Many people think that academic philosophy is irrelevant to the real world. But it has increasingly important applications. Here's my list of some of the really interesting ones.
Here's hoping philosophers will make further progress on some of these!
1. The Trolley Problem: self-driving cars will be put in situations where there is a choice between sacrificing the passenger to save two pedestrians. Or they might have to choose between killing a 5-year-old pedestrian vs. killing a 70-year-...
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dilemma
Many global challenges arise due to collective action problems or incentive misalignment
Many of the biggest challenges that we face in society are due to one or both of these types of problems:
(A) Collective Action Problems, where many individuals or groups are currently better off taking action X, even though they'd be better off in the long-term if everyone agreed not to take action X.
Some of the big challenges with Collective Actions Problems are (i) getting people or groups to agree to stop the behavior in the first place, and then (ii) creating a v...
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