Sat Mar 08, 2008 at 01:28:25 AM UTC
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| In a previous post, the question was raised as to how much charitable donations to one cause take away from donations to other causes. The topic can be extended to "charitable activities" more generally: Do people have a fixed "charity budget" of money and energy, such that after they've spent some amount of that budget, they feel relieved of further obligations? Or is charitableness more variable, such that small amounts of charity might snowball into bigger amounts of charity that wouldn't have otherwise occurred? |
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Fri Mar 07, 2008 at 00:06:09 AM UTC
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The world's first In Vitro Meat Symposium is being held in Norway, 9-11 April, 2008.
http://invitromeat.org/
It is sponsored by Norwegian University of Life Sciences / Norwegian Food Research Institute.
I'd very strongly encourage utilitarians - or simply anyone who believes in the possibility of a cruelty-free world - to attend.
There is also now a Facebook event for the symposium for all those who would like to express their support. |
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Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 05:42:21 AM UTC
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| As electoral campaigns dominate the news, it seems to me that two essential questions are raised for utilitarians: First, should a utilitarian vote, or perhaps, when should a utilitarian vote? Second, how do we decide who to vote for? |
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Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 00:44:10 AM UTC
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| A recent New York Times article publicized the Boltzmann brain paradox, which states that if low-entropy universes are created out of random fluctuations, then it's vastly more probable that we--highly organized collections of atoms making observations--are isolated brain fluctuations than it is that we're entire bodies contained in an entire ordered universe. Below I'll raise the question of what implications, if any, such a hypothesis has for utilitarians. |
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Tue Jan 15, 2008 at 02:45:23 AM UTC
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( - promoted by Seth Baum)
I've written a piece that attempts to address common objections to Utilitarianism:
Precedent Utilitarianism
Can you think of any objections that do not fall into the general categories I've used, or any common objections that have not been addressed? |
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Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 04:06:58 AM UTC
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| um... |
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Tue Jan 08, 2008 at 02:18:10 AM UTC
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| The literature on existential risk is shockingly small and this site's users know it as well as anyone, so as a service to anyone conducting x-risk research (including ourselves), maybe we could collectively accumulate relevant references in the comment thread here. Eventually a formal list on a separate web page would be nice, but for now let's just get as many references as we can in on place and worry about organizing them later. |
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Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 03:00:18 AM UTC
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| I'd like to have a list of researchers to keep an eye on, including grad students, professors, and people outside academia. Basically anyone that is or could be publishing papers worth reading. Post your recommendations here or send to me via email. |
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Mon Dec 24, 2007 at 02:08:05 AM UTC
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| The "expected value of information" is colloquially defined as the expected value after learning a given piece of information minus the expected value before learning that piece of information. This wording is a little imprecise. For instance, suppose we currently think our best action has expected value +10, and then we learn new information that tells us that the new best action has expected value +5. Clearly, the value of the information wasn't -5. Below, I give an explicit formula for the value of information. (This is nothing particularly insightful, but its concreteness may be helpful.) |
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Tue Dec 18, 2007 at 03:26:38 AM UTC
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| Intrinsic value/good is that which is valuable/good for its own sake. Instrumental value/good is that which is valuable/good because it causes intrinsic value. (See also Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.) What holds intrinsic value depends on the choice of ethical framework; what holds instrumental value depends on what holds intrinsic value. Despite the fundamental difference between the two, the distinction is often not made when using the terms "value" or "good". (c.f. this and this.) |
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