1. Does morality come from somewhere, or is it all subjective?
2. Is superintelligent AI possible? If yes, when will it be developed?
3. Can general AI be aligned to human interests?
4. Do individuals in the distant future have equal moral weight to those alive today?
5. Are we living in a simulation? If yes, what would that mean about morality?
6. Can machines have consciousness?
7. Is the is-ought problem solvable?
8. What is the purpose of education?
9. Is consequentialist hedonism the right ethical framework?
10. 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?
11. Are knowledge/beauty/truth intrinsically valuable?
12. Is the Repugnant Conclusion all that awful?
13. Is having children morally good/neutral/bad?
14. How do you square abortion rights with the sorites paradox?
15. Why do people vote?
16. Should we hold current citizens responsible for historic wrongs committed by their nation?
17. Is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis true?
18. Are there lives which are not worth living?
19. Is rational suicide possible? Is it selfish?
20. How does innovation happen?
21. Is global prosperity going to continue to increase at the same rate as the last 200 years?
22. How much inequality should we accept for greater net wealth?
23. Would I walk away from Omelas? Should I?
24. Will life extension be possible in my lifetime?
25. Should I get myself cryogenically frozen after I die?
26. Is my death bad for me?
27. Is one out of [consequentialism, virtue ethics, deontology] provably “right” or “wrong”? What does that mean?
28. Does the answer to “does free will exist?” matter? Is asking the question dangerous?
29. Is academic success mostly determined genetic predisposition, upbringing, or “work ethic” (and if the last, what’s that determined by?)?
30. If meritocracy is unfair, what system should we use instead?
31. Would I plug myself in to Nozick’s experience machine? If I were plugged in, would I want to unplug myself?
32. What political system delivers the maximum social welfare in the long term?
33. In a democracy, how do you balance the executive, legislature, and judiciary?
34. How do you incentivise politicians to make electorally unpopular decisions that are important for young people’s futures (or yet-to-be-born citizens)?
35. What happened to developed-world productivity growth?
36. Will the UK solve its housing crisis, NHS crisis, and social care crisis? How?
37. Laissez-faire libertarianism or welfare state socialism?
38. Where have all the Enlightenment-style polymaths gone?
39. Do we have duties to the dead?
40. What makes so many intelligent people religious? What might I be missing?
41. Should you use expected values or does the St. Petersburg Paradox show you shouldn’t?
42. How do you balance the interests of the experiencing self and the narrating self?
43. What’s the point of privacy if you have nothing to hide?
44. 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?
45. How should we warn people about buried nuclear waste?
46. Is having mindless fun timewasting?
47. What is my best-case scenario life?
48. Is there an algorithm for how to go from stranger -> acquaintance -> friend -> confidant?
49. What makes some friendships last and some not?
50. If I want to want something, can/should I try to fulfil that desire? Want to want to want?
51. Would decriminalisation lead more people to take drugs? Would that be a bad thing?
52. Can A know what is best for B better than B does themself?
53. If I were trying to have the greatest positive impact possible, is going to university a waste of three years?
54. How do public opinions change? What are the levers that influence them?
55. What gives swear words their potency?
56. Which out of [retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, public protection] are valid reasons for imprisonment of criminals?
57. If I’m learning something important and want to understand it deeply, what’s the best way to do that?
58. If I’m learning something pointless and want to memorise it efficiently, what’s the best way to do that?
59. How do you tell the difference between learning for signalling and learning for value?
60. What does acting rationally actually mean?
61. Should the UK and others legalise commercial surrogacy, prostitution, and organ donation?
62. Do I have a right to the income I earn using my mind and body? What about the wealth I inherit?
63. What are better ways of doing science than peer review (and RCTs)?
64. Is my red the same as your red? What about a blind person’s red?
65. What is the significance level that should be used for the principle “innocent until proven guilty”?
66. Are sweatshops with fully consenting workers exploitative? In what way?
67. What does it mean for somebody to be transgender?
68. Why, in a world more connected than ever, do people report being lonelier than ever?
69. What is it that leads people to respect authority? Why don’t more children revolt at school?
70. Is a world without any unpleasant experiences a utopia?
71. What makes people laugh?
72. Does weak will exist (i.e., do we ever do things that we know to be not the best course of action)?
73. Would I rather study at Oxford and get a university degree certificate from Durham, or vice versa?
74. Should hate speech be outlawed even when not inciting physical harms?
75. Should governments regulate online disinformation and falsehoods?
76. What is lost when an endangered language goes extinct?
77. What is lost when a natural species goes extinct?
78. What would be lost if Homo Sapiens went extinct?
79. Is it possible to create a perfect digital simulation of a human brain?
80. Can a machine be creative?
81. What makes Jackson Pollock’s art better than mine?
82. Why don’t I find playing the clarinet enjoyable any more? Why did I use to like it?
83. When is guilt the right emotion to feel?
84. Why is humanity so bad at solving collective action problems? Can we get better?
85. How can an effective but politically palatable carbon tax be implemented?
86. Is this going to be the Indian century?
87. Will international cooperation on space governance be as ineffective as on climate change agreements?
88. Is geoengineering research net-positive or net-negative for human welfare?
89. Why do we need to sleep, and why do we dream?
90. Where do unwanted thoughts come from?
91. How do you measure happiness/life satisfaction/welfare?
92. Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?
93. Why do people feel sad about misfortunes suffered by others?
94. What makes people want to keep secrets about their private life?
95. How long/hard can one work without getting burned out in the long run?
96. How do you work out probabilities of events that have never occurred?
97. Why does the placebo effect seem to work?
98. Can patriotism be healthy?
99. Are there some rights which trump others?
100. Is knowledge identical to justified true belief?
101. Should I reconsider my opposition to taking drugs and drinking alcohol?
102. Why is it that I have interesting conversations much more often with my female friends than with my male ones?
103. Is it morally wrong of me not to be donating blood/organs?
104. Is my keeping a journal a good use of time?
105. What is so exciting/addictive about being asked piercing questions?
106. Would immortality get boring?
107. 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?
108. Would it be wrong to eat lab-grown human meat?
109. Can intelligence (along the lines of Spearman’s g) be measured? What is actually being tested for?