Contra some meta-ethical views, you can’t forever aim to approximate the self you would become in idealized conditions. You have to actively create yourself, often in the here and now.

We don’t need non-natural normative facts to tell us what to do. We can decide for ourselves.

Can what you should do hold no appeal whatsoever?

Reimagining Peter Singer’s drowning child from the perspective of care rather than guilt.

What is altruism towards a paperclipper? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind at once?

We wouldn’t expect prudence to be “not demanding.” Why would morality be different?

There are oceans we have barely dipped a toe into. There are drums and symphonies we can barely hear. There are suns whose heat we can barely feel on our skin.

An intuition pump for a certain kind of “holy sh**” reaction to existential risk, and to the possible size and quality of the future at stake.

Making happy people is good. Just ask the golden rule.

Video and transcript of a presentation I gave on existential risk from power-seeking AI, summarizing my report on the topic.

Report for Open Philanthropy examining what I see as the core argument for concern about existential risk from misaligned artificial intelligence.

Report for Open Philanthropy on the computational power sufficient to match the human brain’s task-performance. I examine four different methods of generating estimates in this respect.

I think that you can “control” events you have no causal interaction with, including events in the past, and that this is a wild and disorienting fact, with uncertain but possibly significant implications. This essay attempts to impart such disorientation.

Examination of various arguments that we should assign significant probability to living in a computer simulation. 

Essay examining a certain sort of fundamental prior, called the “Universal Distribution.”

Trying to see through the eyes of people who think consciousness is an illusion.

On living in a glass tunnel, and on open air.

If we’re confused about consciousness, what else are we confused about?

You can’t keep any of it. The only thing to do is to give it away on purpose.

How can “non-attachment” be compatible with care? We need to distinguish between caring and clinging.

Nearby is the country they call life.

If you kill something, look it in the eyes as you do.

Against hitching together your desire to accomplish things and your desire to do good.