"The Ministry for the Future seminar"  reminds me of "The Art of the Future Warfare"

Henry will never learn, and neither will Cooper. He belongs with them. Using the connection to Obama, in 2021 is just hilarious. I'll add the tag for the discovery of experience, because they still haven't. And freedom of speech because they oppose it.

Futurists, moralists, puritans, and fascists. 

"The claims about Art criticised in Art, an Enemy of The People, are very similar to those made by most religions, namely that there is a special category of people (prophets or artists) and a special category of activities (Religion or Art) which yield transcendent insights into the human condition, and which should be accorded special privileges over other people and other ways of finding meaning and enjoyment in life."

“… Search [in Shakespeare] for statesmanship, or even citizenship, or any sense of the commonwealth, material or spiritual, and you will not find the making of a decent vestryman or curate in the whole horde. As to faith, hope, courage, conviction, or any of the true heroic qualities, you find nothing but death made sensational, despair made stage-sublime, sex made romantic, and barrenness covered up by sentimentality and the mechanical lilt of blank verse."

Fantasies and Fantasists. Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy. 

"Science Fiction was created by men trying to get away from the alien environment populated by their wives."

"Art, an Enemy..." is Quiggin. And it's perfect that Francis Spufford has appeared in comments at the new one. And I need to add Shalizi.

And since D2 made an appearance at the Spufford "seminar"...

"However, one mark of crass consequentialism is to ignore the possibility of tragic dilemmas, yes?"

A “tragic dilemma”, as I understand it, is a situation in which consequentialism gives a clear answer about which alternative is better, but the answer in question is unpalatable. I don’t see why, in such a situation, consequentialism should be described as “crass” rather than, say, “jolly sensible”.

utilitarian psychopathy, autism and morality.