In my last post, I defined power systems and the rules by which they run. That post left two things open. It claimed that how much power an agent holds is a matter of what the agent could bring about rather than what it is seen to do, but it did not make that precise. It also introduced the observation function and showed that what an agent can learn is determined by the reaction and observation…
In my What is Power essay, I described a situation that highlighted the difference between acting inside a system and controlling it. That was an informal distinction and in this post I want to try to make it more formal. I will define power systems and apply the definition to two situations: a robbery and a job. The claim is that power is control over the rules of a process and over whether it…
Published on Substack.
Cryptography research often feels disconnected from real-world impact because the field prioritizes abstract problem-solving over understanding societal effects. Explicitly discussing research goals could help align the field's values with researchers' actual motivations.
Traditional STEM education trains students to flatten complex problems so they can solve them. Humanities training, on the other hand, helps them perceive the full dimensions of the problems they are building for.
What if we could extract the world model that television installs in its viewers?