Preface: As an academic philosopher, I’ve had the pleasure of interacting on multiple occasions with members of ‘the Rationalist Movement’, a contemporary community of thinkers interested in AI, cognitive science, and reasoning that has built up over the years around blogs like LessWrong, Overcoming Bias, and SlateStarCodex. As much as I admire the movement and even identify

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The Conclave of Elders of the city of Salemo considered themselves to be the most humane of consequentialists. While they took the doctrine of the greater good to be sacrosanct, they all swore a common vow never to lose sight of the individual. Yet they faced a perennial problem: every year, when new elected officials

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