Thrasymachus

This piece defends a strong form of epistemic modesty: that, in most cases, one should pay scarcely any attention to what you find the most persuasive view on an issue, hewing instead to an idealized consensus of experts. I start by better pinning down exactly what is meant by ‘epistemic...

Summary: CFAR proposes double crux as a method to resolve disagreement: instead of arguing over some belief B, one should look for a crux (C) which underlies it, such that if either party changed their mind over C, they would change their mind about B. I don't think double crux...

[Cross] Imagine this: > Oliver: … Thus we see that donating to the opera is the best way of promoting the arts. > > Eleanor: Okay, but I’m principally interested in improving human welfare. > > Oliver: Oh! Well I think it is also the case that donating to the...

[Morose. Also very roughly drafted.] Normally, things are distributed normally. Human talents may turn out to be one of these things. Some people are lucky enough to find themselves on the right side of these distributions – smarter than average, better at school, more conscientious, whatever. To them go many...

What do you think about these pairs of statements? 1. People's misfortunes result from the mistakes they make 2. Many of the unhappy things in people's lives are partly due to bad luck 1. In the long run, people get the respect they deserve in this world. 2. Unfortunately, an...

Summary: Overhead expenses' (CEO salary, percentage spent on fundraising) are often deemed a poor measure of charity effectiveness by Effective Altruists, and so they disprefer means of charity evaluation which rely on these. However, 'funding cannibalism' suggests that these metrics (and the norms that engender them) have value: if fundraising...

[I'm unsure how much this rehashes things 'everyone knows already' - if old hat, feel free to downvote into oblivion. My other motivation for the cross-post is the hope it might catch the interest of someone with a stronger mathematical background who could make this line of argument more robust]...