Aligned, but with whom?
We humans all want AIs to be ‘aligned’ with us. But what does alignment mean, and who is the ‘us’? I asked Claude himself* how he addresses this challenge
- Economics
Temperature, tools and tobacco
- Culture
The life of a Capitol Hill intern involves bamboozling policyspeak, hellacious heat, free food at AEI, and a parade of utterly charmless Tattes
- Life
When Your Parents Are Dying: Some of the Simplest, Most Difficult and Redemptive Life-Advice You’ll Ever Receive
Ten shelves · 50 essays
The Reading Room
I.
Tech
What Google and Reddit's bad days have in common
AI search is underperforming for Google, and it's killing Reddit's traffic. What now?
Anthropic’s financials are surprisingly strong
Cost of greed, as unbearably tall chart
Building a multiplayer game world with autonomous Fable-class models
II.
Culture
Drunk or sober, but especially drunk, Edgar Allan Poe acted against his own interests. He turned the mystery of why into art
Drunk or sober, but especially drunk, Edgar Allan Poe acted against his own interests. He turned the mystery of why into…
The hottest class at Harvard? Humanities 10, where phones are banned, attendance is mandatory, and the readings are dense
Fields of lilies, fractal landscapes, idioms, DNA, Renoir’s orange, human anatomy: Why is the world full of so much beauty?
Is the book business distressed? Anxious? Optimistic? All of the above
Eric Hobsbawm against the identitarians. Centering gender, race, and sexuality was not his “kind of history.” Nor was it Karl Marx’s
III.
Life
When Your Parents Are Dying: Some of the Simplest, Most Difficult and Redemptive Life-Advice You’ll Ever Receive
"Death makes human beings seem like very small containers that are packed so densely we can only be aware of a fraction…
Commanding Heights Released
The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother
What It Takes to Be Free
Sylvia Plath on Living with the Darkness and Making Art from the Barely Bearable Lightness of Being
IV.
Design
Planning with Agents: Divided Worlds, Boundary Objects, and Thicker Interfaces
Why we need richer, thicker interfaces and better boundary objects for collaborative planning with agents
August 2026
In Memoriam, Encountering World War I, and Thinkable Horrors
One Developer, Two Dozen Agents, Zero Alignment
Gas Town’s Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale
V.
Economics
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, & Co.: They Are Not Brains, They Are Kernel-Smoother Functions: HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES
If your large language model reminds you of a brain, it’s because you’re projecting—not because it’s thinking. It’s not…
CROSSPOST: HENRY FARRELL: Agentic AI Is Myth Set in Motion
DoorDash's $17B Acquisition of Instacart Points to a World Without Employees
Can Artificial Intelligence Forecast Treatment Effects in Economics?
Lael Brainard on Why Groceries Cost So Much
VI.
Finance
Is Buying a House Now a Bad Investment?
Housing is not an investment. The post Is Buying a House Now a Bad Investment? appeared first on A Wealth of Common Sens…
Thursday links: voting share design
Stale Data, Fresh Problems: What “Factor Time” Reveals About the Fama-French Factors
Asset managers starting to get long
Longform links: inefficient interactions
VII.
History
The Art of Blaming Israel For Everything
Notes Toward an Autopsy of Anti-Zionism
The future of Britain in 7 maps
Brotherist Without Being a Brother
The history of Britain in 7 maps
Intifada Everywhere All at Once
VIII.
Philosophy
Ban Foie Gras!
If you’re in DC, vote yes on Initiative 86
How to care with Shantideva
Only Effective Altruists Should be Anti-Effective Altruism
AI writing in philosophy
The Argument For God From Knowledge
IX.
Psychology
Cornell 7, Illicit Activities, Violence Interventions
Links and Recommendations
Fake it ‘til you make it (and then keep faking it)
Quiet Luxury for Academics
Pseudobeliefs
Poor People Lie Upward, Rich People Lie Downward
X.
Science
Consciousness Isn't in the Cortex
Mark Solms on feelings, dreams, and the brainstem
Off-grid data centers have 60-80% higher emissions
Scott Aaronson: “I Heard That a Robot Solved the Math Problem You Worked On”
Scott Aaronson: “I Heard That a Robot Solved the Math Problem You Worked On”
What is a Differentiable Manifold?
Life · Feature
What Is Your Refugium?
For courage, says Bulgarian folk wisdom instructs, keep a horse chestnut in your pocket. Even as a child, I was mistrustful of superstition. But every autumn, I would pick up dozens of them from the sidewalks of Sofia and fill my pockets — not as a spell against fear but as an ode to joy. Conkers, a...
From the Stacks
Browse the full archive → Five rediscoveries from the back issues, rotated by the day
Read slowly. There is no hurry.