Impostor Children

Impostors And Role-Players

John Wentworth | Less Wrong | 25th September 2023

Coders working with artificial intelligence freely admit to having little or no idea what goes on inside their black boxes, and even top AI scientists proceed largely by inference. Which is, if you think about it, a strange situation. Is this some kind of reverse-impostor syndrome? Or does it suggest strategies for people in other fields who are, one way or another, basically role-playing their jobs? (1,500 words)

On Having Children

Martin Gurri | Discourse | 11th October 2023

For the first time since the fourteenth century the world’s population is about to start shrinking. You can try explaining this reversal by reference to economic and social trends, but mere correlation seems an inadequate account of what amounts to an existential shift in human preference. Have we lost confidence in our species? Do we "love humanity as an abstraction but despise it in the flesh"? (2,060 words)