Upcoming Events

October 2020

Oct

“Challenging Expertise: When Specialization Meets Democracy” by Dr. Jamie Watson

Conference/Seminar

Expertise is a problem for democracy. Democratic processes give every view equal weight, but experts tell us that their views are better than others. Democratic processes presume individuals are the best judge of their own interests, but experts tell us that we often act against our own interests. Can we resolve this tension and save both democracy and expertise? I will explain three ways that philosophers and political theorists suggest we should understand the relationship between expert and non-expert citizens. Then I will describe some features of expertise that may point to a new solution to problem of expertise for democracy.

Click here to register:

https://usu-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYld-6grj4jH9I16EmnkHc0SFD_tZk-dRQA

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm | Online/Virtual | More Info

Oct

“Gamification and Value Capture” by Dr. Thi Ngyuen

Conference/Seminar

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Retweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. Value capture poses several threats. First, it threatens to change the goals of our activities, in a way that often threatens to undermine the value of those activities. Second, in value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should be carefully tailored to our particular selves, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack.

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm | Online/Virtual | More Info

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