May 20, 2026
Last year I wrote a piece on artistic taste, which got many good responses from (eg) Ozy, Frank Lantz, and Sympathetic Opposition. I tastelessly forgot to respond to them until now, but I appreciate how they forced me to refine my thinking. In particular, they helped me realize that “taste” and “good...
May 20, 2026
Constraint consequentialists believe that you should try to do good things that improve the world, unless those break hard-and-fast rules (“deontological bars”).
For example, you shouldn’t assassinate democratically-elected leaders, even very bad ones. Why not? Since bad leaders set bad policy, and bad policy can...
May 20, 2026
As a blogger, I hear about lots of projects to “solve debate”, or “disagree better”, or “map arguments”. Often these are ACX grant applications. I always turn them down. They’re well-intentioned, sophisticated, and doomed.
I appreciate that Internet arguments usually don’t go well, that there are lots of...
May 8, 2026
[I haven’t independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by...
May 8, 2026
This month, rationalist institution Lighthaven is running their second Inkhaven, a bootcamp for aspiring bloggers. Participants have to publish a post a day, or they get kicked out. You can read their posts here.
I’m too old to manage that pace, but agreed to participate as an advisor. Then I missed the first half of...