lived a life rich in exercise and socialization, until you got an infected wound and died at thirty-five after…

Receive updates on new posts published biweekly-ish.

About the Author

Sam B has no qualifications of any kind to discuss these topics. He has been particularly influenced by authors Aldous Huxley and Kim Stanley Robinson. He recommends these movements, books, and websites:

“Increasingly my main desire in life is to live on a commune that’s as non-culty as possible while still maybe being slightly culty.” – JG