Current Events
This senator just set the record for the longest filibuster in US history
Who is Cory Booker?
This thought experiment asks whether an object is the same object after having all of its original components replaced over time
What is the ship of Theseus?
This agreement between the US and France ceded over 800,000 acres of land West of the Mississippi River to the US
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
This youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize recipient studied PPE at Oxford after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban for advocating girls' education.
Who is Malala Yousafzai?
This common game theory scenario involves two prisoners who can't communicate but must decide whether to cooperate or betray each other
What is the prisoner's dilemma?
This French presidential candidate has been barred from running in 2027 after being found guilty of embezzlement
Who is Marine Le Pen?
This thought experiment by Robert Nozick asks if one should plug into a virtual reality indistinguishable from real life that simulates one's perfect life
What is the experience machine?
This treaty ended World War I
What is the treaty of Versailles?
This Rhodes Scholar studied PPE at Oxford before returning to teach law at the University of Arkansas, later becoming the state's Governor and eventually U.S. President.
Who is Bill Clinton?
This equilibrium concept, named after a mathematician, occurs when no player can benefit by changing their strategy while others keep theirs unchanged
What is the Nash Equilibrium?
This is the name of the Signal groupchat created by Pete Hegseth used to discuss war plans, that accidentally included the chief editor of the Atlantic
What is Houthi PC Small Group?
This political philosophy thought experiment from John Rawls asks you to choose principles of society without knowing your future social status, abilities, or conception of the good
What is Original Position / The Veil of Ignorance?
In 1955, this treaty established a mutual-defense organization between the Soviet Union and other Eastern European Countries
What is the Warsaw Pact?
This British philosopher studied PPE, and later formulated the famous "Trolley Problem"
Who is Phillipa Foot?
In this type of game, the total of all payoffs to all players is zero, meaning any player's gain is exactly balanced by others' losses
What is a zero-sum game?
This state became the first US state to ban the use of Flouride in public water
What is Utah?
This thought experiment suggests that if the government actually cared about people driving safely, they would mandate this addition to cars that makes cars less safe for the driver
What is Tullock's Spike?
This international treaty establishes the legal framework for all activities in the oceans and seas, including defining maritime zones, navigation rights, and resource management.
What is UNCLOS (United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea)?
This Australian-born media tycoon studied PPE before building and owning a global media empire that includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and 21st Century Fox.
Who is Rupert Murdoch?
This scenario stages two competing firms with homogenous goods, where their products compete only by price in an oligopolistic market
What is Bertrand Competition?
This is the formula used by the Trump administration to determine the tariff rates it recently set
What is (Trade Deficit) / (Imports*2)?
This thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson argues against physicalism by saying that knowing everything about color cannot substitute the knowledge you obtain by experiencing color
What is Mary's Room / The knowledge argument?
This treaty esteablished the 49th parallel as the border between the US and Canada
What is the Oregon Treaty? OR What is the treaty of 1818?
This PPE graduate made history in 2022 as the first British Prime Minister of South Asian descent, and the youngest UK Prime Minister in over 200 years.
Who is Rishi Sunak?
This is a key idea in social choice theory - by contradiction, it mathematically proves that no rank-based decision rule can satisfy the requirements of rational choice theory
What is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem?