Here are four incredibly bad ideas (that are still commonly believed):

1) That people should be judged for, blamed for, or feel shame about the behavior of their ancestors.

Of course, if your ancestors did bad things, you should condemn those acts. And if you directly benefit from something bad your family member did, you should consider if you can make amends.

But, logically, people cannot be morally responsible for events that they were unable to affect.

This bad idea (that we are responsible for the behavior of our ancestors) is partly responsible for numerous cycles of violent conflict, as well as for unjust punishments and unhelpful guilt.

2) That small differences in group means are a good justification for jumping to conclusions about members.

This idea is partly responsible for a variety of forms of prejudice and harmful stereotyping.

Epistemically, a small mean difference provides only a sliver of evidence about individuals. Morally, it’s unjust to treat individuals as though only their group matters.

3) That there’s a simple explanation for all or most human behavior.

Variations on this idea have led to a great deal of confusion about human nature.

Human behavior is not all about sex, or self-interest, or happiness, or status, or individual survival, or even love.

Humans have a very diverse set of forces that influence behavior: emotions, culture, values, habits, instincts, heuristics, goals, etc.

4) That you need to follow a prescribed template in order to have a fulfilling life.

This idea has led to countless people being pressured into or trapped in lives that are bad for them.

Some people will be happiest as homemakers, others as professionals, and still others as adventurers, etc. Sometimes, the best life for a person will match the stereotype for their gender or group; other times, it will be the opposite, and at other times, it will seem completely out of left field.

Our boxes are much too small to force people’s lives into.

This piece was first written on July 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on November 10, 2024.

Here’s a list of some of those theories (as I interpret them), explained in extremely concise terms as best as I could manage:

The List of Thinkers and Their Core Ideas:

1. Peter Singer

We would ruin expensive shoes to save a drowning child we walked by, but not forgo expensive shoes to save one far away. We say it’s wrong to torture animals, yet our factory farms constantly torture them to make the meat/eggs we choose to buy. We should do more good.

2. Nick Bostrom

Technology is often good, but not always, and sometimes it is incredibly dangerous (e.g., nuclear weapons, engineering of viruses). If we invent enough technologies, eventually we may invent one that totally devastates civilization, even if actors are well-intentioned.

3. Eliezer Yudkowsky

Each year, AI gets more powerful. It’s on course to eventually be smarter than the smartest human in almost all ways. But these AIs are alien minds that won’t embody what we care about sufficiently well. When that happens, it will likely go extremely badly for humanity. Nobody knows how to make such a system safe.

4. Robin Hanson

Many of the explanations for why we do things don’t make sense (if we did X for claimed reason Y, we’d also do Z, which we don’t do). The most parsimonious explanation is that much of our behavior is just social signaling, which we engage in without even realizing it.

5. Elon Musk

If we let climate change or A.I. get out of control before we get off this planet, we’re F’d. Let’s get off this planet before it’s too late.

6. Jonathan Haidt

We often think we use our reason to arrive at moral conclusions, but mainly we use our reason to try to rationalize or justify what our moral intuition tells us. Political parties/groups have differing moral intuitions, and there are good people on all sides.

7. Noam Chomsky

We view the U.S. as a democracy, yet large corporations and a small group of elites have far more sway over what happens than anyone else. We view the U.S. as a world benefactor, yet its actions abroad are self-serving.

8. Andrew Yang

Automation is eventually going to take away a massive number of jobs (with e.g., self-driving cars and trucks, automated checkout, and AI assistants). We need to figure out how to make society work for all as jobs disappear and wealth becomes even more unequally distributed.

Of course, I had to vastly oversimplify your views to fit them in this format – hopefully I did so about as accurately as the format allows.

This piece was first written on August 26, 2020, and first appeared on my website on May 18, 2026.