long paper

Posted: March 28th, 2022

The Joe Rogan Podcast is very popular among a certain subset of our culture, yet is the cause of much concern for others. For the uninitiated, the conceit of the show is that it is important for us to engage with “big ideas,” even when they are “controversial,” because it allows us to be critical thinkers and come to our own views on these issues. Past guests on the show have included Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones (one of the foremost academic misogynists and a conspiracy theorist who believes (among other things) that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag, respectively).

Write a paper (no less than 700 words) explaining in as much detail as you can (using the concepts from this class) the reasons why this extremely popular show raises concerns. I recognize not all of you are all that familiar with this podcast (although I’m sure some of you listen to/watch it regularly). That’s ok. You have the tools to evaluate experts, so do a little research to make sure you understand the structure and nature of the show. You can also look into what other experts have to say about the issue (make sure to cite any sources you use with a link).

These concepts from philosophy class are: misinformation effect, belief perseveration, hindsight bias, expert testimony, appeal to popularity, appeal to tradition, wishful thinking, illegitimate appeal to emotion, legitimate appeal to emotion, straw man fallacy, fallacy of irrelevant reason, an argument against the person, appeal to ignorance, suppression of negative evidence, a news source or social media platform of begging the question, a news source or social media platform of the either/or fallacy, drawing the line fallacy, representative heuristic, availability heuristic, base-rate fallacy or the dilution effect, certainty effect, confirmation bias, status quo bias.