Some recent reviews of
The Big Questions:
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Recent Posts
- Out of the Closet and Into the News
- Fixing Elections
- Premium Prices
- Krugman versus Krugman
- Weekend Roundup
- The Hunting of the Snark
- Criminal Law
- Split Infinities
- Taking the Cake
- Tidbits
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Arsenic and Gold Medals
- Fewer Voters Are Better Voters
- So How’s That Fiscal Stimulus Working For You?
- The Olympics, Bernie Madoff and Me

It always irks me when someone is willing to call something “sophistry” without feeling the need to actually present a real counter-argument. I’m still waiting to get the book for Christmas, but I assume that the headache argument is along the lines of pointing out that there’s something deeply inconsistent with refusing to pay 1$ to prevent a 1-in-a-billion chance of death, paying 1$ to cure a headache, but not paying a life to cure a billion headaches.
Maybe there is a good answer to that seemingly inconsistency, but it DEMANDS a good answer, not a flip refutation that boils down into merely a restatement of one of the prongs of the original inconsistency (i.e. the presumed idea that no one would kill anyone for any price whatsoever)
Getting a copy for Xmas. Surprised that none of the L.A. libraries have picked this one up.
And while your argument against libraries in Fair Play is exactly the reason it’s a good library book to me, this one definitely sounds like a keeper.