Social alignment is, as always, the central moral question behind any engineering project — AI alignment is no different, do we trust ourselves enough to shepherd these projects?
Author Archives: William Sundwick
War in the Year 2024: Why Do They Fight, and How?
It’s true that warfare has persisted throughout human history. Evidence exists that tribes even fought in paleolithic times – like chimpanzees today. But, at least since Plato’s time, we humans have also believed in idealism. Peace is better than war, and continuous warfare is never thought to be the ideal human condition! Indeed, those whoContinue reading “War in the Year 2024: Why Do They Fight, and How?”
The World in 2124
Predicting the future — to a time after we are all dead — is not so hard, especially if you don’t have to support any of your projections!
Cars: Spiritual Totems or Historical Markers?
All the cars I ever owned and all the cars I remember my parents owning — and there were many (as a GM salaried employee, my dad bought a new car every year) — what does it all mean?
Factionalism and Particularity
I need to further clarify one particular paragraph in my last post, “Everything I Know About Politics” … sorry, readers!
Everything I Know About Politics
Most readers will agree that politics is about power. It’s about interpersonal power in social settings. It’s about group influence over governance. Decision-making. Organizing. Motivating followers. Some people are good at the personal side of this – the art of politics. Others expend great effort to understand the dynamics of politics – the ideologies andContinue reading “Everything I Know About Politics”
Where Have All the Anarchists Gone?
understanding political philosophy — like anarchism or socialism — requires a quick dip into its intellectual history — anarchism’s Big Three thinkers were Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin (in that order!)
What I Learned from Tabletop Wargaming
Tabletop wargames were a peculiar fascination of a small group of hobbyists 50-60 years ago — that group included me!
Early Childhood Memories: Autobiographical, Imagined, or Quantum Entanglement?
In recalling and explaining early childhood memories, we need to ask some metaphysical questions — about consciousness and reality itself!
War, What Is It Good For?
I belong to the generation that fondly remembers Edwin Starr’s 1970 Motown hit, “War.” It was meaningful to our Vietnam generation because it both reflected our predominant philosophy of war (generally pacifist) and apparently justified our antipathy toward the specific American war of the age. It was most likely recorded and marketed with that zeitgeistContinue reading “War, What Is It Good For?”
Warp and Woof 