These four categories of moral reactions to behavior are:

1) Disgust: A visceral, emotional reaction to a behavior (which appears connected to the moral realm) that’s perceived as gross or disgusting.

Examples:

• The disgust that most people would have at the idea of someone eating human flesh (even in a survival scenario where there is no other food available and a person has died of natural causes).

• The disgusted reaction that some (but not most) people have to the idea of gay sex. For instance, in one study I ran, about 40% of Americans said that imagining themselves having sex with someone of their own gender caused them “an emotion of disgust.”  

I think that people sometimes confuse the visceral emotion of disgust in response to a behavior with the behavior itself actually being immoral. Jonathan Haidt’s “moral dumbfounding” experiments support this point of view, where people insist a situation is immoral but can’t explain what is immoral about it (because the situations were carefully crafted not to violate moral principles and not to involve harm).

2) Character judgments: when a behavior is seen as indicative of an unethical character, even in cases where the behavior itself has no actual effects.

Examples:

• A person going to watch the daily operations of a slaughterhouse because they are intrigued by the idea of watching an animal die

• A person who enjoys daydreaming about stealing items from people they know, even though they have never stolen before

Cases like these provide evidence (some would argue, though it’s perhaps debatable) that a person has bad moral character, even if the behaviors themselves are not immoral. But people can jump to thinking an action is immoral because the sort of person that does it is more likely to be immoral, which I’d argue is, a mistake. While immoral actions are evidence of bad moral character, some actions that are evidence of bad moral character are not themselves immoral actions!

3) Heuristics: when a behavior is (collectively) judged as being “bad” because it often either causes harm, involves unethical behavior, or involves defecting on a social contract of some sort. These negative judgments can apply even if the behavior in question isn’t causing any harm in the specific situation where it’s being witnessed.

Examples:

• Driving fifty miles an hour over the speed limit is generally categorized as bad behavior, but if someone did it because they were driving a dying person to the hospital, we’d say that was actually okay.

• The head of an organization dating one of their employees is generally viewed as bad behavior because it often leads to harm, but there are instances where many people would say that in that particular case, it was ethically okay, such as cases where the employee insistently initiated the relationship leading to the pair ending up happily married

It’s easy to think of violations of heuristics like these as being bad, but really what’s going on is that we’re socially agreeing they are bad because it’s a good and helpful rule of thumb to treat them that way. But special circumstances can make them fine. Because of this, it’s not unreasonable to judge actions as probably bad when they fall in these categories (when we lack other information), but we should be sensitive to the specific details of the case since they are not necessarily bad.

4) Fundamentally unethical: a behavior that is, in and of itself, actually unethical according to at least some people’s deep ethical values. These actions don’t necessarily cause a feeling of disgust, and don’t merely appear bad because they are the sort of thing bad people do, and aren’t merely matching a heuristic about what’s bad – they are actually bad because of the precise action for some ethical values that people hold.

Examples:

• Poisoning your toddler because you don’t want a child

• Pretending you love someone when you don’t because you lack the courage to be honest

• Secretly spying on someone so you can see them naked

• Violating a promise you swore to uphold merely because you’re feeling lazy

When we treat an action as fundamentally unethical merely because it produces a feeling of disgust, or because it’s the sort of thing that provides evidence of bad character, or only because we have a societal heuristic against it because actions in that category tend to be harmful, I think we’re making a mistake. These categories are easy to conflate with an action being immoral, but they aren’t the same thing.

This piece was first written on November 16, 2024, and first appeared on my website on January 20, 2025.

Principles act as shortcuts to help you make choices that you’ll be satisfied with, and they serve as beacons to guide you toward a better version of yourself. They also serve as an encapsulation of important lessons you’ve learned throughout your life.

We recently released an interactive module to help you determine your principles. It also makes it easy to save or print off a beautiful depiction of your principles to help you keep them top of mind. You can use the module yourself here.

A big shout-out goes to Adam Binks who created this module!

Here are the principles I attempt to live by as of Jan 3, 2023:

1. Seek the truth on important topics, even when it’s difficult. Listen carefully to all plausible sides. Aim to avoid all self-deception.

2. Aim to have opinions on most topics that are important to you, but view your beliefs probabilistically. Be quick to update your view as you get new evidence.

3. Always strive to become a better version of yourself. Take constructive feedback with grace and use it to improve.

4. Try to understand your intrinsic values and avoid confusing them with instrumental values. Aim to be highly effective at generating what you intrinsically value.

5. While capable, devote a substantial percent of your time and effort to improving the world.

6. Try to always be kind.

7. Try never to tell lies. White lies are okay only when they’re what the recipient would prefer.

8. Don’t let anyone of low moral character be a recurring or substantial part of your life.

9. Try to be grateful for all that you have. Take pleasure in simple things.

10. Take care of your physical and mental health.

11. Always have a self-experiment running to find new ways to better yourself and your life.

12. Aim not to avoid anything valuable just because it makes you feel awkward, anxious, or afraid.

13. Remember that you will usually fail many times at any difficult thing before you succeed. Try, fail, learn from your mistakes, and try again.

This post was first written on December 31, 2022, was edited slightly on January 3, 2023, and first appeared on this site on July 26, 2023.