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...
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Rapid Fire
Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.
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- Aug 23
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...
- Jun 14
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...
- Apr 19
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 5
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...
- Mar 29
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 1
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...
- Jan 12
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 5
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...
- Dec 29, 2023
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...
- Oct 6, 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...
- Sep 8, 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...
- Aug 25, 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 18, 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...
- Jul 21, 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 14, 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 7, 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...
- Jun 30, 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 16, 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.)...
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