August 2025 – Unstable Ontology
2 posts published by Jessica Taylor during August 2025| Unstable Ontology
2 posts published by Jessica Taylor during August 2025| Unstable Ontology
Sometimes, a philosophy debate has two basic positions, call them A and B. A matches a lot of people’s intuitions, but is hard to make realistic. B is initially unintuitive (sometimes radically so), perhaps feeling “empty”, but has a basic realism to it. There might be third positions that claim something like, “A and B … Continue reading A philosophical kernel: biting analytic bullets| Unstable Ontology
It is analytically useful to define intelligence in the context of AGI. One intuitive notion is epistemology: an agent’s intelligence is how good its epistemology is, how good it is at knowing thin…| Unstable Ontology
In part 1, I discussed the falsifiability of hypercomputation in a typed setting where putative oracles may be assumed to return natural numbers. In this setting, there are very powerful forms of h…| Unstable Ontology
In “Generalizing zombie arguments”, I hinted at the idea of applying a Chalmers-like framework to morality. Here I develop this idea further. Suppose we are working in an axiomatic system rich enough to express physics and physical facts. Can this system include moral facts as well? Perhaps moral statements such as “homicide is never morally … Continue reading Towards plausible moral naturalism| Unstable Ontology
Chalmers’ zombie argument, best presented in The Conscious Mind, concerns the ontological status of phenomenal consciousness in relation to physics. Here I’ll present a somewhat more general analys…| Unstable Ontology
1 post published by Jessica Taylor during July 2025| Unstable Ontology
A theist, minimally, believes in a higher power, and believes that acting in accordance with that higher power’s will is normative. The higher power must be very capable; if not infinitely capable,…| Unstable Ontology
Ziz has been in the news lately. Instead of discussing that, I’ll discuss an early blog post, “Self-Blackmail”. This is a topic I also talked with Ziz about in person, although not a lot. Let…| Unstable Ontology
In my Xenosystems review, I discussed the Orthogonality Thesis, concluding that it was a bad metaphor. It’s a long post, though, and the comments on orthogonality build on other Xenosystems content. Therefore, I think it may be helpful to present a more concentrated discussion on Orthogonality, contrasting Orthogonality with my own view, without introducing dependencies … Continue reading The Obliqueness Thesis| Unstable Ontology
(also posted on LessWrong) I’ve met a few Landians over the last couple years, and they generally recommend that I start with reading Nick Land’s (now defunct) Xenosystems blog, or Xenosystems, a Passage Publishing book that compiles posts from the blog. While I’ve read some of Fanged Noumena in the past, I would agree with … Continue reading Book review: Xenosystems| Unstable Ontology
(this is an expanded, edited version of an x.com post) It is easy to interpret Eliezer Yudkowsky’s main goal as creating a friendly AGI. Clearly, he has failed at this goal and has little hope of achieving it. That’s not a particularly interesting analysis, however. A priori, creating a machine that makes things ok forever … Continue reading Executable philosophy as a failed totalizing meta-worldview| Unstable Ontology
The following is an argument for a weak form of the many-worlds hypothesis. The weak form I mean is that there are many observers in different branches of the wave function. The other branches R…| Unstable Ontology
(note: some readers may find the LaTeX more readable on LessWrong.) In this post I prove a variant of Gödel’s completeness theorem. My intention has been to really understand the theorem, so …| Unstable Ontology
