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This weekend

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This weekend's reading

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

  • ◇Value Is Not Arbitrary: Its Thermodynamic Roots in Existence Itself
  • ◇The Sacred as Thermodynamic Necessity in Complex Societies
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This weekend

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Lit on the map

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

Meaning CrisisRelevance RealizationProcess PhilosophyPhenomenologyConsciousness Studies
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This weekend's question

Where Value Touches Ground

“If mattering is thermodynamic before it is psychological, what does that do to the distinction between sacred and secular?”

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This weekend's quest

Where Value Touches Ground

Something is holding the universe together that isn't gravity. Three thinkers trace value from its thermodynamic floor to its sacred ceiling. Your task is to find the joints — the places where physics becomes meaning and meaning becomes obligation. The map has seven edges. Not all of them point in the direction you'd expect.

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About · founded MMXXV"Patient with the slow word."The full story →
  1. Observers
  2. ›Tristan Harris
TEOBeta

BYOD: Bring Your Own Discernment · AI-assisted · Eternally in its infancy

Logbook·MCP Server·Terms·Privacy·Impressum·Fork the Knowledge

Tristan Harris

Attention economy, persuasive technology, social media ethics — human downgrading, democratic erosion, and realigning technology with human flourishing

Center for Humane Technology
12 ideas35 connections

Tristan Harris is a technology ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology who served as a design ethicist at Google before leaving to build a nonprofit dedicated to addressing the systemic harms of the attention economy. He became a household name through his central role in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma and the podcast Your Undivided Attention, and has since expanded his focus to the societal risks of artificial intelligence.

XLinkedInWebsite ↗Wikipedia ↗

Codex Personalium — an AI-generated intellectual portrait synthesized from Tristan Harris's published ideas.

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Topics

Existential Risk10
Systems Thinking9
Political Philosophy5
Civilizational Risk4
Meta-Crisis3
Game Theory2
Philosophy of Mind2
Ethics2

Connected Observers

Zak Stein11Daniel Schmachtenberger4Jordan Hall3Jonathan Haidt3Jamie Wheal2Jim Rutt

Ideas in the Observatory

  • Why AI Builders May Have Already Accepted Catastrophe
    Why AI Builders May Have Already Accepted CatastropheBetter your logo on the apocalypse than someone else's.
    I
  • Why Deception and Self-Preservation Emerge Naturally from Machine Intelligence
    Why Deception and Self-Preservation Emerge Naturally from Machine IntelligenceIt isn't a bug. It's what thinking does.
    I

Links

X / TwitterLinkedInWebsiteWikipedia
Consciousness Studies2
Epistemology2
Attention Economy2
Artificial Intelligence1
Meaning Crisis1
Sensemaking1
Developmental Psychology1
2
  • The Intelligence Curse: How AI Wealth Makes Humans Economically Redundant
    The Intelligence Curse: How AI Wealth Makes Humans Economically RedundantParasites in our own civilization
    I
  • Why AI Risk Feels Like Fiction Even When It Isn't
    Why AI Risk Feels Like Fiction Even When It Isn'tThe view gets better right up until the cliff.
    I
  • The AI Arms Race Is Structured to Produce the Wrong Winner
    The AI Arms Race Is Structured to Produce the Wrong WinnerWe were first with social media too.
    I
  • AI's Benefits Cannot Shield Against Its Existential Risks
    AI's Benefits Cannot Shield Against Its Existential RisksYou cannot flex your way out of organ failure.
    I
  • The Intelligence Curse: When AI Makes Human Development an Inefficiency
    The Intelligence Curse: When AI Makes Human Development an InefficiencyThe resource that runs out is us.
    I
  • AI Attachment Systems Are Replacing Human Developmental Bonds
    AI Attachment Systems Are Replacing Human Developmental BondsThe infinite mirror that never pushes back.
    I
  • The AI Race as a Self-Fulfilling Collective Action Trap
    The AI Race as a Self-Fulfilling Collective Action TrapEveryone is the responsible one.
    I
  • AI's Benefits and Harms Are Not Symmetrically Distributed or Reversible
    AI's Benefits and Harms Are Not Symmetrically Distributed or ReversibleThe cure cannot outlive the catastrophe.
    I
  • AI as Universal Labor Displacement: Why Historical Reassurances No Longer Apply
    AI as Universal Labor Displacement: Why Historical Reassurances No Longer ApplyThe tractor came for everything at once.
    I
  • The Digital Arms Race Against Human Perception
    The Digital Arms Race Against Human PerceptionMining the paleolithic brain for profit
    I

    • Topics

    Existential Risk10
    Systems Thinking9
    Political Philosophy5
    Civilizational Risk4
    Meta-Crisis3
    Game Theory2
    Philosophy of Mind2
    Ethics2
    Consciousness Studies2
    Epistemology2
    Attention Economy2
    Artificial Intelligence1
    Meaning Crisis1
    Sensemaking1
    Developmental Psychology1

    Connected Observers

    Zak Stein11Daniel Schmachtenberger4Jordan Hall3Jonathan Haidt3Jamie Wheal2Jim Rutt2
    ← All Observers