Subatomic Articles

“This is the EXPLOIT CHAIN!” –Claude Mythos, while devising a privilege escalation attack on a configuration file I previously wrote about how our civilization looks a lot like a tower of holes, constructed almost entirely out of weird edge cases we’ve discovered in Nature and exploited. In turn, society itself is often deeply vulnerable to … Read more

After more than a year of trials and new models, Anthropic’s Claude AI has finally managed to beat Pokémon Red. The writeup that clued me in to this is worth a read; the story of Claude’s many failures leading up to its success are frankly hilarious. There’s even a catchy song. There was no clear … Read more

Epistemic note: This essay conflates two related concepts, the tendency of humans to build civilization by exploiting Nature’s rules and the vulnerability of that same civilization to exploits in turn, under one name. I’d like a better name for these two concepts and am open to suggestions. There is a kind of mindset that pays … Read more

To avoid spoilers, skip the first section. Twenty Chapters in Twenty Sentences A boy named Milo feels lost and listless, until one day he opens a mysterious package containing a cardboard tollbooth and a one-sentence note. He drives his toy automobile through and finds himself in another world. He meets a curious dog named Tock, … Read more

You are a wise member of the proud and noble Clan Auran. You bear no love for your ancient enemies in Clan Irgentum, but nonetheless you hope to end the feud, because in your wisdom you know that violence begets only more violence. But you also know that among your family are rash young idealists … Read more

Yesterday I described an experience that impressed upon fifteen-year-old me the importance of speaking with urgency and courage when something awful is happening.  I lived a fresh reminder of the importance of courage last week at PauseCon, a first-of-its-kind conference in Washington, DC run by PauseAI US.   I was there in a personal capacity, and … Read more

The summer before my freshman year of high school, I attended a science-themed summer camp at the University of Florida. It was a cool week! I stood on top of a nuclear reactor. I accidentally sabotaged a lesson on overfishing and tragedy of the commons by independently reinventing the concept of community governance. (And militias. … Read more