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According to Julia Galef, simply asking question “how do I compare expected benefits against each other?” is already “far more than most people just intuitively do when they want to help the world.”  
The dwarf planet, one of five that exist at the outer edges of the solar system, recently passed in front of a star, allowing astronomers their first shot at getting some really good data.
Earlier this week, I answered a set of “tough questions” posed to advocates of reproductive choice. Well, turnabout is fair play. Although millions of religious people want abortion to be […]
In story after story after story, one powerfully persistent meme of the 2012 American presidential election was that the GOP faced a significant “demographics problem” in which the growing numbers […]
Today I published an op-ed in the NY Times, arguing that the “Yemen model” approach to counterterrorism is deeply flawed.  I also suggest a way forward for the Obama administration […]
In the latest issue of New York Review of Books, Robert Worth reviews The Last Refuge along with Edmund Hull’s book, High Value Target. Worth opens like this: Yemen is […]
What’s the Big Idea? The famous “trolley problem” was a psychological experiment developed by Philippa Foot that involved a railway trolley headed toward five people who can’t get out of […]
In a discussion of the five major trends that will change the world over the next 25 years, star architect Daniel Libeskind recently told Conde Nast that the long-term trend toward urbanization will help […]