Blame Theory

A sharp short essay (self-flagged as Bulverism) proposing a charitable explanation for why upper-class Western academics strain to blame the West/colonialism for Third World suffering: not (just) class signaling, but that people are fundamentally good. Most hold 'Moral Therapeutic Deontology,' where relieving suffering is supererogatory (optional), not a duty -- which clashes painfully with the felt urgency of real suffering. The dissonance resolves if you can prove the suffering is YOUR group's fault, because deontology makes fixing problems you caused a duty. Utilitarianism sidesteps this (relief of suffering is self-justifying), so utilitarian liberals show all liberal features except self-blame. He argues colonialism-blame is net-harmful (couples helping the poor to an identity-insult and to a falsifiable empirical claim).

Quality 70 · Strong. A clever, original moral-psychology mechanism (deontological dissonance -> blame-as-duty-upgrade) with an illuminating utilitarian contrast, tying into his EA themes. Speculative and short (he flags the Bulverism), so Strong rather than higher.

Claude’s paradigm shift 50 · Moderate. Moderate. The 'Moral Therapeutic Deontology -> blame to convert supererogatory into obligatory' framing is a fresh, genuinely original lens on a familiar phenomenon.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A speculative moral-psychology mechanism (deontological dissonance to blame-as-duty); an idea-level contribution to the blog's EA-adjacent discourse with no reach into laws, institutions, or ordinary lives → RWI 2.