Welcome to my website. I am a philosophy PhD student. My interests are generally motivated by the question: what, ultimately, ought we to believe? Right now I'm exploring the various potential ways—epistemic, practical, and moral—we might go about answering this question.
I am also interested in less ultimate, more practical, questions about what we should actually think about the world. Work on cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and education/learning (among others) are therefore also nearby areas of interest for me.
Here you'll find reading notes, bloglike posts, wip essays, and more. In the Link Heap I share links to articles, videos, blogs, web pages, etc. that I think are worth checking out. I often disagree with content in such links. Feel free to email me for paper drafts (or for anything, really) at the email above.
Find me at: Youtube | Github | Substack | LetterBoxd
2/1/26 Updated PhilPapers PDFGrabber, fixed some bugs. Please redownload and reinstall for the fixes.
6/7/25 Updated website to new styling. Ditched markdeep and am now using water.css with some minor tweaks.
12/29/23 Updated welcome text.
11/8/22 Switched over to new domain from the old one (ethanjkemp.com). I waited ~15 years to snag ethankemp.com!
10/6/22 Updated website styling, now using markdeep to write the html file in markdown.
3/30/19 Creation of this website (estimated date).
• A Survival Guide to a PhD - Andrej Karpathy
• SEIU Delenda Est - Scott Alexander
• The Century of the Maxxer - Sam Kriss
• It's Rawls's World and We're Just Living In It - Joseph Heath
• How to get hired - Derek Sivers
• Postmodernism? - Noam Chomsky
• A guide to professional philosophy - Neil Mehta
• Sources Say Bay Area House Party - Scott Alexander
• What Is Man, That Thou Art Mindful Of Him? - Scott Alexander
• The possibility of Kantian metaethics - Florence Bacus
• Advice from MIT on Preparing a Philosophy Writing Sample - Anon
• Penelope Maddy's Workbench - Nathan Ballantyne
• My two cents on Abundance - Joseph Heath
• Book Review: The Math Academy Way - Isabel
• When Should you Peak? - Barry Lam
• Cyc: Obituary for the greatest monument to logical AGI - Yuxi Liu
• Why is Rear Window so tense? - Henry Oliver
• Notes on Spaced Repetition Scheduling - nwm
• The Origin of the Research University - Clara Collier
• A Mathematician’s Lament - Pual Lockhart
• My advice on (internet) writing, for what it's worth - dynomight
• The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction - Owen Yingling
• How I learned to love literary criticism - Henry Oliver
• He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He’s Won a Fields Medal - Jordana Cepelewicz
• The Politics of Apoliticism - Kieran Setiya
• What I Worked On - Paul Graham
• Square Theory - Adam Aaronson
• Is Building Good Note-Taking Software an AGI-Complete Problem? - Thane Ruthenis
• How to Live on $432 a Month in America - A.M. Hickman
• Spaced Repetition Systems Have Gotten Way Better - Domenic Denicola
• Curtis Yarvin does not live in reality - Sam Kriss
• My 16-month theanine self-experiment - Dynomight
• Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science - Scott Alexander
• Mainstream Media is Worse Than Silence - Bryan Caplan
• The Real Analytic/Continental Divide: Fashion - Steven Gimbel
• The Outer Limits of Analytic Philosophy - Brian Weatherson
• Learning From Four Analytic Philosophy Wins - Liam Kofi Bright
• John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism - Joseph Heath
• On Priesthoods - Scott Alexander
• Why Philosophy Matters - Hilarius Bookbinder
• The torture of an unphilosophical life - Agnes Callard
• Philosophy isn't... - David Chapman
• This one internet subculture explains murder suspect Luigi Mangione's odd politics - Emily Shugerman
• Looking Back at the Future of Humanity Institute - Tom Ough
• Ozempic For Sleep - Isaak Freeman
• Reward is not the optimization target - TurnTrout
• Daniel Stoljar's Workbench - Nathan Ballantyne
• Some Unattractive Meta-Ethical Positions, Free to a Good Home - Cosma Shalizi
• My Dinner with Nozick - David J. Schmidtz
• Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually - Scott Alexander
• How I Joined the Resistance - J.D. Vance
• The Perceptual Quest for a Truth Machine - Kelly Clancy
• Exorcising us of the Primer - Andy Matuschak
• Meditation in a Toolshed - C.S. Lewis
• On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense - Friedrich Nietzsche
• Fast Crimes at Lambda School - Benjamin Sandofsky
• The Structure of Academic Writing - John Danaher
• Well-functioning democracy for neither me nor for thee? - Tyler Cowen
• A Dozen Ways to Get More Dakka - David Manheim
• Book Review: The Others Within Us - Scott Alexander
• Profile: The Far Out Initiative - Scott Alexander
• What Is It Like to be a Philosopher? (David Pearce) - Cliff Sosis
• On starting papers - Helen De Cruz
• Every Scholar Should Feel Relatively Underappreciated - Eric Schwitzgebel
• David Milch's disembodied writing process - Mason Currey
• Why it's impossible to agree on what's allowed - Dan Luu
• The killer app of Gemini Pro 1.5 is video - Simon Willison
• Lableak truther loses $100,000 in his own debate - Philipp Markolin
• The Serendipity Machine - Nabeel S. Qureshi
• Getting In - Malcom Gladwell
• From Vexing Uncertainty to Intellectual Humility - Michael Dickson
• Principles of Research - Albert Einstein
• Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years - Peter Norvig
• Zen and the art of speedrunning enlightenment - The Irrationalist
• Studio Trickery - Owen Hatherley
• The Great AI Weirding - Delip Rao
• The Tension Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Turn into War - Ted Gioia
• Kelly Bets on Civilization - Scott Alexander
• From Scientific Reproducibility to Epistemic Humility - Joseph Wayne Smith
• Why Not Heterodox Research? - Robin Hanson
• The Philosophy of Reading as First Philosophy - Robert Hanna
• How to Edit Your Own Lousy Writing - Julian Gough
• In Continued Defense of Effective Altruism - Scott Alexander
• Is AI alignment on track? Is it progressing... to fast? - Alexey Guzey
• ChatGPT, High-Tech Plagiarism, and The Neoliberal University - Michelle Maiese
• Im so sorry for psychologys loss, whatever it is - Adam Mastroianni
• How Analytic Philosophy Generates Unsolvable Puzzles - Joseph Wayne Smith
• How to read the canon - Henry Oliver
• Common Knowledge and Aumann's Agreement Theorem - Scott Aaronson
• Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born - Henrik Karlsson
• Lifespan extension: separating fact from fiction - milkyeggs
• On Not Believing In One's Work - Liam Kofi Bright
• Quick thoughts on research - Michael Nielsen
• Multi-layered calendars - Julian Lehr
• Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness Contest: Psychedelic Cryptography - Andrés Gómez-Emilsson
• Email (let's drop the hyphen) - Don Knuth
• Maker's Schedule - Paul Graham
• The Canal Papers - Scott Alexander
• Language Model Sketchbook, or Why I Hate Chatbots - Maggie Appleton
• Vitalik Buterin Exclusive Interview - Arkadi Mazin
• Do the weirdest thing that feels right. - Charlie Becker
• Instead of your Life's Purpose - existentialpervert69
• Two ways of evaluating rationality - Alexander Pruss
• My Lifetime Reading Plan - Ted Gioia
• Raise Your Threshold For Accusing People Of Faking Bisexuality - Scott Alexander
• Brain training begins in the hips - Adam Mastroianni
• Effective Spaced Repetition - Fernando Borretti
• The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise - Marc Brooker
• How I use social media mindfully - Kasra
• The Solution to Information Overload - Andrew Connor
• Hanti's Notes on Doing a PhD and Getting a Job in Philosophy - Hanti Lin
• Beware boasting about non-existent forecasting track records - Jotto999
• ChatGPT + Code Interpreter = Magic - Andrew Mayne
• Repair and Remain - Kurt Armstrong
• Unbundling Tools for Thought - Fernando Borretti
• The end of the system of the world - Noah Smith
• Fuzzy API composition - Geoffrey Litt
• You Don't Want a Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy of Mental Disorders - Scott Alexander
• The Permaweird - Venkatesh Rao
• Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps - A Short Story By Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Are you serious? - Visakan Veerasamy
• The internet is already over - Sam Kriss
• How to keep cakes moist and cause the greatest tragedies of the 20th century - Adam Mastroianni
• Can This AI Save Teenage Spy Alex Rider From A Terrible Fate? - Scott Alexander
• Is Wine Fake? - Scott Alexander
• Don't Surround Yourself With Smarter People - Venkatesh Rao
• Umberto Eco's Guide to Writing a Thesis - Umberto Eco
• Orexin and the quest for more waking hours - Jordan Arel
• Nick Cammarata on Jhana - Scott Alexander
• Singer and the Noble Lie - Bryan Caplan
• What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture - Derek Thompson
• Semaglitude has changed the world - Andre Popovitch
• A Columbian Exchange - Scott Alexander
• Scraping training data for your mind - Henrik Karlsson
• Breaking Points - Agnes Callard
• Unpredictable Reward, Predictable Happiness - Scott Alexander
• Making Normal Conversations Better - Sasha Chapin
• Why aren't smarter people happier? - Adam Mastroianni
• A Cyclic Theory of Subcultures - Scott Alexander
• How a Public School in Florida Built America's Greatest Math Team - Ben Cohen
• Our Problems Aren't Procedural - Adam Klein
• Impact Markets: The Annoying Details - Scott Alexander
• Immortality Begins at Forty - Venkatesh Rao
• So You Want to Live in a Cabin in the Mountains - Kelton Wright
• What do I think about Network States? - Vitalik Buterin
• My 40-liter backpack travel guide - Vitalik Buterin
• If my library burned tonight - Aldous Huxley
• What Is It About Peter Thiel? - Anna Wiener
• Fake artists are what happens when fandom dies - Mark Mulligan
• Who Gets Self-Determination? - Scott Alexander
• Learning from Lucas - Thomas J. Sargent
• Why Isn't There a Replication Crisis in Math? - Jay Diagle
• Do a cost-benefit analysis of your technology usage - TurnTrout
• What Are We Arguing About When We Argue About Rationality? - Scott Alexander
• Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People - DinoInNameOnly
• The Eros Monster - Agnes Callard
• Examples of barbell strategies - Dwarkesh Patel
• Misidentifying talent - Dan Luu
• Shifting guilt - Nate Soares
• What Is The Morning Writing Effect? - Gwern
• Theses on Sleep - Alexey Guzey
• Motivated Reasoning As Mis-applied Reinforcement Learning - Scott Alexander
• The Charisma of Leaders - Metaismurder
• Reality is Very Weird and You Need to be Prepared for That - slimemoldtimemold
• Utopian for Beginners - Joshua Foer
• On the Origin of Everything - David Albert
• On Philosophy and Philosophers: Unpublished papers, 1960-2000 by Richard Rorty - Daniel C. Dennett
• The Phrase "No Evidence" Is A Red Flag For Bad Science Communication - Scott Alexander
• Jhanas and the Dark Room Problem - Scott Alexander
• Futurists have their heads in the clouds - Erik Hoel
• Minds Almost Meeting - Robin Hanson
• Deliberate Play - J Steinhardt
• Spaced Repetition for Efficient Learning - Gwern
• Keep Your Identity Small - Paul Graham
• A Nobel Prize for the Credibility Revolution - Alex Tabarrok
• Seneca (Letter 53), Long Haul Covid, and Impiety - Eric Schliesser
• Rules for Noobs - Jacob Falkovich
• Tyler Cowen on reading fast, reading well, and reading widely - Stuart Patience
• Tyler Cowen is the best curator of talent in the world - Tony Kulesa
• How To Write Quickly While Maintaining Epistemic Rigor - johnswentworth
• Reversals in psychology - Gavin Leech
• Why People Are Scared of Marie Kondo - Sasha Chapin
• BAD Philosophy Videos! - Hans-Georg Moeller
• Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse - Philip Goff
• Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality - Scott Alexander
• Prospectus On Prospera - Scott Alexander
• Against Libertarian Criticisms of Redistribution - DePonySum
• Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality - Charlie Wood
• The Communist Manifesto: On Bugs vs Features of Capitalism - Eric Schliesser
• Bets, Bonds, and Kindergarteners - Jeff Kaufman
• The "racial wealth gap" is a class gap - Matthew Yglesias
• Hayek on the Epistemic Benefits of (Class) Diversity - Eric Schliesser
• Social Injustice as Emergent Property - Kevin Vallier
• New York Times's discredited 1619 Project - Tom Mackaman, David North
• The Inner Ring - By C. S. Lewis
• Why you are not a conservative - Deirdre McClosky
• The four-fold imagination - Mark Vernon
• God-intoxicated man - Clare Carlisle And Yitzhak Y. Melamed
• Heidegger v Carnap: how logic took issue with metaphysics - Sam Dresser
• Philosophy without a philosopher in sight - Amit Chaudhuri
• CD / Color - Captain Disillusion
• Let's avoid talk of 'chemical imbalance': it's people in distress - Joseph Davis
• A Proposal for Social Insurance During the Pandemic - Greg Mankiw
• Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now - Tomas Pueyo
• Guessing the Teacher's Password - Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Introduction to Deleuze on Nietzsche - Bernard Harcourt
• Coronavirus: A Note - Norman, Bar-Yam, Taleb
• The World of Vaping - Amanda Chicago Lewis
• Black People Less Likely - Scott Alexander
• Meditations on Moloch - Scott Alexander
• Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide - William James
• The best of times, or the worst of times? - John Cochrane
• Mastering The Core Teachings of the Budapestians - Scott Alexander
• If the Only Way You Can Get Your Great Idea Implemented - Bryan Caplan
• On Learning and the Learned - Arthur Schopenhauer
• The Mystic and the Metaphysician - Miri Albahari
• What Intellectual Progress Did I Make in the 2010's? - Scott Alexander
• Hemingway's Hidden Metafictions - Ian Crouch
• Is Eating Meat a Net Harm? - David G and Froolow
• Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects - Milton Friedman
• Todd Phillips's "Joker" Is No Laughing Matter - Anthony Lane
• How to Increase Taxes on the Rich (If You Must) - Gregory Mankiw
• The Economic Debate over the Minimum Wage - Dylan Matthews
• How to be Rational about Rationality - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Free Market Healthcare - John Cochrane
• Liberalism, Politics, and the Spirit of Mercantilism - Eric Schliesser
• Truth in the Culture War - Liam Bright
• Fernando Pessoa's Disappearing Act - Adam Kirsch
• How to be an Anti-Intellectual - Coleman Hughes
• What is Enlightenment? - Immanuel Kant
• The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Byzantium, and PSR - Eric Schleisser
• The Mises - (Karl) Polanyi debate (on Imperialism) reconsidered - Eric Schleisser
• The Effects of Rent Control - Rebecca Diamond
• New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed - Scott Alexander
• God and SuperGod - Noah Smith
• Controversial Push to 'Rehumanize' Math - Catherine Gewertz
• Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty - Scott Alexander
• Book Review: Mastering the Core Teachings of The Buddha - Scott Alexander
• The PNSE Paper - Scott Alexander
• The Algernon Argument - Gwern Branwen
• Democrats, Avoid the Robot Rabbit Hole - Paul Krugman
• Naturalism and property dualism - Alexander Pruss
• Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics And The Anarchic Brain - Scott Alexander
• Ethics and complexity - Alexander Pruss
• Review of Tyler Cowen's Stubborn Attachments - Joseph Heath
• A measure of sincerity - Alexander Pruss
• A Successful Artificial Memory Has Been Created - Robert Martone
• Inflation, and history - John Cochrane
• Don't Fear the Simulators - Scott Alexander
• Misunderstanding Nozick, Again - David Boaz
• No Absolute Time - Matias Slavov
• What's Going On in Hong Kong? What to Know About the Protests - Victor, Yuhas
• 'National conservatism' is 'Elizabeth Warren conservatism' - George Will
• America Needs an Independent Fed - Volcker, Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellin
• Yes, There Is a Trade-Off Between Inflation and Unemployment - Gregory Mankiw
• The Trinity, sexual ethics and liberal Christianity - Alexander Pruss
• The Discouraged Suitor - Bryan Caplan
• The Right's Identity Politics Is More Dangerous Than the Left's - Shikha Dalmia
• Donald Trump was right, and Justin Amash was wrong, about conservatives - Ezra Klein
• A Midsummer overview of the Democratic Field - Nate Silver
• The Post-Liberals' Incoherence - Charles Cooke
• Don't be biased (It won't be Trump's fault) - Scott Sumner
• The risks to trump - Scott Sumner
• Asymmetric Weapons Gone Bad - Scott Alexander
• Institutionalized Nonsense - John Cochrane
• Why is Immigration a "Contentious Issue in Classical Liberalism?" - Bryan Caplan
• America's Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals - Farhad Manjoo
• How Liberalism Loses - Ross Douthat
• Clemens on minimum wage - John Cochrane
• Hate Globalization? Then Embrace Stagnation - Noah Smith
• Academe's Extinction Event - Andrew Kay
• Down and Out? Try Federalism - Kevin Williamson
• The Economics of Donald J. Keynes - Paul Krugman
• Counterspells - Virgil Kurkjian
• Let's not emphasize behavioral economics - Scott Sumner
• The Nordic Approach to Private Roads - Giovanna da Silva
• Pain as Active Ingredient in Dating - Scott Alexander
• Meer On Minimum Wage - John Cochrane
• Paying for the Green New Deal - Scott Sumner