“There are known puzzles and unknown future discoveries in physics, neuroscience, anthropics, infinity, general epistemology, human (and nonhuman) values, and many other areas of life that are likely to radically transform our views on ethics and how we should act in the world. Taking object-level actions based only on what we know now is sort of like Socrates trying to determine whether the Higgs boson exists. Socrates would have been at a complete loss to solve this question directly, but one thing he could have done would have been to encourage more thinking on intellectual topics in general, with eventual payoff in the future.”

— Brian Tomasik, Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World (Foundational Research Institute)