- Does morality come from somewhere, or is it all subjective?
- Is superintelligent AI possible? If yes, when will it be developed?
- Can general AI be aligned to human interests?
- Do individuals in the distant future have equal moral weight to those alive today?
- Are we living in a simulation? If yes, what would that mean about morality?
- Can machines have consciousness?
- Is the is-ought problem solvable?
- What is the purpose of education?
- Is consequentialist hedonism the right ethical framework?
- What’s the moral case against a tyranny of a majority in which welfare is higher than it would be if minority rights were respected?
- Are knowledge/beauty/truth intrinsically valuable?
- Is the Repugnant Conclusion all that awful?
- Is having children morally good/neutral/bad?
- How do you square abortion rights with the sorites paradox?
- Why do people vote?
- Should we hold current citizens responsible for historic wrongs committed by their nation?
- Is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis true?
- Are there lives which are not worth living?
- Is rational suicide possible? Is it selfish?
- How does innovation happen?
- Is global prosperity going to continue to increase at the same rate as the last 200 years?
- How much inequality should we accept for greater net wealth?
- Would I walk away from Omelas? Should I?
- Will life extension be possible in my lifetime?
- Should I get myself cryogenically frozen after I die?
- Is my death bad for me?
- Is one out of [consequentialism, virtue ethics, deontology] provably “right” or “wrong”? What does that mean?
- Does the answer to “does free will exist?” matter? Is asking the question dangerous?
- Is academic success mostly determined genetic predisposition, upbringing, or “work ethic” (and if the last, what’s that determined by?)?
- If meritocracy is unfair, what system should we use instead?
- Would I plug myself in to Nozick’s experience machine? If I were plugged in, would I want to unplug myself?
- What political system delivers the maximum social welfare in the long term?
- In a democracy, how do you balance the executive, legislature, and judiciary?
- How do you incentivise politicians to make electorally unpopular decisions that are important for young people’s futures (or yet-to-be-born citizens)?
- What happened to developed-world productivity growth?
- Will the UK solve its housing crisis, NHS crisis, and social care crisis? How?
- Laissez-faire libertarianism or welfare state socialism?
- Where have all the Enlightenment-style polymaths gone?
- Do we have duties to the dead?
- What makes so many intelligent people religious? What might I be missing?
- Should you use expected values or does the St. Petersburg Paradox show you shouldn’t?
- How do you balance the interests of the experiencing self and the narrating self?
- What’s the point of privacy if you have nothing to hide?
- What would it be qualitatively like to upload your mind to a digital brain? Or to connect to a superintelligent AI using a brain-computer interface?
- How should we warn people about buried nuclear waste?
- Is having mindless fun timewasting?
- What is my best-case scenario life?
- Is there an algorithm for how to go from stranger -> acquaintance -> friend -> confidant?
- What makes some friendships last and some not?
- If I want to want something, can/should I try to fulfil that desire? Want to want to want?
- Would decriminalisation lead more people to take drugs? Would that be a bad thing?
- Can A know what is best for B better than B does themself?
- If I were trying to have the greatest positive impact possible, is going to university a waste of three years?
- How do public opinions change? What are the levers that influence them?
- What gives swear words their potency?
- Which out of [retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, public protection] are valid reasons for imprisonment of criminals?
- If I’m learning something important and want to understand it deeply, what’s the best way to do that?
- If I’m learning something pointless and want to memorise it efficiently, what’s the best way to do that?
- How do you tell the difference between learning for signalling and learning for value?
- What does acting rationally actually mean?
- Should the UK and others legalise commercial surrogacy, prostitution, and organ donation?
- Do I have a right to the income I earn using my mind and body? What about the wealth I inherit?
- What are better ways of doing science than peer review (and RCTs)?
- Is my red the same as your red? What about a blind person’s red?
- What is the significance level that should be used for the principle “innocent until proven guilty”?
- Are sweatshops with fully consenting workers exploitative? In what way?
- What does it mean for somebody to be transgender?
- Why, in a world more connected than ever, do people report being lonelier than ever?
- What is it that leads people to respect authority? Why don’t more children revolt at school?
- Is a world without any unpleasant experiences a utopia?
- What makes people laugh?
- Does weak will exist (i.e., do we ever do things that we know to be not the best course of action)?
- Would I rather study at Oxford and get a university degree certificate from Durham, or vice versa?
- Should hate speech be outlawed even when not inciting physical harms?
- Should governments regulate online disinformation and falsehoods?
- What is lost when an endangered language goes extinct?
- What is lost when a natural species goes extinct?
- What would be lost if Homo Sapiens went extinct?
- Is it possible to create a perfect digital simulation of a human brain?
- Can a machine be creative?
- What makes Jackson Pollock’s art better than mine?
- Why don’t I find playing the clarinet enjoyable any more? Why did I use to like it?
- When is guilt the right emotion to feel?
- Why is humanity so bad at solving collective action problems? Can we get better?
- How can an effective but politically palatable carbon tax be implemented?
- Is this going to be the Indian century?
- Will international cooperation on space governance be as ineffective as on climate change agreements?
- Is geoengineering research net-positive or net-negative for human welfare?
- Why do we need to sleep, and why do we dream?
- Where do unwanted thoughts come from?
- How do you measure happiness/life satisfaction/welfare?
- Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?
- Why do people feel sad about misfortunes suffered by others?
- What makes people want to keep secrets about their private life?
- How long/hard can one work without getting burned out in the long run?
- How do you work out probabilities of events that have never occurred?
- Why does the placebo effect seem to work?
- Can patriotism be healthy?
- Are there some rights which trump others?
- Is knowledge identical to justified true belief?
- Should I reconsider my opposition to taking drugs and drinking alcohol?
- Why is it that I have interesting conversations much more often with my female friends than with my male ones?
- Is it morally wrong of me not to be donating blood/organs?
- Is my keeping a journal a good use of time?
- What is so exciting/addictive about being asked piercing questions?
- Would immortality get boring?
- When and where in history would be the best time to be alive as a random median person? As someone in the top percentile of wealth/intelligence/skill?
- Would it be wrong to eat lab-grown human meat?
- Can intelligence (along the lines of Spearman’s g) be measured? What is actually being tested for?