In my view, there are "four forces" behind why humans avoid unethical behavior. I think understanding these forces can be useful when seeking to explain people's actions (especially when someone does something truly terrible). Ethical force 1: Emotion  The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see ...

Note (March 26, 2023): I first wrote this list on December 3, 2022. Since then, GPT-4 has come out, and several of the points in this list are closer to happening. For example, point #2 is partly true already, thanks to Bing Chat (which runs on GPT-4). Here are nine ways I think that AIs that generate text (like GPT-3) will have a >50% chance of changing the world for the better and...

If you're like me and really dislike small talk, you may find these ideas useful. (1) If you end up talking about their work, ask what they (i) most like about it and (ii) find most challenging about it. (2) If they end up asking about your work, try to explain what you do in a way you've never experimented with before. Example: if you're a programmer, maybe you'll say your job i...

Recently, a study came out where 73 research teams independently analyzed the same data, all trying to test the same hypothesis. Seventy-one of the teams came up with numerical results across a total of 1,253 models. Across these 1,253 different ways of looking at the data, about 58% showed no effect, 17% showed a positive effect, and 25% showed a negative effect. But that's not even the oddest p...

One time when I was walking in Central Park, a branch fell from a really tall tree, perhaps a 50- to 60-foot drop. A squirrel was on that branch when it fell, and the branch hit the cement path with a loud thud. The squirrel lay there on its back, quivering. I knew it was totally screwed. Its back was probably broken, but it was clearly still alive. "Fuck," I thought to myself. "Look at ...

All else being equal, it's good to avoid creating awkwardness. But too much awkwardness-avoidance can be harmful. Lately, I've been trying to accept a bit more awkwardness (rather than reflexively avoiding it) in cases where I think doing so can produce value. Here are four areas where I'm leaning more into awkwardness: 1. When asked for feedback on a project (and I think it wil...

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 m...

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 ...

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 b...

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 c...