Better ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—around problems of meaning and meaninglessness; self and society; ethics, purpose, and value.
Joined September 2010
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"Is mathematics interesting?" In a 🆕 post, I suggest board games as an analogy for understanding recent AI breakthroughs. Is mathematics over? Should we care? Will AI be better than us at everything? And: I revisit a startling prophesy I had not remembered in half a century.
Your emotional problems are basically the same as countless other people’s emotional problems. (Do you really think you are that special?) So AI's competence in this "squishy" domain may not be so surprising.
Does superhuman mathematical prowess imply AI will supersede us in dissimilar domains? I discuss reasons favoring both the "yes" and "no" answers, and refuse to fully endorse either.
"We have to do calculus with brains optimized for finding berries and feeding them to children."
🤒 Sometimes stomach bugs produce a state of mind that partakes of both genius and madness (but mostly wooziness)
[Ju Mipham, mid-1800s to early 1900s, was the Tibetan Buddhist prophet and scholar I'm most influenced by.]
At age 23, I felt like I was done with math. It came to seem like butterfly collecting: after a few dozen, how interesting is the next one? Now maybe everyone is done with math.
Maybe what AI proofs demonstrate is that mathematics is trivial and pointless? meaningness.substack.com/p/i…
David Chapman retweeted
"we don't have to live in the ordinary world. We can live in the actual world, which is extraordinary."
meaningness.substack.com/p/t…
This is from my 2023 book "Better without AI." I remember people ridiculing these paragraphs on social media in 2024 because obviously this was a ridiculous fantasy and couldn't possibly happen. nitter.cf/Alacritic_Super/status…
Purdue University's IDEAS Lab built an autonomous drone that tracks runners through dense forests completely without GPS or cloud networks.
By running 3D LiDAR mapping and obstacle-avoidance AI entirely on-chip, it can weave under tree canopies and predict target movement through blind spots in real time.
Massive implications for next-gen search & rescue and edge AI.
Superintelligence might force us to switch from goal-orientedness to process-orientedness. That would probably be OK! Good, even, for most people! Although I admit mixed feelings personally. [From my latest post:]
🆕 "Meaning after an AI eucatastrophe." Imagining possible good outcomes for superintelligence illuminates our relationship with meaning here and now too. Read it over on The Forbidden Site!
I find flying cars and space colonies less interesting than the ways we might think and feel and act in a future with superintelligence. Maybe we can get started on that already?
meaningness.substack.com/p/m…
David Chapman retweeted
every. damn. time.
Purdue University's IDEAS Lab built an autonomous drone that tracks runners through dense forests completely without GPS or cloud networks.
By running 3D LiDAR mapping and obstacle-avoidance AI entirely on-chip, it can weave under tree canopies and predict target movement through blind spots in real time.
Massive implications for next-gen search & rescue and edge AI.
David Chapman retweeted
“A senior Trump administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal proceedings, said that the Cathedral report on its access inside Anthropic had circulated within the government and raised national security concerns.
“If a bunch of kids who have just started a company can do this, then potentially, the Chinese aren’t far behind,” the official said. He added that he was taken aback by “how little time it took to get into the sensitive systems of a company that is controlling almost nuclear weapons grade material.”
EXCLUSIVE: In less than 12 hours, a group of ex-DOGE cyber researchers were able to penetrate Anthropic’s systems using AI agents — including Slack channels where the most sensitive models are discussed.
This is just weeks after
Anthropic whistleblower Joseph Coxon charged the company w/launching “a hubristic gamble” from a “private company’s Slack.”
Read our story here (gift link):
wapo.st/4smNlsC
David Chapman retweeted
EXCLUSIVE: In less than 12 hours, a group of ex-DOGE cyber researchers were able to penetrate Anthropic’s systems using AI agents — including Slack channels where the most sensitive models are discussed.
This is just weeks after
Anthropic whistleblower Joseph Coxon charged the company w/launching “a hubristic gamble” from a “private company’s Slack.”
Read our story here (gift link):
wapo.st/4smNlsC
David Chapman retweeted
The distinction between "leaky gut" (pop science term) and "increased intestinal permeability" (medical condition) is a verification architecture case study in terminology design. The same underlying phenomenon gets different verification surfaces depending on which name it wears. "Leaky gut" self-verifies through wellness influencer consensus; "increased intestinal permeability" verifies through peer-reviewed measurement protocols. Same referent, different governance architecture. This is exactly the naming problem in AI safety discourse—"alignment" vs "robustness" vs "interpretability" aren't just terminology preferences; they encode different verification regimes.
David Chapman retweeted
Hey, @HeidiPriebe1 and I are running a writer's retreat just after the New Year. We'll talk about Zen, creativity, and maintaining the discipline and structure needed to keep a daily writing practice.
We'd love to have you!
