Arguments For and Against Longtermism

August 30, 2022

Thanks to William MacAskill's excellent new book on the topic (What We Owe the Future), lots of people are talking about longtermism right now. For those not familiar with the concept, "longtermism" is the ethical view that "positively influencing the long-term future should be a key moral priority of our time." Below are some of my favorite arguments for longtermism, followed by some of my favorite against it. Note that I borrow from Will's book heavily here in the section on arguments ...

Tensions between moral anti-realism and effective altruism

August 14, 2022

I believe I've identified a philosophical confusion associated with people who state that they are both moral anti-realists and Effective Altruists (EAs). I'd be really interested in getting your thoughts on it. Fortunately, I think this flaw can be improved upon (I'm working on an essay about how I think that can be done), but I'd like to be sure that the flaw is really there first (hence why I'm asking you for your feedback now)! People that this essay is not&...

On Emotionally Reactive Traits: a hidden cause of drama and ruined relationships

August 13, 2022

Have you ever known a well-intentioned, kind person who had a pattern of creating interpersonal drama? I've known quite a few people like this, and they've often baffled me. Why would good people engage in behavior that systematically destroys relationships? After spending a while thinking about my past experiences with such cases, I now have a name for a cluster of traits that I believe, in at least some of these cases, help explain what's going on. I call this cluster "Emoti...

Understand how other people think: a theory of worldviews

June 29, 2022

This piece was coauthored with Amber Dawn Ace. A libertarian, a socialist, an environmentalist, and a pro-development YIMBY watch an apartment complex being built. The libertarian is pleased - ‘the hand of the market at work!’ - whereas the socialist worries that the building is a harbinger of gentrification; the YIMBY sees progress, but the environmentalist is concerned about the building’s carbon footprint. They’re all seeing the same thing, but they understand it differently because they ...

Why do some people oppose Roe v. Wade?

June 27, 2022

"March for Life," 2020 (photo in public domain)

Why do some people oppose Roe v. Wade? I tried to figure it out by reviewing the responses to a series of open-ended and multiple-choice questions answered by 49 people in the U.S. who say they're "very happy" that Roe v. Wade was overturned. Here is what they said. I posed the following open-ended questions: 1. "What are your views on abortion?" 2. "If you oppose abortion, why do you oppose it?" 3. "Under what circumstances do you think it should be legal to get one?" The...

Understanding Relationship Conflicts: Clashing Trauma

April 17, 2022

Artwork by Alexander Milov | Photograph by Adam Hornyak on Unsplash

Here is a common situation that you might have noticed: close friends (or romantic partners) suddenly have their relationship explode – both people feel like the other one hurt them and that they themselves did nothing wrong. These heart-breaking and all-too-common situations can arise from a pattern we call "Clashing Trauma." It has been estimated that over 70% of adults in the world have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Consequently, the majority of fr...

Can you have causation without correlation? (Surprisingly, yes)

March 14, 2022

Usually, when X causes Y that means that X is correlated with Y. This may seem obvious simply because correlation is simply a measure of the extent to which Y goes up, on average, when X goes up. But, fascinatingly, there are some special cases where you can have causation WITHOUT correlation. Here are five ways causation without correlation can occur: 1. Averaging: increasing A sometimes causes increasing B, but other times, it causes B to decrease. The two balance out. Since correlation...

Seven reasons why you could be defining a concept ineffectively

March 2, 2022

Note (December 16, 2022): This piece is cross-posted from the Clearer Thinking blog, where it appeared on March 2, 2021. Can a chosen definition be "wrong"? No. If you choose a definition, then you can define a sound or series of characters to mean whatever you want them to mean. For instance, if you wanted, you could declare that whenever you say "phloop," you mean one of those little paper umbrellas that are sometimes found in Piña coladas. That would be weird, but it wouldn't be ...

The enduring wisdom of a disabled man born into slavery nearly 2000 years ago

March 1, 2022

Imaginary portrait of Epictetus. (Imagine is in the public domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Epicteti_Enchiridion_Latinis_versibus_adumbratum_(Oxford_1715)_frontispiece.jpg)

This is a cross-post from my post on the Clearer Thinking blog (from March 1, 2022). The post first appeared on this site on December 3, 2022. Epictetus, born ~50AD, was a disabled man born into slavery in Phrygia (present-day Turkey). Nothing that he wrote down survives; we know about him only through the words of other scholars. But he was so wise that his ideas reverberate through society today. This article summarizes some parts of his incredible life and the impact that he had on the wo...

Why I changed my mind about courage

February 13, 2022

I used to not think much of courage as a virtue. After all, isn't it courageous to drive 50 mph over the speed limit despite being nervous about driving - or to rob a bank despite being next to a police station?Don't soldiers show courage fighting, even when fighting for the more evil side?It takes courage to become a boxer (because you're likely to have your face pummeled by a powerful person), but is that a good trait to encourage?What made me rethink courage was witnessing many cases where p...