November 2014 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

I finally got around to reading Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save.

I'm pretty much sold on the whole Effective Altruism venture, but I found the book quite disappointing. The chapters on arguments for greater charitable giving don't go far beyond appeals to moral intuition, and Singer's rebuttals to common counterarguments focus on arguments that seem particularly weak. I was expecting something a bit more robust from a professional moral philosopher.

There are some reasonable bits on foreign aid, development economics and establishing new cultural standards of charitable giving. The parts about loudly publicising one's charitable giving has the same sort of tone and content as LW material on the subject. It clocks in at 176 pages excluding the endnotes, so it gains points for conciseness. I wouldn't say it's an especially sophisticated treatment of the subject, though, and you're probably not missing much if you skip it. Read the Call of Soares or pretty much anything by Scott on practical solutions to abstruse utilitarian problems instead.

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November 2014 Media Thread

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November 2014 Media Thread

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