I’ve written about 3 million words on my blog. Who has time to read all of that? And what’s worse, my articles span about 5 bajillion distinct subjects. As a gift to you personally, whoever is reading this, I thought it would be worth summarizing my main pieces on most topics. I’ve limited this mostly to being about things I’ve written in the last few years, because otherwise it would be too massive and filled with lots of bad pieces. Feel free to suggest pieces that I’ve left out. I've left out most electoral and legislative advocacy, which ages fast.
There’s a non-trivial amount of overlap between the different pieces I write on various subjects. So often you can get a good sense of my views just by reading one or two pieces.
(There is overlap between the first two sections and other sections. But after the first two sections, there’s no overlap).
The sections:
My worldview in eight articles.
My most popular articles.
Effective altruism.
General.
Factory farming/meat eating.
Welfare of small, simple animals.
Longtermism.
AI.
Wild animal suffering.
Digital minds.
Theism.
General.
Fine-tuning argument.
Objections to atheist arguments.
Pascal’s wager.
Christianity.
Other philosophy.
Anthropics.
General.
Utilitarianism.
Continental philosophy.
Moral realism.
Ethics
Miscellaneous
Top paywalled posts.
General
Politics.
If You’re To Die: the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s about living a meaningful life.The Best Thing You Can Do: why you should take the Giving What We Can pledge.God Best Explains the World: my cumulative case for theism.The Bone-Chilling Evil of Factory Farming: factory farming is a horrific abomination.Longtermism is Surprisingly Obvious: defends the correctness of Longtermism.Insect Suffering Is The Biggest Issue: there are strong arguments for thinking almost all of what presently happens in the world and matters happens to insects.The Best Charity Isn’t What You Think: makes the case for donating to shrimp welfare.The Bluesky Way of Arguing: describes my frustration with a lot of left-wingers despite sharing many of their broad political goals. Also discusses why I don’t like continental philosophy and the methods of arguing I find super unproductive.
The Unfuck America Tour Is Why The Left Is Fucked: a summary of an extremely funny and deranged dumpsterfire left-wing tour meltdown over an alleged microaggression.How Continental Philosophers Argue: a concise explanation of why continental philosophy is a bunch of hooey.The Bluesky Way of Arguing: criticizes the overconfident and pugnacious debate style of all too many people.My Competitive Debate Cancellation Story: describes the hilarious and crazy story behind my debate cancellation.The Best Charity Isn’t What You Think: explains why you should give your money to the Shrimp Welfare Project.Trump Attempted a Coup: argues that Trump tried to illegally overturn the results of an election he knew he lost.I Am Begging My Fellow Liberals to Stop Lying About Tyler Robinson: argues against the firehose of misinfo going around about Tyler Robinson from liberals claiming he was right-wing.Social Media Is Crazier Than You Think: self-explanatory.The Importance of Blasting Good Ideas Into The Ether: tells the story of getting the daily show to cover shrimp welfare.Arguments For God Tier List: ranks all the arguments for theism.
If You’re To Die: about living a meaningful life.Effective Altruism FAQ: provides a pretty comprehensive overview of EA and addresses the main objections.The Best Thing You Can Do: explains the case for taking the Giving What We Can pledge. See alsoWhy I Just Took The Giving What We Can Pledge. For a more emotional spinoff, seehereand for a reply to objections, seehere. See alsoChildren Are Dying Who You Can Save.Important Insights: summarizes some of the most important things that I think are true and why I think them.There Is Exactly One Good Objection To The Drowning Child Argument: Defends the argument that failing to donate to effective charities is like culpably walking past a drowning child and not saving her life. It particularly focuses on why this conclusion doesn’t generalize to imply that we have to give away all of our excess wealth.Which cause area is best?: a comparative ranking of all the EA cause areas. For a comparison of the top charities, seehere.What 100 Lives Is: 100 lives is about the number you can save by giving 10% of your income to effective charities. Here, I try to give people a vivid grasp of what that really means. For a similar piece, seeNone of It Is Pretend.Read This Book: 80,000 Hours has a book about how to have a career that does a lot of good. I review it and summarize the main insights.Goodmaxxing: in this piece, written alongside , we explain the basic ideas of EA and case for it using goofy gen-alpha slang.Effective Altruism and Radical Trivialisms: explaining why the objection that EA is trivial doesn’t work.Effective Altruism Has Very Good Epistemics: explains why I think EAs are generally very good at forming true beliefs.Demanding Moral Theories Aren’t Too Demanding: why I don’t buy the demandingness objection to EA.Growing Effective Altruism: makes the case for growing EA being a top priority.Effective Altruist Writing Is Impactful: Here’s What To Do About That: explains why I think more EAs should write on the internet.The Altruistic Case For Becoming a Billionaire: argues that there’s a strong EA case for being a billionaire.
The Bone-Chilling Evil of Factory Farming: makes the case against factory farming.How To Cause Less Suffering While Eating Animals: explains how you can have a positive overall impact on animals while continuing to eat them. See alsoherewhere I make the case for offsetting.You Should Go Vegan to Stop Facilitating Torture of the Innocent: explains the basic argument for veganism. For a similar piece, seehereandhere.Extreme Suffering on the Farms: notes the enormous amount of intense suffering experienced by the typical factory farmed animal.Animals Behind the Veil of Ignorance: argues that behind the veil of ignorance, animal welfare would eclipse human welfare in importance.Be A Marginal Reducetarian: makes the case that if you eat meat, you should try to reduce your meat consumption.There Aren’t Any Good Arguments Against Lab Meat: explains what’s wrong with all the arguments against lab meat.Mass Torture of Humanlike Minds: argues that factory farming is about as bad as torturing comparable numbers of mentally primitive humans, given that animals are about as mentally primitive as certain humans.The Objections to Veganism Are All Wrong: rebuts every major objection to veganism.Why Eating Meat Is Like Torturing Puppies:summarizes and defends Norcross’s paper arguing meat eating is wrong.Factory Farming Is Not Just Bad: It’s the Worst Thing Ever: an argument for factory farming being the worst thing that ever happened.The Lives of British Animals: summarizes in detail how animals in the UK live.Billie Eilish Is Obviously Right About Animals: explains why loving animals is incompatible with eating them.Inhuman: somewhat more emotional piece about the horrendousness of factory farming.Why
Do You Bristle at Shock Collars if You Eat Meat?:those who condemn routine animal cruelty should be vegan on the same grounds.Why I Don’t Buy The Best Objection To Veganism: explains why I don’t think you should eat meat to reduce wild animal populations.For They Are Not Robots: about animals being real.The Unspeakable Horrors Beyond Comprehension That We Inflict On Thanksgiving Turkeys: a summary of the nightmarish life of turkeys.The Moral Risk Argument Against Meat Eating: argues eating meat is too risky to be permissible.
The Best Charity Isn’t What You Think: makes the case for the Shrimp Welfare Project being a fantastic charity. I respond to objectionshere. See alsohere,hereandhere. Seeherewhere I reply to Lyman Stone’s objection to shrimp welfare.Insect Suffering Is The Biggest Issue: explains why nearly all of what matters short-term in the world is what happens to insects and what should be done about it. For another piece providing even more arguments for this, seehere, and seeherefor a piece arguing that insect suffering either matters zero or is the most important thing in the world.Don’t Eat Honey: explains why eating honey is immoral. This sparked a huge online controversy, so seehereandherefor replies to objections.The Horror of Extreme Pain: talks about how ubiquitous extreme pain may be and why preventing it is an urgent moral priority.Expand Your Moral Circle: explains the philosophical argument for caring about all sentient beings.Might Intense Agony Be Widespread?: goes over empirical and theoretical evidence that simple creatures can feel a lot of pain. In a similar vein toBetting on Ubiquitous Pain. For another argument that consciousness is widespread, seeThe Objectivity of Consciousness Favors Its Ubiquity.Fish Feel Pain: comprehensively analyzes and attempts to settle the fish pain debate.The Staggeringly Strong Case That You Should Save Infinite Shrimp Instead of One Person: argues from super modest premises saving infinite shrimp is better than saving one person.Michael Huemer is Wrong About Insects: a brief summary of why I don’t buy the arguments against insect pain.Bryan Caplan Replied To Me On Bugs: He’s Still Wrong: rebuts Bryan Caplan’s arguments against the moral importance of insects.Humane Pesticides Are Massively Morally Urgent: every year quadrillions of insects are killed or harmed with pesticides. Here I explain why it’s really important that these cause less pain.The Lies of Big Bug: debunks the foundational premises of insect farming.Leading Insect Farm Took Millions In Subsidies, Then Collapsed Into A Waking Nightmare: summarizes a crazy situation with an insect farm.
Strong Longtermism Is Simply Correct: rebuts the major objections to Longtermism. Other similar pieces includeDialogues on Ethical Longtermisma…
