Episode Details

The "expanding moral circle" -- the idea that moral concern has (or, at least, should) widened over time from family, to community, to nation, to all humanity, and (arguably) outward to all sentient beings -- was developed by W.E.H. Lecky (1869) and popularized by Peter Singer in The Expanding Circle (1981). This concept is has really resonated with me throughout the years and eventually led to me study farm animal welfare as an academic economist.

Naturally, I was looking around for a visualization of it that I liked enough to hang on my office wall and replace the simpler one in my slide deck, but nothing was cutting it.

So I made one.

A few notes on the design: composition, layout, and curation are mine; illustrations were generated with ChatGPT and edited in Canva (~20 hours total). I tried to make the inner rings feel intimate and the outer rings feel expansive, with subjects (people, species) chosen to span all continents. I intentionally included invertebrates and farm animals, with a hen taking center stage at the bottom to highlight the enormous anthropogenic suffering that billions of chickens face every day.

To convey a sense of "mind-opening," all circles [...]

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First published:
May 6th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3jcCaZjNrgjJD4oFp/i-made-a-graphic-of-the-expanding-moral-circle-free-to-use

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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