Categorizing The Causes Of Bad Things In The World

November 17, 2025

What causes bad things? It sounds like a huge question, but maybe it's not as big as it seems. Here's my updated/improved list of high-level causes of bad things in the world. Note that these are not mutually exclusive categories. I've also added some potential solutions for each cause. I'd be interested to know: what is missing from my new list of causes of bad things and potential types of solutions? Thanks to those of you who commented on my prior version! Causes of bad things in the w...

Narcissists Aren’t Necessarily Who You Think They Are

June 20, 2025

Here are 8 common misconceptions about narcissists that can lead to misidentifying them or being hurt by them: —Myth #1: Narcissists don't know they are narcissistic. Surprisingly, quite a number do. Since narcissists are rarely able to see their own flaws clearly, there are 2 positions they usually take: i) I'm narcissistic, but that's good, actually or ii) I'm not narcissistic In fact, enough highly narcissistic people know they are narcissists that on anonymous surveys, the...

Think smarter about what’s “good”

December 20, 2023

Cross-posted on the Clearer Thinking blog. Travis Manuel helped to edit and improve this post. People like to think of things as "good" or "bad," such as: Trans fats are bad for you, and broccoli is good for you. Lethargy is bad, but exercise is good. Being cowardly is bad, and having courage is good. A problem with putting something in the "good" bucket of your mind, though, is that this can lead to the belief that the more of it there is, the better. But most go...

People often ask – why do girls like bad boys? But do women like bad guys, or do they actually prefer “powerful good guys”?

October 25, 2023

People often talk about how women are attracted to "bad guys" and don't actually like the "nice guys," or they ask, "Why do girls like bad boys?" or "Why do girls like mean guys?" In my opinion, these views are based on misunderstandings of what is attractive. It's definitely true that some women are attracted to traits like narcissism, callousness, and manipulativeness (and some unusual women even go so far as to write letters to serial killers to get to know them). In my experience, though...

How to make companies into engines of good: make harm unprofitable

July 20, 2017

One oversimplified but potentially useful way to think about corporate regulation is to prevent it from being profitable to cause harm. Of course, this can be very challenging to achieve, and one can debate what "harm" means, how broadly it should be construed, and what to do in cases where there is substantial uncertainty about how to make harm unprofitable. But insofar as it's unprofitable to cause harm, and companies behave as profit maximizers, companies are basically forces for good. ...

Distinguishing Evil and Insanity: The Role of Intentions in Ethics

July 29, 2009

(Note: this is an essay I wrote many years ago that I still mostly agree with. It probably was what led to me eventually coming up with the idea of Philosophical Disorders.) After a little reflection, it is clear that the morality of a person who carries out an action doesn't just depend on the action itself but rather depends on the state of mind of the person who performs it. This holds for pretty much every commonly used definition of morality. Suppose, for example, that I was tricke...