Despite the comforting proclamations in the founding charters of liberal democracies, or the aspirational beliefs held by many, the conditions into which we are born — our location, time period, biology, and familial circumstances — are not of our choosing. Yet these variables overwhelmingly determine the shape of our lives. The time and place of one's birth is, statistically and causally, the single most consequential determinant of one's future: more so than talent, effort, or even personal character.
These birth conditions shape whether we grow up in affluence or poverty (relative to global norms), whether we are likely to be religious or secular, what range of healthcare and education we can access, what ideas and technologies we are exposed to, and what opportunities are available, if any. While it is tempting to think about personal achievement as the result of hard work, grit, and determination, such virtues are almost always scaffolded by structural advantages, the most potent of which is simply being born in the right place and at the right time.
Had I been born in rural Uganda rather than a wealthy Western country, it is overwhelmingly likely that my educational path, ethical views, intellectual exposure, opportunities and daily lived reality would differ in ways that render comparison meaningless.
This blog is an attempt to grapple with that asymmetry — an effort to examine the ethical implications of having won the birth lottery. It is written from the perspective of someone acutely aware of that luck, and concerned with the moral obligations (and opportunities) it entails.
Specifically, I explore topics including effective altruism, moral responsibility, and the lived tension between ethical ideals and real-world compromises. My ethical framework, as of 2025, is shaped by a synthesis of negative and classical utilitarianism, suffering-focused ethics, moral uncertainty, and elements of contractualist reasoning. These views are common within certain rationalist and EA-aligned communities but remain marginal, sometimes even unintelligible, within broader moral discourse within most societies.
A central aim of this blog is to push against the all too common gravitational pull of moral parochialism: the tendency to weight moral concern by proximity — be it geographic, temporal, or psychological. I am interested in expanding the moral circle systematically and rigorously, and in interrogating the psychological and social resistance to doing so.
I do not claim moral certainty. I assign only probabilistic confidence to the views expressed here, and my positions are open to revision as better arguments or more data become available. I think of my current moral views as provisional, self-correcting, and I am explicitly aware of their own fallibility and I fully expect my views to continue to evolve, potentially into new directions I cannot anticipate yet.
Given the epistemic and emotional discomfort the themes presented on this blog may evoke — particularly the challenge they pose to typical narratives of merit, autonomy, and deservingness — I do not expect this blog to reach a wide audience. And while, I do admit that in a perfect world these ideas gain a much stronger traction, mass popularity is not the goal for this project. Rather, I hope that a small subset of readers may find its arguments sufficiently compelling or unsettling to warrant deeper reflection. And if even one person shifts their actions in light of these ideas — if someone donates more, reasons more rigorously, or lives with greater moral intentionality — then this endeavour will have achieved its minimal viable purpose. ▧
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