“Imperfection is OK” by Richard Y Chappell🔸

This is a link post. tl;dr: We shouldn't expect normative perfection of people in general, or pretend to it ourselves. It's OK to be suboptimal: willingness to recognize the state is the first step to (sometimes) doing even better. (But still, be OK with the fact that you'll never be perfect.) [Probably old news for most of this audience, but it's sometimes helpful to reiterate this sort of thing.] Intro A curious feature of human nature is that we’re very psychologically invested in seeing ourselves as good. Teaching applied ethics, it's striking how resistant students often are to any hint of moral self-critique. Meat-eaters will come up with the most transparently absurd rationalizations for disregarding all the torture that goes into producing their favorite meals. Some philosophers deny that having kids is good, simply because they’re scared of the (non-)implication that people ought to have more kids.[1] And there's obviously [...] ---Outline:(00:33) Intro(01:20) The role of social norms(03:51) Philosophical Cover(07:14) Living with Imperfection(09:23) Avoiding VillainyThe original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 6th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/93tiQue2nCSRhaLL4/imperfection-is-ok --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.