Alex O'Connor

speaker

2,073 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Sep 2025 last heard 25 May

Alex O'Connor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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And you could have a discussion about this and you could say, well, actually, you know, I'm not sure.

So their theory might be, I think you should not cause unnecessary harm.

And then you say, yeah, but you're harming animals and factory farms.

Maybe then we shouldn't.

And they'll go and edit the theory.

Because what you're doing is you're precisely working out what you already believe.

You're allowed to have your version.

But it's not just, you're not just like protecting it defensively.

You're just like, no, this is what I believe.

And so I'm going to edit the theory.

John Rawls, the political philosopher, had this concept of the reflective equilibrium.

So he thought that what happened, you can sort of imagine this like machine, right?

And we have inputs, which are our theories about what's right and wrong.

And those theories give us outputs.

So we input a theory which sounds plausible.

We should minimize suffering.

And it gives us an output.

Like, well, then you should kill everyone instantly.

And actually, hold on, that's not quite right.

So then you sort of adapt the... It's like, okay, we actually need to minimize suffering...

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