Pre-History of an Encounter
Subscribe
Sign in
Home
AI Topic
Political Economy Topic
Theory Topic
Fiction
Palladium Articles
Cosmonaut Articles
Bluesky
Archive
AI
Structural Estimates of Human Computation
Some back of the envelope math
Nov 9, 2025
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
8
3
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
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
5
10
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
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
16
14
4
Superintelligence isn’t Approximated by a Rational Agent
(Thank you to Jessica Taylor and others who provided feedback on this essay)
Jul 24, 2025
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
5
1
Merely Language Machines?
A Review of "Language Machines" by Leif Weatherby
Jul 17, 2025
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
19
3
6
Higher Order Signs, Hallucination and Schizophrenia
Picture yourself on a beach.
Nov 1, 2024
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
4
7
Galatea and the windup toy
The problem of the rationalist theory of mind
Oct 26, 2024
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
1
The Impossibility of a Rational Intelligence Optimizer
Goodhart’s Law and Sign Function Collapse
Jun 6, 2024
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
A Semiotic Critique of the Orthogonality Thesis
“Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal axes along which possible agents can freely vary.
Jun 3, 2024
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
4
10
On Immortality and Prophecy
Continuing Discussion on AI
May 31, 2023
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
1
Against Butlerian Jihad
A Response to Simon McNeil
May 30, 2023
•
Nicolas D Villarreal
7
1
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts
