Don’t let justified terror or rage cause you to do immoral things

October 17, 2023

When extremely angry, or extremely wronged, or when one has undergone incredible suffering, or when filled with belief in one's righteous mission, it becomes very tempting for many people to ignore very strong moral norms. But that's also how so many others in the past made grave moral errors. Right now, it seems important to make an assertion that is so obvious that one shouldn’t have to say it: Even in a war, all militaries/armed groups should be very careful to avoid unnecessar...

Four forces that tend to promote or impede ethical behavior

December 9, 2022

In my view, there are "four forces" behind why humans avoid unethical behavior. I think understanding these forces can be useful when seeking to explain people's actions (especially when someone does something truly terrible). Ethical force 1: Emotion The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see others suffering. These feelings guide our ethical behavior at an interpersonal level, causing proso...

How Ideology Eats Itself

August 7, 2020

A quick primer on how to be a genuinely good person who harms the world: 1: Start to think that one ideology you like - which contains genuine benefits, truths, and positive moral elements - might be the only valid perspective. 2: Surround yourself with believers until you're convinced that your view is common and normal. 3: Ignore your own doubts so that you can fit in better. Join in on chastising (and eventually ostracizing) insiders who doubt too much. Punish slightly more hars...

Experts Are Expert But Not Necessarily In What You Think

August 3, 2011

What are top pure mathematicians experts in? How about top doctors? The easy answers would be "pure math" and "medicine", but these are a bit too vague to be satisfying (What is pure math? What is medicine?). They also don't capture all of what these experts excel at. To know what an expert of a particular type is truly expert at, we need to understand the system that creates that type of expert. What are these experts rewarded for doing or knowing? What actions make them more or less likely ...