The Last Instrumental Century
On the possibility — and the possible forms — of a human future
Collection I
Dense, opinionated texts on science, philosophy, artificial intelligence, consciousness, literature and the future. Includes the Polymathēs series.
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On the possibility — and the possible forms — of a human future
Mereological Nihilism of Consciousness
Conscious deliberation is not the origin of our choices but a late narrator of them; the essay argues that much specifically human suffering comes from consciousness invading the domain of the subconscious, and asks who, after all, decides.
Nothing known prevents a superintelligence from existing; the technical path and the timeline are opaque; and the alignment problem is open while institutions are inadequate. An argument for cautious possibilism, neither doomerism nor complacency.
How artificial intelligence is turning the reversal of aging from a philosophical aspiration into an engineering program: epigenetic reprogramming, AlphaFold, deep aging clocks, six original theses, and the ethical and geopolitical stakes.
Linguistic competence in language models is a genuine achievement of intelligence, but only one region of a multidimensional topography that crows, chimpanzees and octopuses explore in ways LLMs cannot: action, grounding, interaction, development.
A tour of the frontiers of life, mind, matter, computation and the cosmos, and an argument that science, despite the systems that hobble it, remains humanity's noblest collective project.
An essay on consciousness in a universe of entropy: what depression sees, why we refuse Nozick's experience machine, and what art, free science and technology can and cannot do about suffering.
A Hypothesis on Artificial Intelligence, Child Cognitive Development, and the Limits of the Statistical Mind