#75 overall
Justice (Michael Sandel)
Harvard University
5 recommenders · 5 threads · recommended in 5 years, 2011–2023 · score 6.5
Michael Sandel's Harvard lecture series on moral and political philosophy, introducing major theories of justice from Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Rawls through contemporary debates. The lectures are freely available on YouTube and the course site.
Commenters call it an amazing, extremely well presented introduction to moral reasoning and ethics, and say they recommend it repeatedly.
Humanities & Social Sciencebeginnerfreevideo lectures#ethics#political philosophy#moral reasoning#justice#sandel
Recommendations by year
20062026
Came here to suggest Robert Sapolsky's class as well.
I would also add Michael Sandel's Justice: What's the right thing to do? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY&list=PL15D875D84... great course on moral reasoning, covers different theories of justice based on ideas from Aristotle, Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls and many more, extremely well presented too.
Be well versed in genetics / molecular biology! - If I had the time to finish school, I'd double in biology / math or CS. Man will that be a killer combo when that kid is 30.
It feels like biotech is where computing was in the 1930's... what's to come, and how it will change the world is both frightening and exciting.
On the "soft" side (whatever that means): ethics, the history of ethics, from every point of view.
Two lecture series I always recommend, and feel like everyone should watch with a gun to their head (as the instructor himself says):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY -- Harvard course on justice / ethics.
- https://youtu.be/NNnIGh9g6fA -- Robert Saposky (and guests) on the biology of human behavior.
Literary theory. Gaining a deeper understanding of how masters of symbolism, language, and creativity think and put together their work; the history of literature; etc. will open you up to new ways of thinking just like studying pure maths or programming would.
Now to invent a time machine and give myself this advice! Boy I could've used it.
Khanacademy is neat but I find it odd that people on HN either aren't aware or dont care about other earlier sources such as :
- MIT's OCW - USNW eLearning channel on Youtube (esp Richar Buckland) - TIMMS (Germany, possibly the first of the video resources) - UCBerkeley youtube channel - Dr. Adrian Banner (Princeton) - Harvard (esp Michael Sandel's lectures, amazing)
The above can be easily searched for and are hardly a comprehensive list as that would be large. Here is a website which is a sort of clearinghouse for video lectures: www.cosmolearning.com
A search of HN shows less attention given to these original sources than perhaps they deserve. In my opinion MIT OCW was the best known initiative till recent times and started this wave of online video learning. BTW, I highly recommend Michael Sandel's lectures on ethics and politics, available on YouTube.
The problem I have with Sandel’s argument against meritocracy is that the “meritocracy trap” is not meritocracy at all, but the illusion of meritocracy. He has a point, but I just disagree with how he frames it: a true meritocracy doesn’t have the attributes he highlights.
I highly recommend his “Justice” lectures from Harvard though.
According to http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/courses-exams/courses-i... so does Michael Sandel's Justice course, which can be viewed here: http://www.justiceharvard.org/
It's one of the most amazing lecture series I've seen. I can't see how the one given by Puett could possibly be any better... But then again, Harvard is supposed to be one of the best schools in the world, maybe Puett really offers a better course...
Sure, from a persuasion point of view I agree. But from a "trying to understand another human" point of view, I'd recommend you to read the Wikipedia page on ethics [1]. My own education on the topic: a course in college (as a business student) and watching some of the Harvard lectures on ethics [0]. IMO ethics courses teaches people to gain a more fine-grained vocabulary on explaining their own positions and understanding other's positions.
GP clearly uses a deontological line of thinking on this matter. Something that GP considers to be "inhuman and barbaric" invokes a line of thinking in where he/she believes one ought to not do a certain action, because it simply is wrong.
I'm not the best at explaining deontological ethics, nor are the people who think like this. My point is: a lot of thought has gone into the types of statements that GP makes, and IMO it's worth thinking about.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics