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Posts by Richard Y Chappell🔸

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Are All Objections Question-Begging? Against lazy dismissals

Arguments we personally find unpersuasive can still be philosophically interesting, valuable, and worth engaging with rather than dismissing.
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/are-all-ob...

3 weeks ago 5 0 0 0
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Power Calls for Accountability Murder, slander, and mistrust

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/power-call...

2 months ago 1 0 0 0
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The Basic Argument for AI Safety High-stakes uncertainty warrants caution and research

An ultra-minimal argument for worrying about AI safety.
Which premise are critics most inclined to reject?
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/the-basic-...

3 months ago 1 0 0 0
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2025 in Review Another year, another 70-odd posts and 1,500 new subscribers...

An overview of my year's blogging www.goodthoughts.blog/p/2025-in-re...

3 months ago 1 0 0 0
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Subagents for Shrimp ... and other good causes

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/subagents-...

4 months ago 2 0 0 0
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Vaccine Obstructionism Kills The FDA kills far more people than vaccines do

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/vaccine-ob...

4 months ago 3 1 0 0
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Inviolability and Importance Kamm vs Kagan on Maximal Moral Status

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/inviolabil...

7 months ago 1 0 0 0
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How to Think about Collective Impact Universalizability Done Right

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/how-to-thi...

7 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Can Songs Philosophically Convince or Illuminate? You tell me!

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/can-songs-...

8 months ago 1 0 1 0
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Only Aggregationists Respect the Separateness of Persons Separate people have independent value

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/only-aggre...

8 months ago 1 0 0 0
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Anti-AI Ideology Enforced at r/philosophy Are Reddit mods abusing their power?

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/anti-ai-id...

8 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Home Education Resources For Gifted Kids

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/home-educa...

8 months ago 0 0 0 0
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The Gift of Life Against Anti-natalism

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/the-gift-o...

8 months ago 1 1 0 0
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Diversity, Merit, and Distrust Comparing arguments for demographic and intellectual diversity

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/diversity-...

9 months ago 1 0 0 0
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Creepy Philosophy What candidate truths do you find most disturbing?

www.goodthoughts.blog/p/creepy-phi...

9 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Autonomy Consequentialism Maximizing respect for others' self-regarding preferences
9 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Vibe Bias Check Your Dialectical Privilege

The most important influences on a debate occur in the cultural background, before any arguments are even exchanged.

In practical ethics, especially, these background assumptions are deeply shaped by vibe bias: attunement to what sounds superficially good.
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/vibe-bias

9 months ago 0 0 0 0
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This was a fun interview!
philosophyandfiction.substack.com/cp/168005453

9 months ago 2 1 0 0

No, I actually think philosophers have a kind of general-purpose expertise in thinking that makes it prima facie reasonable to include a philosopher on a policy team independently of their more specific topical or subdisciplinary expertise. (Obviously you *also* need domain-specific experts.)

9 months ago 1 0 0 0

The charge is that Byrne is misleading people because the HHS (implicitly) describes him as a "methodologist" instead of a "philosopher"? Not really sure why the verbiage matters, but it sounds like that's a complaint to direct at the HHS rather than at Byrne.

9 months ago 0 0 2 0
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A Human Abundance Agenda Review (#2/2) of *After the Spike*

Part I of my review explained why we should be worried about below-replacement global fertility and subsequent depopulation. Today’s post asks what we should do about it. (Spoiler: make parenting easier and more appealing.)
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/a-human-ab...

9 months ago 2 0 0 0
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What's Wrong with Collaboration? Against the argument from cooties

The procedural principles advanced in philosophy's latest condemnatory "open letter" seem pretty bad to me.

9 months ago 1 0 1 0
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Ethics Discussion with Daniel Muñoz Hosted by Bentham's Bulldog

A fun and wide-ranging discussion! www.goodthoughts.blog/p/ethics-dis...

9 months ago 1 1 0 0
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The Costs of Permission Against barriers to good behavior

One of the top priorities of public policy should be to shape our choice environment so that it’s easier to do good and worthwhile things. Requiring a license to exercise, parent, or donate to charity would violate this principle.
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/the-costs-...

9 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Why should life or death decisions turn on a question so empty and trivial as mere metaphysical taxonomy?
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/death-by-m...

9 months ago 0 0 0 0
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Debate: Depopulation Matters — EA Forum After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso is one of the most bracing, insightful, and import…

New book makes a compelling case for thinking that depopulation is a serious moral concern, and we should do more as a society to make parenting easier & more appealing, so more people want to do more of it! forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/B7bLd4...

9 months ago 2 0 0 0
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Meta-Metaethical Realism Could Anti-Realism be Objectively True?

Are there reasons to doubt the objectivity of moral truths that aren’t equally reasons to doubt the objectivity of metaethical claims like “there are no objective moral truths”?
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/meta-metae...

9 months ago 4 0 0 0
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The Moral Gadfly's Double-Bind Warranted moral criticism is rarely welcomed

If the status quo is genuinely atrocious, is there an inoffensive way to convey the truth of the matter?
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/the-moral-...

9 months ago 2 1 0 0

Thanks for bringing the worry to my attention.

10 months ago 0 0 0 0

Fair enough! I've updated the footnote to clarify: "I just offer these as representative examples of what I take to be a very common pattern of reasoning. No offense intended to these authors in particular; they’ve just written down what I hear lots of other academics saying!"

10 months ago 1 0 1 0