47 min listen
How to Think about Coronavirus Conspiracism
How to Think about Coronavirus Conspiracism
ratings:
Length:
59 minutes
Released:
May 20, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
The recently released documentary Plandemic is a perfect example of the type of conspiratorial thinking that has emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. The claim: that the virus was not "naturally occurring" and thus "manipulated" — and that it was released, "deliberately or not," on the public. In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Elan Journo address aspects of the documentary in order to identify and explain several key characteristics of conspiratorial thinking.
Among other topics, they discuss:
What real evidence for a claim looks like and how to spot arbitrary claims;What Objectivism’s theory of knowledge has to offer in terms of how to think about conspiracies and the facts presented to us;Why conspiratorial thinking is sometimes appealing to self-proclaimed “individualists.”
Mentioned in the podcast are three additional resources of interest: Bayer’s articles “An Alternative to Conspiracism’s Foolish Illusions” and “Analyzing the Conspiracist Firestorm over Notre Dame,” and the Ayn Rand Lexicon entry “Arbitrary.”
This podcast was recorded on May 18, 2020. Watch or listen to the discussion below.
To see future episodes of New Ideal Live, join the live Zoom broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Pacific to take part in the Q&A. Go to https://zoom.us/join and use Meeting ID: 812-506-718. Or catch the livestream or recordings on YouTube and Facebook.
Podcast audio:
Among other topics, they discuss:
What real evidence for a claim looks like and how to spot arbitrary claims;What Objectivism’s theory of knowledge has to offer in terms of how to think about conspiracies and the facts presented to us;Why conspiratorial thinking is sometimes appealing to self-proclaimed “individualists.”
Mentioned in the podcast are three additional resources of interest: Bayer’s articles “An Alternative to Conspiracism’s Foolish Illusions” and “Analyzing the Conspiracist Firestorm over Notre Dame,” and the Ayn Rand Lexicon entry “Arbitrary.”
This podcast was recorded on May 18, 2020. Watch or listen to the discussion below.
To see future episodes of New Ideal Live, join the live Zoom broadcast on Mondays and Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Pacific to take part in the Q&A. Go to https://zoom.us/join and use Meeting ID: 812-506-718. Or catch the livestream or recordings on YouTube and Facebook.
Podcast audio:
Released:
May 20, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Moral Frameworks for Addressing the Pandemic: In this episode of New Ideal Live, philosophers Aaron Smith and Onkar Ghate analyze a recent Bloomberg.com article, “How Coronavirus Is Shaking Up the Moral Universe.” That article surveys “some of the leading idea systems undergirding competing concep... by New Ideal, from the Ayn Rand Institute