If you want inspiration for this moment in time I have two recommendations: watch Babylon Berlin and read the Foundation Trilogy. They are roadmaps for living a moral life in a time of profound regression. I am approaching this moment with the clarity that comes from recognizing that one has failed. Over a decade ago I started calling for dramatic changes to how we organize society. I gave talks, wrote blog posts and even published a book. But I didn't make a dent. Instead, the existing socie...

I wrote the following in April of 2025 and sent it to some friends in Europe. But now seems a good time to just publish it here as a provocation. Illustration by Gemini/Nano Banana Pro. European Federation Manifesto Europe needs to be strong – for itself and for the world. China has become a superpower and the United States is struggling with the accumulated debt of neoliberalism and global intervention. Russia is waging a war at Europe’s doorstep. Europe can no longer rely on the support of ...

As introduced in the prior post, studying the interaction between “ought” and “is” permits a scientifically grounded approach to morality. Previously we looked at the importance of avoiding absorbing states. Today we will consider the mobilization of resources. We visited Luang Prabang in Lao as a family and observed monks in the ritual morning alms walking down the street with locals and some visitors putting rice into their bowls. The alms bowl is one of only eight “requisites” which Buddhi...

Invocations of the Lump of Labor Fallacy have recently been superseded by appeals to Jevons paradox in claiming that we shouldn’t worry about what AI progress will do to workers. As with the case of calling something a fallacy, a paradox also suggests that those who understand it are smarter and more sophisticated than those who don’t. Case in point is Einstein’s famous Twin paradox, which people love to throw around in discussions of space travel but is quite difficult to actually understand...

In the Beginning was the Command Line is a famous essay by Neal Stephenson, in which he argues against the Disneyfication of computing represented by Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). And I do have fond memories of programming using nothing but a text editor (VIM) and the command line. Over the years though Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) became more and more popular. And today most programmers are using something like Visual Studio or more recently Cursor. But IDEs are still code ...

One common objection to my program for Philosophy Mondays is an appeal to Hume's famous dictum "you can't get to ought from is." I recently read Science and the Good, an entire book dedicated to debunking the idea that science can provide a foundation for morality. The authors appeal to Hume pretty much in every chapter. And yes many claims they push back against are in fact weak attempts to infer a moral "ought" from a biological "is," such as in various studies of brains while making decisi...

In science, theories eventually get discarded if they lack explanatory power. This mechanism acts quite slowly at times, as we can see in the case of string theory. But over the course of history it has worked quite well. Nobody spends time on the phlogiston theory of combustion. It is at best of historical interest but doesn’t inform current science or engineering. In philosophy on the other hand, texts continue to be studied, no matter how impractical, useless, or even detrimental the ideas...

The term abundance is being slung around a lot these days. First came the discussion that was kicked off by the recent eponymous book, which fell comically short of its title. Now we are deep into a debate on AI. On one side are proponents of massive AI expenditure arguing that if we get to artificial super intelligence then we will live in abundance. And so of course we should aim to get there as fast as possible. On the other side are those who see this simply as a cynical ploy to drive up ...

The Magic Employment Fallacy Invoking the “Lump of Labor Fallacy” to shut down discussion of the labor market impact of AI and robotics is once again popular. Labeling something a fallacy is a powerful move. After all, who would want to hold “a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument” (common definition for fallacy) and where one will be accused of zero sum thinking?So what is the lump of labor fallacy? It is the belief that there is a fixed amount, a “lump,” of labor and so...

I wrote previously about the threat of a Trump dictatorship. That was in 2020 which seems like a long time ago. After I wrote that post we got close to disaster when Trump attempted in various ways to stay in power despite the election results. We are now in the second Trump term and the situation is considerably worse. Back then I wrote that “... I deem it unlikely that Trump has a masterplan for becoming a dictator. Then again he probably didn’t have a masterplan for becoming president but ...

So promptly after I wrote about having "Renewed Energy" I entered another 7 week writing gap. There are of course many reasons, with some better than others. On the fun side there was a brief sailing adventure on Frolic, heading from the Canaries to Cabo Verde and exploring the volcanic islands on both ends with Gigi (Frolic is now en route to the Carribean). At work I have been particularly busy with several financings happening at the same time along with working on a new investment. I have...

Between work, projects and travel I have missed many weeks of writing on Philosophy Mondays. Thankfully during this time I have also gained clarity that my fundamental goal with this series, which is to argue for a universal moral core on an objective basis, is more important than ever. As a result I am feeling a renewed sense of urgency for this work. I was utterly fascinated by the conversation between Dwarkesh Patel and Richard Sutton, which is worth listening to in its entirety. Quite ear...

“God is dead” Nietzsche famously proclaimed. Humanity’s desire to be ruled by god, by contrast appears very much alive. Our latest hope for salvation rests with Artificial Intelligence. Climate crisis? AI will cool the planet. Death and disease? AI will make us immortal. War? AI will bring about peace. Machina deus ut deus ex machina (with apologies to my Latin teacher and asking for help from anyone who can come up with the right idiom; update: "Deus machinae ut deus ex machina" has been pro...