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 world:

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1) EXTERNAL CAUSES

1i) Nature or evolution (e.g., malaria, cancer) -> Potential solutions: technological development, such as medical cures

1ii) Bad luck (e.g., landslides, earthquakes, droughts) -> charity, government programs providing social safety nets

1iii) Scarcity (e.g., insufficient food or water in an area) -> migration away from high scarcity areas, technological development to increase food production

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2) FAILINGS OF HUMAN NATURE

2i) Highly selfish actions by non-evil people (e.g., some of the crimes that are committed, some of the manipulation that occurs) -> cultural norms discouraging selfishness, cultural norms to punish those taking highly selfish actions

2ii) Harmful actions taken in highly emotional, confused, or desperate mental states (e.g., crimes of passion, harmful, desperate reactions out of fear, harm caused during extreme mental illness) -> widely available and effective mental health treatment, widespread education/training related to mental health and emotional regulation

2iii) Well-intentioned ideologues who are convinced that their simple but wrong model of the world is the absolute truth (e.g., some of the genocides and wars, many harmful yet well-intentioned policies) -> rationality education/training, a robust culture of respectful disagreement and debate

2iv) Cognitive biases leading to actions with severe negative consequences (e.g., greatly misjudging whether a project will bring enough benefit to be worth the cost, excessive fear towards or devaluing of ‘othered’ outsiders leading to mistreatment or harm to outsiders, lack of preparation for likely occurrences that are not salient) -> rationality education/training, careful design of systems to counteract biases, strong moral norms of respect towards all, moral circle expansion

2v) Retaliation or revenge (e.g., cycles of retribution) -> a culture of forgiveness, effective dispute resolution methods and institutions, reliable enforcement of laws

2vi) Evil people acting alone (e.g., serial murder, child abuse) -> effective police forces, high crime clearance rates, enforcement of laws, scientific investigation into the root causes of evil

2vii) Evil people who rally supporters (e.g., some genocides and wars, some extractive government policies) -> strong norms around truth telling and social punishment for lying, a robust culture of respectful disagreement and debate, a culture of empathy toward and acceptance of those who are different than you, a well-educated and informed citizenry, scientific investigation into the root causes of evil, a strong constitution, a strong independent judiciary, strong norms around maintaining freedom and independence of thought

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3) CHALLENGES OF COORDINATION AND INFORMATION

3i) Negative-sum competition (e.g., fighting over food when there isn’t enough to go around) -> technological innovation to increase abundance, thoroughly enforced laws forbidding negative-sum behaviors

3ii) Unintended side effects of actions that are not innately unethical (e.g., addiction caused by the invention of social media, new promising-seeming medical treatments that turn out to have horrendous side effects) -> a robust and low-transaction cost systems for those who were harmed to be compensated by those who caused the harm, hard to undermine enforced regulation requiring organizations to ameliorate harms once they have been identified

3iii) Collective action problems and negative externalities caused by individually reasonable behavior (e.g., pollution, climate change, overuse of resources) -> methods for assigning prices to negative externalities so that someone bears the cost, regulation to limit negative externalities

3iv) Prisoner’s dilemmas and difficulties of pre-commitment and coordination (e.g., arms races, such as with nuclear weapons) -> technology to facilitate coordination and simultaneous action, public projects by governments and private donors

What other broad causes of bad things or potential types of solutions am I missing?

This piece was first written on November 2, 2025, and first appeared on my website on November 17, 2025.

So, what are those things that at least some human cultures view as INHERENTLY immoral, that is, acts they would still think of as immoral even if no other consequences of that behavior were to occur?

Here’s my attempt so far at making a comprehensive list of things that at least some cultures view as intrinsically wrong. Note that many of these items are related or overlapping. What am I missing from the list?

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1. UNFAIRNESS

• Injustice (e.g., helping a bad person avoid punishment, or undermining someone’s just reward)

• Inequality (e.g., causing society’s resources to be concentrated among just a few while everyone else is poor, or treating people differently based on gender or skin color)

• Abuse of authority (e.g., nepotism, or favoritism, or those in power giving rewards to those they like best instead of those who deserve it, or those who are given a certain position of authority not carrying out the duties of that position, or carrying out the duties poorly or in a self-interested manner)

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2. HARM

• Harm (e.g., causing others suffering or purposely reducing the happiness of others)

• Murder (e.g., ending the life of another person, including in some cultures, animals, or allowing others to die needlessly)

• Genocide (e.g., the harming or killing of a specific, targeted group)

• Stealing (e.g., taking something that belongs to someone else or that should be no one’s property)

• Destruction (e.g., damaging or annihilating things of value, like ruining the environment, destroying ancient or beautiful artifacts, instigating societal collapse, or hunting a species to extinction)

• Slander (e.g., speaking ill of others, or gossiping by spreading true but negative or harmful information about other people)

• Subjugation (e.g., controlling the body, mind, or choices of others, or restricting freedom)

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3. DISRESPECT

• Disrespect of authority (e.g., being rude to your parents or disobeying your leaders)

• Disrespect of the vulnerable (e.g., treating people badly or not showing respect for members of a subjugated or vulnerable or oppressed group, or not paying proper respect to those who are victims, or disrespecting people living under hard conditions)

• Disrespect of the dead (e.g., digging up a grave, selling a dead body, necrophilia, cannibalism, speaking badly of the dead)

• Disrespect of god or gods (e.g., blasphemy, taking God’s name in vain, desecrating a place of worship, violating a commandment such as doing work on a day when work is forbidden, worshiping a carved idol instead of worshiping God, not engaging in prayer or thanks, questioning God’s nature, or God’s choices, or God’s existence)

• Practicing other faiths (e.g., worshipping alternative gods, engaging in superstitions, engaging in practices or rituals of other religions)

• Rule-breaking (e.g., violating the laws of your country or the rules of your culture, even if those laws are arbitrary or pointless)

• Violating tradition (e.g., non-conformity, or refusing to engage in the traditions of your culture, or flouting traditional roles or norms)

• Disrespect of opinions (e.g., not taking into account the opinions or desires of other people, falsely believing you know more or are wiser than others)

• Defiling (e.g., causing others to be impure, or causing others to take immoral actions, or causing others to leave your religion)

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4. IMPURITY

• Food impurity (e.g., eating certain “forbidden”, “impure” or “disgusting” foods)

• Sexual impurity (e.g., sex before marriage, bestiality, incest, sex with forbidden people, or performing forbidden sexual acts)

• Bodily impurity (e.g., uncleanliness, or making certain disallowed alterations to the body, face, or hair, or taking drugs or intoxicants)

• Social impurity (e.g., spending time with others who are thought to be bad or impure, such as murderers or members of an outcast group)

• Unnaturalness (e.g., engaging in behaviors or social relationships that are viewed as unnatural or in violation of the natural order, or “playing god”, such as by trying to modify natural things)

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5. DISLOYALITY

• Betrayal (e.g., refusing to help someone who has often helped you or with whom you have a long history)

• Familial rejection (e.g., disowning a family member or refusing to help a family member in need or choosing to benefit a non-family member over a family member)

• Infidelity (e.g., to cheat on a romantic partner when in a monogamous relationship)

• Treason (e.g., rejecting your in-group, or bad mouthing your in-group, or harming your in-group, or leaving your in-group for another group, running away in battle)

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6. DISHONESTY

• Lying (e.g., being dishonest, or spreading false information, or allowing others to come to false conclusions)

• Perjury (e.g., claiming that someone did something they didn’t do in order to help yourself)

• Promise breaking (e.g., to violate a contract or go back on a promise)

• Cheating (e.g., getting an unfair advantage, violating rules that everyone else has to follow, or giving what one person has earned to a different person instead)

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7. BAD CHARACTER

• Irresponsibility (e.g., failing to take care of your children, or do your job, or keep your promises)

• Inaction (e.g., not intervening when something bad is happening and you have the power to stop it)

• Wastefulness (e.g., letting food or resources go to waste, using more than is needed, or not making use of your talent or potential)

• Faithlessness (e.g., not believing in God or gods, not believing in the existence of good and evil, not believing that there is such a thing as moral being morality)

• Ignorance (e.g., stupidity, irrationality, lack of knowledge, narrow-mindedness, intolerance of other opinions)

• Selfishness (e.g., not caring about other people, or choosing the benefit of oneself over the benefit of one’s community, or refusing to help others who are in need when you have a lot of resources, or rejecting being part of any community, excessively promoting oneself, or bragging)

• Recklessness (e.g., allowing things of value to come into danger due to lack of forethought or caring, taking excessive risks)

• Sinful emotion (e.g., excessive anger, lust, greed, jealousy, pride, laziness, arrogance, materialistic desire)

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EXAMPLES OF MORAL SYSTEMS

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The Ten Commandments forbid items from 8 of these sub-categories:

• Practicing other faiths (“thou shalt have no other gods before me”)

• Disrespect of God (“thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images…not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain…remember the sabbath day”)

• Disrespect of authority (“honor thy father and thy mother”)

• Murder (“thou shalt not kill”)

• Infidelity (“thou shalt not commit adultery”)

• Stealing (“thou shalt not steal”)

• Perjury (“thou shalt not bear false witness”)

• Sinful emotion (“thou shalt not covet”)

—

The golden rule (“Do to others what you want them to do to you”) doesn’t directly forbid any of these items, but making reasonable guesses for what most people would want done to them, it likely ends up forbidding at least some items from every one of the high-level categories above.

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The “Five Precepts” for lay followers of some traditions of Buddhism ask you to refrain from these sub-categories:

• Murder (“I undertake the training rule to abstain from killing.”)

• Stealing (“I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.”)

• Sexual impurity (“I undertake the training rule to avoid sexual misconduct.”)

• Lying and Perjury (“I undertake the training rule to abstain from false speech.”)

• Bodily impurity (“I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.”)

—

As I understand it, for some (but not all) Sikhs, the main sub-categories of religious prohibitions are:

• Bodily impurity (cutting hair, taking intoxicants)

• Practicing other faiths (e.g., eating meat of animals killed in a ritualistic manner, engaging in superstitious rituals, and animal sacrifice)

• Sinful emotion (obsessive greed/materialistic desire)

• Selfishness (living a life disconnected from society as a recluse or non-family oriented living, bragging)

• Slander

• Lying

• Infidelity

This piece was first written on April 18, 2018, and first appeared on my website on September 15, 2025.

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.

How to make companies into engines of good: make harm unprofitable. If a machine is designed to do X, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise if it approximately does X. However, we want to make sure that X rules out things that we really don’t want the machine to achieve. If it doesn’t, we might end up hating the machine.

In other words, if we think of companies as an optimizing system that (to some degree of approximation) attempts to maximize profit for shareholders, then if the set of very profitable options includes doing harm, we can predict that companies will sometimes take those harmful options.

Making it unprofitable to do harm is different than, say, punishing bad things companies do in proportion to how bad a crime seems intuitively. It ideally takes into account how much punishment is necessary to offset the average profit that could be made from violating that rule (otherwise, if the profit potential is large enough, even once the potential punishment is accounted for, we can predict the rule will be violated by many companies).

This piece was first written on July 20, 2017, and first appeared on my website on June 10, 2025.

It would be nice if this were a valid argument (since then more units sold = more societal benefit). Unfortunately, it’s not valid.

To help put the argument to rest, here’s a list of 13 situations where a product that doesn’t add net value to the world may still get bought in large quantities:

[Note: I like entrepreneurship a great deal and think, on-net, it has added huge amounts of benefit to the world, but I don’t like flawed arguments that make it sound automatically beneficial when it’s not.]

INACCURATE/INCOMPLETE INFORMATION

(1) a product doesn’t actually provide the benefit that it claims to, yet the marketing is persuasive (and it’s difficult to tell after whether or not you got that promised value)

• Numerous supplement companies today whose products don’t do what is claimed. People buy not because they get value but because they think they will (and they keep using it because it can be hard to tell if the benefit is occurring – for instance, whether it’s really reducing your chance of serious illness).

(2) the product benefits most users, but it harms a small number of users so much that it nets out as negative

• A slightly effective treatment for a mild disease that occasionally produces deadly allergic reactions. People buy because they want the slightly effective treatment, but the harm for those who are allergic is so great that in total, the impact is highly negative.

(3) the product adds value to the purchaser, but less value than its competitors would have offered, yet its marketing is more successful than its competitors

• Accounting software that is well below average in usefulness, but it has a much more effective marketing team than other accounting software companies. People buy it because they recognize the brand, but they would have been better off if they hadn’t heard of this brand because then they would have used one of the better competitor products.

EXPLOITING IRRATIONALITY

(4) the product is addictive, and while users get pleasure out of it, many vastly over-consume it (relative to their own preferences), making the experience net negative overall.

• Video games that have been optimized purely for addictiveness (rather than for fun), for instance, making you feel bad when you stop playing. People keep playing and paying even though they are doing it more than they themselves would choose.

(5) the product takes advantage of our tendencies to small overweight probabilities of very large benefit

• Lotteries that are specifically targeted to extremely poor people who really shouldn’t be spending that much money on lotteries. The consumer buys because of their hope that one day they will win (which is an exaggerated hope because we humans struggle to deal with tiny probabilities) in combination with the direct enjoyment of playing (which is potentially real enjoyment, but not enough alone to make buying the tickets worth it).

(6) the product gives us appealing but harmful false information

• A self-help book that paints an appealing vision of the world that people WISH was true (e.g. “you can get anything you want, and you don’t even have to try! It will come to you automatically if you just believe!”), but the book is actually filled with terrible advice that will cause your life to be worse on average (e.g., the advice actually demotivates you from taking actions to achieve things, and the book claims that if its advice isn’t working for you, then you aren’t following it properly, so it’s your own fault).

(7) the product gives consumers benefits immediately but then causes harm in the future to those same consumers that more than makes up for the initial benefit

• A loan product that gives cash immediately, but which has skyrocketing interest rates years from now (the details of which are complex and hard to fully appreciate). People buy it because they are overemphasizing the immediate benefit relative to the greater long term future cost.

ZERO SUM OR NEGATIVE SUM GAMES

(8) the product does create value for THAT consumer, but it does so by making it easier for that consumer to take advantage of or harm other people

• Software that makes it easier for you to spam people. People buy it because they benefit selfishly by spamming people, but at a direct cost to those other people.

(9) the product provides value to you as long as you can convince others to become buyers of it too, but ultimately this is unsustainable so, in the end, someone pays the price

• Various multi-level marketing companies that turned out to be pyramid schemes, where most of the value a consumer derives is not from using the product, but rather from convincing other consumers to convince other consumers, to convince other consumers to sell the product, etc. and eventually the whole thing collapses because there isn’t enough real demand. Consumers still buy it though because they see all the (real) success stories of people getting rich from it and because their friends have a monetary incentive to convince them to, and people don’t catch on right away to the lack of sustainability of the whole system.

(10) the product helps the buyer get more of a resource that only exists in limited quantities, so it necessarily comes at the expense of someone else getting less

• A product that trains you how to do better on a specific entrance exam for a highly prestigious institution that has only a fixed number of open slots each year.

NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES

(11) the product has negative environmental externalities that are greater than the value it provides to the purchaser

• A toy company that dumps their factory waste in a river, slowly and subtly poison people living nearby. People buy because they like the toys, but the consequence is causing other people to be poisoned.

(12) the product causes a large transfer of wealth from poorer people to richer people, leading to greater inequality

• An automation technology for private companies in a non-competitive industry that makes the service those companies provide WORSE for consumers, but it is still in the interest of companies in that industry to buy it because it allows them to fire many employees. So even though consumers are less happy and buy less overall (and a lot of people lose their jobs), the companies save so much money that they still make more profit. And furthermore, because the industry is not very competitive, the companies don’t subsequently fight each other on price and so are able to hang on to this extra profit (that they used to pay to their employees) for a long time.

(13) the product gives some people a little value, but a huge amount of time from a huge number of people went into developing that product, and it was not an effective use of that massive amount of labor.

• A bloated startup that raised way too much VC money and hired way too many employees, yet its product is only slightly useful.