The quality of research on this one:
> You don’t believe me? Then put “What is the earliest novel?” into Google. I always get The Tale of Genji.
Yes you get that, in articles saying 'people say it was the tale of genji, but they were wrong', didnt even bother to click the link and read the articles.
Even the [Wikipedia article "Novel"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel) doesn't get all the way through the introduction before saying "there were certainly long fictional works that preceded" *Genji*. Singer is less informed than schoolchildren who cheat on their homework.
Does he even do bioethics anymore? I thought his whole schtick nowadays was to talk about how utilitarianism says that the most moral thing you could do is be really rich and donate to charity.
I feel like he isn't reading the room properly. I think his old "make rich liberals feel less guilty about their wealth" grift is going to always be profitable, and cancel culture is already waning as a profitable grift.
Holy fuck. The Golden Ass like, isn't the most famous piece of Roman literature but it's definitely one that tends to like, get mentioned a fair bit. It's not some obscure thing.
I have to admit, I didn't particularly care if Peter Singer had heard of Apuleius' The Golden Ass, but I'm downright offended that he hadn't heard of Dürer's Rhinoceros.
It made him vegan so he is automatically morally superior to anyone that isn’t even if he also writes uninformed things on old novels. But that is more a consequence of veganism being correct under a wide range of ethical presuppositions than a credit to utilitarianism in particular.
Uninformed guess; misinformed beliefs about the excellence of Sparta is probably part of it.
And good news! The historian being tweeted here actually did an in depth series on Sparta, why it sucked, and why most of what we believe about it is actually propaganda.
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/
For a moment there, when I saw this sneer first, I thought this was Bret Bedbug, but I was wrong thankfully. And Acoup is a good blog. [The Saruman was an idiot series](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/) is also pretty good, and a good read for any of the more Rationalist types who think just being smart is enough to do all kinds of things.
Wargry, and the concepts it relates to, such as camelry and elephantry, are great. But it does make me sad for some missed opportunity, apparently there existed a species of [mega capybara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephoartigasia_monesi) which sadly were not domesticated by the South Americans (due to them being extinct iirc). Think about it, Incan Capybaragry.
(E: and just to show im a huge nerd, you can create Capybaragry [in rimworld](https://megafaunarimworld.fandom.com/wiki/Josephoartigasia))
Michael Tooley’s book “Abortion and Infanticide,” is among the worst on the topic, but essentially Tooley & Singer agree with PL bioethicists on the first premise: they do not dispute that life begins at conception, but argue that prenates and neonates are so cognitively underdeveloped that murdering them is justified. Singer has gone a step further and defended the rape of mentally undeveloped adults “when they show clear signs of pleasure.”
> Singer has gone a step further and defended the rape of mentally undeveloped adults “when they show clear signs of pleasure.”
Wow, that is a whole new way to be fucked up over something that everyone else can agree is straight-up evil.
Most people would also consider snapping a newborn’s neck for having Down’s Syndrome straight up evil, but Singer left a semblance of morality behind long ago.
The donkey, with his big ears, hears many people telling stories, and
insists on retelling them to us. Some of them are entertaining, but the
overall effect of so many digressions is that the reader ceases to be
gripped by the main narrative of the adventures of the donkey. This, I
thought, must be why the work is so little known and read.
This raises an interesting question: Which would be shorter, Singer’s
Canterbury Tales or his Arabian Nights?
Sometimes I wish the only thing Singer had written was Famine,
Affluence, and Morality. Every new thing I read is dumb. I’ll admit
I haven’t heard of The Golden Ass, but it’s funny that this ad
includes the translator’s opinions that (1) the digressions are not
pointless and (2) actually it is quite popular.
(Granted, I imagine Animal Liberation was also good;
eventually I’d like to read some animal lib theory if not the book
itself.)
In case you want to read the actual submission by Singer, cf https://antigonejournal.com/2021/05/golden-ass/
I had trouble believing Devereaux’s sneer, but Singer’s submission is really that awful, and does not look like an April 1st joke either.
“Singer - noted author of ::checks notes:: zero works of intentional fiction”
This is the best sneer in the thread.
A choice sneer.
Also some additional context in the replies: https://twitter.com/MichaelR00ney/status/1399590015206789121
I felt like this tweet (in the replies; same author) was good Sneer™ also:
https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1399541000142458882
and now im down the rabbithole learning about why Singer wants to murder disabled infants yay
[2 second effort](https://imgur.com/a/UxqtCMp)
This raises an interesting question: Which would be shorter, Singer’s Canterbury Tales or his Arabian Nights?
Sometimes I wish the only thing Singer had written was Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Every new thing I read is dumb. I’ll admit I haven’t heard of The Golden Ass, but it’s funny that this ad includes the translator’s opinions that (1) the digressions are not pointless and (2) actually it is quite popular.
(Granted, I imagine Animal Liberation was also good; eventually I’d like to read some animal lib theory if not the book itself.)