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• Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia - Joe Carlsmith

  There are oceans we have barely dipped a toe into. There are drums and symphonies we can barely hear. There are suns whose heat we can barely feel on our skin.

• Learning from the fact that you exist - Joe Carlsmith

  This is the first essay in a four-part series explaining why I think one prominent approach to anthropic reasoning (the “Self-Indication Assumption” or "SIA") is better than another (the "Self-Samplin...

• Can you control the past? - Joe Carlsmith

  I think that you can “control” events you have no causal interaction with, including events in the past, and that this is a wild and disorienting fact, with uncertain but possibly significant implicat...

• On the limits of idealized values - Joe Carlsmith

  Contra some meta-ethical views, you can’t forever aim to approximate the self you would become in idealized conditions. You have to actively create yourself, often in the here and now.

• Existential Risk from Power-Seeking AI (shorter version) - Joe Carlsmith

  Building a second advanced species is playing with fire.

• Morality and constrained maximization, part 1 - Joe Carlsmith

  First in a two-part series about whether morality falls out instrumental rationality, if you do the game-theory right. This part lays out of the basic structure of a prominent argument in favor.