Re: ethics.
The problem with judging ethical progress, is that we have no independent way of verifying we're progressing rather than regressing.
My interpretation of the article is not that he's saying that gauging moral progress is impossible, but that you can't gauge it by comparing the past with the present. It has to be gauged against an ideal, but the ideal has to be carefully chosen or else the ideal may be useless or self-defeating. I'm sure such an ideal can be constructed (maybe someone has already constructed one that's widely considered to be acceptable - in that case I'd be interested in finding out about it) but since I'm not aware of a widely accepted ideal against which progress ca...
Ever since Eliezer, Yvain, and myself stopped posting regularly, LW's front page has mostly been populated by meta posts. (The Discussion section is still abuzz with interesting content, though, including original research.)
Luckily, many LWers are posting potentially front-page-worthy content to their own blogs.
Below are some recent-ish highlights outside Less Wrong, for your reading enjoyment. I've added an * to my personal favorites.
Overcoming Bias (Robin Hanson, Rob Wiblin, Katja Grace, Carl Shulman)