In the latest episode of Elucidations, Greg Salmieri (University of Texas) joins us once again, this time to discuss freedom of speech.

Free speech talk has been in the air, on the internet, for the past decade. But what exactly is going on with freedom of speech? Do I have the right to criticize my alderman’s second term on my blog without getting thrown in jail? Do I have the right to publish cartoons that make fun of venerated religious figures without being physically attacked Do I have the right to tell my work colleagues who I voted for in the last election without getting fired? Do I have the right to express an opinion on whether R2-D2 or BB-8 is the superior Star Wars droid, without getting kicked out a group chat I have going with my friends? Which of these things is a right and which isn’t? What even is a right?

Our esteemed guest offers a few suggestions to help us navigate these questions. One core suggestion is that we should think of a right as something defining spheres of action: having the right to do something means that on such and such a question, deciding how to act and then acting that way is my purview, rather than anyone else’s. It doesn’t mean that every possible decision I make is the right one. I could have the right to make a given decision, even if the actual decision I end up making in that case ends up being morally wrong; that doesn’t change the fact that it would also be morally wrong to block me from making it. For instance, even if I decide to regularly do drugs, knowing that it will turn into a harmful habit, that doesn’t change the fact that I have the right to decide whether or not to get into drugs, and it also doesn’t mean that it would be okay for others to prevent me from making that decision.

This idea of a right as tied to spheres of action and decision making leads naturally to a distinction between the different examples on our original list. I do have the right to mock revered figures, or to express unfashionable political views, without being physically attacked or thrown in jail. However, there is no such thing as the right to say whatever you want to your friends in a group chat, without getting kicked out. Indeed, if there are any rights in the vicinity of that question, it’s your friends who have the right to decide who they want to associate with and invite to their group chats. Why is that? The idea is that you aren’t being physically forced away from a decision that’s in your purview. If your friends don’t want you in their group chat, it’s their prerogative, and it would probably be best for you to find a group chat in which your hot takes on droids would be received more favorably.

Salmieri then goes on to argue that similar reasoning applies to both social media platforms and workplaces. The overall view that emerges is that the right to free speech is central and important, but that in recent discourse, it has strangely been extended beyond its natural reach.

I found this to be an illuminating conversation that had a big impact on how I think about freedom of speech. I hope you enjoy it.

Matt Teichman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the latest episode of Elucidations, Sam Enright (Progress Ireland, The Fitzwilliam) instructs us in the delicate art of learning forever.

If you’re one of those people who responds well to formal education, chances are you’ve spent 10-20 years of your life as a student. When you finally graduate, it can feel jarring, like you’re kissing all this efficient infrastructure for mastering difficult skills goodbye. How are you going to keep learning, without a teacher you can pester with questions in the classroom, without regular feedback on homework assignments, and without exams? Sam Enright is here to tell you that just because you’re moving into the next phase of your life, that doesn’t mean you need to turn your back on the learning experience.

In this episode, he discusses his study regimen, which ranges over philosophy, history, economics, math, and computer science, via a couple different formats that are easier to integrate into your everyday life than full-time study in the classroom. The first is something called spaced repetition. This is a method that involves repeating your study practice less and less frequently over time, in order to maximize your direct recall ability. The version that our guest practices involves using software that leans into quizzing you more often on whatever you have the most trouble with, and less often on whatever you have the least trouble with. The quiz questions are of your design, and every time you answer one, you’re given the opportunity to revise it for the future. This allows you to update your study materials over time in light of the expertise you accrue.

Another method Sam Enright recommends is reading groups. Echoing similar recommendations from the Elucidations podcast in Episode 126, our guest tells us about a recurring reading group he runs in Ireland that spans a wide variety of disciplines. The key here is to select reading material that is too difficult for you to fully make sense of on your own, and to establish a culture of staying on topic. Sam Enright’s reading group has been in existence for years now and attracts researchers from all over.

Finally, our guest discusses how he is able to use AI chatbots to supplement the reading process and drill deeper. In addition to traditional techniques such as notetaking, being able to upload an entire text into a chatbot’s context window and then ask it questions about what you’re reading allows you to explore the terrain it opens up interactively. You can restate your understanding of what you just read, invite the chatbot to identify mistakes in your summary, revisit the parts of the original text that are relevant to those mistakes, and so forth. Interestingly, he even reports having success when the platform he is using hallucinates a little, because trying to sniff those hallucations out allows him to cultivate the kind of skeptical attitude that makes reading itself a bit more like the classroom experience.

It was a tremendously fun discussion for me to have, and I hope you enjoy it.

Matt Teichman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This time around, Matt talks to Luca Gattoni-Celli about why it’s so expensive to buy a house.

In the 80s, people from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds were able to afford apartments and houses in places like New York City, San Francisco, or London. Now, on the other hand, even many wealthy people are getting priced out of the city. And indeed, the issue is no longer specific to urban areas: the problem of seemingly infinitely increasing real estate prices would appear to be creeping into the rest of the US, and into many other areas that were typically regarded as affordable in the recent past.

Why is this the case? In this episode, Luca Gattoni-Celli discusses three factors that have artifically inflated housing prices far beyond the equilibrium point between supply and demand. One is zoning regulations, which impose limits on how maximum building size in a given area, how many people can live on a single property, and so forth. Another is permitting, which has the effect of introducing delays into the building process that make it financially infeasible and thus effectively block it from happening. The third is building codes, many of which were introduced for the purposes of making buildings safer to inhabit, but which have the perverse effect of preventing the construction of new buildings that would be safer than the old buildings that are currently in use.

Our guest also makes the argument that zoning regulations have a sordid racist and classist past, which you can see, to an extent, in some of the original proposals that led to some of the original policies. More broadly, the claim is that population density is the way that low-income people band together to be able to afford real estate for which there is high demand, and that a push to block density effectively amounts to a push to keep lower-income people out.

I found the discussion quite stimulating; I hope you enjoy it.

Matt Teichman

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.