Ethics

AI Alignment and Phenomenal Consciousness

In the initial feedback I’ve received on my attempt to formally state the AI alignment problem, the primary objection I’ve heard is that I assume any AI worth aligning will experience qualia. In particular, some think we have to worry about aligning AI that…

Formally Stating the AI Alignment Problem

The development of smarter-than-human artificial intelligence poses an existential and suffering risk to humanity. Given that it is unlikely we can prevent and may not want to prevent the development of smarter-than-human AI, we are faced with the challenge…

Introduction to Noematology

Last time we performed a reduction of the phenomenon of conscious self experience and through it discovered several key ideas. To refresh ourselves on them:

• Things exist ontologically as patterns within our experience of them.

Is Feedback Suffering?

NB: Some of the terminology and concepts I used here are incompatible with my more recent work because this was written before I formalized my philosophy, but is dangerously close enough to them that it may cause confusion. Caveat lector.

Nothing is Forbidden, but Some Things are Good

I recently wrote about my vegetarianism to casually document it for friends, and it proved to be more popular than anything else I’ve written lately. My guess is that it was popular because it was about something highly relatable that many people…