Authoritarian empiricism
(Excerpts from a conversation with my friend Mack, very slightly edited for clarity and flow, including getting rid of most of the metaconversation.) Ben: Just spent 2 full days offline for the holiday...
View ArticleTotalitarian ethical systems
(Excerpt of another conversation with my friend Mack.) Mack: Do you consider yourself an Effective Altruist (capital letters, aligned with at least some of the cause areas of the current movement,...
View ArticleShould Effective Altruism be at war with North Korea?
Summary: Political constraints cause supposedly objective technocratic deliberations to adopt frames that any reasonable third party would interpret as picking a side. I explore the case of North Korea...
View ArticleBlame games
In Excerpts from a larger discussion about simulacra, I worked through a well-known schema for distinguishing different relationships towards semantic reference, that are a natural result of...
View ArticlePecking Order and wings
There are a few points I didn't make in my post on blame games because they seemed extraneous to the core point, which are still important enough to write down. Pecking Order The Pecking Order game is...
View ArticleTowards optimal play as Villager in a mixed game
On Twitter, Freyja wrote: Things capitalism is trash at: Valuing preferences of anything other than adults who earn money (i.e. future people, non-humans) Pricing non-standardisable goods (i.e....
View ArticleA War of Ants and Grasshoppers
A parable on the difference between motives and ecological niches. "No, we really did have food stored up for the winter. But at the end of autumn, we went to war with a nearby colony. They defeated...
View ArticleXanadu riffs
Pursuant to this Twitter thread: Xanadu-Shave In Xanadu A dome decree Where river Alph Runs down to sea Burma-Shave This is Xan a du I have decreed the pleasure-dome that was in Xanadu where Alph the...
View ArticleA drowning child is hard to find
Stories such as Peter Singer's "drowning child" hypothetical frequently imply that there is a major funding gap for health interventions in poor countries, such that there is a moral imperative for...
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