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A Measure of Phenomenological Complexity
In my previous blog I laid out some ideas about how to measure complexity, based on the idea of complexity increasing and then falling with rising…
May 22
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Complexity, entropy and semiotic analysis of the mind
Usually when considering the relationship between Shannon entropy, a measure of the “surprise” of a message” and physical entropy, a measure of the…
May 8
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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AI Timelines: On The Precipice?
This blog is a follow up to a previous one where I used structural linguistics and Landauer heat to do some estimates of how many Floating Point…
Feb 23
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Structural Estimates of Human Computation
Some back of the envelope math
Nov 9, 2025
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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The Problem of Consciousness and AI as an Ethical Subject
After my last post on the nature of qualia, I had several long discussions with readers in the comments and on twitter which made it clear there were…
Oct 12, 2025
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Materialist Semiotics and the Nature of Qualia
I recently read the essay by China Miéville “Beyond Folk Marxism: Mind, Metaphysics and Spooky Materialism” which is all about criticizing Marxism and…
Oct 8, 2025
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Superintelligence isn’t Approximated by a Rational Agent
(Thank you to Jessica Taylor and others who provided feedback on this essay)
Jul 24, 2025
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Merely Language Machines?
A Review of "Language Machines" by Leif Weatherby
Jul 17, 2025
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Higher Order Signs, Hallucination and Schizophrenia
Picture yourself on a beach.
Nov 1, 2024
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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Galatea and the windup toy
The problem of the rationalist theory of mind
Oct 26, 2024
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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The Impossibility of a Rational Intelligence Optimizer
Goodhart’s Law and Sign Function Collapse
Jun 6, 2024
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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A Semiotic Critique of the Orthogonality Thesis
“Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal axes along which possible agents can freely vary.
Jun 3, 2024
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Nicolas D Villarreal
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