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To truly know yourself, watch your actions not your feelings
Related to: Murder (Meteuphoric), Just how many people are you, anyway?, Do we give because we care for others or for our image? When I propose cynical explanations for human altruism towards anyone...
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Every little bit doesn’t count
Right after writing a post on cynical explanations of human behaviour I read Yvain over at Less Wrong: “Interesting new study out on moral behavior. The one sentence summary of the most interesting...
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We don’t actually care about Haitians
Related to: Don’t help refugees, you bastards A while back I wrote that to know what you as a whole mind really wants, you should look at what you do, not at what the little conscious voice in your...
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Faux altruism at its most hilarious
I found this flyer in a lecture theatre today: “Join in an amazing two week volunteer and adventure program in South America or the Fijian Islands this year. The first week will see you commuting via...
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Systematically picking the high-hanging fruit
The greatest concentration of concern about issue X is usually found where the best performance on issue X has already been achieved. For a variety of reasons, most people focus on improving things...
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Why existential risk is the most important thing part I
Anna Salamon, Research Fellow with the Singularity Institute, does a back-of-the-envelope calculation on how much impact a single person could have by contributing to a good Singularity (or reducing...
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Why present the gender ‘pay gap’ as a moral issue rather than a profit...
TLDR: It is commonly alleged that there is a persistent gender pay gap which is unjustified by the productivity of male and female employees. If this is true, businesses should be able to make lots of...
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Preventing open-ended tasks from consuming your life
I have spent almost all of my life in formal education. One of the most stressful things about high school and university, at least for a diligent (indeed perhaps, obsessive) student like me, is the...
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Building a community of ‘effective altruists’
One of the big challenges in life is finding friends and colleagues who support and bring out the best in you. This is especially the case when your goals are unusual and you are less likely to be...
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New existential risk links
Earlier today I had the pleasure of a long Skype with Seth Baum about existential risk and how I could best contribute to reducing it. Among other things, Seth studies climate change as a global...
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The case for working on an AI singularity even if it is improbable
For those concerned about the future there are a lot of things to worry about. Nuclear war, bioterrorism, asteroids, artificial intelligence, runaway climate change – the list goes on. All of these...
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Why local food is not effective altruism
I’m going to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on ‘local food’ and then later ‘fair trade’ to explain why I don’t think they are worth putting much effort into. I hope it will inspire you to do...
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Beeminding your way to greatness
Ever had a long term goal you wanted to achieve, like publishing a paper, getting fit or maintaining a blog, that you always put off and never actually got done? You and me both! I’m not sure whether...
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