Educational and military systems can work together to let the most competent people rise to the top of society.

The folk popularity of pirates embarrassed central authorities and gave us show trials, procedural manipulation, and state-run PR campaigns.

Contractualism can’t meet every human need. In order to thrive, we must rebalance.

The artist shares her thoughts on human civilization, the universe, and the dawn of artificial intelligence.

It is impossible to align artificial intelligence because agency is inherently unstable. A post-human world will be less unified than you think.

Alliances of families built the impersonal organizations that now regulate society. Only new alliances can replace them.

The genomics revolution has shown us our barbaric past. It now also forces us to decide our future.

Dreams of aligned AI give up too much agency to the machine, and assume “human values” are more stable than they are.

Nick Land has articulated a crisis of humanism in the face of artificial intelligence. The solution is to embrace your own will-to-power.

American education has become misguided in its goals even as it has grown increasingly competitive. Confucian teaching offers a solution.

Can online networks become viable communities and further their goals in the real world? I brought two hundred people together in Montenegro to find out.

Wagner Group arose out of Russia’s landscape of corruption, factionalism, and political fiefdoms. If similar conditions intensify in the West, powerful individuals will exploit the same opportunities.

The Bay Area is a regional economy hindered by fragmented local governments. The answer is consolidation into Greater San Francisco.

The Cosmists pursued visions of resurrection and immortality but ended up recuperated into Soviet ideology. Modern tech utopians are following in their footsteps.

There is only one durable justification for space exploration. If we fail to understand it, our civilization will end on Earth, not among the stars.