I use a poor innocent guide book author as a target for complaining about empty consumerism, and explain why features of the Swedish language makes it slightly less unreasonable than it appears. Read more (6 min, 1500 words).
Good vs. Good
Author: John Nerst
Leftovers from Last Time
I pick up and elaborate on some parts that were cut from my review of "The AI Does Not Hate You", including some riffing on mind dumps, weirdness, tensions between the rationalist community and polite society, my conservatism-free youth, the conservatism of Star Trek and my hopes for AI stagnation. Read more (17 min, 4300 words).
Review: The AI Does Not Hate You
I review Tom Chivers's book The AI Does Not Hate You, about AI risk, the rationalist community and his own process finding out whether he agrees with them. I note that I wanted to hear more about the last part, mostly because of how similar to the author I seem to be. Read more (16 min, 3900 words).
Picking Apart Eugenics
A quick-and-dirty piece on what the hell people mean by "eugenics", promted by the fallout from a tweet by Richard Dawkins. Read more(7 min, 1700 words).
It’s Not So Only
Are mental illnesses actual illnesses or are they unusual preferences? Or maybe this is a non-issue because it's only about words? Well, that's not so only. Read more (8 min, 1900 words).
The End of 2019
I try to sum up 2019, a year that started out well but took a weird turn about a third of the way through. Read more (6 min, 1400 words.)
Erisology, Round Three
Third attempt at a relatively user-friendly introduction to what "erisology" means. Read more (10 min, 2600 words).
Cat Couplings
"I prefer honest argumentation to dishonest rhetoric." Do I mean that rhetoric is essentially dishonest, or am I talking about the kind of rhetoric that's dishonest? That's a cat coupling. Read more (7 min, 1800 words).
Interpretation Matrix: Free Trade Benefits Everyone
Many disagreements are complicated by terms having several meanings. What if a claim is made up of more than one such term? How would we deal with that complexity? I look at an example about the benefits of free trade. Read more (7 min, 1800 words).
The Prince and the Figurehead
When we misrepresent other people, is it a mistake or do we do it on purpose? Neither explanation feels right to me. Rather, I think we should consider that we often perform "semitentional" actions, which is the result of our agency being more distributed than we think. Read more (6 min, 2900 words).
