While I think there are very serious concerns that advancing technologies, and AI in particular, raise (such as lack of control over these systems with could be a tremendous threat, reduction of agency, and the potential for extreme concentration of power), if we can keep these technologies well under control and pointed at the betterment of humanity (a big if) I don’t think they have to destroy meaning. Here’s why:

While some people do derive a lot of their sense of self-worth from their work (such as myself), and such people could be especially hard hit if they are replaced by technology, there are, thankfully, many things that humans intrinsically value, and therefore, lots of potential sources of meaning. By seeking and then (at least to a reasonable degree) creating what we intrinsically value, we create meaning.

So let’s have a quick look at different human intrinsic values (i.e., things people value for their own sake, not as a means to an end) and how advancing technology, such as AI, may impact each of them:

—

Spirituality and purity: there are no reasons I see that technology would have to interfere with spirituality, religion, or attempts to act purely. So these values could continue being a source of meaning.

Truth and learning: if anything, really effective technology can accelerate the search for truth and our ability to learn. At the same time, technology gone wrong could make the truth harder to discern (e.g., if technology facilitates misinformation outcompeting accurate information).

Achievement: this one could be hard hit by technology insofar as it’s related to doing things that eventually AI may do better than all of us. At the same time, humans find a lot of value in achievements regardless of non-human performance. For instance, people compete in sprints (even though cheetahs could easily outrun us) and find value in achievement in chess (despite AI being able to easily beat the best human). A lot of people also value personal achievement – merely doing the best you can, or improving to do better than your own previous results.

Freedom: while technology could impair freedom (e.g., if it concentrates power into the hands of certain actors, they might choose to limit freedom), there is also potential for technology to expand freedom a lot by allowing us to do many things that weren’t possible before, either because we didn’t know how to do them or because they were too costly before.

Pleasure, non-suffering, longevity: there is no fundamental tension between technology and these values, and technology may be able to improve these by reducing sources of suffering (such as disease), increasing lifespans, and making pleasure more easily accessible.

Happiness (as distinct from pleasure and non-suffering): This is a tricky one, because technology can cut both ways here. For instance, while it’s likely social media has increased some kinds of pleasure, it may well have reduced overall happiness for some people by making them more disconnected or impacting the way they see the world.

Caring, reputation, respect, loyalty, and virtue: these don’t have to be impacted by technology; we could continue valuing these in our relationships with others, even in a world where AI has replaced most work. The main threats I see here from technology are the ways that social media can cause people to spend less face-to-face time together, and the way that AI friends or “relationship” partners could take the place of human relationships.

Justice and fairness: this could go either way. Technology could concentrate power in a way that makes these worse or systematize bias. On the other hand, if the benefits of technology are distributed widely, they could create increased abundance. Technology also has the potential, if harnessed correctly, to reduce (currently commonplace) human bias.

Diversity: globalization tends to reduce diversity, and so technology could accelerate that trend. On the other hand, giving people more freedom through technology could end up increasing forms of diversity (such as how people choose to live their lives).

Protection: technology has the ability to make us safer, so while we may experience more protection (for ourselves and our loved ones), it also could mean that our own role of protecting others is reduced, which could reduce the meaning derived from providing protection. On the other hand, if technology is not developed thoughtfully, the world could feel increasingly chaotic and even become more unsafe, so protection could become even more important.

Nature: technology has a track record of destroying nature, so that trend may continue. However, it’s possible that with sufficiently advanced technology, that trend will go the opposite direction (e.g., cheap green energy makes it easier to protect nature). Technology often destroys nature either as a means to accelerate or as a side effect of acceleration, but sufficiently advanced technology may reduce that effect.

Beauty: technology has the possibility of increasing beauty in the world (making it easier to create and experience beauty), but also runs the risk of filling the world with generic slop.

Overall, while advancing technology may have a negative impact on some things that humans intrinsically value, as long as we don’t destroy the world with these technologies and avoid allowing extreme concentration of power from them, other intrinsic values may not be impacted or even be benefited by technology. As long as we can seek and (to a reasonable degree) create what we intrinsically value, there are sources of meaning available.

This piece was first written on November 16, 2025, and first appeared on my website on December 22, 2025.

This is the third of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, fourth, and fifth parts (though the links won’t work until those other essays are released).

Sometimes, people take an important value – maybe their most important value – and decide to prioritize it above all other things. They neglect or ignore their other values in the process. In my experience, this often leaves people feeling unhappy. It also leads them to produce less total value (according to their own intrinsic values). I think people in the effective altruist community (i.e., EAs) are particularly prone to this mistake.

In the first post in this sequence, I introduce Valuism – my life philosophy – and offer some general arguments for its advantages. In this post, I talk about the interaction between Valuism and effective altruism. I argue that the way some EAs think about morality and value is (in my view) empirically false, potentially psychologically harmful, and (in some cases) incoherent. 

EAs want to improve others’ lives in the most effective way possible. Many EAs identify as hedonic utilitarians (even the ones who reject objective moral truth). They say that impartially maximizing utility among all conscious beings – by which they usually mean the sum of all happiness minus the sum of all suffering – is the only thing of value, or the only thing that they feel they should value. I think this is not ideal for a few reasons.

1. I think (in one sense) it’s empirically false

Consider a person who claims that “only utility is valuable.”

If we interpret this as an empirical claim about the person’s own values – i.e., that the sum of happiness minus suffering for all conscious beings is the only thing that their brain assigns value to – I think that it’s very likely empirically false. 

That is, I don’t think anyone only values (in the sense of what their brain assigns value to) maximizing utility, even if it’s a very important value of theirs. I can’t prove that literally nobody only values maximizing utility, but I argue that human brains aren’t built to only value one thing, nor would we expect evolution to converge on pure utilitarian psychology since evolution optimizes for survival (a purely utilitarian brain would get rapidly outcompeted by other brain types if they existed 50,000 years ago). 

I think that even the most hard-core hedonic utilitarians do psychologically value some non-altruistic things deep down – for example, their own pleasure (more than the pleasure of everyone else), their family and friends, and truth. However, in my opinion, they sometimes deny this to themselves or feel guilty about it. If you are convinced that your only intrinsic value is utility (in a hedonistic, non-negative-leaning utilitarian sense), you may find it instructive to take a look at these philosophical scenarios I assembled or check out the scenarios I give in this talk about values.

For instance, does your brain actually tell you it’s a good trade (in terms of your intrinsic values) to let a loved one of yours suffer terribly in order to create a mere 1% chance of preventing 101 strangers from the same suffering? Does your brain actually tell you that equality doesn’t matter one iota (i.e., it’s equally good for one person to have all the utility compared to spreading it more equally)? Does your brain actually value a world of microscopic, dumb orgasming micro-robots more than a world (of slightly less total happiness) where complex, intelligent, happy beings pursue their goals? Because taken at face value, hedonic utilitarianism doesn’t care about whether a person is your loved one or a stranger, doesn’t care about equality at all, and prefers microscopic orgasming robots to complex beings as long as the former are slightly happier. But, if you consider yourself a hedonic utilitarian, is that actually what your brain values?

2. It can be psychologically harmful

Additionally, I think the attitude that there is only one thing of value can lead to severe psychological burnout as people try to push away, minimize or deny their other intrinsic values and “selfish,” non-altruistic desires. I’ve seen this happen quite a few times. Here’s Tyler Alterman’s personal account of this if you’d like to see an example. And here’s a theory of how this burnout happens.

3. I think (in one sense) it’s incoherent

When coupled with a view that there is no objective moral truth, I think it is, in most cases, philosophically incoherent to claim that total hedonic utility is all that matters.

If you believe in objective moral truth, it may make sense to say, “I value many things, but I have a moral obligation to prioritize only some of them” (for example, you might be convinced by arguments that you are objectively morally obliged to promote utility impartially even though that’s not the only value you have).

However, many EAs, like me, don’t believe in objective moral truth. If you don’t think that things can be objectively right or wrong, it doesn’t make sense (I claim) to say that you “should” prioritize maximizing utility for all of humanity over other values – what does this “should” even mean? Well, there are some answers for what this “should” could mean that philosophers and lay people have proposed, but I find them pretty weak.

For a much more in-depth discussion of this point (including an analysis of different ways that EAs have responded to my critique of pairing utilitarianism with denial of objective moral truth), see this essay. It collects may different objections (from EAs and from some philosophers) and discusses them. So if you are interested in whether it is or isn’t coherent to only value utility when you deny objective moral truth, and moreover, whether EAs and philosophers have good arguments for doing so, please see that essay.

I find that while many (perhaps the majority of) EAs deny objective moral truth, many still talk and think as though there is objective moral truth.

I found it striking that, in my conversations with EAs about their moral beliefs, few had a clear explanation for how to combine a belief in utilitarianism with a lack of a belief in objective moral truth, and the approaches to that that they did put forward were usually quite different from each other (suggesting, at the very least, a lack of consensus in how to support such a perspective). Some philosophers I spoke to pointed to other ways one might defend such a position (mainly drawn from the philosophical literature), but I don’t recall ever seeing these approaches being used or referenced by non-philosopher EAs (so they don’t seem to be doing much work in the beliefs of EAs who hold this view). 

I suspect it would help many EAs if they took a more Valuist approach: rather than claiming to or aspiring to only value hedonic utility, they could accept that while they do intrinsically value this – very likely far more than the average person – they also have other intrinsic values, for example, truth (which I think is another very important psychological value for many EAs), their own happiness, and the happiness of their loved ones.

Valuism also avoids some of the most awkward bullets that EAs sometimes are tempted to bite. For instance, hedonic utilitarianism seems to imply that your own happiness and the happiness of your loved ones “shouldn’t” matter to you even a tiny bit more than the happiness of a stranger who is certain to be born 1,000,000 years from now. Valuism may explain why people who identify as hedonic utilitarians may feel a great deal of internal conflict about this – even if you value the happiness of all sentient beings a tremendous amount, you almost certainly have other intrinsic values too. That means that Valuism may help you avoid some of the awkward conundrums that arise from ethical monism (where you assume that there is only one thing of value).

Valuism and the EA Community

From a Valuist perspective, I see the EA community as a group of people who share a primary intrinsic value of hedonic utility (i.e., reducing suffering and increasing happiness impartially) with a secondary strong intrinsic value of truth-seeking. Oddly (from my point of view) EAs are very aware of their intrinsic value of impartial hedonic utility, but seem much less aware of their truth-seeking intrinsic value. On a number of occasions, I’ve seen mental gymnastics used to justify truth-seeking in terms of increasing hedonic utility when (I claim) a much more natural explanation is that truth-seeking is an intrinsic value (not just an instrumental value that leads to greater hedonic utility). This helps explain why many EAs are so averse to ever lying and so averse even to persuasive marketing.

Each individual EA has other intrinsic values beyond impartial utility and truth-seeking, but in my view, those two values help define EA and make it unique. This is also a big part of why this community resonates with me: those are my top two universal intrinsic values as well.

If more EAs adopted Valuism, I think that they would almost all continue to devote a large fraction of their time and energy toward improving the world effectively. Maximizing global hedonic utility (i.e., the sum of happiness minus suffering for conscious beings) is the strongest universal intrinsic value of most community members, so it would still play the largest role in determining their goals and actions, even after much reflection. 

However, they would also feel more comfortable investing in their own happiness and the happiness of their loved ones at the same time, which I predict would make them happier and reduce burnout. Additionally (I claim), they’d accept that, like many effective altruists, they also have a strong intrinsic value of truth. They’d strike a balance between their various intrinsic values, and not endorse annihilating all their intrinsic values except for one.

I published this piece on this site on March 10, 2023.

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You’ve just finished the second post in my sequence of essays on my life philosophy, Valuism – click here to go to the fourth post.

1. The Wise Critic
Honesty + Courage = telling difficult truths that it’s important for others to hear.

Honesty without courage is still good and valuable, but you’re limited to telling easy truths.

2. The Protector
Compassion + Courage = protecting other people even when it is dangerous and difficult, such as when saving someone from a bully means risking being bullied yourself.

Compassion without courage is great, but it’s limited to certain kinds of help.

3. The True Friend
Loyalty + Courage = being on the side of your loved ones and those you are grateful to, even when it comes at significant personal risk.

Loyalty without courage is still really nice to have, but it limits the extent of that loyalty.

4. The World Changer
Justice + Courage = fighting against the status quo to make the world better and fairer.

Justice without courage is great at small scales, but courage is often needed to create widespread change.

5. The Investigator
Truth-seeking + Courage = uncovering what is true regardless of what you wish were true or what you get rewarded or punished for finding.

Truth-seeking without courage leads to truer beliefs, but only in domains where truth isn’t too inconvenient.

6. The Hero
Goodness + Courage = standing up against immoral behavior, even when that behavior is socially condoned or carried out by the powerful.

Goodness without courage is a wonderful quality, but it doesn’t effectively combat evil.

Courage can make good behavior better and bad behavior worse.
That’s why it’s not a virtue by itself. But a lack of courage limits one’s ability to do good. Don’t seek courage for its own sake. Cultivate it because it enhances your other virtues.

Many people do bad things not because they are bad people but because they lack the courage NOT to. Seek courage because it allows you to do the right thing in difficult situations.

Here is how others have put related ideas about courage:
“…courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.”

-C.S. Lewis

“Courage is the most important of the virtues because, without it, no other virtue can be practiced consistently.”

-Maya Angelou

“Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.”

-Samuel Johnson

“Who but a man of infinite courage could have dared to think those thoughts? That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage. They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to think.”

-Richard Hamming

(Hat tip to @CallHimMoorlock and @alexisgallagher on Twitter for pointing me to some of these quotes.)

On a personal note, I’ve become more courageous over the years. I still have plenty of room for improvement, though, and it’s something I’d like to continue to work on.

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This piece was first written on February 13, 2022, and first appeared on this site on February 3, 2023.

To help clear them up, I’d like to share with you some statistics, followed by what I’ve witnessed regarding sexual assault and rape (in my personal networks).

Here are some helpful statistics about the rates of victimization in general:

• According to RAINN, about 1 in 6 American women and 1 in 33 American men have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape (source). 

• According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) survey, 1 in 5 American women experienced completed or attempted rape during her lifetime, and 1 in 14 American men had been made to penetrate someone (completed or attempted) during his lifetime (source). Among women, 13.5% experienced completed forced penetration during their lifetime, 6.3% experienced attempted forced penetration, and 11.0% experienced completed alcohol/drug-facilitated penetration at some point in their lifetime. Among men, approximately 1.6% were made to penetrate through completed forced penetration, 1.4% experienced situations where attempts were made to make them penetrate someone else through the use of force, and 5.5% were made to penetrate someone else through completed alcohol/drug facilitation at some point in their lifetime.

Note that these estimates can vary quite a bit due to (a) different definitions being used/different question wording and (b) precisely who is being surveyed. I wouldn’t be surprised if anywhere from 1 in 2 to 1 in 6 women in the US have been raped and/or sexually assaulted (depending on who is asked and with which wording).

• According to RAINN, about 20% of sexual violence is committed by a stranger, 40% by acquaintances, 33% by a current or former romantic partner, and 3% by a non-spouse relative (source).

• According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about 1 in 3 rapes/sexual assaults are reported to the police (source).

In my networks:

• Twelve people that I know have told me about being raped or sexually assaulted (11 women and one man) – note that I’m only talking here about one-on-one conversations I’ve had where the person told me some details about what happened. If you’re wondering, none of these were cases where consensual sexual activity was occurring, and then, in the heat of the moment, the perpetrator did something that they didn’t know the victim didn’t want. These cases are all very clear violations.

• In only three cases (i.e., 25%), the perpetrator was a stranger.

• Of the 12 people, only one of them (i.e., 8%) reported what happened to authorities or publicly named the perpetrator.

To see how common sexual assault experiences are among my Twitter followers, I posted two (anonymous) polls, both shown below. Of the respondents, more than 1 in 2 women and more than 1 in 7 men reported that they had experienced sexual assault, defined here as a situation they found very distressing where (1) they were forced to engage in a sexual act OR (2) a sexual act was performed on them against their will. These proportions were similar regardless of if it was (or wasn’t) specified that a reasonable person would have predicted they didn’t want the act to be done (this specification was added in the second poll).

This raises the question – why did victims so rarely report such cases to authorities?

The reasons I’m aware of for why people don’t report are that they…

• don’t think they’ll be believed

• feel shame or embarrassment

• don’t want their attacker (e.g., an ex-boyfriend) to go to jail or be harshly punished

• don’t want more people to know about the event

• are too young to know what to do

• are trying to avoid reliving the trauma or being retraumatized (since reporting it will require talking about the event extensively)

• are scared of retaliation by the perpetrator

• don’t believe that reporting it will lead to justice

Claire Z, who commented on an earlier version of this post, also pointed out the following additional reasons that people sometimes don’t report (which I don’t believe were major factors in the 12 cases I’m referring to above, but which I think can be important in other situations).

Some people don’t report because they…

• are too busy and don’t want to take the time to report, follow up, and possibly be a witness in a trial

• have fear related to admitting to the use of illegal substances during the assault

• don’t want specific people to find out about the assault (e.g., parents they think would react counterproductively)

• don’t think what happened to them was very bad or important

• don’t think what was done would be considered very bad or important (or even think people would consider it good – especially in the case of men assaulted by women)

• are genuinely uncertain what happened, e.g., because of substance use

In a nutshell, I think victims of rape and sexual assault usually believe that (all consequences considered) they will be worse off reporting the event to authorities. So, after an extremely upsetting and often traumatic event, they are in a situation where reporting it may make things even worse for them. Under such circumstances, is it any wonder that these events would often go unreported?

Another thing I’ve seen baffle people is that victims sometimes stay in touch with a perpetrator or even continue being nice or friendly to them. Such behavior sometimes leads people to think that the alleged event was consensual or fabricated. Yet, there are good explanations for why this sometimes happens.

Here are the reasons I’ve seen for victims staying in touch with (or even acting friendly with) the perpetrator afterward:

• they don’t want the perpetrator to slander them to people they both know

• they don’t want to come across as a threat to the perpetrator, which could raise their future level of danger (especially if the perpetrator has power over them or comes across as someone who may hurt them even worse if angered)

• there are additional negative consequences associated with not speaking to the perpetrator, or it is difficult to avoid talking to them (e.g., the perpetrator is a work colleague, a family member, tightly woven in their social circles, or has some kind of power over them)

• they want to hide from the perpetrator how negatively impacted they were by the event

• they have a strong emotional attachment to the perpetrator (or are even in love with them), and the terrible event doesn’t remove that attachment (e.g., it’s a situation of an abusive boyfriend/close family member)

• the perpetrator (or other people in the victim’s life) make the victim feel like they are to blame for the event, or at least that they are as much to blame as the perpetrator

• they feel some uncertainty about what happened because they were willingly (or unknowingly) consuming drugs before the event transpired

Thankfully, the norms around reporting rape and sexual assault appear to be shifting. It’s getting easier to report these events. That being said, I think the incentive structures still are such that victims often feel it is not in their interest to report.

In my opinion, shifting incentives so that victims benefit more from reporting rape and sexual assault (ideally without significantly increasing incentives for false reporting) is one promising approach to make outcomes more just and reduce how often these crimes are committed.

This essay was first written on January 9th, 2022, and first appeared on this site on January 21st, 2022.

In my experience, many obvious-seeming psychological concepts explode in complexity when you attempt to dissect them. For instance, trying to respond to a question about “why we forgive” made me realize there are a vast number of motivations for forgiveness.

After someone wrongs you, you can forgive them based on:

UNDERSTANDING

• Empathy – you realize that you would have done the same thing that they did if you had the same choice to make. Consider: someone who harmed you only a little in order to gain something they value tremendously.
• Humility – you realize that you have made mistakes of equal or greater magnitude to this other person’s mistake, and that making mistakes of that magnitude do not tarnish a person irrevocably, just as you are not tarnished irrevocably by yours. Consider: someone harming you in a way that you once harmed someone else.
• Pity – you see how the bad actions were the consequence of weakness or misery or prior hardship. Consider: someone who has been rejected their whole life who lashes out in a harmful way at the first hint of rejection.
• Compassion – you realize it’s hard to be human, and that we almost all are fighting hard battles of one kind or another, and that the person who wronged you is probably no exception. Consider: someone struggling a great deal with the recent death of a loved one who does something harmful to you during that time.
• Redirection – you realize that while this person’s action harmed you, it actually had nothing to do with you. Consider: a person who deeply insulted your way of life, but who did so only because they have been greatly harmed by something related to that way of life.

PERSPECTIVE

• Ignorance – you realize the other party didn’t know what they were doing when they took the harmful action. Consider: a pet knocking over your grandmother’s antique vase.
• “Id”- since you realize it was the carnal part of the other person’s mind that caused them to do the thing (e.g., they were acting at that moment out of fear, or anger, or without their “System 2” mind being engaged, etc.) and that they wouldn’t have carried out the action if they had thought about it in a cool and collected state. Consider: someone insulting you because they were infuriated over something that had happened a few minutes before that’s unrelated to you.
• Unpredictability – you realize that while the person intended to take action, they did not foresee the negative consequences that resulted. Consider: someone throwing a pebble absentmindedly, which, through a bizarre series of very unlikely coincidences, causes a car accident.
• Mistakes – the person didn’t intend to take the harmful action at all. Consider: someone accidentally trips and, in doing so, knocks you into a pool.

SELF-INTEREST

• Relief – your anger is harming you, and forgiveness makes you feel better or leads to better consequences for you. Consider: forgiving a criminal that once robbed you because obsessing about getting revenge has made your life significantly worse.
• Identity – you don’t want to be the sort of person that holds a grudge, or because you think better of yourself if you forgive. Consider: the good feeling that results from being the “better and bigger person” and letting the wrongdoing go without retaliation.
• Social reward – others look positively on us for forgiving. Consider: a father who tells his son that he would be very proud of him if he could genuinely forgive his brother.

JUSTICE

• Punishment – the person has received a proportional punishment that fit the crime, and, in receiving it, has been absolved. Consider: someone who stole something from you but who has now undergone what you feel has been a fair punishment for that action.
• Restitution – the other person has undone the harm by the actions they took afterward. Consider: someone who damages a chair in your home and then goes out and buys an identical replacement chair for you.
• Compensation – the other person has done something good for you that you feel makes up for the harm. Consider: someone who, through negligence, causes you embarrassment in front of your colleagues at work, but then, to make amends, takes you to an expensive broadway play you’ve wanted to see and buys you a thoughtful present.
• Regret – the other person is genuinely remorseful of their action and truly wishes they had not done it. Consider: someone expressing deep regret while they give you a heartfelt apology for the harm they caused.

PHILOSOPHY

• Free will – you view the person as a product of their environment and genetics, and as much as you may not like their actions, and as much as you may choose to avoid them in the future or even warn others about them, you do not fundamentally believe in free will. Consider: someone who grew up in a highly traumatic environment and developed their current bad behavior as a coping mechanism for that terrible environment, and you view their behavior therefore as a deterministic consequence of this person’s history.
• Morality – you think it is morally “right” to forgive and “wrong” to hold a grudge. Consider: the teaching in the Bible that we should “turn the other cheek.”
• Change – the person has improved themselves since they made a mistake and are legitimately no longer someone who would make that mistake again. Consider: someone who has credibly adopted a new life philosophy and set of behaviors since they harmed you, and you can tell they wouldn’t harm you in that way today.
• Hard choices – you realize that if the person hadn’t harmed you in the way they did, something of even greater value in the world would have been lost. Consider: someone who is in the difficult position of choosing between harming just you and causing greater harm to many strangers, and they chose to harm you as the best of two bad options.

While psychological concepts (like forgiveness) do seem to explode in complexity upon analysis, which may create the feeling of being even more confused at first, this sort of analysis, in my experience, does tend to lead to a better understanding of the topic eventually. For instance, as complex as it is, forgiveness seems to mostly come down to considerations of (A) understanding, (B) perspective, (C) self-interest, (D) justice and (E) philosophy, depending on the situation and the person doing the forgiving, which is certainly not something I was aware of before I spent an hour or two thinking about it.

And perhaps, if you are having trouble forgiving, you can find a reason in the list above to forgive.