Essays on philosophy, science, thinking and living well....
Ask a language model a hard question and you get five options. Ask an expert and you get one answer. The difference looks stylistic — models hedge, people commit — but it points at something deeper than style. It points at what may be the binding constraint on artificial intelligence. Start with an intuition about mediums. We have Turing completeness for what is computable; it is tempting to want…
Preamble This is written for my little friend, whom I sincerely wish the best for. In it, I want to describe and show what can make for a good life — as best I understand it — without unnecessary concepts or vapid aphorisms, yet with enough substance to meaningfully expose these perennial problems. What I have written should be taken in the spirit of a fallibilist, playful exploration of some…