Intelligence Squared
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2018–2022
1:35:44 · 728K views · Feb 12, 2018
An Intelligence Squared debate in which Will Self argues for Brave New World and Adam Gopnik for Nineteen Eighty-Four as the better dystopian warning. It includes acted excerpts and is chaired by Jonathan Freedland.
HN recommends it as a good long debate for the recurring question of whether Orwell or Huxley was right.
4 comments from Hacker News
I don't know if Brave New World or 1984 was right. You will enjoy this debate about that exact question: this video Fantastic oratory, excerpts acted out by famous actors, intriguing ideas. Marvelous production.
yes! thank you. huxley was right about a scary number of things... this debate between will self and adam gopnik on 'brave new world' vs '1984' is really good if anybody has 1.5 hours to indulge. this video just grabbed 'amusing ourselves to death' from libby, thanks for the recommendation!
interesting and I agree with you. sorry if my original comment sounded like I was correcting you or something. I had my mind made up after watching an actual 90 mins panel[1] on this subject - then after watching I re-read both books and since then thought I finally had my answer to this annoying question. that is until you just tore it all up again with more facts I hadn't considered :) the problem you describe with reading feels very familiar. I haven't had time to read any fiction for 20 years and only focused on papers (or stuff that I felt had some kind of immediate value to my career). The only pleasure I allowed myself was social media, shallow type of blogs and regurgitated opinions from books that were published not longer than the previous 2 years. then one day I noticed something was missing in my life and I missed the fiction of my childhood. I then switched to reading only old books (nothing published after 1970 preferably before WWII ...) and the more old stuff I read the less I wanted to write. I felt there is no point in reading new books because everything that could have ever been said has already been said. (NNTaleb pointed me to this "fact" in Antifragile which also triggered my abstinence from anything new). I used to write a lot of blogs before too but after reading old things I realize I have little to add to the conversation (and if I do it's just diluting the pool of good existing content). maybe we're just all totally overloaded from the amount of da
- Most channels by IDW (Intelectual Dark Web) people, though when you know all the arguments, due to overwatching, it can get a bit tiring. - Tom Scott, igsquared, JunsKitchen, Alex French Cooking Guy, New York Times, Great Big Story, Strange Parts, TED, and a few philosophy ones from Brazil. Some examples: JunsKitchen (Japanese cooking), homemade tofu [LINK] Lateral (Tom Scott's new game show) [LINK] igsquared (Brave New World vs 1984) this video If anyone knows any good Italian channels I might like, based on the above, let me know please. Grazie.