RSS feed for new writing posts from Fin Moorhouse. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/ Fin Moorhouse 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/book-reviews/ This is a mirror of my written book reviews on Goodreads. They are generated using the .csv file of reviews which Goodreads lets your export. Here’s the code I used if you’re interested. All by... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/book-reviews/.) 2025-12-27T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2025-b/ Books and music I enjoyed from the second half of 2025. Ordering remains arbitrary. Let me know if you find something from this list that you end up liking! Books (Or skip to music →) Watership Down... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2025-b/.) 2025-12-01T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/consciousness-and-ai/ Introduction The illusion is irresistible. Behind every face there is a self. We see the signal of consciousness in a gleaming eye and imagine some ethereal space beneath the vault of the skull lit... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/consciousness-and-ai/.) 2025-08-04T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/project/better-futures-essay-series/ ‘Better Futures’ is a series of essays about cause prioritisation and axiology, for Forethought. I co-authored two of the essays with Will MacAskill: ‘No Easy Eutopia’, and ‘Convergence and... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/project/better-futures-essay-series/.) 2025-07-02T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2025-a/ Books and music I enjoyed from the first half of 2025. Previous lists: 2024 (second half) 2024 (first half) 2023 (second half) 2023 (first half) 2022 (second half) 2022 (first half) 2021 (full... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2025-a/.) 2025-03-11T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/project/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion/ ‘Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion’ is a paper I co-authored with Will MacAskill, for Forethought. You can read the report on the Forethought website here, and you can download a PDF version... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/project/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion/.) 2025-01-17T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/moral-mountaineering/ Sometimes we have the opportunity to change the world, and we care about changing the world for the better, but we’re worried about our efforts backfiring and being counterproductive. I don’t want to... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/moral-mountaineering/.) 2024-12-22T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2024-b/ Books and music I enjoyed from the second half of 2024. Previous lists: 2024 (first half) 2023 (second half) 2023 (first half) 2022 (second half) 2022 (first half) 2021 (full year) Ordering remains... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2024-b/.) 2024-12-12T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/mirrored-life/ In a report in Science Policy Forum, more than 30 leading scientists(sidenote: Including Jack W. Szostak, John Glass, Kate Adamala, Michael Kay George Church, and Craig Venter, many of whom originally... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/mirrored-life/.) 2024-09-12T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/order-without-design/ I recently read Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities by urban economist Alain Bertaud.(sidenote: Don’t judge books on their cover, yes. But are beautiful covers no guide to which books you... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/order-without-design/.) 2024-07-18T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/x-risk-scepticism/ Recently I stumbled on this post, arguing ‘in favour of exploring nagging doubts about x-risk(sidenote: Meaning “existential risk”; risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s longterm... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/x-risk-scepticism/.) 2024-06-30T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2024-a/ Music, books, and writing I enjoyed from the first half of 2024. Previous lists: 2023 (second half) 2023 (first half) 2022 (second half) 2022 (first half) 2021 (full year) Ordering remains... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2024-a/.) 2024-05-27T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/tractability/ Summary: for some problems in the world, efforts towards those problems pay off in a big way only once progress on the problem passes some threshold — once the problem is ‘solved’. We can estimate how... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/tractability/.) 2024-04-28T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/sims/ Summary Here’s a thought. If digital minds eventually vastly outnumber real humans, why aren’t we them? I think that question can be read in two ways. First, we might accept that there will be many... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/sims/.) 2024-04-21T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/fhi/ The lights are out at the Future of Humanity Institute. Anders Sandberg has put together a ‘final report’ on FHI, some oral history on how FHI grew up and what it was like to be there. There is also a... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/fhi/.) 2024-03-18T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/japan/ I’m back from a great trip to Japan (specifically Honshu, the main island). Below are some things I learned(sidenote: Blanket caveat that I don’t really know what I’m talking about and I am not... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/japan/.) 2024-01-14T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/go-east/ Here’s a puzzle: Imagine you begin a journey in Seattle WA, facing exactly due east. Then start traveling forward, in a straight line along the Earth’s surface. You will travel across North America,... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/go-east/.) 2023-12-22T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2023-b/ Media I enjoyed from the second half of 2023. Previous lists: 2023 (first half) 2022 (second half) 2022 (first half) 2021 (full year) Ordering remains arbitrary. Let me know if you find something... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2023-b/.) 2023-11-13T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/richard-bruns/ I recently spoke to public health economist Dr. Richard Bruns about indoor air quality — why it’s a big deal, and what we can do about it. I learned a lot and I think the topic is important, so I made... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/richard-bruns/.) 2023-10-30T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/future-people/ When someone is born, chemical parts once scattered across the world converge to form a human. Days, years, and decades before, those atoms were always somewhere in the world. I recently got curious... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/future-people/.) 2023-10-11T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/chuck-feeney/ Philanthropist Chuck Feeney died on October 9, at 92. He founded one of the largest private charitable foundations in history, giving away his entire fortune within his lifetime. He was almost... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/chuck-feeney/.) 2023-07-23T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/guive-assadi-conversation/ I recently spoke to Guive Assadi about a recent paper of his called ‘Will Humanity Choose Its Future?’, as part of the podcast I do. I thought it was a productive conversation, so I’m sharing the... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/guive-assadi-conversation/.) 2023-06-30T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2023-a/ Media I enjoyed from the first half of 2023. Previous lists: 2021 (full year) 2022 (first half) 2022 (second half) Ordering remains arbitrary. Let me know if you find something from this list that... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2023-a/.) 2023-04-30T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/clean-air/ The excellent report(sidenote: By Gavriel Kleinwaks, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, Jam Kraprayoon, and Josh Morrison) from Rethink Priorities and 1Day Sooner was my main source for this (here’s a... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/clean-air/.) 2023-04-09T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/news/ I think that some people feel obliged to read the news, and that they don’t need to. Reading the news (for perhaps hours per week) might feel virtuous or necessary, but mostly I think it is... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/news/.) 2023-04-06T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/rory-stewart-givedirectly/ I recently got to speak with Rory Stewart, on the podcast I co-host with my friend Luca. Rory is now President of the charity GiveDirectly, so we spoke about ending poverty by scaling unconditional... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/rory-stewart-givedirectly/.) 2023-02-25T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/more-projects/ I recently wrote about some EA projects I’d like to see (also on the EA Forum). This went well! I suggested I’d write out a few more half-baked ideas sometime. As with the previous post, I make no... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/more-projects/.) 2023-01-20T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/wwotf-summary/ This is a summary for a popular audience of the book What We Owe The Future, by William MacAskill. The ‘overall summary’ section is a 5–10 minute read, and the remaining sections summarise individual... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/wwotf-summary/.) 2023-01-15T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/future-generations/ Notep]:my-1"> In 2021, to mark its 75th anniversary, the United Nations released a report called '‘Our Common Agenda’. Among other proposals, it called for a ‘Declaration on Future Generations’. This... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/future-generations/.) 2022-12-12T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2022-b/ This is me listing things I enjoyed reading / hearing / watching from the first half of 2022. Here are my highlights for the first half of 2022, and for all of 2021. Ordering remains arbitrary. Let me... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2022-b/.) 2022-11-05T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/podcast-advice/ People sometimes ask me for advice about starting their own podcast. In this page, I discuss the process behind the podcast I co-host. I’ll give some general advice, offer some technical details, and... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/podcast-advice/.) 2022-10-10T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/carl-sagan-quotations/ Carl Sagan (1934–1996) was an astronomer and science communicator. He organised the first physical messages to space (the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record), presented the hugely popular TV... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/carl-sagan-quotations/.) 2022-06-30T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2022-a/ Cultural signalling, round two! This is me listing things I enjoyed reading / hearing / watching from the first half of 2022. Here are my highlights for all of 2021. Ordering remains arbitrary. Let me... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2022-a/.) 2022-04-28T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/convex-altruism/ Summary Many of the original insights of effective altruism are insights about diminishing returns, especially from concave functions. In particular, ideas about concavity motivate the concept of... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/convex-altruism/.) 2022-03-13T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/ea-projects/ I think sharing half-baked ideas is an underrated practice (see my post on research ideas)(sidenote: Typical caveats apply: make you’re not doing accidental harm by spreading bad ideas.). So I’ve... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/ea-projects/.) 2021-12-28T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2021/ I’ve enjoyed others’ roundups of the media they’ve recently enjoyed (example). I’ve discovered some amazing books, music, and films this way (for the same reason recommendations from friends tend to... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/media-2021/.) 2021-12-20T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/research/ I have a backlog of half-baked ideas for potentially interesting research projects, and it doesn’t make much sense to keep them to myself. In part, I’ve written some of these ideas down as a kind of... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/research/.) 2021-10-13T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/asteroids/ Notep]:my-1"> Recently, I’ve been working on a problem profile about space governance for 80,000 Hours. This post is about a small part of that topic: deflecting asteroids and comets. Assessing the... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/asteroids/.) 2021-09-17T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/our-common-agenda/ I co-wrote this summary with Avital Balwit. You can also find this post on the Effective Altruism Forum. Introduction and Key Points On September 10th, the Secretary General of the United Nations... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/our-common-agenda/.) 2021-07-26T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/longterm-institutions/ Notep]:my-1"> I co-wrote this article with Luca Righetti for the Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art. The full title is Institutions for the Long Run: Taking Future Generations Seriously in... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/longterm-institutions/.) 2021-03-18T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/x-risk-history/ Notep]:my-1"> I wrote the following article to accompany an interview I recently did with the intellectual historian Thomas Moynihan for a podcast I co-host with Luca Righetti. You can also read it... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/x-risk-history/.) 2021-01-26T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/longtermism/ Notep]:my-1"> You can now read this introduction to longtermism on effectivealtruism.org. This essay has now been translated to Turkish and French. ‘Longtermism’ refers to a set of ethical views... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/longtermism/.) 2021-01-12T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/protein-alternatives/ Notep]:my-1"> I wrote the following article reflecting on a recent conversation I had with Bruce Friedrich, for a podcast I co-host with Luca Righetti. You can also read it alongside the recording on... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/protein-alternatives/.) 2020-12-08T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/peter-singer/ Notep]:my-1"> I wrote the following article reflecting on a recent conversation I had with the philosopher Peter Singer, for a podcast I co-host with Luca Righetti. You can also read it alongside the... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/peter-singer/.) 2020-11-11T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/well-being/ Notep]:my-1"> I was recently asked by the Happier Lives Institute to write a very short introduction to the philosophy of well-being for their website. I’ve reproduced the article below, but you can... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/well-being/.) 2020-11-02T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/scale-norming/ For my final year undergrad philosophy dissertation, I wrote about an apparently neglected problem relating to the measurement of subjective well-being. You might find this interesting (i) if you care... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/scale-norming/.) 2020-10-02T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/moral-uncertainty/ I just read the recently published ‘Moral Uncertainty’ by Will MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord. It’s a thoughtful survey of a nascent field in moral philosophy, and a key contribution to the... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/moral-uncertainty/.) 2020-09-29T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/existential-risk/ Notep]:my-1"> I wrote the following article reflecting on an interview I recently conducted with Dr S.J. Beard for a podcast I co-host with Luca Righetti. You can also read it alongside the recording... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/existential-risk/.) 2020-08-23T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/micropayments/ Something about our relationship with content on the Web has quietly turned sour. It took more than one form: ads have inflated and spilled out over the pages they occupy, sometimes blending with the... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/micropayments/.) 2020-08-17T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/causal-closeness/ A shorter version of this post can be found on the EA forum, where you can leave a comment. There’s a decent-sized psychological literature investigating factors which influence charitable donations.... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/causal-closeness/.) 2020-07-24T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/jaime-sevilla-interview/ I recently interviewed Jaime Sevilla Molina, a researcher focusing on forecasting the impacts of new technologies and social interventions, for a podcast I co-host with Luca Righetti. We then wrote an... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/jaime-sevilla-interview/.) 2020-07-09T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/10-philosophy/ I can say, without irony, that I loved learning about philosophy during my undergrad degree. But among those only peering into the world of academic philosophy from a safe distance, I imagine the... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/10-philosophy/.) 2020-06-26T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/ea-review/ I recently picked up a fairly recent collection of articles on philosophical topics in effective altruism, called Effective Altruism – Philosophical Issues. I really enjoyed it, and figured it might... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/ea-review/.) 2020-04-25T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/unsung-heroism/ Wet markets Huanan Seafood Market is a Chinese ‘wet market’ selling animals live and dead, wild and domesticated – from badgers to birds to bats and pangolins. There is a strong case for severely... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/unsung-heroism/.) 2020-04-10T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/mwa/ May Week Alternative is an initiative encouraging students to celebrate the post-exam period by donating a significant amount of money to charity. After the donations period, they host a summer party... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/mwa/.) 2020-03-24T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/precipice/ I recently finished reading Toby Ord’s new book ‘The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity’. The book discusses the risks of catastrophic events that destroy all or nearly all of... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/precipice/.) 2020-02-25T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/signalling/ I recently interviewed Dan Williams about signaling theories of misinformation for the podcast I co-host called Hear This Idea. I found the whole thing extremely interesting and spent a fair bit of... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/signalling/.) 2020-02-01T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/ea-blogs/ I thought it might be useful to organise the EA-related blogs I have discovered and enjoyed so far, roughly arranged by topic. I will revisit this and add to it when I have more to add. Some are in... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/ea-blogs/.) 2019-12-19T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/stories-for-good/ Does thinking about ethics make you more ethical? Do you have an intuitive reaction to that question? I did – I would have said yes: that’s basically why many people do ethics. If you are unsure, what... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/stories-for-good/.) 2019-12-01T00:00:00Z https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/repugnant-conclusion/ Since the publication of Derek Parfit’s 1984 Reasons and Persons, the last three decades or so have witnessed a surge of interest in the field of population ethics. One of the classic problems in... (Read the full post at: https://www.finmoorhouse.com/writing/repugnant-conclusion/.)