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The report link has moved to: https://founderspledge.com/research/fp-climate-change

I also hope your faith in Bennett is well-placed, that whatever mix of vices led him to write vile antisemitic ridicule on an email list called 'morning hate' in 2016 bear little relevance to the man he was when with Leverage in ~~2018, or the man he is now.

Perhaps it'd be helpful for Bennett to publish a critique of alt-right ideas in Palladium Magazine?

• In Bennett's statement on Medium, he says now that he's Catholic, he condemns the views he espoused. If that's true, he should be glad to publish a piece which reduces their level of support.
• Since he used to espouse those views, he has intimate understanding of the psychology of those who hold them. So a piece he edits could help deconvert/deradicalize people more effectively than a piece edited by an outsider. And whatever persuaded him to abandon those views might also work on others.

Bennet might complain that publishing such a piece would put him in an impossible bind, because any attempt to find common ground with alt-righters, and explain what originally drew him to the movement to do effective deconversion, could be spun as "Jonah Bennett doubles down on alt-right ideology" for clicks. Bennet might also complain that publishing such a piece would make him a target for alt-right harassment. However, if Bennett is sincerely sorry for what he said, it seems to me that he should be willing to accept these risks. At least he could offer to publish a critique of the alt-right that's written by someone else.

If he does publish such a piece, I personally would be inclined to tentatively accept him back into civil society--but if he's unwilling to publish such a piece, I think it's reasonable to wonder if he's "hiding his true power level" and be suspicious/condemnatory.

I do feel we should have some sort of path to forgiveness for those who sincerely wish to leave extremist movements.

You might be interested in the following posts on the subject from Daily Nous, an excellent philosophy blog:

"Why Progress Is Slower In Philosophy Than In Science"

"How Philosophy Makes Progress (guest post by Daniel Stoljar)"

"How Philosophy Makes Progress (guest post by Agnes Callard)"

"Whether Philosophical Questions Can Be Answered"

"Convergence as Progress in Philosophy"

Same. Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to hearing more.

My understanding is that it's currently focused on nonprofits (in large part because it's much more logistically and legally complicated to send money to individuals)

Believing that my time is really valuable can lead to me making more wasteful decisions. Decisions like: "It is totally fine for me to buy all these expensive ergonomic keyboards simultaneously on Amazon and try them out, then throw away whichever ones do not work for me." Or "I will buy this expensive exercise equipment on a whim to test out. Even if I only use it once and end up trashing it a year later, it does not matter."

...

The thinking in the examples above worries me. People are bad at reasoning about when to make exceptions to rules like "try to behave in non-wasteful ways", especially when the exception is personally beneficial. And I think each exception can weaken your broader narrative about what you value and who you are.

I was brought up in a family that was very pro-don't-waste, and I've had an a lengthy shift towards "actually, 'not wasting'" just isn't very important. It's more of a carry-over from a time when a) humanity had a lot less ability to produce stuff, b) humanity had worse landfill technology than we have now."

Insofar as we do produce too much waste, it's mostly at a corporate/organizational level than something that makes sense for individuals to prioritize.

It's not that I think people should be making exceptions to rules like 'try to behave in non-wasteful ways', it's that I mostly now think that 'don't be wasteful' wasn't that useful a core-rule in the first place.

(Among my cruxes here are a belief that landfill technology has improved since the era when 'don't waste' and 'recycle' memes took off, as well as a shift towards 'thinking broadly about having a high impact is much more important than individual local decisions.'

Past me (and perhaps you) might be suspicious of the 'landfill technology is actually good enough that this isn't that big a deal', perhaps rightly so because it's a kinda suspiciously-convenient belief. I don't have arguments-at-the-ready that'd have convinced past me, so mostly just laying out my current reasoning without expecting it to be that persuasive at the moment)

After a bit more googling I found this which maybe shows that there have been philosophical problems solved recently. I haven't read about that specific problem though. It's difficult to imagine a short paper solving the hard problem of consciousnesses though.

Honest question: are there examples of philosophical problems that were solved in the last 50 years? And I mean solved by doing philosophy not by doing mostly unrelated experiments (like this one). I imagine that even if some philosophers felt they answered a question, other would dispute it. More importantly, the solution would likely be difficult to understand and hence it would be of limited value. I'm not sure I'm right here.

I'm excited to see this. The application appears geared to focused charities. Is it open to researchers in academia?

Before reading the details I was surprised that 3 out of 5 community favourite posts are about invertebrate welfare. Seems like I'm missing out on something :)