Richard Chappell
Article
Richard Chappell is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 06, 2024 and August 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “I discovered Richard Chappell’s The Nietzschean Challenge To Effective Altruism”; “Philosophy professor Richard Chappell ( blog here ) showed up and presented a different argument”; “Philosopher Richard Chappell responds to my criticism”. It most often appears alongside Italy, ACX, ACX Grants.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: August 06, 2024
- Last seen: August 25, 2025
Appears In
- Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers
- My Responses To Three Concerns From The Embryo Selection Post
- Open Thread 396
Related Pages
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- Italy (2 shared issues)
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- ACX (1 shared issues)
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- ACX Grants (1 shared issues)
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- AI (1 shared issues)
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- altruism (1 shared issues)
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- America (1 shared issues)
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- Bell Labs (1 shared issues)
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- Bill Gates (1 shared issues)
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- Britain (1 shared issues)
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- Caesar (1 shared issues)
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- capitalism (1 shared issues)
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- CBTi (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
[EDIT: Halfway through this post I discovered Richard Chappell’s The Nietzschean Challenge To Effective Altruism, which makes some similar points]
Inline links: The Nietzschean Challenge To Effective Altruism
Philosophy professor Richard Chappell (blog here) showed up and presented a different argument: “A sleeping hermit has a mind, even if their mental states aren't being actively processed. It's completely different from merely having a ‘potential’ to form mental states after a bunch of further development.”
I claim that canceling the cellular-disassembly surgery halfway through is murder, for the same reason that canceling the heart surgery halfway through would be murder. But this seems to disprove both the anti-throwing-away-embryos people’s position and Richard Chappell’s position. While you’re disassembled, you don’t have a brain, or a working mind, or any independent potential to self-assemble into a person. You just have a sort of residual claim to personhood that you lodged back when you were a fully-assembled human.
2: Philosopher Richard Chappell responds to my (mild) criticism of his position on the embryo selection objections post.
Inline links: responds to my (mild) criticism of his position