PickVidsBest Philosophy & ethics Videos
The 98 Philosophy & ethics videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 8 introductory, 11 intermediate, 79 for a general viewer, and 0 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are a talk. What they share is that one speaker finishes a claim, and the examples exist to hold that claim up. Channels you will keep seeing include Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, TED, Talks at Google.
Bill Hicks - It's Just A Ride
A short clip from Bill Hicks' final special, Revelations, in which he describes life as just a ride.
Richard Feynman Magnets
A short clip of Richard Feynman answering an interviewer's question about how magnets work, in which he explains why a why-question has no simple answer without a shared frame of reference.
Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology)
A short excerpt from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology in which Slavoj Zizek analyzes John Carpenter's They Live.
THIS IS WATER! by David Foster Wallace
A short video of David Foster Wallace's 'This Is Water' commencement speech about awareness and choosing how to think.
The Concept of Language (Noam Chomsky)
Noam Chomsky talks with the University of Washington's Upon Reflection about how languages change over time, why a national language is a modern idea, and how language is a system of communication rooted in human nature.
RSA ANIMATE: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
An RSA Animate adaptation of a Slavoj Zizek talk on charitable giving and ethical consumerism.
Andreessen's Corollary: Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering - Bryan Cantrill | Craft 2019
Bryan Cantrill's Craft 2019 talk on the ethical dilemmas software engineers face as software eats the world.
The Trolley Problem in Real Life
Vsauce's Michael Stevens stages a realistic version of the trolley problem with unsuspecting subjects who believe they must decide a life-or-death outcome.
Jailbreaking the Simulation with George Hotz | SXSW 2019
George Hotz gives a SXSW 2019 talk on the idea that we live in a simulation and asks what actions would be available from inside it.
07/27/1978
An hour-long absurdist Lasagna Cat video in which John Blyth Barrymore muses philosophically on a single Garfield strip.
The psychology of evil | Philip Zimbardo
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo explains how ordinary people can be pushed into doing evil by situations and systems.
Violence | Slavoj Žižek | Talks at Google
Slavoj Zizek discusses his book Violence in an Authors@Google talk in New York.
Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia
A video essay explaining hauntology, Mark Fisher's idea of lost futures, and 80s nostalgia.
OODA Loop & Evolutionary Epistemology of John Boyd by Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney, a long-time associate of John Boyd, presents Boyd's thinking on the OODA loop and evolutionary epistemology.
Peter Thiel on “The Straussian Moment”
Peter Robinson interviews Peter Thiel at the Hoover Institution about Thiel's essay The Straussian Moment.
Joscha: From Computation to Consciousness (31c3)
Joscha Bach's 31c3 talk argues that the mind should be understood as an information-processing system and that even the physical universe can be seen as computational.
Brave New World vs Nineteen Eighty-Four featuring Adam Gopnik and Will Self
An Intelligence Squared debate in which Will Self argues for Brave New World and Adam Gopnik for Nineteen Eighty-Four as the better dystopian warning.
The War on Sensemaking, Daniel Schmachtenberger
Daniel Schmachtenberger discusses why the information ecology is damaged and what healthy public sensemaking would take.
Noam Chomsky - "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding"
Noam Chomsky's 2011 University of Oslo lecture on Newton's contributions to the study of mind.
Peter Singer - ordinary people are evil
Philosopher Jeffrey Kaplan summarizes Peter Singer's 1972 essay 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality', arguing that failing to give to save lives is morally comparable to letting a child drown.
Geographical limit between Balkan and Central Europe
A one-minute clip of Slavoj Zizek showing what he calls the official geographical limit between the Balkans and Central Europe, standing at a river in Ljubljana.
Best Speech You Will Ever Hear - Gary Yourofsky
Gary Yourofsky's 2010 lecture at Georgia Tech arguing for veganism on ethical, health and environmental grounds.
David Deutsch: A new way to explain explanation
Physicist David Deutsch's TED talk on why science took off, arguing that good explanations are those that are hard to vary.
David Deutsch on Optimism
An excerpt from an RSA event in which physicist David Deutsch makes the case for optimism as a driver of progress in the 21st century.