English texts

• My mistakes and failures
• My top ten ideas of all time (anno 2023)
• My top ideas of 2022
• My top ideas of 2021
• My top ideas of 2020

Infographics

• Why speciesism is a moral illusion
• Why animal products cause so many problems
• Moral illusions
• Unwanted arbitrariness
• Mild welfarism
• Effective altruism
• How to reduce the duration of animal suffering
• Wild animal suffering
• The next innovation: clean protein
• Why cell-based meat will be better
• Why indoor, vertical farming will be better
• The environmental, health and welfare benefits of veganism
• One day vegan (the quantitative benefits of eating vegan)
• One day car free

Basic ethical principles

• What is a rational ethicist?
• Dual moral theory
• Unwanted arbitrariness, dictatorship and discrimination
• Mild welfarism: avoiding the demandingness of total(itarian) welfarism
• Real universal rights
• The two intrinsic rights that restrict utilitarianism
• The problem of counting people and conscious experiences
• Against arbitrariness
• The priority for strong personal-state preferences (and implications for wild animal welfare)

Population ethics

• Person-affecting neutral-range utilitarianism
• The problem of possible populations: animal farming, sustainability, extinction and the repugnant conclusion

Animal rights and antispeciesism

• The birth lottery (combining a theory of animal citizenship with a theory of justice)
• Speciesism as a moral illusion
• Ten arguments against speciesism
• Moral illusions and arbitrary discrimination
• Born Free and Equal (PhD dissertation and summary)
• Thought experiment: which dream do you prefer?
• What if everyone was human?
• Speciesism, arbitrariness and moral illusions
• Arguments for an impartial preference for human lives
• Consider remarkable animal capabilities to expand the moral circle
• Deep canvassing for animal rights

Predation and wild animal suffering

• Moral illusions and wild animal suffering neglect
• On intervention in nature, human arrogance and moral blind spots
• Why we need to herbivorize predators
• Blatant contradictions in the argument that predation benefits ecosystems
• Predation and transplantation: a thought-experiment for herbivorizing predators
• About insect welfare and how to improve it
• The most important technologies and research disciplines for wild animal welfare
• Wild animal suffering, longtermism and population ethics
• Relativistic welfare, farm animal abolitionism and wild animal welfarism
• Save the parrot! (On help prioritization and the search for the kindest animal)
• A logical argument why predation is impermissible
• Crucial considerations for (anti)natalists
• Most animals die prematurely, most humans don’t

Veganism, meat consumption and farm animal suffering

• The deathprint of replacing beef by chicken and insect meat
• Veganmodernism: the end of veganism?
• An argument for veganism (argumentation scheme)
• The health benefits of vegan diets
• The environmental benefits of vegan diets
• Is a vegan diet optimal for our health and the environment?
• Can we eat happy meat?
• Our final strategy for meat abolition?
• The extreme cost-effectiveness of cell-based meat R&D
• The crux of the cell-based meat feasibility debate
• The very complex welfare impact of fishing
• Animal-welfare certified meat is not a stepping stone to meat reduction or abolition
• Is veganism difficult? An example of omnivorism bias

Effective altruism

• My cause prioritization
• My three top charities
• Doing good now or later, by yourself or by others?
• The integration of effective altruism focus areas
• Ineffective actions and campaigns that can backfire
• A rational approach to improve worldwide well-being
• The most important technological innovation (and how we can support it)
• Top scientific research questions for prolific welfare interventions
• Why there is only one basic right and how this is compatible with altruism
• How emotional attachments make us less effective
• Exploiting the cognitive biases of altruists
• Why I have a career switch: an effective altruistic analysis
• The two most important distributions in effective altruism
• Idealistic versus realistic animal advocacy: the need for effectiveness and rationality
• Effective altruism and the law of diminishing marginal effect
• The openness of effective altruism
• Higher and more equal: a case for optimism
• Our three most harmful activities and how to minimize them
• Cost-effectiveness distributions, power laws and scale invariance
• Birth prioritization (or: why vegans should have more kids)
• The harm cascade: why helping others is so hard

Effective environmentalism

• Clean technology innovation as the most cost-effective climate action
• Towards zero harm and more sustainability: animal-free and land-free food
• From Shiva to Dyson: a paradigm shift from soil-based low-tech to air-based high-tech food
• Effective environmentalism and ecomodernism
• The case against degrowth
• Why naturalness is irrational and harmful
• Why naturalness is a misleading value
• Some inconsistencies in food environmentalism
• Being rational about nuclear power
• Being rational about organic food
• On GMOs and effective environmentalism
• The scientific consensus on GMOs
• How to compensate your carbon footprint
• Carbon offsetting versus meat offsetting
• Climate change, alarmism and effectiveness
• Non-human overpopulation is the real problem
• The ImPACT equation
• The neglected double climate benefits of vegan diets

Economics and politics

• The worst enemy in economics: privatized economic rent
• Rational democracy and futarchy
• Economics and ethics for a rational politics
• The large income benefits of migration
• On the correspondence between AI-misalignment and cognitive dissonance using a behavioral economics model
• The three most important new tax proposals
• A carbon tax on meat could increase external costs

Rational ethics

• Our worst enemies in crucial areas
• It’s time to take the Red Pill and change your mind
• Reflections on male privilege
• Reflections on intersectionality in the animal rights movement
• Black Lives Matter: racism at unexpected places
• My biggest moral mistake
• Carnism versus terrorism: the most extreme example of irrational fear
• What anti-vaxxers truly believe (or how reframing improves critical thinking)
• Opposing cell-based meat: a serious irrationality in the animal rights movement
• Big is beautiful. On the dangers of too much distrust in big institutions and high-tech solutions.

Psychology, moral illusions and cognitive biases

• The moral gravity bias
• The single objective bias
• The conflict of interest bias
• The anti-experimentation bias
• The most serious moral illusion: arbitrary group selection
• The identifiable problem effect
• Discrimination biases
• Your neighbor cares more about animal rights than you think
• Rational altruism and risk aversion

Older articles (that I no longer endorse completely, or that contain some mistakes)

Ethical principles

• The three most defensible principles in ethics
• Asymmetry in ethical principles
• Asymmetric altruism
• The minimum complaint theory (summary of the strongest moral theory)
• The minimum complaint theory and maximum autonomy
• The moral hand (a complete and coherent ethic, short version)
• The meta-ethical hand (how to construct a coherent ethical system)
• Saving children versus preventing unwanted pregnancies
• The population ethics trilemma
• 8 basic principles of ethics
• Why I became a utilitarian
• Some solutions to utilitarian problems
• On the interpersonal comparison of well-being
• On the interpersonal comparison of well-being, part 2

Population ethics

• Variable critical level utilitarianism as the solution to population ethics
• A game theoretic solution to population ethics
• An ethical minefield. Stepping from the worst to the best population ethical theories

Animal rights

• Towards a coherent theory of animal equality
• The ethical consistency of animal equality (e-book, based on PhD-thesis in moral philosophy)

Effective altruism

• Probability estimate for wild animal welfare prioritization
• Reducing existential risks or wild animal suffering?
• Reducing existential risks or wild animal suffering? Part II: expected value estimation
• The three most important win-win-win measures
• The most effective things you can do about the three most important win-win-win measures
• The effectiveness and ethics of unconditional cash transfers