December 15, 2025
Blind Spots, Consistency, and What Remains
On moral exemplars, blind spots, and applying consistent standards—to others and to oneself.
Ethics
Browse posts by tag
November 4, 2025
Phenomenological Ethics: Starting From What Hurts
When you stub your toe, you don’t think: “Hmm, let me consult moral philosophy to determine whether this pain is bad.”
The badness is immediate. Self-evident. Built into the experience itself.
On Moral Responsibility proposes a …
November 4, 2025
The Policy: Coherent Extrapolated Volition - The Paradox of Perfect Alignment
“Build AI to optimize for what we would want if we knew more, thought faster, and were more the people we wished we were.”
Beautiful in theory. Horrifying in practice.
The Policy grapples with Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV)—one of …
November 4, 2025
The Policy: S-Risk Scenarios - Worse Than Extinction
Most AI risk discussions focus on x-risk: existential risk, scenarios where humanity goes extinct. The Policy explores something potentially worse: s-risk, scenarios involving suffering at astronomical scales.
The “s” stands for …
October 13, 2025
Post-ASI Archaeology: When Humanity Becomes a Dataset of Origins
Humanity has always fought against oblivion using stories, monuments, and lineage. But I no longer believe legacy will continue in that format. If something like Artificial Superintelligence endures beyond us, the mode of remembrance may shift from …
April 22, 2019
API Design as Value Imprinting
I’ve been thinking about how API design encodes values—not just technical decisions, but philosophical ones.
Every interface you create is a constraint on future behavior. Every abstraction emphasizes certain patterns and discourages others. …
September 1, 2012
On Moral Responsibility: Why Free Will Might Be the Wrong Question
This essay, written in 2012, asks a question that still haunts me: Why do we hold people morally responsible?
The Setup
People throughout history have believed they belong to a special categorical class: persons. What makes persons special? Their …
October 1, 2010
On moral responsibility: a metaphysical examination
October 1, 2010
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?