Tag Archives: morality

podcasts

Universal Basic Income, Either-Or and More – Podcasts for June 5

Each week I present a round-up of the podcasts I listen to. These podcasts are all centered around the theme of looking at current events through the lens of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. The goal is not to provide all the information they talk about, but rather to highlight the things I found interesting in the hope that it will intrigue others to take a listen.

In this week’s edition:

Yaron’s AM560 Rewind: What is life really about?

In this episode of Yaron’s Chicago radio broadcast, he discusses the morality of Ayn Rand’s read more

Captain America agent of Hydra
Image (c) Marvel Comics

What makes a superhero a hero? Moral judgment

Taken from http://www.hypable.com/captain-america-steve-rogers-hydra-agent-reactions/

Taken from http://www.hypable.com/captain-america-steve-rogers-hydra-agent-reactions/

I have been thinking about heroes, superheroes actually, quite a bit lately. The new Captain America movie is out, I’ve seen it twice, and has so far made more than a billion dollars. In the midst of that success, Marvel’s comic book division releases a new title, Captain America: Steve Rogers, which reveals that Cap is and always has been an agent of Hydra, the organization he has fought his entire read more

[Video] Defining Basic Moral Concepts

package dealsIn this talk from the 2015 Objectivist Summer Conference, , author of In Defense of Selfishness, discusses the difficulty in defining moral concepts, among other concepts, due to package deals. Package deals are terms that try to integrate items by non-essentials, read more

[Video] Why Inequality is Good for the Individual – Yaron Brook

Equality sucks, inequality is great.Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, spent several weeks recently on a speaking tour through Europe and Russia. The theme for these talks, largely, was the theme of his, with Don Watkins, forthcoming book: the idea that equality is unfair and that inequality is moral and just.

This particular talk was given at  Högerteknologerna and Fria Moderata Studentförbundet, Sweden. Before he begin the main talk, he commented that in other places where he had given talks the Q&A sessions read more

[Video] Yaron Brook Talks Capitalism in Warsaw

Yaron Brook talks capitalism in Warsaw

Yaron Brook talks capitalism in Warsaw.

Dr. Yaron Brook has been on something of a whirlwind speaking tour over the last week in Europe. One of the seven talks he gave over a six-day period was his Morality of Capitalism delivered in a beautiful venue in Warsaw, Poland to about 200 people.

For those who have watched Yaron’s talks in the past, this one covers familiar ground although I find that each time I listen to the material I notice something different that makes my understanding clearer and a bit more complete. As always, read more

[Video] Yaron Brook at ELITE Department of Entrepreneurial Thinking

If we stop changing the environment…we will die.

This is another great talk from Yaron Brook, this time from ELITE (Latin American School of Engineering, Technology and Business) in Bogota, Colombia. While much of the talk will be familiar to those who have watched videos of Dr. Brook’s talks in the past, this had a bit of a different slant as it had an emphasis on applying the rational principles of self-interest to entrepreneurial read more

Income Inequality as Such is not the Problem

income inequalityJim Pagels over at Reason.com has a good article on why Oxfam’s claim that the wealthiest 1% may soon be worth more than all the rest of us is not something to worry about. He correctly points out a number of reasons why this study is extremely flawed. For example, with the methodology the study uses a person I know, a truck driver who has gone through bankruptcy, is wealthier than read more

[Video] Religion and Morality

In this presentation from 2006, Dr. Onkar Ghate presents a fascinating discussion on the relationship between religion and morality. He makes the case that the rise in religion is the result in the remnants of the American sense of life seeking some code of absolute moral values in the absence of such values in the secular culture. As Dr. Ghate says:

It [religion] is in large measure a quest by individuals who have been abandoned in a moral desert and think they see in religion an oasis.

Onkar read more

[Video] Creationism in Camouflage: The Intelligent Design Deception

Keith Lockitch presents a discussion of how the idea of intelligent design is simply a dressed up version of creationism. Even though intelligent design is often expressed in more formal, scientific sounding, language, it is not different in its essentials from the version of creationism based on a biblical version of geology, i.e., the world is only about 6000 years old and was created by some supernatural being. Dr. Lockitch says during the lecture:

The argument from design is not a valid argument read more