Ethics

Good and Real

Notes

Demystifying paradoxes from physics to ethics. LessWrong favorite.

The Alignment Problem

Blind Spots, Consistency, and What Remains

On moral exemplars, blind spots, and applying consistent standards to others and to oneself.

Phenomenological Ethics: Starting From What Hurts

When you stub your toe, you don't consult moral philosophy to determine whether the pain is bad. The badness is immediate. Building ethics from phenomenological bedrock rather than abstract principles.

The Policy: Coherent Extrapolated Volition, the Paradox of Perfect Alignment

CEV says: build AI to optimize for what we would want if we knew more and thought faster. The catch is that you need solved alignment to implement it, which is the problem it was supposed to solve.

The Policy: S-Risk Scenarios, Worse Than Extinction

Most AI risk discussions focus on extinction. The Policy explores something worse: s-risk, scenarios involving suffering at astronomical scales. We survive, but wish we hadn't.

Post-ASI Archaeology: When Humanity Becomes a Dataset of Origins

If superintelligence endures beyond us, remembrance shifts from memory to query. I build legacy systems not for nostalgia, but to remain legible in a future where legibility determines what persists.

API Design as Value Imprinting

API design encodes philosophical values: mutability, explicitness, error handling. Your interface shapes how people think about problems.

On Moral Responsibility: Why Free Will Might Be the Wrong Question

A philosophical essay arguing that moral responsibility may not require free will, and that the question itself may be misframed.

On moral responsibility: a metaphysical examination

On Moral Responsibility: A Metaphysical Examination

A philosophical exploration of free will, determinism, and moral agency. What does it mean to be a moral agent? Can we truly be held responsible for our actions in a deterministic universe?