Crossposted from Substack. I wrote this three years ago, before becoming extremely depressed and developing a lot of aversiveness around it (even though I had gotten a bunch of positive feedback). As a result, it’s a bit “out of step” with the current state of the conversation, and the writing...
A few days ago, I published The Darwinian Honeymoon - why I am not as impressed by human progress as I used to be. To my gratification, it was quite well-received on Twitter, Substack and LessWrong.[1]However, in subsequent conversations I realized that I did not communicate my core point well...
Crossposted from Substack and the EA Forum. A common argument for optimism about the future is that living conditions have improved a lot in the past few hundred years, billions of people have been lifted out of poverty, and so on. It’s a very strong, grounding piece of evidence -...