Category Archives: replies

plagiarism, etiquette, and morality

Pla­gia­rism by col­lege stu­dents has got­ten some atten­tion in the New York Times lately, and it occurs to me that I have dropped the ball on a series of posts about pla­gia­rism that I started ear­lier this sum­mer. Although I had planned to write other stuff next, I’m instead going to allow myself to be

sexism and the equality of persons

This post at Over­com­ing Bias caught my eye the other day: I Am Sex­ist Basi­cally, Robin Han­son points out that a com­mon def­i­n­i­tion and usage of “sex­ism” — hav­ing a “belief or atti­tude that one gen­der or sex is infe­rior to, less com­pe­tent, or less valu­able than the other” is flawed. It makes sci­en­tific obser­va­tion

I don’t know how free Amish women are

Bryan Caplan writes: Ques­tion: How free are Amish women com­pared to other Amer­i­can women?  I say they’re just as free.  I also say, against Will Wilkin­son, that their “for­mal free­dom” is morally sig­nif­i­cant. If the Amish used threats of vio­lence to keep their women in, it would be a ter­ri­ble crime.  As mat­ters stand, though,