“We progressives annoyed the average American into fascism”

It is surprisingly hard to find this data going back to 1970.

 

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

Is there anything someone won't believe? That is not snark. It is a real question. 

“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

I'm not even talking about thing like vaccines helping humans (or that the world is round). I'm talking about simple, absolute facts, like the obvious fact that average human is far better off today than ever before (i.e., much less likely to be starving, living in poverty, or dying young).

Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

Professional joke Paul Ehrlich might be best known for losing a public bet with Julian Simon - a bet for which Ehrlich set the terms. But his life has been one long lie.

Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980 when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.6 years).

Not surprisingly, Ehrlich refuses to face facts to this day; this tweet is from 2023:

Paul R. Ehrlich

@PaulREhrlich

60 Minutes extinction story has brought the usual right-wing out in force.  If I'm always wrong so is science, since my work is always peer-reviewed, including the POPULATION BOMB and I've gotten virtually every scientific honor. Sure I've made some mistakes, but no basic ones

10:14 AM · Jan 3, 2023

But this post isn't (another) rant against one "peer-reviewed" quack who has consistently said thing like:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

This is a post about why, in 2026, the United States is fully ruled by horrible humans.

“In ten years [i.e. 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”

When the Left gets things wrong (very very wrong), we don't admit our errors. Not even to ourselves.

“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.”

If you tell someone something that turns out to be super-wrong, but you continue to insist you're actually right, any sane person will no longer trust you or your peer-reviewing allies. 

Especially when you have actively called for policies that actually would have caused millions of people to starve to death:

In 1967, Ehrlich called to cut off emergency food aid to India as “hopeless.”

“India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.”

(India now produces more than enough food to feed its population of nearly 1.5 billion. The liberal media still focuses only the negative. There is plenty to be done, but food production isn't the problem.)

Life expectancy, India

Again, this isn't about Ehrlich. It is about liberals and the liberal popular media, which continues to promote him, e.g., 60 Minutes in 2022.

Serious question: Why would someone trust anyone who defends Ehrlich, or media source that gives Ehrlich a platform?

Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

I bring this up because I recently made the observation that Ehrlich has been embarrassingly wrong about everything, a clearly true statement. I received this reply:

Yeah, simply quoting Ehrlich is all just a right (wright?) wing conspiracy to smear him.

From John and Hank Green, quoted here:

Fewer children under five will die this year [globally] than have died in any year during at least the last 4,000 years. 2000 BCE, when the population was only maybe 100 million, might be the last time so few kids died. 

How is this not the biggest story in the world? But this never shows up on TikTok or Instagram or Twitter. 

In my last job, I wrote an article where I documented the many many times scientists had said humanity only had X years before Earth hits a "tipping point," or a "point of no return." (Example from 2009.) Again and again and again, humanity keeps blowing through those dates, and the world doesn't end.

But you can’t go a day without seeing more claims like this, made with absolute certainty.

Global life expectancy. Simple fact.

Look, I'm not here to dunk on Kaleberg. Being honest and facing facts isn't good in-and-of itself; I'm not saying "Lying is always bad!" (Although always following dogma is bad.)

Being honest about the state of the world is important for two reasons:

1. Elections matter. Continuing to exaggerate and lie (and scold) very directly drives away the median voter. Racist, hateful xenophobes now run the richest, most powerful nation that has ever existed, because, to quote lefty comic Marc Maron, "We annoyed the average American into fascism." 

It's funny 'cuz it's not funny. 

Trump and Co. don't just annoy us. They're causing immense harm in the world.  

2. Things only ever get better on the margin because some people are willing to actually do the work, rather than just scream. As noted here:

Ask yourself, “Why didn’t any of [Ehrlich et al's promises of doom] come to pass?” It wasn’t because of “radical changes in almost every aspect of global society.” It was because of pragmatic, practical, politically-possible policies.

(The "Left" language above is lazy, as pointed out here by Carl Phillips.) 

In addition to Carbon-Based Cruelty, more:

Why Paul Ehrlich got everything wrong
And why we should still listen to warnings about environmental catastrophes  

18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day in 1970, Expect More This Year

I hate it when the right is right

2025 #1: Idiot or Fanatic?

The most popular 2025 post: 

You know where to find that quote.

(Below is basically a rehash of this post.)

Several people I know badmouth alcohol as "poison." Of course, you get the same thing from many vegans about animal products, including the claim "Casein is the most relevant chemical carcinogen ever identified" - to which tobacco says, "LOLZ: Hold my beer." 

[Edit: This Freakonomics episode presents dairy as a wonder food.] 

This is the general pattern - what I do is correct. If you do less than I do, you're a "poison drinking" idiot. If you do more, you are a crazy fanatic.

My current take on the evidence is that physical fitness is the most important determinant of healthspan. Everyone has their "studies" to "prove" their personal view, but the numbers here convinced me that diet is not the single greatest factor.

Do you spend several hours every day doing optimal exercises? Do you get in just the right amount of Zone 2 activity, with regular blood draws during exercise to measure your lactate levels? Do you do perfect VO2 Max workouts? Do you do all the balance work recommended? Do you lift the right weights in the right way at the right time? Do you work walking on a treadmill, never sitting? Do you have a glucose monitor stabbing you regularly to make sure your levels stay optimal? Do you really get the optimal amount and quality of protein? Have you perfected mindfulness to keep your stress low? Do you get the optimal amount of sleep without any aid at all? Are you the perfect BMI and percentage body fat? Have you filled your life with a solid, loving social network? Do you care only about the things you can impact, and let everything else bad fall away with no impact on your mental health?* 

Wait. You don't do every single one of those things?

How can you stand yourself, you idiot?

Of course, I'm joking.

It took me a long time to get to this point, but I don't care if anyone thinks I'm an idiot. I don't care if others think or act like me. For example, I don't care if you drink alcohol, or do shrooms, or gorge on tater tots, or skydive, or worship Vishnu, or practice autoerotic asphyxiation, or run ultramarathons, or watch trashy TV.

What I do care about is suffering. 

It doesn't matter at all if another person's beliefs or actions correlate with mine.

What matters is if they are causing suffering, to themselves or (especially) to others. 

I don't know how to change anyone's mind to have them cause less suffering and suffer less themselves. But I do know that being right is clearly not the way to reduce suffering.

Genuine caring is better. True kindness is better. No judgement. We need to start there. 

It is very hard, I know. But it would be a huge advance.

This whole thing is worth reading

This Gila Monster has made more correct predictions than Ehrlich. And done less damage to humanity, too.

Forecasting Follies 2025

And I'm not just saying that because he totally takes Paul Ehrlich apart. It is worth understanding just how bad we are at predicting the future!

"I've seen the best minds of my generation..." (Why the world is so much worse than it needs to be)

Our World In Data, via Hank and John Green's newsletter - the Malthusian Population Bomb Doom Dogma continues to be a lie on every single continent. (Click for larger.)
When was the last time you saw facts like these?
More good news, from Vox of all places.

Song: The Fireman (Paul McCartney) - Lovers In A Dream (from the great album Electric Arguments)

Beat poet Alan Ginsberg's 1956 "Howl" begins: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness."

Today, many of the best minds are busy destroying others' minds by driving them to madness. At companies like Facebook and Twitter, many of the smartest people spend their day figuring out how to push our rage and fear buttons. 

Human evolutionary heritage has left us with minds that are easily manipulated. So to make Zuckerberg, Musk, Trump, Murdoch et al. richer and more powerful, we are fed a steady diet of posts and stories that stoke our impotent outrage and unquenchable fear. 

And we gobble it down. Click click click like repost share forward forward forward.

"Impotent" is the key word. Musk and Trump et al. don't care if we are angry at them, as long as we are focusing on things that don't matter (GMOs, The Epstein Files, celebrity tweets, nematodes, cross-contamination, AI water use, Cecil the lion) and / or we can't do anything about (Gaza, carbon emissions, "existential" [sic] risks,  AI in general, "inequality," etc. etc. etc.). 

The example that just came across my (very limited and curated) feed is microplastics. People literally lose their minds; one person asked Fraser Cain of Universe Today if microplastics are "the great filter" - how every single technological civilization in the universe inevitably destroys itself. Even though we really can't do anything about microplastics and there is no actual evidence of real harm, many on the left spend far more time obsessing about microplastics than actually improving their health via exercise and diet!

To emphasize: Unlike the huge impacts of diet and exercise, there are no proven, significant health harms from microplastics - just the assumption that microplastics must be bad! As Vox's Dylan Scott summarizes the underlying, evidence-free assumption: "These manmade materials can’t be good for us." 

Their logic is simple: man-made = inherently poison. 

Like vaccines, stents, antibiotics, cochlear implants, statins, dental fillings, biosynthetic insulin, The Pill, folic acid, etc. 

The "terrifying" news isn't that there is smoking/cancer-level correlation of microplastics and disease (and there is definitely no microplastics signal in the mortality data over time). 

Instead, the terror comes from people mindlessly screaming "Microplastics are everywhere!" 

And now, it turns out that those "microplastics everywhere!" stories are not true! Even the (liberal) Guardian and Doom.com (i.e., Vox; more) have noted that these "microplastic are everywhere!" studies are bogus. They admit this even while they continue with the scare tactics; e.g., "plastic pollution has also soared, with 8bn tonnes now contaminating the planet from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest ocean trench." 

"Pollution" that is "contaminating the planet." 

Remember: People don't want deoxyribonucleic acid in their food. (That link is really worth clicking.)

I repeatedly bring up our futile fussing because in a world of immense unnecessary and preventable suffering, loads of liberals spend their limited time and energy impotently obsessing over and raging about minutia and distractions. This obviously leads to vastly more unhappiness. (I would bet that the health effects of the anxiety and stress that come from "Microplastics!" is worse than anything microplastics are actually doing. Another example of how we are destroying our own mental health.)

More importantly, focusing on the wrong things keeps caring individuals from doing work that can actually make the world a better place for those truly suffering.

The defining action of today's online "liberals" seems to be to ignore things over which they actually could have actual agency and impact. Every day, I wonder if it isn't simple self-sabotage, but rather the manipulation of infiltrators and enemies foreign and domestic who continue to profit from our rage and distraction. 

PS: On January 14, I logged out to work on this post. When I logged back in, I got this email:

I know this [below] is the kind of stupid shit you are talking about re: our movement. The comments of “boycott them” are even more eyeroll inducing …apparently a couple products have beeswax now. The comments (just read a few) are sort of a purity olympics. 

Our friend's commentary: 
"BREAKING NEWS 2% OF PRODUCTS ARE NOT VEGAN IN THIS STORE EVEN THOUGH 99% OF PRODUCTS IN ALL OTHER STORES ARE NOT VEGAN ALREADY. BUT LET'S FOCUS ON THIS ONE"

2025 #2: Doing Good Better Per Marginal Dollar

Interesting post about housing prices. Tl;dr - you shouldn't compare houses or living conditions. My five-person family had one bathroom and no air conditioning; Anne's family had six people and a similar house! The mortgage rate when we moved in late 1979 was nearly 13%!

OTOH, this is interesting, that housing prices are following the average income, not the median. 

The 2nd most popular 2025 post: 

Correctly realizing that "Go Vegan!" has failed (to put it kindly), a number of people are focusing more on welfare reforms. This has taken the form of encouraging people to "offset" their support of factory farming by donating to efforts for welfare reforms. Here is a good overview by Kenny Torrella. 

As noted by Kenny, Lewis Bollard helped raise millions of dollars for these "offset" efforts with one podcast. I am thrilled this money didn't go to "Vegans" (or AI "risks,"* or just sit in bank accounts), but will also note that one podcast probably raised more money than One Step for Animals has brought in over the course of its entire existence. 

It seems to me unlikely that One Step's reasoning and advocacy are currently doing less good per marginal dollar than more funding for welfare reforms. I could be wrong.

To see why, here are some excerpts from a recent Robert Yaman column. His context is climate change, which readers know I care less than zero about. But Robert's statistics are worth considering when deciding how to best make a difference in the world; please click here if you agree:

Mortality among broiler chickens currently stands at roughly 6%. Over 500 million chickens die before slaughter in the US each year (which, for perspective, is more than all the other land animals that we actually eat) 

Broiler mortality has increased from 3.7% to 6% over the last 12 years.

Chickens raised for meat are bred to grow extremely quickly, which puts intense pressure on their legs, often leading to bacterial infection in their developing bones and joints. One major consequence is lameness—poor leg health that makes it agonizing for birds to walk. The pain is often so intense that a chicken will die of thirst rather than walk. Up to 225 million chickens in the US die each year from this condition.

*

How to lie by omission, cancer edition

The horror of vaccines. (At the links, the main story is below the intro.)

Many Doomers point to rates of cancer to "prove" how terrible things are (ignoring, of course, life expectancy). From Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data, via Hank and John Green's newsletter:

Over the past four decades, the global number of people dying from cancer each year has doubled. This can look like the world is losing its battle with cancer: people are more likely to develop it, and we’re getting no better at treating it. This isn’t true.

There are, of course, almost 4 billion more people in the world than in 1980. And many of those people are older. This matters a lot because cancer rates rise steeply with age.

The chart shows three different measures. Total deaths just count how many people died from cancer; this is the number that has doubled. Crude death rates, shown in yellow, adjust for population size; the increase shrinks from more than 100% to around 20%. Age-adjusted rates, shown in blue, also account for the fact that countries have older populations today; we can see that the fully age-adjusted rate has actually fallen by more than 20%.

It means that for the average person, the likelihood of dying from cancer in any given year is now lower than it was for someone of a similar age in the past. The world still has a long way to go in preventing and treating cancer, but it’s wrong to think that no progress has been made.

Q on Hard Determinism, My Least Popular View

Winter in the desert.

As you know, I've written a lot about our lack of free will. I don't do this to say, "Look how insightful I am! I'm just so much smarter than the rubes." 

No, I write about free will because if we recognize reality, we can be much happier (full version) and also more effective at reducing suffering. Win/win!

Here is Q (ChatGPT) on why hard determinism is so rare and unpopular (full interaction):

Me: Most of our friends are atheists and/or vegan. But very few of them are hard determinists. It makes me think there are more vegans than hard determinists.

Q: I think your intuition is almost certainly right — and by a large margin.

Short version

In the U.S., there are many more vegans than non-compatibilist hard determinists. Likely an order of magnitude more.

Rough numbers (U.S.)

Vegans

Most credible estimates put U.S. vegans at roughly:

1–3% of adults (depending on definition and year) [1% at best]

Even if we take the low end (true, stable, ethical vegans), you’re still talking millions of people.

Hard (non-compatibilist) determinists

As we discussed:

• Starting with ~1–2% at most
• Possibly <1% if you require [which I do]:
• rejection of compatibilism after it’s explained
• stable endorsement
• acceptance of moral implications (no just deserts, no ultimate blame)

That’s plausibly hundreds of thousands, not millions.

So yes: Vegans almost certainly outnumber hard determinists — probably by 5×–10×, maybe more.

Why this makes sense psychologically

Veganism asks you to give up:

• Taste pleasure
• Social convenience
• Cultural norms

But it preserves:

• Moral agency
• Praise/blame
• “I chose the right thing”
• A heroic self-narrative [natch]

In fact, veganism often strengthens moral identity. 

Hard determinism asks you to give up:

• Ultimate moral responsibility
• Just-desert-based praise and blame
• The feeling of being a “prime mover”
• A deep, implicit sense of authorship

That’s a much more fundamental sacrifice.

As you’ve noticed, many people are happy to say:

• “Animals shouldn’t suffer”
• “God doesn’t exist”

But they recoil at:

• “No one could have done otherwise — including me”

Your social circle is actually a perfect test case

Your friends already:

• Question tradition
• Reject religious authority
• Make ethically demanding lifestyle choices
• Accept unpopular views (veganism!)

And still, very few accept hard determinism.

That strongly suggests the bottleneck isn’t intelligence or courage — it’s the psychological cost.

One way to put it (very “you”)

• Veganism challenges what we owe others.
• Hard determinism challenges what we are.

Most people will go much farther on the first than the second.

2025 #3: Q Asks: Got Back?

Bonus link: More Doom Dogma goes down the drain.
(It never made sense to point to wild animals dying as proof that the world is ending. All animals die, including charismatic megafauna, and generally die horrible deaths.) 

More good news. Counter to the below.

The 3rd most popular 2025 post:

This post was drafted on Monday by “Q” (ChatGPT) because I’ve been stuck in bed for most of three days (and counting) with my back out. So I used voice recognition on my phone to brainstorm with Q (who, by the way, voice recognition insists on calling “chatchee BT.”) The irony is that a few days before this, I was, by some (but not all) measures, more fit than I had ever been.

Like other times in my life, my lower back has again decided No More Mr. Nice Guy. The pain has been so intense that I have almost thrown up on several occasions. At times, even the smallest movement has felt like a series of knives in the back, like I'm being filleted. 

And the thing is — this isn’t some once-in-a-lifetime medical catastrophe. It’s mundane. People throw out their backs every day. Yet at times, the suffering is absolutely overwhelming.

Lying here, I have found myself wondering: Have the folks who argue expected values — shrimp or insects or “the worst product is the one that involves bees” — ever really suffered?  

(And yes, I recently saw someone argue that the cruelest animal product is … honey. Not veal. Not foie gras. Honey. Because "numbers." SMH. [BTW, they are off by orders of magnitude!])

Seriously: I just have to doubt that anyone who’s been in enough pain to vomit, or to pass out, or to want to die — all of which I’ve experienced — could truly believe the ethical focus of their life must be bugs. 

To be clear, I’m not saying insects don’t matter. If it turns out they can suffer, then yes, their suffering matters. But contending that guesses and equations should outweigh the certain, profound, unnecessary suffering that is right in front of us — that’s just flabbergasting.

Yes, philosophy and reason matter. They keep us from only caring about ourselves or thinking the universe revolves around our cat. (Though Dusty would strongly disagree.)

"You take that back!"

But when ethics becomes math and drifts off into pure abstraction — divorced from the messy, visceral reality of actual, profound, tractable suffering — we have really lost the thread.

Thinking beyond our bubble is right and necessary. (Sorry, Dusters.) But when we forget what extreme pain feels like, we end up ignoring suffering that could actually be alleviated right now. And that’s the opposite of progress:  less compassion, more suffering, and no meaning.

(Blog's titles "Got Back" = reference to The Beatles = bugs.)

Taco Bell!

10 seconds to laughter. H/t Ken.

"Taco Bell is underrated. They offer inexpensive, tasty, not-terrible-for-you animal-friendly fast food." p. 256

So often in our travels, Taco Bell has been the only option for vegan food. (We like to be off the beaten path.) But I never really thought about all the different options you can get there, until I came across PlanetlyVegan's / Maggie Eats Vegan Instagram! She has a whole series on Taco Bell orders I would have never considered. Examples: Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 20 - 10/10. 

Now I'm hungry! 

Get things grilled - I never knew that! All these things can be done in the app or on the DIY order screens at Taco Bells, as opposed to asking the cashier.

(She also regularly makes a point against the Vegan Police; example. But even in her comments, people are like "But..."  😵 )

Repeat:

I would greatly appreciate it if you could take a minute to let me know how this blog can be more useful to you.

Please reply to this email (if you get it over email), comment on this post (you can do so anonymously), directly email, or otherwise contact me with feedback and suggestions for the year ahead. (I still don't know how to best use this blog and my substack.) 

When we believe absurdities, we commit atrocities

Doesn't the shrimp know smoking is bad for your health??
Nano Banana gives a hat tip to C.M. Coolidge.

Many “effective altruists” and self-proclaimed utilitarians believe absurd things, leading to many more individuals suffering intensely. 

Absurdity 1: Ego Overwhelms Imagination

The first absurdity is projecting ourselves into every animate organism. Everything that moves with “intention” seems to be a small human, capable of agony like we are (e.g. the suffering described in Day 30 of Losing My Religion, p. 521 of the pdf). 

We naturally and irresistibly project our feelings onto others, no matter how different. For example, ignoring (or lying about) the actual science, the vocal EA “vanguard” insist shrimp suffer “torturous” deaths.$. (Last second update: Rob Velzeboer analyzes the work cited by the shrimpers. tl;dr - the actual research does not say what you think it says.)  

Digression: Yet another attempt to explain the absurdity of the “torturous” view of shrimp et al.

Recently, I was “triggered” by researchers who claim that plants have “minds” and thus ethical relevance. (And, of course, the nematode and face mites crowd.)

Not to beat a dead horse chestnut, but I’ve clearly failed in my attempts to make these points, so I’ll try again:

A fertilized human egg does not have a mind, nor the capacity to have a Day-30-level “torturous” experience. 

At some point, the fertilized egg can become a conscious being capable of experiencing a Day 30 torturous experience. 

Does this developing blastocyst (embryo, fetus, baby, toddler) go from having zero subjective experience directly to the capacity for full horrific experience? Would this happen with the development of the first neuron? The 1,000th? The 100,000th? The 10,000,000th? The 86 billionth? 

The ability to have subjective experiences – specifically the ability to experience intense suffering – is not binary. It can’t be. It goes from nothing to torturous gradually over the course of the development of a human. This also happened over the course of evolution. The ability to suffer increases with the development of more complex brains.* There’s simply no other way it could be.

It is absurd to think that a rock or a plant or a fertilized egg or an embryo or a fetus or even a newborn or dog has the exact same capacity to suffer that a normal human adult has.** (Sure, some people believe things like this, just as some believe the earth is flat, god(s) likes certain people best, nature is good, we have the ability to change the course of the cosmos, etc.) 

But I also think that many people who say everything with nerves can experience “torture” make these claims as a way to be provocative and / or to show how “smart” and “open minded” they are. Others think this way in order to have a simple, binary view of the world. (Walter Veit is pretty great on this; we certainly don't agree on everything, but he's not just following convention.)

Mostly, though, we simply can’t help but project our feelings into a dog, a chicken, an ant, or a square moving on a screen.

Absurdity 2: Moral Solipsism

For my purposes here, solipsism is the belief that my consciousness is the only thing that exists. Moral solipsism is the belief that what exists in my consciousness is the only object of moral consideration.

I first recognized the prevalence, absurdity, and destructiveness of moral solipsism when developing “Chicken Worlds” for Losing’s chapter, “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” (relevant section in the postscript below).

In short: Our minds add up pleasure and pain across individuals. We then claim that this sum – which is only a thought in our minds – is what we need to address with our “morality.” 

This is simply wrong. There is no entity experiencing the sum total of pain and pleasure – the sum is only an idea in our mind. This sum doesn’t exist in the real world. It is a falsehood, a fantasy. 

But many of us base our morality, our judgments, our values, our policies, and our choices on an illusion, on a lie.

How these Absurdities Lead to Atrocities

The first absurdity – equating all minds – very directly supports the continuation of our modern atrocities. Falsely claiming that shrimp suffer “torturous” deaths – when they actually have either no subjective experience or the faintest hint of suffering – has led to literally millions of dollars being spent on shrimp “welfare.” This money could actually have actually helped alleviate or prevent real, severe, soul-crushing suffering.*** 

The absurdity of moral solipsism similarly drives atrocities. Our minds fantasize the fever dream of moral sums and “expected values,” leading utilitarians to ignore actual torture in favor of their mental sums of minor suffering (or future hypothetical pleasure or pain). Many explicitly endorse more intense suffering if that suffering is “offset” by “enough” other “worth living” lives (e.g., arguing to torture chickens to “save” nematodes; see also “The Explicit EA Preference for Torture”).

Why?

I’ve written a lot about why this happens. But in short, we believe these absurdities for three reasons:

1. Our minds are not rational, and we are simply unable to recognize our personal cognitive biases and failures.
   We each are certain that we are rational and right. Everyone who thinks vaccines cause autism (rivers have moral value in and of themselves, “saving” humanity is an obvious good, Jesus loves them and will welcome them into Heaven, medicine is poison, veganism will cure everything, etc.) are certain they are logical and fact-based in their beliefs. The same goes for the shrimp “welfare, “save humanity,” and future robot crowds.
2. We want to feel good about ourselves. (This is the main reason.)
3. We’ve never actually experienced Day-30-level “torturous” suffering.

Conclusion: More a Warning than a Prescription

As I’ve written many times (including the conclusion of “Biting the Philosophical Bullet”), I don’t think that these insights lead to obvious philosophical, policy, or career outcomes. (But see "Confidence Levels or Degrees of Sentience?" by Walter Veit for policy implications.)

Yet having read 3+ years of “rebuttals” to “Biting the Philosophical Bullet,” I now feel much more strongly that utilitarianism, as practiced by many, is fatally flawed and is making the world a much worse place. 

I don’t want anyone to experience “torturous” suffering. That's my main desire! 

I do want everyone to stop playing mental math games and take truly tortuous suffering seriously. 

$ Shrimp are killed by being put into ice slurries. A quick googling shows that dying of hypothermia is one of the best (least painful) ways to die (for a human at least). That people aren't suffering is actually one of the dangers of hypothermia! 

* How do we know the brain leads to consciousness? Because we can manipulate conscious subjective experience by manipulating the structure and chemistry of the brain. Even with our excruciatingly limited understanding of the brain, we can dim consciousness, deepen it, distort it, dement and derange it, depress it, disengage it, dull it, diminish it, and destroy it with relatively small changes. 

** This is not to say that other animals are just dimmed version of normal adult humans. We don't even understand the diversity of human consciousness (e.g., try to imagine what it was like to be Rainman) let alone what it is like to be a bat or a dolphin. Many people have explored this in thoughtful ways, such as Ed Yong's magisterial An Immense World. 

And yes, there very well could be entities capable of much worse suffering than a normal adult human.

*** I don't exempt myself from this. As I discuss in the conclusion of "Biting the Philosophical Bullet," I worry all the time that One Step for Animals is not what I should do to help individuals experiencing intense suffering. But so far....

Postscript: Chicken Worlds, from Losing My Religions, p. 387 of the pdf

Imagine a universe that has only two worlds, World RR and World FL. In World RR, Ricky Rooster is the only sentient being and is suffering an absolutely miserable life.

This is bad. But where is it bad? In Ricky’s consciousness. And nowhere else.

On World FL, Rooster Foghorn is living in one forest and Rooster Leghorn is living in a separate forest. They are the World FL’s only sentient beings, and don’t know each other. Their lives are as bad as Ricky’s.

Our natural response is to think that World FL is twice as bad as World RR. But where could it possibly be twice as bad? Foghorn’s life is bad in his consciousness and nowhere else. Leghorn’s life is bad in his consciousness and nowhere else.

Where is their world twice as bad as Ricky’s?

Nowhere.

Okay, yes, I admit it is twice as bad in your mind and my mind. But we are not part of that universe. Imagine that these worlds are unknown to any other sentient being. Then there is simply nowhere that World FL is worse than World RR.

In this example, there are three worlds and only three worlds: one in each of their minds.

Please tell me where I am factually wrong. Seriously, I’m asking. My life would be much easier and happier if you did.

Don’t say the implications of this insight leads to absurd conclusions that offend our intuitions. I already know that! Just tell me where I am factually wrong. 

I know (oh, yes, I know) that this seems like it can’t possibly be right. This is because we can’t help but be utilitarian in this regard, just like we can’t help but feel like we are in control of our consciousness and our decisions and our choices.

But I can see no way around this simple fact: Morally-relevant “badness” (and goodness) exists only in the singular consciousness of an individual….

2025 #4: The End of Optimization

Freddie Mercury

The 4th most popular 2025 post:

(Side note: Interesting overview on Passkeys.)

A follow-up to my earlier post, "Idiot or Fanatic," this post, "Optimizing Ourselves to Death" from Of Dollars and Data is worth a quick read. 

If you've read Losing, you're familiar with some of my regrets along these lines, particularly that the work I did for decades, on balance, made the world worse. But I also obsessed over every penny. Literally -- I worried that I wasn't getting enough use out of individual Q-tips. Oy.

Few want to cause harm. But....

Link: Today's substack post re: last time I almost died / wanted to.

From Morgan Housel (although in his full post, he repeats the homeownership line, which seems to be a myth):

Most harm done to others is unintentional. I think the vast majority of people are good and well-meaning, but in a competitive and stressful world it’s easy to ignore how your actions affect others. 

One consequence of this is that it’s easy to underestimate bad things happening in the world. If I ask myself, “How many people want to cause harm?” I’d answer “very few.” If I ask, “How many people can do mental gymnastics to convince themselves that their actions are either not harmful or justified?” I’d answer … almost everybody. [Post on this scheduled.]

...

An iron rule of math is that 50% of the population has to be below average. [A point someone else has made, p. 357.] It’s true for income, intelligence, health, wealth, everything. And it’s a brutal reality in a world where social media stuffs the top 1% of moments of the top 1% of people in your face.

You can raise the quality of life for those below average, or set a floor on how low they can go. But when a majority of people expect a top 5% outcome [because of social media] the result is guaranteed mass disappointment.

...

I have a theory about nostalgia: It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the time.

How to use your free will

"Life is good, hooman."

Why be upset? 

This isn't snark or condescension. It's a question I'm struggling with. When I ask others, I get one of two responses:

1. "How can you not be upset? This is so upsetting!” 

But this is just circular reasoning. More importantly, this reaction denies us of the ability to grow and change with new information. 

By accepting “this is upsetting,” we are saying we are simply Pavlovian – see something, react automatically. But our brains give us the opportunity to process information, rather than just react.

Again: even though everything follows the laws of physics, our big brains still give us remarkable plasticity – the ability to learn, to incorporate new information, and to change how we respond. Not even ChatGPT responds the same to the same prompt. You can do better than ChatGPT, can't you?

In short, being upset just isn’t required.

If your free will can't be used to make you happier, what good is it?  😉

2. “How can you make a difference if you're not upset?”

If you think about this, it doesn't make sense. Adding to the quote on p. 229 here: 

“Taking in horror after horror doesn't make you a good person. Fury at current events doesn't make you a good person. Being upset doesn't make you a good person. 

“Making a difference makes you a good person.” 

Outrage is not virtue. Anger is not change. 

You don't have to be upset to work to reduce suffering. 

You just have to recognize and appreciate that suffering is bad. 

Being upset doesn't make things better. It makes things worse. 

I've noted this for decades in the context of animal advocacy, but it applies to everyone who wants a better world. From “A Meaningful Life”:

Society’s stereotype of animal advocates and vegans is a significant roadblock to widespread change. The word “vegan” rarely needs to be explained anymore; but unfortunately, some still use it as shorthand for one who is deprived, fanatical, and antisocial. This caricature guarantees that veganism won’t be considered – let alone adopted – on a wide scale.

Regrettably, the “angry vegan” image has some basis in reality. Not only have I known many obsessive, misanthropic vegans, I was one myself. My anger and self-righteousness gave many people a lifetime excuse to ignore the realities hidden behind their food choices.

As a reaction to what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses, very strong feelings, such as revulsion and outrage, are understandable and entirely justified. However, the question isn’t what is warranted, but rather, what actually helps animals. I have known hundreds of outraged activists who insisted, “Animal liberation by any means necessary! I’m willing to do anything!” Yet few of these people are still working toward animal liberation today.

If we truly want to have a fundamental, lasting impact on the world, we must deal with our emotions in a constructive way. We need to ask ourselves:

• Are we willing to direct our passion, rather than have it rule us?
• Are we willing to put the animals’ interests before our personal desires?
• Are we willing to focus seriously and systematically on effective advocacy?

It is not enough to be a vegan, or even a dedicated vegan advocate. We must remember the bottom line – reducing suffering – and actively be the opposite of the vegan stereotype. Just as we need everyone to look beyond the short-term satisfaction of following habits and traditions, we need to move past our sorrow and anger to optimal advocacy. We must learn “how to win friends and influence people,” so that we leave everyone we meet with the impression of a joyful individual leading a fulfilling and meaningful life.

2025 #5: Don't Fall for Nostalgia

Bonus: Funny Chicken Videos
The 5th most popular 2025 post: 

😵Holy Chicken! More Good News from Vox!  Don't fall for nostalgia. Even for the '90s.*

Similar to: Nostalgia is harmful

Ted Nordhaus: Why I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist

* I get much joy from memories from the 90s (example below), but I'm not bitter about the present.

Beeg disappointment

Happy 58th Birthday to Stephan Pastis! A great series of his Pearls Before Swine comic: