Goodbye Slopstack! Also, a $50,000 essay/fiction contest, adversarial consciousness tech, & more
Desiderata #41
The Intrinsic Perspective
Natural philosophy, belles-lettres, polemics.
Live Last read · last published · next check
Latest posts
Anthropic runs like Wile E. Coyote into the brick wall of consciousness research
When the AI companies first began talking about existential risk, it was common to hear some version of:
Screentime correlates more with kids' brains than IQ; Matt Yglesias gets Dan Dennett wrong; Why literary fiction awards keep falling for AI scams; & more
Desiderata #40
Don't dethrone consciousness!
LLMs aren't conscious (and thinking they are is culturally dangerous)
But Dumbo could already fly?
100% pure human copium about OpenAI solving Erdős problems
We consciousness researchers have failed you
In Which I Become Shackleton
IVF epigenetic damage gets worse across generations; The next Project Hail Mary; AI's "odorless" math proofs; Waymo at 100% human oversight? & more
Desiderata #39
Hubris
The Lore of the World: Part 4
RIP Dan Simmons. Why weren't you more famous?
The world hates a polymath
Bits In, Bits Out
Six years of AI and the world got stupider