Rapid Fire

Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.

5 days ago

Consistently Biased

Hey, sorry for the late post, had to give a talk this morning! I’ve written a bit about QALYs here before, or Quality-Adjusted Life...

Sep 13

Something I HATE about Averages

If you had to summarize a statistical distribution with one number…well, I guess you could do worse than taking an average. Even so,...

Sep 6

SNEAK PEEK: Board Game Ethics

(Stick around for a sneak peek at my latest manifesto!) It’s been a busy week onboarding at Hopkins and continuing to get settled in...

Aug 16

How Coffees Get Scored

Do you know how coffees get scored? Here’s a sample espresso cupping form: Let’s talk survey methodology . This form is part of a...

Aug 9

What Deck-Builders get Right

Skill explosions are all around us. Just compare Simone Biles’s 2024 gold medal vault with Larisa Latynina’s 1956 gold medal vault, set...

May 10

Quantity as Quality?

I need to take a break from proofreading my dissertation (I’m turning it in today to defend this summer!) to write something else. So...

Apr 12

How to Tell Better Narratives of Character (ft. Canceling)

Our discourse around canceling seems a bit too simplistic. But how can we do better? We’ve all done bad things we wish we could take...

Jan 5

You will be Misread

When you go to the hospital, we rarely have the resources to treat everyone as promptly and thoroughly as we’d like. So we have to make...

Oct 13, 2023

Someone could get it Wrong

I had a really interesting conversation about art criticism this week. So here we go: What does it mean to be great at jazz? Look, I know...

Sep 29, 2023

MVP mini-manifesto

I’m always fascinated by Most Valuable Player awards because I think they’re a great encapsulation of how we think about value in sports...

Sep 8, 2023

Game Values vs. Real-Life Values

My friend Kjell and I noticed there just aren’t enough podcasts, so we decided to help. Our first episode takes an early look at some of...

Aug 18, 2023

I got Published

Neat! You can check out a free version of my paper “Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism” here. (The final, professionally edited and typeset...

Aug 11, 2023

I got my guy!

So here’s the mind-blowing keynote for Who’s Responsible for ChatGPT? Apparently I have a very expressive face. Anyway, I’ll give you a...

Ricky Mouser