Professor of theoretical physics at Harvard University
I read the New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane. Don’t always agree with his opinions on movies but he’s always deadly funny.
Sean Illing, Vox, “9 questions” series, 10 June 2017 source ↗
The question
Whose work do you read even when you disagree with them?Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
Vox used this as one of nine fixed questions in its 2017 series on intellectual habits.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Professor of theoretical physics at Harvard University
I read the New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane. Don’t always agree with his opinions on movies but he’s always deadly funny.
Sean Illing, Vox, “9 questions” series, 10 June 2017 source ↗
I would include among philosophical writings some liberals. For example, John Stuart Mill, even though I disagree with him profoundly — a very resourceful and intelligent thinker.
Firstly, Bob Aumann is a very special man. I disagree with him about his political views – he is a right-wing person. I disagree with him about his current position on “what game theory is about”. From time to time he expresses views – about politics for example – backed with the authority of the great game theoretician. I don’t like those statements. In spite of this fact, I admire him for his academic work and personality.
This book is a great place for people to begin who want to learn more about strategy. Gray does what he says he is going to do: he talks about modern strategy. He talks about everything from the principles of nuclear strategy to the basic fundamentals of strategy itself, the importance of Clausewitz, and of strategic context. I don’t agree with everything he says, but no strategist agrees with everything another one has to say. But his book is a great place to begin.
I chose this book because it’s written by a physicist, very elderly now, who has spent all his life working in controlled fusion. The title is a take on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth . The first part of the book is Chen claiming that fusion is indispensable for our future, and why. He has a very readable section on climate change, a section on fossil fueled energy and a section on renewables—in which I disagree with him strongly, because he denigrates solar energy—and then goes on to say that we need fusion.
Checking email when I don’t know an answer.
Paul Thagard, Bill Nye, Massimo Pigliucci, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Wolfson, Adam Gopnik
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