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Julia Galef

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Why we need a new word for “lazy”

The other day on Twitter I said: Here’s why this is important. In an ideal world, I claim, the way you would make decisions about how to spend your time would be something along the lines of: Think about what you like / dislike Think about the most efficient ways to get the [ ]

Insightful articles on free speech & social justice

This is a collection of articles that I think contribute some useful insight to the discourse on free speech and social justice. I find that most articles on this topic only argue for the importance of the one good the author cares most about — for example, “Free speech is important because that’s how we [ ]

Unpopular ideas about children

I’ve been compiling lists of “unpopular ideas,” things that seem weird or bad to most people (at least, to most educated urbanites in the United States, which is the demographic I know best). Because my collection of unpopular ideas became so long, I’ve broken it into categories. Below, I focus specifically on ideas about children. (Here [ ]

Nature shouldn’t have apologized for their editorial

I didn t fully agree with Nature s editorial this week, which argued that instead of removing statues of scientists who did cruel or racist things, we should leave them up, and add plaques discussing why those scientists are problematic. But I hate the response to the editorial even more. People called it offensive and said it [ ]

C’mon, not all disagreements are opportunities to change your own mind

Yesterday I tweeted about some of the reasons I engage in online arguments with people, even if there s no real hope of swaying them: The most common objection I got was this: You didn t mention the motivation of changing your own mind. Shouldn t you always be approaching arguments with open-minded curiosity, motivated by a desire [ ]

Unpopular ideas about crime and punishment

I’ve been compiling lists of “unpopular ideas,” things that seem weird or bad to most people (at least, to most educated urbanites in the United States, which is the demographic I know best). Because my collection of unpopular ideas became so long, I’ve broken it into categories. Below, I focus specifically on ideas about crime and [ ]

Unpopular ideas about politics and economics

I’ve been compiling lists of “unpopular ideas,” things that seem weird or bad to most people (at least, to most educated urbanites in the United States, which is the demographic I know best). Because my collection of unpopular ideas became so long, I’ve broken it into categories. Below, I focus specifically on ideas about political and [ ]

Unpopular ideas about social norms

I ve been compiling lists of unpopular ideas, things that seem weird or bad to most people (at least, to most educated urbanites in the United States, which is the demographic I know best). Even though I disagree with many of these ideas, I nevertheless think it’s valuable to practice engaging with ideas that seem weird [ ]

How I think about free speech: Four categories

Here s how I think about free speech. I see four levels of wrongness of speech, each of which merits a different reaction none, individual social consequences, official social consequences, and legal consequences. 1. No consequences. In this category are views I disagree with, but I can see how a reasonable person could hold that view, [ ]

Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

(I wrote this in reference to this memo and the ensuing uproar) First off, his argument had some flaws. For example, even if he was correct about personality differences between men and women being a factor in the gender imbalance in tech, he never made a case for why we shouldn t think other factors are even [ ]