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Rapid Fire
Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.
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Valuation Pipelines in AI
I was invited to write a short public-facing piece about my research for the APA (American Philosophical Association) Blog, which you can...
Apr 19


SNEAK PEEK: Board Game Ethics
(Stick around for a sneak peek at my latest manifesto!) It’s been a busy week onboarding at Hopkins and continuing to get settled in...
Sep 6, 2024


Trusting the Process
Here’s a reasonably sophisticated argument. (I’m not saying that it’s right.) Trust the Process means, care about process over actual...
Aug 23, 2024


The books Elon pretends he’s read
“I read a lot of books,” says Elon Musk. Apparently one of them is Superintelligence, the highly-influential book that AI moguls from Sam...
Jun 14, 2024


What makes You think you’re so Special? (a reluctant defense of X-Risk)
I spent this past week at The Midwest Ethics Symposium on AI presenting my research and meeting lots of great folks from academia and...
Apr 19, 2024


Fake Experts
Recently I’ve started thinking more about the political role of experts in society. Who counts as an expert anyway? We expect a lot from...
Apr 5, 2024


My talk on Superintelligence and Suicide
This week I gave a Zoom talk as part of the AI Futures Work-in-Progress Series at Indiana University (a thing I totally started but it’s...
Mar 29, 2024


I made a Video Essay
Two weeks ago, I had no idea how to use Adobe Premiere Pro. But now, I’m pretty good at Googling. Indiana University is holding a...
Mar 1, 2024


Talent and Fit
At a really (really) high level, performance is a function of what you bring to the table (we’ll call that talent), and and how you can...
Jan 12, 2024


You will be Misread
When you go to the hospital, we rarely have the resources to treat everyone as promptly and thoroughly as we’d like. So we have to make...
Jan 5, 2024


Why is Racism bad?
I recently spoke to a trained economist who argued that racism was bad, but only because it was bad for the economy. What can we say...
Dec 29, 2023


Quantitative and Qualitative Values
I’ve been working hard to get clear on the differences between quantitative and qualitative values lately. Here’s an example: If I want...
Oct 6, 2023


Game Values vs. Real-Life Values
My friend Kjell and I noticed there just aren’t enough podcasts, so we decided to help. Our first episode takes an early look at some of...
Sep 8, 2023


The Politics of Age of Empires II
I’ve been playing a lot of Stellaris lately, but as a kid, the only computer game I really played much was Age of Empires II (AoE2, as in...
Aug 25, 2023


I got Published
Neat! You can check out a free version of my paper “Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism” here. (The final, professionally edited and typeset...
Aug 18, 2023


SlamBall and the Skill Explosion
Darius Clark, 25, is a highly decorated long jumper who holds the Guinness World Record for the highest vertical leap with a running...
Jul 21, 2023


Twilight Imperium and Instrumental Convergence
I got to play Twilight Imperium last weekend and I was so powerful I didn’t know what to do. I like to describe Twilight Imperium as 8...
Jul 14, 2023


Why do (some) scientists hate philosophy?
My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature... It’s not that there can’t be...
Jul 7, 2023


I had to write a research statement about what I’m working on. Here’s my first draft.
Let me know what you think! I'm still figuring out how to summarize my research program and instill confidence I’ll be a “productive”...
Jun 30, 2023


Efficient and Effective
Just a quick dive into a useful distinction, because these aren’t the same: Effectiveness is all about outcomes. (You know, effects.)...
Jun 16, 2023
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