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...
Posts by Richard Y Chappell🔸
An ultra-minimal argument for worrying about AI safety.
Which premise are critics most inclined to reject?
www.goodthoughts.blog/p/the-basic-...
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
This was a fun interview!
philosophyandfiction.substack.com/cp/168005453
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.)
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.
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...
The procedural principles advanced in philosophy's latest condemnatory "open letter" seem pretty bad to me.
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-...
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...
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...
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...
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-...
Thanks for bringing the worry to my attention.
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!"