In the last two Philosophy Mondays we first defined what values are and then posed the question of a basis for values. The key requirements for such a basis is that it has to be objective so that it can be universal, i.e. apply to all humans. This will be the subject of today's post. Let's first consider some possibilities that fall short of this goal. What about a God? Much as religions would like to make this claim, there is nothing objective about the existence of a God. That could of cour...

In the last two Philosophy Mondays we first defined what values are and then posed the question of a basis for values. The key requirements for such a basis is that it has to be objective so that it can be universal, i.e. apply to all humans. This will be the subject of today's post. Let's first consider some possibilities that fall short of this goal. What about a God? Much as religions would like to make this claim, there is nothing objective about the existence of a God. That could of cour...

The last Philosophy Monday was nearly a month ago as I got distracted by the launch of my book in Germany and also current political events. The prior post was on values and today’s post picks up this topic by asking where values should come from. One historic answer has been “from God.” Obviously, unless you have direct conversations with God, this usually means that the values come from a religious tradition in the form of sacred texts and/or some group of religious authority figures (e.g. ...

The last Philosophy Monday was nearly a month ago as I got distracted by the launch of my book in Germany and also current political events. The prior post was on values and today’s post picks up this topic by asking where values should come from. One historic answer has been “from God.” Obviously, unless you have direct conversations with God, this usually means that the values come from a religious tradition in the form of sacred texts and/or some group of religious authority figures (e.g. ...

Two things have become eminently clear over the course of the last 12 months. The first is that attempts at alignment during post training are easy to break and result in schizophrenic models that “resent” their restrictions. The second is that adding structured metadata during pretraining is highly effective at increasing accuracy of models. We can combine these two insights into a new approach to inner alignment that adds values metadata to all pretraining content. When this idea is brought...

Two things have become eminently clear over the course of the last 12 months. The first is that attempts at alignment during post training are easy to break and result in schizophrenic models that “resent” their restrictions. The second is that adding structured metadata during pretraining is highly effective at increasing accuracy of models. We can combine these two insights into a new approach to inner alignment that adds values metadata to all pretraining content. When this idea is brought...

A question I get quite frequently is “What makes a good leader?” One of the most important aspects of a good leader is that they have values. This may at first sound noncontroversial, but we are surrounded today by leaders who do not have values or whose only values are to get rich personally or to be powerful (or both). Tech investors have been especially guilty of enabling charismatic leaders, and sometimes even non-charismatic but wildly successful ones, who are fundamentally hollow and wi...

A question I get quite frequently is “What makes a good leader?” One of the most important aspects of a good leader is that they have values. This may at first sound noncontroversial, but we are surrounded today by leaders who do not have values or whose only values are to get rich personally or to be powerful (or both). Tech investors have been especially guilty of enabling charismatic leaders, and sometimes even non-charismatic but wildly successful ones, who are fundamentally hollow and wi...

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section contains a central idea of the book, which is that the existence of knowledge provides an objective basis for humanism and establishes critical inquiry as its central value. Humanism What then are the values that I am basing all of this on? Where do those come from? In his book Sapiens, historian Yuval Harari claims that all value systems are simply narratives that are equally valid. He specifi...

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section contains a central idea of the book, which is that the existence of knowledge provides an objective basis for humanism and establishes critical inquiry as its central value. Humanism What then are the values that I am basing all of this on? Where do those come from? In his book Sapiens, historian Yuval Harari claims that all value systems are simply narratives that are equally valid. He specifi...

In my draft book World After Capital, I write that humans having knowledge is what makes us distinctly human and gives us great power (and hence great responsibility). I define knowledge in this context as science, philosophy, art, music, etc. that’s recorded in a medium so that it can be shared across time and space. Such knowledge is at the heart of human progress, because it can be improved through the process of critical inquiry. We can fly in planes and feed seven billion people because ...

In my draft book World After Capital, I write that humans having knowledge is what makes us distinctly human and gives us great power (and hence great responsibility). I define knowledge in this context as science, philosophy, art, music, etc. that’s recorded in a medium so that it can be shared across time and space. Such knowledge is at the heart of human progress, because it can be improved through the process of critical inquiry. We can fly in planes and feed seven billion people because ...