A Philosopher's Blog

As a rule, any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Even if it shouldn’t. In accord with this rule, researchers and engineers have been

Many years ago, the sci-fi buddy cop show Almost Human episode on sexbots inspired me to revisit the ethics of sexbots. While the advanced, human-like models of the show are

Some ages get cool names, such as the Iron Age or the Gilded Age. Others have less awesome names. An excellent example of the latter is the designation of our

While terraforming and abortion are both subjects of moral debate, they would seem to have little else in common. However, some moral arguments used to justify abortion can be used

My core aesthetic principle is that if I can do something, then it is not art. While this is (mostly) intended as humorous, it is well founded—I have no artistic

  Doubling down occurs when a person is confronted with evidence against a belief and their belief, rather than being weakened, is strengthened.A plausible explanation of doubling down rests on

While asteroid mining is still science fiction, companies are already preparing to mine the sky. While space mining sounds awesome, lawyers are murdering the awesomeness with legalize. Long ago, President

In the previous essay on threat assessment, I looked at the influence of availability heuristics and fallacies related to errors in reasoning about statistics and probability. This essay continues the