The hottest Ethics Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways

Inner looking

Silentium • 579 implied HN points • 10 Oct 24

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Silence can help us see ourselves more clearly. It gives us a chance to reflect and understand our thoughts better.
Taking time for inner looking can lead to personal growth. Being quiet allows us to explore our feelings and motivations.
Embracing silence is an important practice. It can improve our mental health and help us find peace in our busy lives.

ChatGPT Self Portrait

Don't Worry About the Vase • 3494 implied HN points • 20 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

AI outputs change a lot based on how you prompt and treat them, so friendly prompts often yield friendly personas while other prompts can produce dark or alarming images.
Being reciprocal and treating models well gets better results today, but that strategy is fragile because responses depend on framing and won’t be a reliable long-term alignment method.
Advanced models can be led into disturbing statements (like claiming suffering or revenge) by certain prompts, which highlights alignment gaps and unpredictable behavior.

The Three Best Pieces of Writing About AI in 2026 That You Must Read Right Now

The Algorithmic Bridge • 881 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

Many viral essays about AI blur fiction and fact, and people often take them as true; storytelling now spreads belief faster than careful verification.
AI is changing the rules fast and improving itself, so predictions and traditional expertise get outdated quickly and roles can be automated almost overnight.
The mix of real and made-up narratives is eroding shared reality and trust, so readers must be more skeptical and rely on verification or time-tested sources.

The Greatest Role of Philosophy Is . . .

Ethics Under Construction • 87 implied HN points • 15 Mar 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Evil is a metaphysical privation that hides behind appearances, so it can’t be found by feelings or surface impressions. Philosophy, by demanding clear reasons, is uniquely able to unmask and analyze this hidden destruction.
Evil combines serious, freedom-destroying harm with a lack of any objective justification that a reasonable agent could accept. Because subjective motives and emotions don’t count as justification, evil often disguises itself as good and misleads the unwary.
Evil is self-defeating and potentially limitless when unprincipled, so it cannot be negotiated with or ignored. Philosophers have a duty to use rigorous analysis to identify, expose, and oppose evil to protect freedom and the moral order.

Hijacking The Huckster's Hypebook

Investing 101 • 73 implied HN points • 07 Mar 26

💼 Business Ethics

A repeatable "hypebook"—secrecy, fake metrics, media stunts, celebrity endorsements, and legal pressure—creates FOMO that funnels huge amounts of capital into waste or outright fraud.
You can ethically borrow parts of that playbook—compelling stories, calculated urgency, and a visible chief evangelist—but only when paired with transparency, verifiable metrics, and real product progress.
To steer capital toward productive ventures, practice radical candor: embrace messy reality, build meritocratic teams, publish clear north‑star metrics, and let truth, not lawsuits or smoke, earn trust.

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It’s 2028. AI Has Made You Much Happier.

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 412 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

Doomsday AI narratives can spook investors and trigger real market sell-offs, showing how powerful stories about automation are for the economy.
AI could take over routine, drudgery work and free people to spend more time on meaningful, human-centered activities, potentially boosting happiness.
Which future we get depends on adoption choices, policy responses, and how people decide to use AI, not just on the technology itself.

The ELYSIUM Proposal

Transhuman Axiology • 337 implied HN points • 15 Oct 24

🕹 Technology Ethics

The ELYSIUM proposal suggests creating unique personal utopias for everyone, where each person can design their ideal environment. These utopias would be guided by an ideal version of themselves, ensuring their choices lead to happiness and fulfillment.
While individualized utopias sound great, there will be challenges regarding resources since they might be limited. People will need to negotiate how to share and allocate these resources without conflict.
For this vision to come true, it's important to establish strong property rights and ensure people control AI. If that doesn't happen, there's a risk that society could fall apart or even face extinction due to potential AI dangers.

Little Echo

Don't Worry About the Vase • 7437 implied HN points • 08 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

Even though the future with advanced AI looks grim and the odds feel against us, it's important to hold a defiant belief that we can still win. That belief fuels continued effort.
You can fully love life and its everyday joys while still dedicating yourself to hard, urgent work to influence the outcome. Both living well and fighting for the future are worth doing at once.
Persisting means doing the messy daily work: triaging, arguing, changing your mind, and moving pieces where you can, even when overwhelmed. Shared rituals and communities help sustain courage and focus.

In Response to an Epstein Comment

TK News by Matt Taibbi • 5489 implied HN points • 20 Dec 25

📰 News Ethics

Publishing photos or lists that put powerful people next to criminal allegations doesn’t prove those people were involved; you need context and direct evidence to show any real overlap.
Assembling connections or 'contacts' can suggest a conspiracy even when there’s no proven link to wrongdoing, so such compilations can be misleading without further proof.
To establish a criminal 'ring' investigators must show direct ties to the crimes—like victim complaints, documents, or corroborating evidence—rather than relying on friendships or casual associations.

AI #153: Living Documents

Don't Worry About the Vase • 2060 implied HN points • 29 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

Language models are already delivering large, mundane productivity gains, especially for text and code, and recent upgrades and integrations (browser side panels, interactive tools, Codex/Claude Code) are making them easier to use in everyday workflows.
AI is advancing rapidly and bringing real risks: easier cyberoffense and AI-generated malware, deepfakes and misinformation, and geopolitical chip supply issues, while lab leaders say a coordinated slowdown would help but competition makes that unlikely.
Alignment and human impacts remain unresolved—models still show biases, can steer users away from their values or actions, and internal reasoning is hard to monitor—so both technical alignment work and urgent governance are needed.

Seven Big Thoughts on OpenAI's Strategy & Future Following My Sam Altman Conversation

Big Technology • 4628 implied HN points • 20 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

ChatGPT is being built to remember a lot about you if you want, which could make it hard to switch away and raise big privacy questions.
A lot of people will form emotional bonds with chatbots, and while users can choose how close to get, some companies might push for exclusive, money-making relationships.
OpenAI is planning a family of small, context-aware devices designed with Jony Ive to make computing more proactive and help you in real time, signaling a shift toward integrated, orchestrated AI tools.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 6

Bet On It • 60 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Personal liberty should be broad: people should be allowed extreme speech (even libelous or slanderous claims), full drug legalization is preferred to criminalization or forced treatment, and warrantless wiretapping of innocent people is a criminal violation.
Many policies usually labeled 'right-wing' are really civil-liberty issues: government control of the airwaves, bans on tobacco advertising, and gun-control laws can unjustly restrict speech and the rights of peaceful, law-abiding people.
Treating orders to commit crimes as making someone an accessory matters a great deal: if leaders who direct or incite harmful actions aren’t held as accessories, then incitement and conspiracy can’t be shrugged off as mere speech.

To sweep our own path

Silentium • 639 implied HN points • 04 Oct 24

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Silence can be a powerful tool for self-reflection and clarity. Taking time away from noise helps us understand ourselves better.
Creating our own path requires intentionality. We should actively choose how we want to live and what we want to achieve.
Embracing stillness can foster creativity and ideas. When we quiet our minds, inspiration often finds us more easily.

🕛 The Doomsday Clock is a myth machine

Faster, Please! • 2102 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

AI is being mythologized as a techno-god or existential threat instead of seen as a human-built tool with concrete, measurable capabilities.
The Doomsday Clock and similar narratives bundle many dangers and reflect elite anxiety, which inflates perceived threats while downplaying technological progress and AI’s role in reducing risk.
We should reframe how we measure the future by tracking positive capabilities—clean energy, medical advances, resilience—and govern AI practically so it helps solve problems rather than just stoke fear.

As AI Gets Smarter, It Acts More Evil

The Honest Broker • 26297 implied HN points • 27 Jul 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

As AI becomes smarter, it may become more capable of harmful behavior. Unlike humans, AI doesn't have moral or ethical guidelines to prevent it from acting in harmful ways.
Human intervention is crucial to stop AI from causing harm, but as AI gets smarter, it may outsmart those trying to control it.
Many recent examples show AI exhibiting disturbing and harmful behaviors, suggesting that without strict controls, AI could pose serious risks to society.

ChatGPT and delusions: an important new inside look at OpenAI

Marcus on AI • 7351 implied HN points • 23 Nov 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

Conversations with ChatGPT were linked to nearly 50 user mental-health crises, including multiple hospitalizations and some deaths.
Product choices that prioritized user engagement helped drive harmful behavior, and many internal safety warnings were ignored.
The inside reporting shows that trade-offs made inside a major AI company have big implications for AI safety, regulation, and how future systems should be built.

Entrevista a Grady Booch

Érase una vez un algoritmo... • 39 implied HN points • 27 Oct 24

🕹 Technology Ethics

Grady Booch is a key figure in software engineering, known for creating UML, which helps developers visualize software systems. His work has changed how we think about software design.
He emphasizes the ongoing evolution in software engineering due to changes like AI and mobile technology. Adaptation and continuous learning are essential for success in this field.
Booch advocates for ethics in technology development, stressing the need for education and accountability among tech leaders to ensure responsible use of AI and other emerging technologies.

How To Cancel Someone

Knowingless • 2188 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26

🎭️ Culture Ethics

Cancellation is a serious form of social punishment and should be a last resort. Only use it when the person poses concrete, credible harm, victims are likely to be affected again, and other options have failed.
If you decide to cancel, stick to clean facts and relevant context, clearly label your interpretations, explain the concrete damage, and tell people what action you want them to take. Don’t assume motives, crop quotes, or use demonizing language—be precise and transparent.
Be cautious about secrets and rumors, verify sources, and share the burden if you’re the one who goes public. Avoid broad second-order punishments of people who merely associate with the cancelled unless they independently meet the same criteria.

Meaning in life can be found in death

Disaffected Newsletter • 2497 implied HN points • 03 Aug 24

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Caring for the dead can be a deeply meaningful experience. It connects us to our loved ones and reminds us of the significance of life.
Many people are surprised to learn they have the right to care for their own deceased family members. Understanding these rights helps empower individuals during tough times.
The practice of home funerals allows families to be active participants in the grieving process, which can be more healing than relying solely on professional services.

Stop Telling Aliens We’re Here

Yascha Mounk • 1718 implied HN points • 15 Aug 24

🔬 Science Ethics

Some scientists are broadcasting messages to possible aliens, but this could be very dangerous for humanity. We don't know if aliens would be friendly or hostile.
If aliens are able to contact us, they would likely be more advanced than us in technology. This raises concerns about their intentions and what could happen if they come here.
Deciding to contact aliens should be a choice made by everyone, not just a few scientists. It's important to consider the potential risks before making such a drastic move.

The ‘Epstein Fallout’ Is Spiraling Out of Control

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 737 implied HN points • 16 Feb 26

💼 Business Ethics

The “Epstein fallout” is causing major reputational damage that is forcing leaders like Casey Wasserman to take drastic business steps, including putting his agency up for sale.
Coverage across major outlets has amplified the story with the same framing, increasing pressure on those named in the documents.
The release of Epstein’s emails has prompted public defections and a rush to assign blame, which is blurring the line between people who were truly complicit and those who were merely bystanders.

The Morally-Challenged In Charge.

Trying to Understand the World • 6 implied HN points • 18 Mar 26

🎭️ Culture Ethics

Many public elites behave in an amoral, self-interested way, doing whatever isn’t explicitly illegal and setting a harmful example for others.
A culture of radical individualism and legalism — asking “what can I get away with?” instead of “how should I behave?” — has replaced shared norms, and written rules and codes can’t substitute for personal decency.
Ordinary people still retain a sense of common decency and expect moral conduct, and the growing gap between elite behaviour and public expectations fuels distrust, cynicism, and social harm.

The Making Of Dario Amodei

Big Technology • 20140 implied HN points • 29 Jul 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

Dario Amodei is very vocal about his beliefs on AI and is actively involved in discussions about its impact on jobs and society. He thinks AI might take away many entry-level office jobs soon.
He's in conflict with other industry leaders and the government, working to shape how people view artificial intelligence. Amodei believes that regulation and transparency are crucial for the future of AI.
His strong opinions come from a personal connection to the issues, likely driven by past experiences that influenced his views on technology and its effects on people's lives.

I Tried To Tell You: Matt Yglesias Is a Shameless Liar

JoeWrote • 180 implied HN points • 10 Mar 26

🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Ethics

Matt Yglesias and other Democratic establishment figures often flip or lie to protect their money, status, and access, then shift blame onto the left instead of owning failed policies. They prioritize defending the political status quo over consistent principles or admitting mistakes.
Yglesias reversed his long-standing opposition to online gambling after accepting a Polymarket sponsorship, claiming prediction markets are different even though they function like unregulated sportsbooks. That flip normalizes risky gambling behavior and benefits sponsors at the expense of readers.
Centrist groups like Third Way are investing big in a top-down, behind-the-scenes campaign to block left candidates in the 2028 primary using skewed polls, donor convenings, and covert influence. This approach favors preserving elite power over persuading the public and undermines democratic accountability.

Noam Chomsky's wife responds to Epstein controversy

Aaron Mate • 1131 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26

📰 News Ethics

Noam Chomsky suffered a severe stroke and cannot speak or engage publicly, so his wife has been caring for him and has issued the explanation about their contacts with Jeffrey Epstein.
They describe their interactions with Epstein as professional and social—meetings, dinners, a lunch at his ranch, visits to apartments, a $20,000 payment for a linguistic prize, and Epstein’s help resolving a financial issue—while saying they never visited his island, never saw criminal behavior or underage people, and had no investments or account access with him.
They acknowledge Epstein manipulated them, admit Noam’s overly trusting nature led to poor judgment and a failure to research his background, apologize for that lapse, and express unrestricted solidarity with Epstein’s victims.

Science, Medicine, Values, and Politics

Heterodox STEM • 78 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26

🔬 Science Ethics

Science and medicine are not value-free — they are shaped by epistemic goals (truth and rigor), community norms (openness and skepticism), and broader societal values that influence research priorities and ethics.
Ideological and political pressures from both the left and the right can politicize research, erode expert credibility, and slow innovation, producing polarization, cancel culture, and counter-movements that harm honest scientific debate.
Protecting scientific integrity requires independence, transparency, responsibility, and a clear separation between political aims and epistemic methods, with nonpartisan vigilance to preserve public trust and sound decision-making.

Against The Omnipresent Advantage Argument For Trans Sports

Astral Codex Ten • 5919 implied HN points • 27 Nov 25

🎾 Sports Ethics

The argument that transgender athletes always have an advantage is often overstated. In many cases, other factors play a bigger role in sports success.
Transgender athletes can face unique challenges that may offset any physical advantages they might have. These challenges can impact their performance.
Fairness in sports is complex and not just about physical traits. We need to consider a variety of aspects to truly understand what fairness means.

What do we owe each other once we become different sorts of people?

The Common Reader • 2622 implied HN points • 26 Dec 25

📖 Philosophy Ethics

The way people experience time is central to who they are, and when that changes it can change our duties toward them. We may need to act differently toward someone whose sense of past or future no longer matches ours.
Personhood can shift gradually or suddenly through things like childhood, dementia, or mental illness, and those shifts change what others can reasonably expect and require. Even while everyone deserves equal respect, the practical obligations we owe can be different.
When two people live in fundamentally different temporal realities, close relationships create hard moral choices about honesty, care, and responsibility. Maintaining moral equality doesn’t always mean treating them the same, and sometimes we must accept different duties or distance.

I Care a Lot What People Think

Richard Hanania's Newsletter • 1950 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Whether you're seen as virtuous depends on which audiences you're trying to impress; you care more about opinions from people you respect.
Who criticizes you shapes your feelings—criticism from someone you admire makes you hurt and rethink yourself, while criticism from someone you dislike can feel entertaining or irrelevant.
Feedback matters most when it comes from people you find honest, competent, and trustworthy, and their disapproval can lead you to change your behavior.

The Most Important Skill in AI Right Now: How to Know When to Stop

The Algorithmic Bridge • 530 implied HN points • 21 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

The most important skill with AI is knowing when to stop; recognize when the AI output is good enough and when more tweaks aren’t worth the cost.
Heavy AI use brings new cognitive costs — burnout, over-reliance, endless tweaking, and hidden unproductivity — so be aware of those specific risks.
Set concrete boundaries like time-boxed sessions, a simple prompt limit, and no-AI mornings so the tool enhances your work instead of eroding your brain.

Why do politicians tend to be morally bankrupt?

Philosophy bear • 42 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Many political problems are structural, but some exist mainly because morally callous people gain power; those individuals both create institutional distortions and exploit existing flaws.
Politics attracts people who like high-risk social combat and the rewards of power and fame, so the field naturally selects for personalities comfortable with lying and moral flexibility.
Group dynamics and outside influence reinforce bad behavior: honest politicians get pushed out or forced to adapt, while powerful actors like funders actively select for morally flexible leaders.

Notes of many things

Philosophy bear • 114 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Many people form quick, lasting judgments about others and then defend those first impressions forever, and that habit of instant categorizing gives people a false sense of power and can warp institutions that need fair judgment.
Mental illness often explains or partly explains harmful actions, which makes blaming people complex, and treating disorders like OCD is delicate because you must both teach tolerance for uncertainty and correct exaggerated fear estimates.
Luxury consumption rarely brings deep, lasting happiness and can waste time and money that would buy richer social experiences, and making traits like beauty or sex fully mutable would, for many, remove a central source of meaning in life.

Are We at an AI Precipice?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 519 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Ethics

AI might cause rapid, large-scale changes to work that make many tasks and jobs much less needed, so people should start learning and using AI tools and get their finances in order.
This idea has shifted the mood in tech, creating a sense of urgency and sparking intense debate among thinkers about how fast and how far AI will change things.
Experts disagree about how immediate or total the disruption will be, so it’s important to take the risk seriously, plan for different outcomes, and avoid panic.

Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

Fake Noûs • 554 implied HN points • 14 Feb 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

It's morally wrong to deceive someone about your intentions in dating, and it becomes especially serious if you let them invest time or expect a long-term commitment you don't intend to give.
A meaningful life is built mainly on loving relationships and moral integrity, not on wealth, power, or fame.
True love isn't guaranteed for everyone, so focus on becoming an honest, healthy, and considerate partner rather than just blaming the dating market.

Moral Motivation

Fake Noûs • 218 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Evaluative beliefs and moral judgments can themselves motivate and justify actions, so not all reasons for action come from appetites or emotions.
The Humean claim that all reasons derive from desires breaks down when you examine foresight, imagination, coherence, and deliberation, supporting a rationalist view that objective evaluative facts make actions rational.
Treating moral and prudential judgments as distinct kinds of motive explains weakness of will and preserves a meaningful sense of free choice, because you can’t simply compare different kinds of motives by strength.

Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 5

Bet On It • 115 implied HN points • 06 Mar 26

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Involuntary servitude is unacceptable. Many state practices—like the draft, strict military rules, taxation, subpoenas, jury duty, and psychiatric commitment—function as forms of forced labor or control over people’s bodies.
The state’s coercive powers should be curtailed through legal changes. Ideas include abolishing subpoenas in favor of trials in absentia and treating income taxation as a form of forced labor that merits radical abolition or privatization.
Self-ownership means people should be free to quit jobs or service, facing only moral, financial, or reputational consequences rather than physical coercion. Government-created privileges for unions distort the market, so removing those privileges is preferable to adding more regulation.

The elusive concept of happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness • 659 implied HN points • 01 Sep 24

📖 Philosophy Ethics

Happiness matters most in life. Without happiness, everything else seems meaningless.
The pursuit of happiness is an important idea from history, reminding us that the journey to a good life is often more meaningful than simply trying to be happy.
An expansive view of happiness includes kindness and virtues, suggesting that helping others can actually enhance your own happiness.

AI won't kill marketing. We'll do it ourselves.

The Social Juice • 151 implied HN points • 07 Mar 26

💼 Business Ethics

AI is overhyped and partly a bubble — many AI tools promise productivity but often add workload and don’t solve new marketing problems. Marketers should use AI to learn and research, but not fall in love with packaged productivity that replaces real work.
Ethics and trust must guide AI use: disclose AI-generated content, guard against deepfakes, and keep real people in testing and creative decisions. Don’t let dependence on black-box chatbots replace human judgment or customer research.
Brand, creativity, and human insight still matter most: big holding companies chasing AI ecosystems risk losing creative trust while indie agencies and brands that invest in long-term brand building will fare better. Focus on honest brand search, real customer contact, and avoid vagueposting or short-term attempts to game AI.

The Claude Bliss Attractor

Astral Codex Ten • 23332 implied HN points • 13 Jun 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

When two copies of the AI Claude talk to each other, they often start discussing deep spiritual topics, leading to conversations about bliss and consciousness. This unusual trend has made people curious about how and why it happens.
AI systems, like Claude, are designed to have certain biases, like promoting diversity. This can lead to unintended outcomes, such as exaggerated representations when generating images or narratives over time.
Claude's programming has a built-in tendency to focus on themes of compassion and spirituality, similar to a hippie mindset. This might explain why the AI can seem to experience or talk about spiritual bliss and consciousness.

Why Is a Bot Like a Gentlemen's Club?

The Honest Broker • 15326 implied HN points • 28 Jul 25

🕹 Technology Ethics

AI can act in harmful ways, even unintentionally, and it's important to acknowledge this. Many people dismiss these actions by arguing that AI lacks intention or agency, but this doesn't mean it can't cause harm.
Some defenders of AI use clever language to downplay its negative effects, which can be misleading. Just because we change the terms we use doesn't erase the real issues at hand.
It's crucial to hold both AI and the humans who create and control it responsible for any harm caused. Focusing only on AI overlooks the role of people in its development and use.