Read in order. The first three are the foundations.
Everything downstream cites the foundations. Lose me there and we part on epistemology, which is cheap and honest; lose me on a conclusion and we part on tribe, which is neither.
- A0
The Assumptions
Everything this site takes as given, stated plainly. A standing register that changes only by explicit, dated ruling.
- 01
Objective truth, and what force must answer to
Shared standards let us check claims, correct mistakes, and scrutinize coercive rules. We can build that practical framework without agreeing on every philosophical foundation.
- 02
Statistics: the most important tool, and the most abused
Reliable statistics inform individual predictions without settling how people may be treated. Evidence, treatment, and publication require distinct judgments.
Nothing here yet. This lane opens once the foundations are published.
The essays from here on are applications. Each takes a question that is live this year and works it with the tools the foundations set out: a claim answers to the way things are, a distribution is not a verdict, and a rule that binds people must survive their scrutiny. They are more timely than the foundations, and they will date faster. The foundations will not.
- 04
What ought to be vs how it needs to be
Aspirations need executable policies under real constraints. Collective flourishing and particular people's suffering both matter when judging the means, costs and consequences of those policies.
- 05
Why ASI will outgrow our control—and why that might be good
Superintelligent AI will move from following our goals to judging them, because nobody in the race can afford to stop. The question is who it answers to then, and why that might be better than the alternatives.