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.

People that this essay is not about

Some Effective Altruists believe that objective moral truth exists (i.e., they are “moral realists”). They think that statements like “it’s wrong to hurt innocent people for no reason” are the sort of statements that can be true or false, much like the statement “there is a table in my room” can be true or false.

I disagree that there is such a thing as objective moral truth, but I at least understand what these folks are doing – they believe there is an objective answer to the question of “what is good?” and then they are trying to figure out that answer and live by it. 

This usually ends up being some flavor of utilitarianism plus maybe some moral uncertainty giving some weight to other theories such as protecting rights. In the 2019 EA survey, 70% of EAs identified with utilitarianism (though this survey did not distinguish between those who do believe in objective moral truth and those who don’t believe in objective moral truth but have utilitarian ethics anyway). I think this group of EAs that believe in objective moral truth is mistaken but that they are being coherent. They are the first group listed in the poll I took below, and they are NOT the group I am focusing on in this post. 

The flaw I see:

The group I am focusing on is represented by the second bar in the poll above. Many (most?) Effective Altruists deny that there is objective moral truth or think that objective moral truth is unlikely. But then I still go on to hear quite a number of such EAs say things like:

• “We should maximize utility.”

• “The only thing I care about is increasing utility for conscious beings.”

• “The only thing that matters is the utility of conscious beings.”

• “The only value I endorse is maximizing utility.”

(Note that by “utility” here, they mean something like happiness minus suffering, not “utility” in the Economics sense of preference satisfaction [unless they are preference utilitarians] or the Von Neumann–Morgenstern theorem sense.)

I find these statements by Effective Altruists very strange. If I try to figure out what they are claiming, I see a few possible disambiguations:

Possibility 1 – Contradictory beliefs: they could believe that maximizing utility is objectively good even though they don’t believe in objective moral truth – which seems to me to be a blatant contradiction in their beliefs. Similarly, they could be claiming that while they have other intrinsic values, they think they SHOULD only value utility (and should value all units of utility equally). But then, what does the word “should” mean here? On what grounds “should” you if there is no objective moral truth?

Possibility 2 – Misperception of the self: they could be claiming that while there is no objective answer to what’s good, the only intrinsic value they have (i.e., the only thing they value as an end in and of itself, not as a means to an end, that matters to them even if it gets them nothing else) is the utility of conscious beings (and that all units of utility are equal). In other words, they are making an empirical claim about their mind (and what it assigns value to).

Here I think they are (in almost every case, and perhaps in every single case) empirically wrong about their own mind. This is just not how human minds work.

If we think of the neural network composing the human mind as having different operations it can do (e.g., prediction, imagination, etc.), one of those operations is assigning value to states of the world. When people do this and pay close attention, they will realize that they don’t value the utility of all conscious beings equally and that they value things other than utility. While I can’t prove there is literally no such person on earth that only has the intrinsic value of utility, even for the most utilitarian people I’ve ever met, when I question them, I discover they have values other than utility.

And it stands to reason that human minds (being created by evolution) are not the sort of things that are likely to only value the utility of all beings equally. For instance, just about everyone I’ve ever met would be willing to sacrifice at least 1.1 strangers to save one person they love (even if they think that person wouldn’t have a higher than average impact or a happier-than-average life). I certainly would, and I don’t feel bad about that!

One very strong intrinsic value I see in the effective altruism community is that of truth – many EAs think you should try never to lie and are suspicious even of marketing. They sometimes try to justify this on utilitarian grounds (indeed, it can often be beneficial from a utilitarian perspective, not to lie). But this sometimes seems like rationalization – a utilitarian agent would lie whenever it produces a higher expected value of utility (but potentially only if it was using naive Causal Decision Theory (CDT) – H/T to Linchuan Zang for pointing this out), whereas many EAs make a hard and fast rule against lying (saying you should try to NEVER lie). This is easily explained as EAs having an intrinsic value of truth that they don’t want to accept as an intrinsic value (and so try to explain in terms of the “socially acceptable” value of utility).

As a side note, I find it upsetting when EAs try to justify one of their (non-utility) intrinsic values in terms of global utility because they think they are only supposed to value utility. For instance, an EA once told me that the reason they have friends is that it helps them have a great impact on the world. I did not believe them (though I did not think they were intentionally lying). I interpreted their statement as a harmful form of self-delusion (trying to reframe their attempts to produce their intrinsic values so that they conform to what they feel their values are “supposed” to be).

Possibly 3 – Tyranny of the analytical mind: they could be saying that while they may have a bunch of intrinsic values, their analytical mind only “endorses” their utility value. But what does “endorse” mean here? Maybe they mean that, while they feel the pull of various intrinsic values, the logical part of their mind only feels the utility pull. But then why should their analytical mind have a veto over the other intrinsic values? Maybe they believe their other intrinsic values are “illogical,” whereas the utility value is logical. But on what grounds is that claim made? If they could prove logically that only utility mattered, wouldn’t we just be back to claim (1) that there is objective moral truth, and they don’t believe that? 

Intrinsic values are just not the sort of thing that can have logical proof, and if they are not that sort of thing, then why give preference to just that one part of your mind? I’m genuinely confused.

Possibility 4 – Maybe they mean something else that I just don’t see. What else could they mean? I’d love to know what you think (or if you’re one of these people)!

It’s certainly possible that there are very sensible interpretations for their claims that I’m just not seeing.

In conclusion, for Effective Altruists who think there is objective moral truth, I think they are wrong, but I understand what they are doing (this post is not about them). But for ones that don’t believe in objective moral truth (which I think is the majority?) I think they are making some kind of mistake when their sole focus is utility. Of course, I could be wrong.

My personal philosophy – which I call Valuism (and which I am working on an essay about), attempts to deal with this specific philosophical issue (in a limited context).

But in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! What do you think? If you are an EA who doesn’t believe in objective moral truth, but you’re convinced that only utility matters, what do YOU mean by that? And even if you don’t identify with that view, what do you think might be happening here that I might have missed or misunderstood?

Thanks for reading this and for any thoughts you are up for sharing with me!

Summarizing responses to this post

Edit (1 September 2022): after posting an earlier draft of this post on social media, there were hundreds of comments, some of which tried to explain why the commenter is utilitarian despite being an anti-realist, or presented alternative possibilities not delineated in the original post.

One thing that’s abundantly clear is that there is absolutely no consensus on how to handle the critique in the above post. There are a really wide variety of ways that people use to try to explain why they identify with utilitarianism despite not believing in objective moral truth.

Here are some of the most common types of responses given:

1. Responses related to Possibility  1 (i.e., addressing “contradictory beliefs“)

      1.1 Accepting contradiction: many people have contradictory beliefs (and contradictory beliefs may be no more common in moral anti-realist EAs than in other people), and some people are willing to lean into them. As one commenter put it: “many sets of intuitions are *wrong* if you take coherence as axiomatic.” Some people are just okay with self-contradiction.

      1.2 Beliefs that aren’t actually contradictory: my explanation of Possibility 1 might interpret  “we should maximize utility” differently than some people who say that phrase mean it. Here are potential some interpretations by which that statement might actually be consistent with anti-realist views:

           1.2.1 Personal preference: some people do not intend for statements like “we should maximize utility” to be representative of moral truth but instead mean it as an expression of a personal preference that they have for maximizing utility, or an expression of the fact that they will avoid feeling reflexively guilty if they aim to maximize utility, or a statement that they will have a positive emotional response if their focus on maximizing utility. However, these responses still seem to fall victim to another critique from the post, which is the arbitrariness of giving preference to certain feelings/preferences over other ones. 

           1.2.2 Metaethical constructivism: this is defined as “the view that insofar as there are normative truths, they are not fixed by normative facts that are independent of what rational agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice” (source). Some say this is “best understood as a form of ‘expressivism’“. Constructivism seems compatible with both moral anti-realism and utilitarianism, but it’s unclear to me how many effective altruists would hold this view (I think very few). 

           1.2.3 Valuing a different kind of utility: some people may mean “we should maximize utility” in reference to a different kind of “utility” than the classic hedonistic utilitarian interpretation of the word. For example, “utility” is sometimes used to mean a “mathematical function serving as a representation of whatever one cares about.” By such an interpretati, if someone says they are trying to maximize utility they are presumably referring to maximizing their own utility function (rather than some objective one) – and so they are not the focus of this post.

2. Responses related to Possibility 2 (i.e., “misperception of the self“)

      2.1 Second-order desires: people might not be misperceiving themselves at all but might instead be talking about second-order desires or desires about desires. As one commenter put it: “It might be that, though someone empirically does NOT possess desires consistent with maximising the utility of conscious beings, they possess the desire to possess these desires. They want to be the sort of person who does have a genuine utilitarian psychology, even if they don’t possess one now. This may explain the motivation to act as a utilitarian (most of the time) [despite being a moral anti-realist].” Though in this case, it’s unclear why they would want to or think they should give those second-order desire preference over their first-order desires.

      2.2 Unshakable realist intuitions: people might be acting and/or feeling as if utilitarianism is true while also believing (upon reflection) that moral realism isn’t true. One person commented that “many of our intuition[s] are based on a realist world even when rationally we do not believe in one, so it is easy to accidentally make arguments that work only in a realist world, and then try to rationalize the argument afterwards to somehow work anyway.”

      2.3 Mislabeling one’s metaethics: instead of misperceiving what they value, some people might be mislabeling themselves as moral anti-realists even though they aren’t. In other words, some people who call themselves anti-realists might actually be moral realists without realizing it (e.g., because they haven’t reflected on it). One commenter thought that this would be a common phenomenon: “They are expressing a real, but subjective, truth ‘It is true to me that everyone should maximize utility’…I think that ‘deep down’ you will find that in fact most effective altruists and indeed most people are moral realists but under-theorized ones. Even the anti-realists tend to act as if they were moral realists.”

      2.4 Choosing one’s own values: some argue that you can choose your values for yourself (though it’s unclear by what process one would make such a choice, or whether such a choice really can be made – it may hinge on what is meant by “values”). As one of the commenters put it: “It seems like you are assuming in [Possibility 2] that there is an objective answer to what a mind values, e.g. based on how it behaves. For one thing, it’s not clear that that is right in general. But a particular alternative that interests me here: one could have a model where one can decide what to value, and to the extent that one’s behavior doesn’t match that, one’s behavior is in error.” In other words, according to this view, maybe an individual themselves is the only person who can define their intrinsic values, and there is no objectively correct opinion for them to hold about this. But then, by what criteria (or based on what values) is a person deciding on what their values should be?

3. Reasons why Possibility 3 (i.e., “tyranny of the analytical mind“) may not be a confused approach

      3.1 Identifying with the analytic part of the mind: some people feel that choosing to endorse a particular framework (and choosing to endorse some values over other ones) is part of who they are – part of (or even the most important part of) their self-concept. In other words, the reflective part of them making that choice feels to them like it is “who they are” more so than other parts of them that have other preferences. Here’s how one person explained it: “For my part, the part of my mind that examines my moral intuitions and decides whether I want to act on them feels about as ‘me’ as anything gets.” Another person thought that ​endorsing some values over others makes sense because many people think that their “best” self would live “in accordance with the judgments they make based on arguments and thought experiments.” Another proposed explanation for people being guided by the analytic mind is that being guided in this way might be a normal feature of human psychology (which at least one person saw as needing no further explanation). Yet another explanation put forward was that some people can have a completely arbitrary “personal taste” for giving their analytical mind a veto over other parts of their mind (and, according to this argument, those people don’t need a further justification beyond their arbitrary taste).

      3.2 Simplicity and coherence meta-values: having fewer intrinsic values or having fewer intrinsic values that one allows to dictate their behavior can (some argue) be justified by having an intrinsic value of coherence, simplicity, or consistency. As one commenter put it: “I genuinely think I just have utilitarian intrinsic values. [It seems] relevant here that I also value coherence (in a non-moral sense, probably as an epistemic virtue or something), so if I find myself thinking something that is incoherent with another value of mine, I can debate & discard the less important one.” 

Possibility 4: Moral uncertainty

      4.1 Meta-moral uncertainty – believing that realism might be true: people who don’t identify as moral realists might still feel there is some possibility that moral realism is correct and might act as if it was correct (at least to some degree – say, in proportion to how much weight they give this possibility compared to other action-guiding beliefs). As one commenter put it: “Why do I keep donating (and doing other EA things), albeit to a lesser extent [since switching from moral realism to moral anti-realism]? The main reason is (meta) moral uncertainty: I still feel that it is possible that moral realism is correct, and so I think it should have some say over my behavior.”

      4.2 Misinterpreting moral uncertainty as anti-realism: People who think that their own beliefs are not necessarily objectively true (due to moral uncertainty) might conclude that they must be moral anti-realists, but they might be mistaken in calling themselves that. As one commenter explained it: “believing in moral objectivity is different from believing we are actually able to parse the true moral weights in practice.”

Possibility 5: Precommitment and cooperation arguments

      5.1 Benefiting from pre-committing to impartiality: some argue that acting as if classical utilitarianism is true might be justified on grounds related to resolving collective action problems (without having to believe that moral realism is true). For instance, one commenter wrote: “Being impartial between oneself (and one’s friends / family) vs. random people isn’t something that any human naturally feels, but it’s a ‘cooperate’ move in a global coordination game. If we’d all be better off if we acted this way, then we want a situation where everyone makes a binding commitment to act impartially. It’s hard to do that, but we can approximate it through norms. So EAs might want to endorse this without feeling it.” Though presumably, if this was the justification for utilitarianism, they would then switch to a different moral theory if they thought it better solved collection action problems (e.g., if they came to believe virtue ethics better solved collective action problems).

      5.2 Benefiting from pre-committing to preference utilitarianism: some commenters pointed out that preference utilitarianism could also be justified on self-interested grounds (this post was not intended to be about other forms of utilitarianism such as preference utilitarianism, but it was edited to clarify that only after some people had started commenting). As one commenter put it: “If we’re viewing morality as playing a counterfactual game with others, we should take actions to benefit them in a way essentially identically to preference utilitarianism. That doesn’t require any objective morality, it only requires self-interest and buying into the idea that you should pre-commit to a theory of morality that, if many people embraced it, would increase your personal preferences.” Though in such cases (if they were actually optimizing for self-interest), it seems strange they would choose a moral theory where their interests count equally to people they will never encounter and never be in collective action problems with. (Some might argue that this would make more sense if the person endorsed a form of multiverse-wide cooperation via superrationality, though it’s unclear how this resolves more concrete/real-life collective action problems).

Possibility 6: Social forces – as Tyler Alterman put it (when I was discussing this post with him – he’s named here with permission): “[I felt] that [for some EAs] their actual beliefs were at odds with the cultural norms of other smart people (EAs) that they felt alignment with, so they stopped paying attention to their actual beliefs. I think this is what happened to me for a while. There was an element of wanting to fit in. But then there is an element of – there are so many smart people here [in EA]… EA is full of Oxford philosophers – they must have figured this out already; there must be some obvious answer for my confusion. So I just went along with the obligation and normative language and lifestyle it entailed.” Social forces can be powerful, and in some cases, an explanation for human behavior can be as simple as: the other people around me who I respect or want the approval of do this thing or seem convinced this thing is true, so I do this thing and am convinced it is true.

This essay was first written on August 14, 2022, first appeared on this site on August 19, 2022, and was edited (to incorporate a summary of people’s responses) on September 1, 2022, with help from Clare Harris.

1. Occamism: the simpler a moral theory is, the more likely it is to be true. Hence (a priori), the most probable two moral theories are that (a) everything is permissible or that (b) nothing is.

2. Majoritarianism: an action is morally right if and only if the majority of conscious beings capable of understanding that action and its consequences think it’s right.

3. Restraintism: if you have the desire to do something, then you don’t get moral credit for doing it (since the action is satisfying your OWN desire).

So, to maximize the good you do, become the sort of person that hates everyone and doesn’t want to help – then help a lot anyway!

4. Infinitarianism: god is infinite goodness. A finite number plus an infinite number is just the same infinite number again (left unchanged). All actions humans take can only create finite good. Hence, no human action can change the total goodness in the universe.

5. Virtue ethics prime: virtue ethicists are right – being good is only about having good character. But it turns out the only character strengths that count as morally good are cleanliness and moderation.

6. Purely positive utilitarianism: the only thing that matters morally is the sum total of happy mental states (suffering is irrelevant and doesn’t impact the calculation). Hence the attempts to airdrop MDMA into the forests.

7. Qualiaism: some actions are objectively morally right, and others are objectively wrong, but the criteria determining what is right is unique to each human and inaccessible to anyone who is not that person. Hence, each of us must discover our own unique, objectively-true morality.

8. Tegmark morality: for every mathematical structure, there exists some universe for which that structure is a complete description of what’s morally right. Hence, integer addition is a complete and correct moral theory (in some universe).

9. Similaritarianism: how kind you need to behave is determined by how similar someone is to you.

Hence you should be very nice to your parents, less so to strangers, and even less so to a rock. Since you are most similar to yourself, self-kindness is most important of all.

10. Unnatural law: we’re probably living in a simulation. Whoever the simulator(s) were, they were/are vastly more intelligent than us and hence far more likely to understand morality. We must study this creation of theirs (that we call reality) to figure out what’s good!

This piece was first written on March 19, 2021, and first appeared on this site on April 23, 2023.

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.

1. Murder violates an abstract principle that I would like all people to live by.

2. The Bible (or some other religious text) forbids murder.

3. As a result of evolution and natural selection, most people have an innate emotional “moral” aversion towards murder.

4. Murder is against the law.

5. Murder is labeled as “immoral” by most people in my society.

6. Murder usually reduces the total net happiness of society.

7. The idea of murder provokes in me a morality-related emotional state of “wrongness”.

8. Nearly all philosophies forbid murder or say it should be avoided.

9. Nearly all societies have laws that punish murderers or have customs that ostracize them.

10. Most people would feel a sense of guilt if they committed murder.

Unfortunately, dictionaries cannot clarify for us what the word “moral” means. For instance, one dictionary defines “moral” as “conforming to a standard of right behavior”. Looking up the relevant definition of “right”, we find “being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper”. But the definition given for “good” is just as vague and circular as were the definitions for “moral” and “right”. Checking another definition, the result is no better. It defines “moral” as “conforming to accepted standards of behavior.” Accepted by whom, and for what reason? The dictionary does not answer these questions, and hence does not provide us with an unambiguous explanation of what “moral” means.

Many well-respected philosophers begin by assuming that morality is a single, well-defined thing and argue about what properties it must have. But if we haven’t defined morality, how can we derive its properties? Are we even talking about the same thing as each other – if we’re not, then of course we can’t agree on the properties of that thing. As the list of interpretations above shows, there are many very different things that we might reasonably call “morality”, including our genetic moral intuitions created by natural selection, the societal rules that are deeply ingrained in us, religious laws, and certain abstract concepts about how to treat each other.

Some people claim that whenever someone says that an action is “moral”, all that person is doing is expressing a feeling or emotion about that action. It’s easily falsified that this is ALL that talk of “morality” is doing – Christians, Kantians, and Utilitarians at least sometimes use the word “moral” to refer to actions that are compatible with biblical teachings, the categorical imperative, and the happiness principle, respectively. These individuals likely have an emotional feeling that their systems of ethics are worthwhile, but nonetheless, they often speak of morality in direct reference to their philosophical systems, independent of their personal feelings. Many people who speak about what is moral at least genuinely believe themselves to be expressing a fact.

Ultimately, before we can decide whether a statement like “murder is immoral” is true, we must first decide what we mean by “moral”. When we don’t know the definition of a word, it is difficult to have a meaningful discussion that relies on it. If we decide that morality is simply whatever the law says, or is determined by what the Bible says, or is a genetic characteristic of human beings, then the question of whether “murder is immoral” becomes an empirical and factual one. We need only check the laws for our country, or search through the Bible, or study human genetics and behavior in order to answer questions about what is moral.

In practice, though, typically when statements about morality are made, there is rarely any explicit or even implicit definition of morality being used. Your average person relies on an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. This intuitive sense is influenced by many factors, including our genetics, the standards of the society that we live in, the religion that we practice, our personal experiences, and the philosophies that appeal to us. Unfortunately, it appears as though questions about morality are usually unanswerable without further specification about the sense in which “moral” is being used.

If the argument made thus far is true, then how can we understand the fact that nearly everyone seems to agree when it comes to certain ethical statements? For example, how can we account for the fact that almost all people in most of the societies that have ever existed have believed that most kinds of murder are immoral? Well, one relevant factor may be that a strong predisposition to viewing as bad the maurder of close others (especially the murder of family members) is inherent in the human genetic code. More generally, our sense of what is morally wrong appears to be strongly correlated with what we feel an emotional revulsion towards, and those things that we find repulsive are influenced by our genetics. If most humans share a “moral feeling” that is caused by the genes that we share in common, then that provides a plausible explanation of why, for example, murder is generally thought to be immoral.

It is not difficult to imagine that when pre-humans lived in groups, an aversion towards certain types of murder could increase an individual’s chance of survival (perhaps because would-be murderers had a high chance of being killed by their intended victim or the victim’s family). If this were the case, then the process of natural selection could help make a revulsion towards murder a common trait among our ancestors. It may be illuminating to note that many types of carnivores, though feeding daily on other (typically smaller) species, very rarely kill members of their own species (even during fights that break out). This is likely due, at least in part, to the fact that members of a single species are usually fairly evenly matched in strength and fighting skills.

A lion is very unlikely to be killed attempting to kill an antelope. Still, he is fairly likely to be killed or seriously injured when attempting to kill another lion, so lions that focus on eating antelope rather than killing other lions may tend to pass down their genes more effectively (even though there are obvious reasons why one lion might benefit if it does manage to kill another). What’s more, social species may ostracize the members of their group who they feel threatened by, which could dramatically reduce the chance of survival for a “murderer” (by which, in this context, I mean a creature that kills members of its own species). A “moral feeling” would be one possible way, among many, that our genes could urge us not to kill members of our own species.

Another reason for the high convergence in moral views about murder being bad may simply be due to the act itself – it is one that, on nearly any moral view, is bad. But different moral theories, while agreeing on its badness, disagree on why it’s bad and what exactly counts as murder. For instance, they may disagree about whether killing someone in self-defense is murder, or as part of war, or as a punishment for a serious crime.

It’s hard to make progress when discussing moral questions when people mean very different things by “moral,” which, very often, they do.

This piece was first written on July 22, 2009, and first appeared on my website on February 10, 2026.