Neil Levy

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“What Matters For Us Is Not Whether Humanity Comes To An End, But Whether Our Current Projects Are In Vain”

September 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Is it terrible if humans become extinct provided another species replaces us, whether it’s a carbon- or silicon-based life-form? Well, sucks for me and for you magpies as well, but it’s not nearly as bad as nothingness if we’re ranking such things. From Neil Levy at Practical Ethics:

“I think that reflecting on the end of humanity gives some support to views according to which it is not death itself that matters; rather it is the cessation of some kind of ongoing project. Compare two different scenarios in which humanity comes to an end. In scenario 1, humanity comes to an end in 300 years time when a large asteroid collides with the Earth, causing immediate devastation and a long winter in which the remnants of humanity die off. In scenario 2, humanity comes to an end because we encounter and interbreed with space-faring aliens. I think it is clear that scenario 2 is far preferable to scenario 1, and not just because scenario 1 involves suffering (indeed, if we remove the suffering from scenario 1 – the asteroid somehow triggers instant and painless death – 2 remains far preferable to 1). That suggests that what matters for us is not whether humanity comes to an end, but whether our current projects are in vain. If everything we strive for makes no difference, some kind of meaninglessness seems to threaten, but if our projects continue then they might matter beyond their more immediate effects.”

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“One Would Expect – Fervently Hope – That Books Written In The 21st Century Are Radically Different From Those Written 100 Years Ago”

June 18, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From “Reading in a Connected Age,” Neil Levy’s Practical Ethics post which argues that the surfeit of information on the Internet isn’t ending literacy but actually changing it in a necessary way:

“Here I want to consider one potential negative effect of the internet. In a recent blog post, Tim Parks argues that the constant availability of the temptations of the internet has led to a decline in the capacity to focus for long periods, and therefore in the capacity to consume big serious books. Big serious books are still written and read, he notes, but ‘the texture of these books seems radically different from the serious fiction of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries,’ Their prose has a ‘battering ram quality,’ which enables readers to consume them through frequent interruptions.

But of course one would expect – fervently hope – that books written in the 21st century are radically different from those written 100 years ago. After all, if you want to read Dickens and Dostoevsky and the like, there is plentiful quality literature from that period surviving: why would a contemporary writer add to those stocks? Its worth noting, as Francesca Segal points out, that Dickens’ own work was originally published in serial form: that is, in the bite-size chunks that Parks think characterise the contemporary novel in an age of reduced concentration spans.

Perhaps there is something to Parks’ hypothesis that the way the novel has changed reflects changes in the capacities of contemporary readers, but making that claim is going to take careful study. You can’t make it from the armchair. Without proper data and proper controls, we are vulnerable to the confirmation bias, where we attend to evidence that supports our hypothesis and overlook evidence that doesn’t, and many other biases that make these kinds of anecdotal reports useless as evidence.

Here is what may be happening to Parks. He is finding himself aware of a loss of focus more than he used to be. But is that evidence that he is actually losing focus more often than previously?”

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