Intuition Jousting: What It Is And Why It Should Stop
Word count: 1,152
Over the past year or so I’ve become steadily more aware of and annoyed by a phenomeon I’m going to call, for lack of a better term, ‘intuition jousting’ (‘IJ’). My experience, and obviously I can only speak for my own, is that IJ is a quite a […]
Exploring hedonic adaptation and its implications for happiness maximisation
Word count: 4,163
- Introduction
If we want to increase happiness it follows we need to understand what makes people happy and for how long. In this paper I explore the purpose and mechanisms of hedonic adaptation – the process by which the affective intensity of constant of repeated stimuli diminishes over […]
What Philosophy Should, But Won’t, Learn From Silicon Valley
We publish philosophy like hardware even though we write it like software.
Word count: 1,203
(update, 19/03/2017: I notice this has now been picked up on reddit in both philosophy and badphilosophy. As context, I wrote this a couple of days ago to vent my frustration at how slowly philosophy (including my own) […]
What’s happiness for anyway? Why nature doesn’t want to keep us happy and what we can do about it. Public lecture at Oxford Brookes
We’ve become wealthier, healthier, safer, smarter and long-lived over the last 60 years but, surprisingly, no happier. But if those things don’t seem to work, how should we pursuing happiness instead?
In this lecture Michael explains what we can and should mean by the word ‘happiness’, how it gets measured, why […]
Advanced Tools and Techniques for Becoming Happier in 2017
Word count: 1,988
In the past, I’ve thought New Year’s Resolutions were a waste of time. If something is important enough to start, shouldn’t it be important enough to start now, rather than waiting for the Sun and Earth to be in a particular, arbitrary configuration? Nevertheless, this year I’ve decided to […]
Are You Sure You Want To Donate To The Against Malaria Foundation?
Word count: 1,838
In advance of the Christmas charity season, GiveWell has announced that the Against Malaria Foundation (‘AMF’) is once again their top pick for the world’s most effective charity. The explanation for this is quite straight forward: AMF provides bednets that stop very young children (mostly under-5’s) dying prematurely from […]
The Unproven (And Unprovable) Case For Wild Animal Suffering
5,467 words.
Abstract
I’ve been surprised to learn recently that so many people I know in the effective altruism community believe there is more total suffering than happiness in the lives of wild animals. Brian Tomasik appears to be the main current proponent of this view, developing the work done by economist […]
Learning To Love The Rain
People hate rain. You don’t need to ask them. You can just tell. Brollys go up and eyes down as people hurriedly dodge puddles on their way to the nearest plane, train or automobile that’ll trundle them home at the end of a hard day’s grind.
I don’t hate the rain. […]
