parrhesia

Some reflections on the Michael Huemer Richard Yetter-Chappell debate about utilitarianism and laying out an ethical intuitionist critique of utilitarianism.

A response to Scott Alexander's "Slightly Against Underpopulation Worries"

Five arguments against gender-affirming interventions and how they apply to infant circumcision.

A response to Dynomight's response to “Just Say No to Utilitarianism”

Why I believe a high level of knowledge or skill in moral reasoning is possible

Some advice to the pro-choice movement

A response to Matthew Adelstein's "What Is a Parent?"

Aella is a Bay Area rationalist-adjacent writer known for writing controversial Twitter polls and investigating issues related to sex and sexuality. She recently published a thought-provoking article entitled “What A Woman Is,” in which she discusses issues related to gender identity. The article begins with a discussion of language, following in the same vein as Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “

Why Critical Social Justice creates confusion in debates about social and political issues.

On Critical Social Justice theory and Sesardić’s conjecture

For those unfamiliar, street epistemology is a conversational method of calmly examining an interlocutor’s claims through the socratic method as opposed to contesting the evidence. Practitioners, called street epistemologists, take care to avoid being argumentative, insulting or condescending in any way. The goal is to make people think. This method originated in a book by grievance study hoaxer and former Portland State professor

If one intuition works, why not two? or three? or a hundred?

Why we should often trust expert opinion, but COVID-19 is largely different

A proposal for using SRS to recall positive memories and successes to easily remember in order to prevent negative recall bias

Predicting COVID-19 booster numbers, case numbers and deaths

The case for a consistent application of a core tenet of progressivism

Exploring the question of whether you can do anything with N=1 experiments

How to think about anecdotal information and its relevance to quantified self.

My submission to the effective ideas essay contest: "The world in 2072: We want to read about visions of the world 50 years from now."

A discussion of the signal theory of education and looking at college through an investment lens

I propose a grading system which I believe is more accurate, ethical, conducive to learning and less stressful.

Pondering compulsory adult education highlights some of the problems with compulsory education for children and adolescents.

The Moral Mess of Higher Education

Why WFH might make you less happy.

Why would you want to let the people who hate you rule over your life?

An essay in which I provide disconfirming evidence that we are living in a simulation

Financial markets for binary prediction options which pay upon successful replication would provide insight into chances of a finding being true. Professors could be paid with these options.

If you can simulate happiness, then someday will we be morally obligated to spend all our time making computers happy?

Exploring the relationship between Bostrom's simulation argument and utilitarianism.

Use spaced repetition or just forget it

IQ tests are not like marble collections

An alternative to academia for the non-woke

My favorite philosopher Michael Huemer has an interesting article entitled “Existence if Evidence of Immortality” arguing for reincarnation which I discussed previously on this blog in a post entitled “The Bayesian Case for Reincarnation.” The argument, as summarized in a blog post from Huemer, is:

Embryo selection for polygenic traits will exacerbate inequalities, but banning the practice is profoundly unjust.

I. Common-Sense vs. Intuition vs. Peer-Cultivation Holden Karnofsky, a co-founder of GiveWell and co-CEO of Open Philanthropy, recently wrote an article on his blog Cold Takes entitled “Future-proof ethics,” which kicks off a series of blog posts on ethical theories that are “ahead of the curve.” The article begins with a quote from philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah from an article entitled “

Analogizing between current events and historical events is a common source of error among political thinkers.

If you want to have a productive philosophical conversation, you need to be willing to entertain hypothetical scenarios.

I am going to start doing a links post toward the end of the month. It’s just going to be a collection of things that I find interesting. Let me know if you like it. Thanks for reading Parrhesia’s Newsletter! For curated newsletters, you can check out

On the foundations of knowledge

I am going to start doing a links post toward the end of the month. It’s just going to be a collection of things that I find interesting. Your mileage may vary. Let me know if you like it. Thanks for reading Parrhesia’s Newsletter! For curated newsletters, you can check out