Batman

    From a utilitarian point of view, Batman is the dumbest superhero. After the Joker kills dozens or hundreds of people, Batman tracks him down, beats him up, and sticks him in prison. A prison system that doesn't work, where the Joker always escapes. Then, the Joker kills dozens, hundreds, or billions (in some comics) more. Repeat ad infinitum. This goes for not just the Joker, but for every criminal in Gotham. While this makes for a good storyline (where you don't have to introduce a new bad guy every comic), it is a bit ridiculous. Good thing Batman didn't kill that grunt for stealing a purse, he only pushed him off a building and paralyzed him for life. Now, comic book stans will disagree, with some derivative of "wow it is so cool how morally complex Bruce is, he can't kill because he knows that if he does he won't be able to stop." Other people like The Punisher. Common movie trope: Evil Guy orchestrates a horrific attack on innocent people that kills hundreds. Good Guy fights his way through dozens of low-level bad guys (often brutally killing them) in order to get to the Evil Guy. Good Guy beats Evil Guy and has a chance to kill him. In act act of heroism, Good Guy refuses. Then either the Evil Guy dies anyway or he is locked away (where he often later escapes and kills more people). That is Hollywood, folks.

    I don't want to a world where vigilante justice reigns. In fact, I didn't make this post to lament about superheroes. I wanted to prompt a thought experiment: if you made it your life's mission to decrease the amount of gang violence in the city of Chicago, how much could you accomplish? You could spend every minute calling and emailing politicians, or you could try to run for office. You could work very hard in a high paying profession and donate 50% of your salary to organizations that you believe would decrease crime. What would you do? Think about it for a minute. Whatever it is, I would guess that you would be unlikely to make a big impact. Ken Griffin, billionaire hedge fund founder, couldn't make a dent. How much of an impact could a university make? The University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, can't even protect its students. What could you, personally, hope to accomplish? Without billionaire status or near-superhuman training, you couldn't even be an effective vigilante (Batman or Punisher). Plus, I doubt even an effective vigilante could make dent in a city of almost three million people. Would a real-world Batman fix Chicago? What if he killed people? In both cases, this is a pretty clear "no." Even if Ken Griffin put on the suit and started blasting, I'm pretty sure things would not get any better. Crime is complex. Selling drugs is lucrative. Guns are widely available. Many gang-related shootings are a form of vigilante justice, payback from a previous killing. There are over 100,000 gang members in Chicago. You are just one person. This isn't meant to be a depressing question. Just because your impact might be small doesn't mean that it is worthless. We should still strive for a safer world, regardless of the difficulty. There are no recurring villains in the real world. No easy answers (hey, Batman should just kill people). There are more effective ways to have an impact, but that impact is destined to be small.

The Trade You Make

     There are plenty of existential risks. AI, nuclear war, and chemically engineered pandemics are the most likely and are all pretty horrifying. I was on a run today, and I wondered exactly why I have been stressing so much about these risks. Spending years reading and writing about these topics has made me a more anxious person, hesitant to bring children into a world of suffering on a mass scale. Even if there is only a 10% chance humanity gets wiped out this century, it is clearly possible that the year of this extinction could be a horrible time to endure. I would die, my family would all die, my kids would all die, my wife would die, all of my friends would die, and everyone I've ever met would die. This is very clearly the most depressing outcome imaginable. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized: this is the trade you make. This is what it means to be human. This is how every human has lived throughout history: in a period of extreme violence and uncertainty.

    If you lived in Germany many hundreds of years ago, you were probably pretty worried that a group of barbarians would raid your cabin, steal your wife, and kill you and your children. If you lived in Egypt thousands of years ago, you were probably a slave and your family could have been killed on a whim by a despot. In fact, in the majority of societies, the majority of people were placed completely at the mercy of authoritarian rulers or warring overlords. The life of a father or mother caught in a current African civil war is par for the course, it is modern life in the West that is the exception. Or is it? Just because we ignore the prospect of nuclear war doesn't mean we don't constantly sit at the brink. Just because we don't read up on chemically engineered pandemics doesn't mean a modified strain of smallpox won't run through New York City and kill 95% of the population. Nothing has changed. Humans have always faced individual and group extinction, we are just moving the boundaries a little more.

    Looking at ex-risk, the only truly scary one from an existential standpoint is AI. Not because it will kill us all (bioweapons and nukes can too), but because it could make us live near-forever in a pit of tremendous suffering. The good news is, this outcome is probably not likely, and the future of AI is basically entirely uncertain. Also, it is the only one out of the three main ex-risks that through development could lead to something resembling a utopia. Regardless, looking too far towards the long term future of humanity can distract from the present. The stresses of current life and the existential struggle we personally have with accepting death are really nothing new. There were plenty of brave men and women who choose to end their lives out of circumstance or out of fear of some circumstance (they heard the barbarians charging over the hill). We should not discount these decisions. But we should also realize that plenty of people stuck it out. Maybe for some pre-programmed survival instinct, or maybe for some other reason. Not only are things pretty good in the world right now on an absolute basis (very, very few people live every day in perpetual bouts of fear and suffering), but things on a relative basis are getting better every year. The long-term trajectory of the human race is positive, perhaps in an exponential fashion. Perhaps not. Personally, I plan to stick around long enough to find out.

Political Donations

    Effective Altruism as a community has more or less agreed to stay out of politics. Most of the community is probably very liberal, but there is still some large variance within the community. I am still unconvinced that voting is important. William MacAskill argues that on an expected return basis, voting is very important. He argues that even if there is a 0.00000001% chance that your vote swings the presidential election, the value could be so great (worth $1,000,000,000,000 or something) due to averting ex-risk or allocating foreign aid or some other thing, it is worth it to vote. In reality your vote has a 0% chance of mattering (on a national scale, regional elections are probably pretty important and impactful) and the difference between politicians is probably overstated. There is a lot of inertia, bureaucracy, and infrastructure, and legal precedent in place that tie the hands of even radical politicians here in the U.S.. In foreign countries the elections are either similarly low-impact or completely rigged. However, with political donations you may be able to thoroughly swing votes.

    If you are a billionaire such a Michael Bloomberg, you could bankroll candidates or pay for millions of targeted political advertisements. Through the power of absurd wealth, an individual can actually make an impact. Whether actually an effective use of money or not (I would guess the significant majority of political donations are entirely wasted and ineffective) I do not have the data to say. I would guess malaria nets are much cheaper and more impactful than spending a million dollars on a one-minute political ad for Biden which will be unlikely to sway aggregate voters a single basis point in voting polls. One of the problems is that there is already a massive amount of money in politics, so the marginal value of another million dollars is likely to be zero. For this reason, I would argue against political donations of all kinds. If one candidate has pledged to start an unjust nuclear civil war, assassination or voter suppression would be much more effective ways to spend your time. Given that this is rarely the case (and also I think democracy works well generally, I doubt the American public would knowingly elect such a candidate), we should stick to effective charities. To me, donating to political parties is likely one of the most useless uses of your funds, slightly more useless than donating to universities and slightly more useful than setting all of your cash ablaze.

Nihilism

     Utilitarianism is for nihilists who are too cowardly to admit they are nihilists. At least, most of the time. The idea that nothing matters is scary. It follows that everything is permissible, and that there is no objective right and wrong. Living your life according to this is basically impossible (or psychopathic), and only ignorance will avoid a life full of existential dread. So, people turn to any other sort of moral system, despite any objective backing. Semantic tricks and empty ideas such as "the meaning of life is to give life meaning" and "life has no meaning, but your life is meaningful because of you" are philosophically useless. Either things matter or they don't, there is no in between. Either suffering is a bad thing (or good), or it is neutral. These things by definition have to be binary. If we are animals made of meat and bones and there is no god, do we have any moral obligations? Is killing an innocent child for no reason other than sheer amusement really, actually, truly wrong? Is it objectively morally wrong? Or is it only "wrong" because of our current culture and upbringing. Wrong only to the level where if they were releasing and hunting innocent children for fun in the Middle East we would say "well that's just their culture, we can't say for certain if what they are doing is bad." These questions matter. "Well even if everything is meaningless, we don't want to talk about it much because then people might do bad things" is a circular argument. What do you mean by "bad," and wouldn't it be useful to know where our moral obligations lie (or if there are any)?

    I have mentioned my version of Pascal's wager before. I call it Pascal's modified wager. If there is a chance that nothing matters and a chance that something matters, you should probably live your life believing that something matters. If you are wrong, it doesn't matter anyway. But if things actually matter and you ignore them, you could make some pretty sizeable moral mistakes. Proof of this wager is basically impossible, as it is prone to similar counterarguments to a religious version (well, how do you decide what matters? Says who? What if hunting young children is morally good? Prove it!). This is why it's called a "wager" and not a proof. It makes sense to me that suffering is bad. I am going to start there. The Hume is-ought problem makes it impossible for me to thoroughly prove that suffering is bad, even though some have tried ("The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris, for example). But I am fine with that, and of all the things that could be evil in the world (saving children from burning buildings, being nice to people, refusing to partake in genocide), I am going to assume that causing immense suffering is bad. Sue me. With that as a starting point, things can get tricky. Cue the thousands of utilitarian dilemmas. But hey, at least we have a starting point. If you have that, you should have the intelligence to navigate 90% of basic moral decisions (should I push the person in front of me on the train tracks, even though no one will ever know, or should I not?). 

    I love reading about pessimism and nihilism. Cioran and Ligotti are masterful writers who bestowed upon me years worth of existential trauma. But through them I found Becker, and then Singer. And I decided to make a simple choice, to believe that suffering is bad. From that choice a million interesting and fulfilling opportunities arise. The motivation to help others and the desire to have an impact have made my life significantly better. I am still worried that the emperor has no clothes and that I should spend the next forty years at the cabaret. If on my death bed I learn that this was the case, I doubt I will look back with regret.

Hot Take: Pandemics are Bad

    Ebola is terrifying. Any virus with a 90% kill rate that causes you to bleed out of your eyeballs and reduces your body to a heap of bloody mush is something worth freaking out about. As time has gone on, the world has become slightly less scared. Ebola never translated to a worldwide pandemic, it was simply too deadly. Ebola killed people at a very high rate, meaning it didn't have enough time to spread to other humans before killing its host. I am currently reading "The Hot Zone," which successfully transferred my fear of dying of a slow radiation-induced death with that of a pandemic that makes my skin fall off and causes me to cry tears of blood. One cool thing about being a longtermist is that you live a life in constant fear of horrifying deaths. Viruses are not sentient. They are not really alive or dead, they are more similar to machines that manage to reproduce. Even if they were alive and sentient, I am convinced that we should destroy them all with prejudice. Life forms that require the death of others to live on (viruses, parasites) may not have any other choice, but I do think there is some sort of libertarian non-aggression principle at work here.

    

    The Covid-19 pandemic was a wake up call. The world witnessed firsthand how weak our current institutions are, and it was clear that a virus as transmissible as Covid would end up infecting a large portion of the human population no matter what protections a society puts in place (even China). If Covid killed 10% of all people instead of less than 1%, that would have been a big problem.

    Quick defense of the current human population. I hear people say things like "we need a new plague," "there are too many people, it's unsustainable," "even if a virus killed 90% of people we would bounce back, it's just a natural culling of the herd." Not only is this factually wrong (I used to believe overpopulation was a problem, its actually underpopulation that is hurting most societies at the moment), but it fails to think through the after-effects. Killing 90% of the world may be better than killing 50% (since the remaining 10% will have many more per capita food sources and infrastructure and society will probably collapse either way), but killing any significant number of the worldwide population would be horrible for humanity's prospects. It is likely the world will be fragmented into groups of tribes or feudal lords that are vastly decentralized, a world with thermonuclear warheads ripe for the taking.

    Pandemics are bad. Humanity has experienced some really nasty ones, and there are plenty that give me nightmares. Now realize that all of those are naturally occurring viruses, created randomly by a largely stupid process called evolution. Now realize it is becoming easier to to modify these viruses to be exponentially more deadly and pervasive. Then think about mass shootings and suicide bombings, and wonder what the world would be like if those individuals had access to these viruses. Now try to sleep at night.

Is Having Children Moral?

     My favorite philosopher of all time is Emil Cioran. Emil was a Romanian philosopher who was a staunch pessimist, nihilist, and anti-natalist (which means he is anti-procreation). It was through reading "The Trouble With Being Born" that I first seriously considered the idea that having kids could be morally wrong. This idea is usually hardly taken seriously. Personally, I have never been convinced that it is moral to have children. Not that it necessarily isn't moral, but rather I really don't know one way or the other. I've scoffed at others who claimed that they refused to have children because of climate change or some other half-baked ex-risk, but I have actually considered the pain and suffering that would be inflicted by bringing children into a world on the brink of nuclear war. Being born only to suffer a painful, radioactive death seem not very ideal. Would it be stupid to try for children during the Cuban missile crisis? There is probably some level where I agree with anti-natalism. If you live in abject poverty where every week a group of soldiers stops by your house beats you senseless for two hours, your kids are probably not going to have a good life. In that case, it is probably immoral to have children. Now, this is a much rarer case that you would think. It's easy to view abortion as permissible simply because "well foster care is pretty hard and kids that are born into poverty probably turn to a life of violence." Not only is this far-fetched, but if it is the case we should assume having children at all in poverty should be disallowed (if their life is really so bad that it is better to never have lived). I seriously doubt it. The morality of abortion is solely dependent on when a clump of cells becomes equivalent to that of a human life (or at which point some level of moral significance is bestowed that outweighs other factors). This is a philosophical question with no easy answer.

    I view life as good and death as bad, and existence as better than non-existence. A lot of people say things like "death is what makes life worth living" or "death is an important part of life," but remember that humans are very good at rationalizing their situation. We don't need to do this. We should admit that all of us would choose to live longer, potentially indefinitely, until we decide on our own terms not to exist. We do not choose to be born. This makes having kids a moral dilemma, because they have no say over the matter. Although I love pessimistic philosophy, I live my life as an optimist. Human life at the current moment in history is very positive. Having children is totally reasonable, and if you raise them to be happy caretakers of others you will have done an immense service. I am extremely grateful that I was created, and most people I know are as well. If this changes due to some horrifying global developments, maybe we reconsider.

Wealth Inequality

    While I am generally in favor of free market capitalism, I do not agree with the assessment that we need to "lift everyone out of poverty and not worry about those at the top." This is a technocratic take that I have heard Silicon Valley gurus proclaim (Sam Altman included), and I think it is fundamentally misguided. Yes, capitalism is responsible for lifting billions of people out of poverty over the past few centuries and it is clearly a great system for spurring technological grown and ensuring constant economic progress. Yes, bringing the world out of poverty should be our number one goal. If we are rapidly curing diseases, avoiding war, and broadly alleviating poverty, who cares about income inequality? If there is a large income divide between the rich and the poor, but the "poor" have amazing, fulfilling lives, then we probably shouldn't care much. Fairness should never be our guiding principle. If everyone was capped at earning $10,000 a year, the would not be a better place. Dispersion between individual wealth is natural. People can take different sorts of jobs, work harder or not at all, and pass wealth to their children. People that take risks should be compensated. People that innovate should be compensated (in order to incentivize others). Now before I seem too Ayn Randian, here comes the counterargument.

    Money = power. In a system where the top .01% controls a massive portion of the wealth, that small portion of people have an outsized impact on others. Voting is driven in a large part by campaign donations, and oftentimes the richest people have zero altruistic tendencies. If you own the company that owns the AGI, yeah maybe you cure a lot of diseases and everyone has a universal basic income, but now you are the supreme ruler and the most powerful person on the planet. A quick point on financial returns. When you act ethically, you are sacrificing financial return. This is why "ESG" marketers are so focused on trying to prove that constraining your opportunity set to have an "impact" doesn't sacrifice financial returns. Everyone knows that this is false (spoiler, the sales departments are lying to you). Now, donations. Donating money decreases wealth, something a lot of rich people are allergic to. To make an impact, you have to lose money. This truth is unfortunate but will bring an immense amount of clarity to your life.

    The question is, how do we make people with money and power do good? How do we get them to lose money in effective ways (through greater taxes, greater donation incentives, greater guidance)? This is really the fundamental problem with capitalism. It is really good at building people's wealth, but it does nothing for guiding them towards the best ways to lose it.