The Best The Four-Implicature Theory of Fortune Cookies Update

(your guide to properly understanding the dire messages from Panda Express)
Fortune cookies explicitly state the good and silently pass over the bad. In this way, they are like letters of recommendation. The wise reader understands the Gricean implicatures.
Gricean implicature involves implying one thing by saying something else, typically exploiting the hearer's or reader's knowledge of the context and of the norms of cooperative communication. Probably the most famous example, from Grice's classic "Logic and Conversation" (1967), is this:

A is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: 'Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours, etc.'

Although A does not explicitly say that Mr. X is an unimpressive student, the letter implicates it. For if Mr. X were an impressive student, the letter writer, as a cooperative conversation partner, would surely have said that. The reader knows that A knows that letters of recommendation should praise the quality of students who deserve academic praise. A thereby intentionally communicates to the reader that in his view Mr. X does not deserve academic praise. The best that can be said about X concerns his attendance and command of English.
With this in mind, consider these two principles governing the proper interpretation of fortune cookies:
(1.) Fortune cookies, like letters of recommendation, (a.) say only good things, and (b.) say the best that they can about those things.
(2.) All fortune cookies address the following four topics: health, success, social relationships, and happiness.
When a fortune cookie silently omits any of the four topics listed in Principle 2, it implicates that the news on that topic is bad. Furthermore, when a fortune cookie says something limited about health, success, social relationships, or happiness, it implicates that nothing better can be said. This is the Four-Implicature Theory of Fortune Cookies.
Consider, for example, my most recent fortune: "You have the ability to overcome obstacles on the way to success."
What a disastrous fortune! Although it may seem good to the naive reader -- like saying of a philosophy student that he speaks good English and attends regularly -- properly understood, the implicatures are catastrophic. Since only success is mentioned, we must infer that it is passing silently over bad news concerning my health, happiness, and social relationships. Worse, the cookie tells me only that I have the ability to overcome obstacles, not that I will overcome those obstacles. By Principle 1a, the fortune would have said that I will overcome those obstacles if in fact I will. It follows that I will not in fact overcome. Disaster on all four fronts!
[a dire fortune from Panda Express]
Let's try another fortune: "You are kind-hearted and hospitable, cheerful and well-liked." This fortune concerns both social relationships and happiness, two of the four topics that all cookies address. We can therefore infer that the recipient will suffer ill-health and poverty. Concerning happiness, the news is good: The recipient is cheerful! However, the implicature concerning social relationships is mixed: If the best that can be said is that the recipient is kind, hospitable, and well-liked, and not that she finds love, or that people admire her, or that she has other such social goods, the implicature is that she is a bit of a doormat. To the wise reader of cookies, the message is clear: Other people appreciate how cheerful the recipient remains as they take unfair advantage of her kind-hearted hospitality.
I leave the fortunes below as an exercise for the reader.

ETA Aug 24: OMG, today's fortune is even worse!

[printable fortune cookie sheet from Red Castle]

The Best To Reduce the Risk of Moral Catastrophes, Should Society Hire Lots of Philosophers Update

In June, I wrote a post arguing that future generations might find our generation especially morally loathsome, even if we don't ourselves feel like we are morally that bad. (By "we" I mean typical highly educated, middle-class people in Western democracies.) We might be committing morally grievous wrongs -- atrocities on par with the wrong that we now see in race-based slavery or the Holocaust or bloody wars of conquest -- without (most of us) recognizing how morally terrible we're being.
In Facebook discussion, Kian MW pointed me to a fascinating article by Evan G. Williams, which makes a similar point and adds the further thought, bound to be attractive to many philosophers, that the proper response to such a concern is to hire lots of philosophers.
Okay, hiring lots of philosophers isn't the only remedy Williams suggests, and he doesn't phrase his recommendation in quite that way. What he says with that we need to dedicate substantial societal resources to (1) identifying our moral wrongdoing and to (2) creating social structures to implement major changes in light of those moral discoveries. Identifying our moral wrongdoing will require progress, Williams says, both in moral theory and in related applied fields. (For example, progress in animal ethics requires progress both in moral theory and in relevant parts of biology.) Williams' call for dedicating substantial resources toward making progress in moral theory seems like a call for society to hire many more philosophers, though I suppose there are a variety of ways that he could disavow that implication if he cared to do so.
The annual U.S. military budget is about $700 billion. Suppose that President Trump and his allies in Congress, inspired by Williams' article, decided to divert 2% of U.S military spending toward identifying our society's moral wrongdoing, with half of that 2% going to ethicists and the other half to other relevant disciplines. Assuming that the annual cost of employing a philosopher is $150,000 (about half salary, about half benefits and indirect costs), the resulting $7 billion could hire about 50,000 ethicists.
[With 50,000 more ethicists, these empty chairs could be filled!]
Two percent of the military budget seems like a small expenditure to substantially reduce the risk that we unwittingly perpetrate the moral equivalent of institutionalized slavery or the Holocaust, don't you think? A B2 bomber costs about $1-$2 billion. The U.S. government might want to consider a few bomber-for-philosopher swaps.
I write this partly in jest of course, but also partly seriously. If society invested more in moral philosophy -- and it needn't be a whole lot more, compared to the size of military budgets -- and if society took the results of that investment seriously, giving its philosophers prestige, attention, and policy influence, we might be morally far better off as a people.
We might. But I also think about the ancient Athenians, the ancient Chinese, and the early 20th-century Germans. Despite the flourishing of philosophy in these times and places, the cultures did not appear to avoid moral catastrophe: The ancient Athenians were slave-owners who engaged in military conquest and genocide (perhaps even more than their neighbors, if we're grading on a curve), the flourishing of philosophy in ancient China coincided with the moral catastrophe of the period of the Warring States, and the Germans perpetrated the Holocaust and helped initiate World War II (with some of the greatest philosophers, including Heidegger and Frege, on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic, political right).
Now maybe these societies would have produced even worse moral catastrophes if philosophers had not also been flourishing in them, but I see no particular reason to think so. If there's a correlation between the flourishing of philosophy and the perpetration of social evil, the relationship appears to be, if anything, positive. This observation fits with my general concerns about the not-very-moral behavior of professional ethicists and philosophers' apparent skill at post-hoc rationalization.
I'm not sure how skeptical to be. I hesitate to suggest that a massive infusion of social capital into philosophical ethics couldn't have a large positive impact on the moral choices we as a society make. It might be truly awesome and transformative, if done in the right way. But what would be the right way?
[photo credit: Bryan Van Norden]

The Best Top Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazines 2018 Update

In 2014, as a beginning writer of science fiction or speculative fiction, with no idea what magazines were well regarded in the industry, I decided to compile a ranked list of magazines based on awards and "best of" placements in the previous ten years. Since people seemed to find it useful or interesting, I've been updating it annually. Below is my list for 2018.
Method and Caveats:
(1.) Only magazines are included (online or in print), not anthologies or standalones.
(2.) I gave each magazine one point for each story nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, Eugie, or World Fantasy Award in the past ten years; one point for each story appearance in any of the Dozois, Horton, Strahan, Clarke, or Adams "Year's Best" anthologies; and half a point for each story appearing in the short story or novelette category of the annual Locus Recommended list.
(3.) I am not attempting to include the horror / dark fantasy genre, except as it appears incidentally on the list.
(4.) Prose only, not poetry.
(5.) I'm not attempting to correct for frequency of publication or length of table of contents.
(6.) I'm also not correcting for a magazine's only having published during part of the ten-year period. Reputations of defunct magazines slowly fade, and sometimes they are restarted. Reputations of new magazines take time to build.
(7.) Lists of this sort do tend to reinforce the prestige hierarchy. I have mixed feelings about that. But since the prestige hierarchy is socially real, I think it's in people's best interest -- especially the best interest of outsiders and newcomers -- if it is common knowledge.
(8.) I take the list down to 1.5 points.
(9.) I welcome corrections.
Results:
1. Asimov's (229.5 points)2. Fantasy & Science Fiction (162.5)3. Clarkesworld (151.5)4. Tor.com (147.5)5. Lightspeed (101) (started 2010)6. Subterranean (75) (ceased 2014)7. Analog (53.5)8. Strange Horizons (46.5)9. Interzone (43.5)10. Uncanny (41.5) (started 2014)11. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (38)12. Fantasy Magazine (25.5) (merged into Lightspeed 2012, occasional special issues thereafter)13. Apex (19.5)14. Nightmare (13.5) (started 2012)15. Postscripts (11.5) (ceased short fiction in 2014)16. The New Yorker (8)17. Realms of Fantasy (7.5) (ceased 2011)18. Black Static (7)19. McSweeney's (6)20t. Electric Velocipede (5.5) (ceased 2013)20t. Intergalactic Medicine Show (5.5)20t. Sirenia Digest (5.5)23t. Conjunctions (5)23t. Jim Baen's Universe (5) (ceased 2010)25t. Omni (4.5) (classic science/SF magazine, restarted 2017)25t. The Dark (4.5) (started 2013)25t. Tin House (4.5)28. Helix SF (4) (ceased 2008)29t. Cosmos (3)29t. GigaNotoSaurus (3) (started 2010)29t. Shimmer (3)29t. Terraform (3) (started 2014)33t. Beloit Fiction Journal (2.5)33t. Black Gate (2.5)33t. Buzzfeed (2.5)33t. Harper's (2.5)33t. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (2.5)33t. Lone Star Stories (2.5) (ceased 2009)33t. Matter (2.5) (started 2011)33t. Slate (2.5)33t. Weird Tales (2.5) (ceased 2014)42t. Boston Review (2)42t. Fireside (2) (started 2012)42t. Mothership Zeta (2) (started 2015)45t. Abyss & Apex (1.5)45t. Daily Science Fiction (1.5) (started 2010)45t. e-flux journal (1.5)45t. Flurb (1.5) (ceased 2012)45t. MIT Technology Review (1.5) --------------------------------------------------
Comments:
(1.) The New Yorker, Tin House, McSweeney's, Conjunctions, Harper's, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Boston Review are literary magazines that occasionally publish science fiction or fantasy. Cosmos, Slate, Buzzfeed, and MIT Technology Review are popular magazines that have published a little bit of science fiction on the side. e-flux is a wide-ranging arts journal. The remaining magazines focus on the F/SF genre.
(2.) It's also interesting to consider a three-year window. Here are those results, down to six points:

1. Clarkesworld (74)2. Tor.com (69.5)3. Asimov's (65)4. Lightspeed (56.5)5. Uncanny (41.5)6. F&SF (39)7. Beneath Ceaseless Skies (23)8. Analog (20)9. Strange Horizons (14)10. Nightmare (12.5)11. Interzone (9.5)12. Apex (6.5)

(3.) Left out of these numbers are some terrific podcast venues such as the Escape Artists' podcasts (Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders), Drabblecast, and StarShipSofa. None of these qualify for my list by existing criteria, but podcasts are also important venues.
(4.) Check out Nelson Kingfisher's recent analysis of acceptance rates and response times for most of the magazines above.
(5.) Other lists: The SFWA qualifying markets list is a list of "pro" science fiction and fantasy venues based on pay rates and track records of strong circulation. Ralan.com is a regularly updated list of markets, divided into categories based on pay rate.
[image source; admittedly, it's not the latest issue!]

The Best On What We Tell Pollsters Update

Barry Lam’s podcast Hi-Phi Nation has a new episode on “information silos” and what we tell pollsters. Partway through the episode, I am briefly interviewed about the nature of belief.
Lam is always fun, and the episode has a few twists you might not expect. One theme throughout the episode is a critique of the view generally accepted as implicit background in polling and in popular reports of poll results: that people tell pollsters what they actually believe. Lam explores an empirical challenge to this and a more philosophical challenge.
Empirical challenge: People who feel uncertain might answer by "cheerleading" for their side, Republicans for example simply saying whatever they think will make Trump look good, Democrats saying whatever they think makes Trump look bad. If this is going on, when the incentives are changed (for example by paying respondents for right answers, including a smaller payment for admitting that they don’t know), they might instead reveal their true opinion. Even if they are not uncertain, they might simply lie to the pollster, saying what they plainly know to be false, to help or express support for their side.
A more philosophical challenge explores the question of what it is, really, to have a political, or politically loaded, belief. On some questions, there might not be a single straightforward fact about what you believe, hidden in a “secret compartment”, which you choose either to reveal or not reveal to the pollster. On climate change, or racial equality, or on what accommodations society owes to people with disabilities, you might be inclined to answer one way in one context or to one audience, and in quite a different way in another context or to another audience; you might wager thus-and-so when X is at stake, but quite differently when Y is at stake; your spontaneous reactions and your more guarded reactions might splinter in different directions; and so on. Among all these various thoughts and reactions, there needn’t be some privileged set that reflects your true belief while others are somehow misleading or inauthentic.
That, at least, is my view of belief. If you are sufficiently splintered, fragmented, or in-betweenish in your dispositional profile, then what you tell pollsters, even sincerely, will be only one element of a complicated picture. If what you say is misaligned with some other aspects of your speech and behavior, you might be merely cheerleading or lying, but you needn’t necessarily be. You might be answering as sincerely as you can, with the fragment of you that is called forth at the moment.
Full episode here.
[image source]

The Best My New Book in Draft Update

Working title:
Jerks, Zombie Robots, and Other Philosophical Misadventures
[former working title: How to Be a Crazy Philosopher]
The book is composed of several dozen blog posts and popular articles, on philosophy, psychology, culture, and technology, updated and revised, selected from eleven hundred I published between 2006 and 2018.
The full draft is available here.
I will be revising it for the rest of the summer and into the fall, so feedback is appreciated! In addition to the usual content-level feedback, I also welcome feedback on: (a) alternative possible titles, (b) posts or articles that I should have included but didn't, (c) posts or articles that aren't up to the quality of the others and should be cut.
The book is divided into 61 chapters in 5 parts. Every chapter is free standing. No need to read them in order.
[a haphazard sample of the stacks of books in my office, consulted during revision]
Table of Contents:
Part One: Moral Psychology
1. A Theory of Jerks2. Forgetting as an Unwitting Confession of Your Values3. The Happy Coincidence Defense and The-Most-I-Can-Do Sweet Spot4. Cheeseburger Ethics (or How Often Do Ethicists Call Their Mothers?)5. On Not Seeking Pleasure Much6. How Much Should You Care about How You Feel in Your Dreams?7. Imagining Yourself in Another’s Shoes vs. Extending Your Love8. Aiming for Moral Mediocrity9. A Theory of Hypocrisy10. On Not Distinguishing Too Finely Among Your Motivations11. The Mush of Normativity12. A Moral Dunning-Kruger Effect?13. The Moral Compass and the Liberal Ideal in Moral Education Part Two: Technology
14. Should Your Driverless Car Kill You So Others May Live?15. Cute AI and the ASIMO Problem16. My Daughter’s Rented Eyes17. Someday, Your Employer Will Technologically Control Your Moods18. Cheerfully Suicidal AI Slaves19. We Have Greater Moral Obligations to Robots Than to (Otherwise Similar) Humans20. Our Moral Duties to Monsters21. Our Possible Imminent Divinity22. Skepticism, Godzilla, and the Artificial Computerized Many-Branching You23. How to Accidentally Become a Zombie Robot Part Three: Culture
24. Dreidel: A Seemingly Foolish Game That Contains the Moral World in Miniature25. Does It Matter If the Passover Story Is Literally True?26. Memories of My Father27. Flying Free of the Deathbed, with Technological Help28. Thoughts on Conjugal Love29. Knowing What You Love30. The Epistemic Status of Deathbed Regrets31. Competing Perspectives on One’s Final, Dying Thought32. Profanity Inflation, Profanity Migration, and the Paradox of Prohibition (or I Love You, “Fuck”)33. The Legend of the Leaning Behaviorist34. What Happens to Democracy When the Experts Can’t Be Both Factual and Balanced?35. On the Morality of Hypotenuse Walking36. Birthday Cake and a Chapel Part Four: Consciousness and Cosmology
37. Possible Psychology of a Matrioshka Brain38. A Two-Seater Homunculus39. Is the United States Literally Conscious?40. Might You Be a Cosmic Freak?41. Penelope’s Guide to Defeating Time, Space, and Causation42. Choosing to Be That Fellow Back Then: Voluntarism about Personal Identity43. How Everything You Do Might Have Huge Cosmic Significance44. Goldfish-Pool Immortality45. How Big the Moon Is, According to One Three-Year-Old46. Tononi’s Exclusion Postulate Would Make Consciousness (Nearly) Irrelevant47. What’s in People’s Stream of Experience During Philosophy Talks?48. The Paranoid Jeweler and the Sphere-Eye God49. The Tyrant’s Headache Part Five: The Psychology and Sociology of Philosophy
50. Truth, Dare, and Wonder51. Trusting Your Sense of Fun52. Why Metaphysics Is Always Bizarre53. The Philosopher of Hair54. Kant on Killing Bastards, Masturbation, Organ Donation, Homosexuality, Tyrants, Wives, and Servants55. Obfuscatory Philosophy as Intellectual Authoritarianism and Cowardice56. Nazi Philosophers, World War I, and the Grand Wisdom Hypothesis57. Against Charity in the History of Philosophy58. Invisible Revisions59. On Being Good at Seeming Smart60. Blogging and Philosophical Cognition, or Why Blogging Is the Ideal Form of Philosophy!!! :-)61. Will Future Generations Find Us Morally Loathsome?