This page was last updated on 17 June 2022.
For everything else, there’s https://linktr.ee/evansandhoefner.
Introduction
If it’s your first time here, you might want to start by reading this short primer on my beliefs regarding important questions, which I largely take for granted in much of my writing.
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Animal Welfare
Displays facts of the following form:
“Every minute, 442 turkeys are slaughtered in the United States.”
“Every year, 28 million ducks are slaughtered in the United States.”
I Used to Believe: Individual Vegetarians Didn’t Make (Much of) a Difference
How Good Is Bacon, Exactly? [Data]
Uses data to test the intuitions supporting the argument that human pleasure in consuming animal products genuinely justifies farmed animal suffering.
Farm Animal Suffering Comparisons
How much suffering do we cause when we buy _____? Aimed at informing ethical consumers. Some results run counter to common perception – for example, buying chicken is probably more unethical than buying beef.
Lightweight web app suggesting priorities for ethical omnivores. Example takeaways: just giving up chicken reduces the farm animal suffering behind your diet by about 50%, and you can get above 90% by giving up eggs and fish too. More complete data and an explanatory article are in the works.
Vegan Beer Picker (currently broken)
A simple web app that makes it easy to choose high-quality vegan beer while browsing in a shop, without opening a dozen tabs across several websites
General Philosophy
A call for broader perspective in moral evaluation.
Hedonic vs. preference, negative vs. non-negative, total vs. average, rule vs. act.
Responses to the utility monster, the experience machine, and the repugnant conclusion / mere addition paradox.
Why I’m Not a Negative Utilitarian
And why it matters.
Data Visualizations
American Electoral Politics: The Past 100 Years
U.S. presidential elections from 1912 to 2012
What Makes an Elite Rock Climber?
Characteristics of boulderers who have achieved V15 (8C), the hardest confirmed grade
Word clouds characterizing any subreddit, fetching data in real time from Reddit’s API
Applications & Extensions
A Chrome extension to enhance the user experience of the MMO game Agar.io
A Chrome extension for streamlined note-taking and excerpt sharing on Wikipedia
A training, reference, and record-keeping app for rock climbers
Settlers of Catan board generator
Connect Four AI: Interactive Game and Two-AI Showdown
Adjustable-difficulty AI with command-line interface, using MiniMax and AlphaBeta pruning
A simple in-browser tool to generate win probabilities between two players given their Elo ratings.
Miscellany
Introducing “I Used to Believe” (A Series)
A few papers that have played particularly significant roles in my development.
Formal Writing
Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty
With Jisung Park
Buying Enemies: Why Foreign Assistance Endangers US Security Interests and Directions for Reform
With the 2014 national security policy team at the Harvard Institute of Politics
Evan Sandhoefner 