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Neil Levy’s Posts

Cancelling Books

Written by Neil Levy

One of the latest flare ups in the culture wars concerns book publishing. Recent books by Mike Pence, Woody Allen and by Milo Yiannopoulos have all been met with protests, many of them stemming from staff within the publishing houses. Sometimes, these protests have been successful, at least to the extent that the publisher has decided not to publish the book.

Conflict over these books has pitted younger staff at publishing houses against older. It’s also pitted advocates of (relatively) unconstrained free speech against those who support no-platforming certain speakers. Perhaps showing my age, I find myself on both sides of these debates. These are very different cases, and the case for no-platforming Yiannopoulos seems strong; in the other cases, I am less certain. Elsewhere, I have given an underappreciated reason why we might often want to no-platform (a strong reason; not necessarily a decisive reason). In this post, though, I want to rebut some common arguments against cancelling books.Read More »Cancelling Books

Thoughts about Final Thoughts

By Neil Levy   I’ve written a brief article for Aeon Magazine, on whether the regrets of the dying give us insight into what really matters. Here’s the first paragraph. How do we find out what really matters in life? One way might be to ask those who are dying. They might occupy a perspective… Read More »Thoughts about Final Thoughts

In Defence of Pretentiousness

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Written by Neil Levy

In Paul Brok’s book Into the Silent Land, the English neuropsychologist tells the story of Michael. Following a head injury, Michael is disinhibited. When he first returned from rehab, he lived on a diet of fish fingers and Led Zeppelin.  Michael experiences the change as a return to authenticity. “He’d always liked these things and now he didn’t feel he should pretend otherwise.”Read More »In Defence of Pretentiousness

The Urge to Destroy is Also a Creative Urge

Written by Neil Levy

Statues are the latest front in our ongoing culture wars.  Symbolism (as all sides agree) is not the be all and end all of politics, but it does matter. Those who want the statues to fall argue that they are harmful, because they commemorate racists (and worse) and thereby contribute to making these attitudes, and the exclusion they enable, acceptable. Those who want statues preserved argue that we should learn from history, not attempt to erase it. At most, they say, statues should be framed better, with explanatory plaques that note the misdeeds of the person commemorated and place them in context.Read More »The Urge to Destroy is Also a Creative Urge

The Coronavirus: Signs of Hope?

Written by Neil Levy

These are scary times. The death toll from Covid-19 raises hour by hour and in most countries the rate of new infections continues to grow. While most of us know that if we contract the virus the disease will likely be mild for us, we have friends and family who are at much higher risk. As society shuts down and our lives become more and more constrained, our anxiety rises along with it.Read More »The Coronavirus: Signs of Hope?

Cross Post: Climate change: How do I cope with inevitable decline?

Written by Neil Levy

Originally published in The Conversation

I recently watched an interview with David Attenborough, in which he was asked whether there is hope that things can get better for our planet. He replied that we can only slow down the rate at which things get worse. It seems to me that this is the first time in history we have known things will get worse for the foreseeable future. How do you live in the shadow of such rapid and inevitable decline? And how can you cope with the guilt? Paul, 42, London.

I agree that we live in a unique moment in history. This isn’t like a war or an economic recession, where you know things will be bad for a few years but eventually improve. Never before have we known that the deterioration of not just our countries, but our entire planet, will continue for the foreseeable future – no matter what we do. As Attenborough says, we can (and should) fight to slow the rate at which things get worse, even though we can’t realistically hope for improvement.

Read More »Cross Post: Climate change: How do I cope with inevitable decline?

Is ‘Dad Joke” Sexist?

Written by Neil Levy

A dad joke is a short joke, often turning on a pun or a play on words. Here are a couple of examples:

  • Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? It’s got great food, but no atmosphere.
  • A sandwich walks into a bar and orders a beer. “Sorry,” says the bartender, “we don’t serve food here”.

They are called ‘dad jokes’ because they are stereotypically told by fathers. The term is a somewhat backhanded compliment. Like the words “daggy” (in Australian and New Zealand English) and “naff” (in British English) – all of which are words that could appropriately be used to describe jokes in the genre – calling something a dad joke at once conveys that is extremely uncool, but also indicates grudging affection for the target. Dad jokes are bad, in many people’s eyes (not mine, as it happens), but they’re so bad that they’re a kind of artform all of their own, and we convey an affection and grudging respect for those who tell them.Read More »Is ‘Dad Joke” Sexist?

Cross Post: Why No-Platforming is Sometimes a Justifiable Position

Written by Professor Neil Levy

Originally published in Aeon Magazine

The discussion over no-platforming is often presented as a debate between proponents of free speech, who think that the only appropriate response to bad speech is more speech, and those who think that speech can be harmful. I think this way of framing the debate is only half-right. Advocates of open speech emphasise evidence, but they overlook the ways in which the provision of a platform itself provides evidence.

No-platforming is when a person is prevented from contributing to a public debate, either through policy or protest, on the grounds that their beliefs are dangerous or unacceptable. Open-speech advocates highlight what we might call first-order evidence: evidence for and against the arguments that the speakers make. But they overlook higher-order evidence.Read More »Cross Post: Why No-Platforming is Sometimes a Justifiable Position

Angela Smith’s Funny Tinge.

Written by Neil Levy

The irony was palpable: mere hours after a group of MPs resigned from the Labour Party in part over allegations of anti-Semitism in the party, one of the breakaway MPs found herself accused of racism. On a BBC politics program, she described people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as having a “funny tinge”. Angela Smith’s remark was widely condemned. Of course, such talk is unacceptable. However, it’s a mistake to condemn her on its basis.Read More »Angela Smith’s Funny Tinge.

Online Sales and Differential Pricing.

Written by Neil Levy

When it was revealed (more than a decade ago now) that Amazon was charging different consumers different prices, based on information that suggested either that they had higher incomes or a greater willingness to pay for a specific item, there was widespread outrage. Amazon quickly backed down and Jeff Bezos apologised. Today, Amazon says that it does not charge people different prices based on the personal data it collects about them. Many other online retailers make no such promises, and canny shoppers check prices using incognito mode on their browsers, using a VPN, and/or deleting cookies.Read More »Online Sales and Differential Pricing.