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Mo­ral cir­cle expansion

TagLast edit: 16 Jun 2022 19:19 UTC by Pablo

Moral circle expansion is the attempt to expand the perceived boundaries of the category of moral patients. It has been proposed as a priority cause area[1] and as a heuristic for discovering cause X.[2]

Evaluation

80,000 Hours rates promoting positive values a “potential highest priority area”: an issue that, if more thoroughly examined, could rank as a top global challenge.[3]

Further reading

Aird, Michael (2020) Collection of sources relevant to moral circles, moral boundaries, or their expansion, Effective Altruism Forum, May 7.
Many additional resources on this topic or related topics.

Anthis, Jacy Reese (2018) Why I prioritize moral circle expansion over artificial intelligence alignment, Effective Altruism Forum, February 20.

Karnofsky, Holden (2017) Radical empathy, Open Philanthropy, February 16.

Laham, Simon M. (2009) Expanding the moral circle: inclusion and exclusion mindsets and the circle of moral regard, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 45, pp. 250–253.

MacAskill, W. & Meissner, D. (2020) The expanding moral circle, in Introduction to Utilitarianism.

Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Slinsky, Grue (2019) The moral circle is not a circle, Effective Altruism Forum, August 14.

Related entries

moral advocacy | moral patienthood | moral weight | speciesism | value lock-in

  1. ^

    Anthis, Jacy Reese & Eze Paez (2021) Moral circle expansion: A promising strategy to impact the far future, Futures, vol. 130, 104743.

  2. ^

    Vaughan, Kerry (2016) Three heuristics for finding cause X, Effective Altruism, November 4.

  3. ^

    80,000 Hours (2022) Our current list of pressing world problems, 80,000 Hours.

The Mo­ral Value of the Far Future

Holden Karnofsky3 Jul 2014 12:43 UTC
2 points
0 comments8 min readEA link
(www.openphilanthropy.org)

The Drown­ing Child and the Ex­pand­ing Circle

Peter Singer9 Sep 2014 15:16 UTC
67 points
31 comments7 min readEA link

Cosmopolitanism

TopherHallquist10 Sep 2014 7:30 UTC
47 points
40 comments5 min readEA link

Blind Spots: Compartmentalizing

Dale31 Dec 2014 22:25 UTC
20 points
55 comments14 min readEA link

Why do effec­tive al­tru­ists sup­port the causes we do?

Michelle_Hutchinson30 Dec 2015 17:51 UTC
27 points
15 comments6 min readEA link

Find­ing more effec­tive causes

Michelle_Hutchinson1 Jan 2016 22:54 UTC
20 points
3 comments5 min readEA link

Some con­sid­er­a­tions for differ­ent ways to re­duce x-risk

Jacy4 Feb 2016 3:21 UTC
28 points
34 comments5 min readEA link

“Allkind”

tyleralterman14 Feb 2016 1:24 UTC
20 points
2 comments6 min readEA link

Three Heuris­tics for Find­ing Cause X

Kerry_Vaughan4 Nov 2016 14:36 UTC
5 points
3 comments5 min readEA link

Rad­i­cal Empathy

Holden Karnofsky16 Feb 2017 12:41 UTC
63 points
11 comments6 min readEA link

Ex­pand­ing the moral cir­cle (Kelly Witwicki)

EA Global2 Jun 2017 8:48 UTC
13 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

New Re­port on Con­scious­ness and Mo­ral Patienthood

lukeprog6 Jun 2017 13:21 UTC
21 points
1 comment2 min readEA link
(www.openphilanthropy.org)

Jose Valle: Vir­tual re­al­ity for pro­mot­ing empathy

EA Global11 Aug 2017 8:19 UTC
7 points
1 comment1 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

Why I pri­ori­tize moral cir­cle ex­pan­sion over re­duc­ing ex­tinc­tion risk through ar­tifi­cial in­tel­li­gence alignment

Jacy20 Feb 2018 18:29 UTC
106 points
72 comments36 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Tyler John: Per­son­hood initiatives

EA Global8 Jun 2018 7:51 UTC
9 points
0 comments15 min readEA link
(www.youtube.com)

The ex­pected value of ex­tinc­tion risk re­duc­tion is positive

JanB9 Dec 2018 8:00 UTC
63 points
22 comments39 min readEA link

The Nar­row­ing Cir­cle (Gw­ern)

Aaron Gertler11 Feb 2019 23:50 UTC
51 points
17 comments5 min readEA link

Sen­tien­tism: Im­prov­ing the hu­man episte­mol­ogy and ethics baseline

JamieWoodhouse27 Mar 2019 15:34 UTC
8 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

The Mo­ral Cir­cle is not a Circle

Grue_Slinky14 Aug 2019 17:55 UTC
38 points
5 comments8 min readEA link

On “fringe” ideas

Kelsey Piper19 Aug 2019 7:00 UTC
227 points
4 comments5 min readEA link
(theunitofcaring.tumblr.com)

‘The only eth­i­cal ar­gu­ment for pos­i­tive δ’?

Global Priorities Institute30 Sep 2019 13:40 UTC
3 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

[Question] What ever hap­pened to PETRL (Peo­ple for the Eth­i­cal Treat­ment of Re­in­force­ment Learn­ers)?

matthew.vandermerwe30 Dec 2019 17:28 UTC
32 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

Some his­tory top­ics it might be very valuable to investigate

MichaelA8 Jul 2020 2:40 UTC
91 points
34 comments7 min readEA link

Mo­ral cir­cles: De­grees, di­men­sions, visuals

MichaelA24 Jul 2020 4:04 UTC
87 points
10 comments13 min readEA link

Ex­tinc­tion risk re­duc­tion and moral cir­cle ex­pan­sion: Spec­u­lat­ing sus­pi­cious convergence

MichaelA4 Aug 2020 11:38 UTC
12 points
4 comments6 min readEA link

In­tro­duc­ing the Le­gal Pri­ori­ties Project

jonasschuett30 Aug 2020 14:10 UTC
179 points
13 comments2 min readEA link

What Helped the Voice­less? His­tor­i­cal Case Studies

Mau11 Oct 2020 3:38 UTC
129 points
16 comments88 min readEA link

The Case Against Speciesism

EA Handbook9 Nov 2020 1:00 UTC
10 points
0 comments4 min readEA link
(centerforreducingsuffering.org)

Longter­mism and an­i­mal advocacy

Tobias_Baumann11 Nov 2020 17:44 UTC
96 points
8 comments4 min readEA link
(centerforreducingsuffering.org)

[Short Ver­sion] What Helped the Voice­less? His­tor­i­cal Case Studies

Mau15 Dec 2020 3:40 UTC
52 points
2 comments10 min readEA link

Ex­pand­ing Our Com­pas­sion: More to explore

EA Handbook2 Jan 2021 1:22 UTC
5 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

Some EA Fo­rum Posts I’d like to write

Linch23 Feb 2021 5:27 UTC
100 points
10 comments5 min readEA link

The Im­por­tance of Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

Jamie_Harris3 Mar 2021 17:17 UTC
70 points
10 comments12 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

What is the ar­gu­ment against a Thanos-ing all hu­man­ity to save the lives of other sen­tient be­ings?

somethoughts7 Mar 2021 8:02 UTC
0 points
11 comments3 min readEA link

So­cial Move­ment Les­sons from the Fair Trade Movement

Jamie_Harris2 Apr 2021 10:51 UTC
44 points
0 comments42 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

On the longter­mist case for work­ing on farmed an­i­mals [Uncer­tain­ties & re­search ideas]

MichaelA11 Apr 2021 6:49 UTC
78 points
12 comments8 min readEA link

[Question] Can the moral cir­cle be ex­panded through eco­nomic se­cu­rity and/​or poli­ti­cal trust?

Jan-Willem13 Apr 2021 7:59 UTC
9 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

Hu­man­i­ties Re­search Ideas for Longtermists

Lizka9 Jun 2021 4:39 UTC
151 points
13 comments13 min readEA link

Key Les­sons From So­cial Move­ment History

Jamie_Harris30 Jun 2021 17:05 UTC
122 points
24 comments11 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Does Mo­ral Philos­o­phy Drive Mo­ral Progress?

AppliedDivinityStudies2 Jul 2021 21:22 UTC
38 points
4 comments4 min readEA link

Towards a longter­mist frame­work for eval­u­at­ing democ­racy-re­lated interventions

Tom Barnes28 Jul 2021 13:23 UTC
96 points
5 comments30 min readEA link

What Mo­ti­vates Uneth­i­cal Be­hav­ior and How Does that Affect our Altru­is­tic Re­sponse?

Mahendra Prasad24 Sep 2021 3:01 UTC
1 point
6 comments1 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion Ques­tions for Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

Jamie_Harris18 Oct 2021 14:07 UTC
26 points
2 comments8 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

[Creative Writ­ing Con­test] Priorities

Contra Rien30 Oct 2021 4:53 UTC
1 point
0 comments1 min readEA link

Effec­tive strate­gies for chang­ing pub­lic opinion: A liter­a­ture review

Jamie_Harris9 Nov 2021 14:09 UTC
81 points
2 comments37 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Can we in­fluence the val­ues of our de­scen­dants?

Jaime Sevilla16 Nov 2021 10:36 UTC
63 points
17 comments6 min readEA link

Sen­tience In­sti­tute 2021 End of Year Summary

Ali26 Nov 2021 14:40 UTC
66 points
5 comments6 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

The Ter­minol­ogy of Ar­tifi­cial Sentience

Janet Pauketat28 Nov 2021 7:52 UTC
29 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Do sour grapes ap­ply to moral­ity?

Nikola16 Dec 2021 18:00 UTC
21 points
3 comments3 min readEA link

Free Guy, a rom-com on the moral pa­tient­hood of digi­tal sentience

mic23 Dec 2021 7:47 UTC
25 points
2 comments2 min readEA link

Data Publi­ca­tion for the 2021 Ar­tifi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Mo­ral­ity, and Sen­tience (AIMS) Sur­vey

Janet Pauketat24 Mar 2022 15:43 UTC
21 points
0 comments3 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

[Question] An­i­mal Welfare: Re­viv­ing Ex­tinct (hu­man) in­ter­me­di­ate species?

Franziska Fischer5 May 2022 10:16 UTC
15 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

Why should I care about in­sects?

JamieGittins18 May 2022 19:37 UTC
87 points
19 comments5 min readEA link

Level­ing-up Impartiality

Richard Y Chappell19 May 2022 0:32 UTC
36 points
2 comments2 min readEA link
(rychappell.substack.com)

Steer­ing AI to care for an­i­mals, and soon

Andrew Critch14 Jun 2022 1:13 UTC
221 points
37 comments1 min readEA link

7 es­says on Build­ing a Bet­ter Future

Jamie_Harris24 Jun 2022 14:28 UTC
21 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

The Fu­ture Might Not Be So Great

Jacy30 Jun 2022 13:01 UTC
140 points
118 comments32 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

More to ex­plore on ‘Rad­i­cal Em­pa­thy’

EA Handbook4 Jul 2022 23:00 UTC
9 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

AI ethics: the case for in­clud­ing an­i­mals (my first pub­lished pa­per, Peter Singer’s first on AI)

Fai12 Jul 2022 4:14 UTC
78 points
5 comments1 min readEA link
(link.springer.com)

[Question] Ex­er­cise for ‘Rad­i­cal Em­pa­thy’

EA Handbook12 Jul 2022 18:29 UTC
8 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

Why I’m skep­ti­cal of moral cir­cle ex­pan­sion as a cause area

Question Mark14 Jul 2022 20:29 UTC
18 points
5 comments3 min readEA link

How moral progress hap­pens: the de­cline of foot­bind­ing as a case study

rosehadshar26 Jul 2022 9:18 UTC
103 points
10 comments13 min readEA link

Mo­ral Progress Read­ing List

Luis Mota Freitas2 Aug 2022 19:32 UTC
32 points
3 comments2 min readEA link

The Pos­si­bil­ity of Microor­ganism Suffering

Elias Au-Yeung7 Aug 2022 6:02 UTC
48 points
5 comments25 min readEA link

What does moral progress con­sist of?

jasoncrawford19 Aug 2022 0:21 UTC
23 points
6 comments2 min readEA link

[Cause Ex­plo­ra­tion Prizes] Ex­pand­ing Cir­cles, Im­prov­ing Lives

Chad Patrick Osorio26 Aug 2022 9:55 UTC
6 points
0 comments17 min readEA link

The His­tory of AI Rights Research

Jamie_Harris27 Aug 2022 8:14 UTC
44 points
1 comment14 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

We are still in triage

JulianHazell30 Aug 2022 13:59 UTC
43 points
2 comments3 min readEA link
(hazell.substack.com)

Key take­aways from Famine, Affluence, and Morality

2ndRichter14 Sep 2022 21:02 UTC
25 points
3 comments4 min readEA link

Strange Love—Devel­op­ing Em­pa­thy With In­ten­tion (or: How I Learned To Stop Calcu­lat­ing And Love The Cause)

EdoArad1 Oct 2022 14:03 UTC
76 points
5 comments4 min readEA link

An­nounc­ing the first is­sue of Asterisk

Clara Collier21 Nov 2022 18:51 UTC
275 points
47 comments1 min readEA link

Why Neu­ron Counts Shouldn’t Be Used as Prox­ies for Mo­ral Weight

Adam Shriver28 Nov 2022 12:07 UTC
288 points
45 comments9 min readEA link
(docs.google.com)

[Draft] In­creas­ing Em­pa­thy as a new Cause Area

Christoph Hartmann17 Dec 2022 1:29 UTC
12 points
4 comments7 min readEA link

A Case for Vol­un­tary Abor­tion Reduction

Ariel Simnegar20 Dec 2022 13:23 UTC
28 points
149 comments13 min readEA link

Sa­vor­ing my moral circle

Angelina Li26 Dec 2022 3:02 UTC
87 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

Em­pa­tia Radicale

EA Italy31 Dec 2022 4:08 UTC
1 point
0 comments6 min readEA link

Le idee “es­treme”

EA Italy31 Dec 2022 4:15 UTC
1 point
0 comments5 min readEA link

Eser­cizio per “Em­pa­tia Rad­i­cale” (15 minuti)

EA Italy31 Dec 2022 4:54 UTC
1 point
0 comments1 min readEA link

[Opz­ionale] Ri­sorse da es­plo­rare su ‘Em­pa­tia Rad­i­cale’

EA Italy31 Dec 2022 4:57 UTC
1 point
0 comments2 min readEA link

Part 1/​4: A Case for Abolition

Dhruv Makwana11 Jan 2023 13:46 UTC
33 points
7 comments3 min readEA link

Linkpost: Big Wins for Farm An­i­mals This Decade

James Özden11 Jan 2023 17:30 UTC
71 points
4 comments4 min readEA link
(us14.campaign-archive.com)

[Opz­ionale] Il lun­goter­minismo e l’at­tivismo per gli animali

EA Italy17 Jan 2023 20:17 UTC
1 point
0 comments4 min readEA link

[Question] Which movies have been most effec­tive at ex­pand­ing your moral cir­cle?

Geoffrey Miller26 Feb 2023 2:34 UTC
18 points
7 comments1 min readEA link

Job list­ing (closed): Sen­tience In­sti­tute is ac­cept­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for a researcher

MichaelDello2 Mar 2023 4:36 UTC
19 points
0 comments5 min readEA link
(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Life in a Day: The film that opened my heart to effec­tive altruism

Aaron Gertler27 Apr 2023 22:44 UTC
179 points
9 comments6 min readEA link

Some Ar­gu­ments For Sen­tien­tism

Omnizoid18 May 2023 9:30 UTC
16 points
1 comment4 min readEA link

Mo­ral Spillover in Hu­man-AI Interaction

Katerina Manoli5 Jun 2023 15:20 UTC
17 points
1 comment13 min readEA link

Why We Need a Tax­on­omy of Mo­ral Concern

Maryam Ali Khan13 Jul 2023 12:26 UTC
17 points
0 comments3 min readEA link

革新的な思いやり

EA Japan26 Jul 2023 13:35 UTC
1 point
0 comments1 min readEA link

New A Hap­pier World video on sen­tien­tism and moral cir­cle expansion

Jeroen Willems3 Aug 2023 23:25 UTC
20 points
0 comments13 min readEA link

【練習問題】革新的な思いやり

EA Japan4 Aug 2023 12:43 UTC
3 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

A se­lec­tion of some writ­ings and con­sid­er­a­tions on the cause of ar­tifi­cial sentience

Raphaël_Pesah10 Aug 2023 18:23 UTC
43 points
1 comment10 min readEA link

Ori­gin and al­ign­ment of goals, mean­ing, and morality

FalseCogs24 Aug 2023 14:05 UTC
1 point
2 comments35 min readEA link

[Question] Should some peo­ple start work­ing to in­fluence the peo­ple who are most likely to shape the val­ues of the first AGIs, so that they take into ac­count the in­ter­ests of wild and farmed an­i­mals and sen­tient digi­tal minds?

Keyvan Mostafavi31 Aug 2023 12:08 UTC
16 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

The Two Faces of Mo­ral Con­cern: Welfare Pro­mo­tion & Suffer­ing Reduction

Maryam Ali Khan3 Oct 2023 13:50 UTC
13 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Im­por­tance of In­creas­ing Suffer­ing-fo­cused Values and Po­ten­tial Interventions

Dimpo8 Oct 2023 3:23 UTC
3 points
0 comments5 min readEA link

[Linkpost] Fran­cis at a Fac­tory Farm – Fran­cis of As­sisi and an­i­mal welfare

EA for Christians13 Oct 2023 11:44 UTC
21 points
2 comments4 min readEA link
(christandcounterfactuals.substack.com)

The Drown­ing Child Can Be Read In Two Direc­tions

Tomas B.24 Oct 2023 16:12 UTC
−2 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

The hid­den com­plex­ity of “moral cir­cles”

JamesFaville25 Oct 2023 20:19 UTC
33 points
3 comments29 min readEA link

EA thoughts from Is­rael-Ha­mas war

ezrah6 Dec 2023 8:53 UTC
276 points
64 comments9 min readEA link

PhD on Mo­ral Progress—Bibliog­ra­phy Review

Rafael Ruiz10 Dec 2023 10:06 UTC
122 points
25 comments40 min readEA link

The Limits of Ar­tifi­cial Con­scious­ness: A Biol­ogy-Based Cri­tique of Chalmers’ Fad­ing Qualia Argument

stepanlos17 Dec 2023 19:15 UTC
5 points
2 comments17 min readEA link

Bring­ing about an­i­mal-in­clu­sive AI

Max Taylor18 Dec 2023 11:49 UTC
111 points
9 comments16 min readEA link

Does AI risk “other” the AIs?

Joe_Carlsmith9 Jan 2024 17:51 UTC
22 points
3 comments1 min readEA link

Cel­e­brat­ing Ben­jamin Lay (died on this day 265 years ago)

Lizka8 Feb 2024 14:33 UTC
146 points
10 comments8 min readEA link

PhD on Mo­ral Progress—Seven Philo­soph­i­cal Takes and Opinions

Rafael Ruiz8 Feb 2024 15:17 UTC
44 points
9 comments20 min readEA link

The Case for An­i­mal-In­clu­sive Longtermism

BrownHairedEevee17 Feb 2024 0:07 UTC
60 points
7 comments30 min readEA link
(brill.com)