Wishful Thinking Is (Mostly) A Myth - Unpaywalled
How social games, not comforting falsehoods, distort what we believe.
PhilosophyPsychology
Conspicuous Cognition.
Dan Williams on philosophy, psychology, and the forces shaping our beliefs.
Recent essays
30 of 46GPT-6 Astra Reviews ‘The Social Roots of Delusions’
There is currently much debate about how impressive frontier AI models really are and what role they can play in research, including in academic philosophy. To get some evidence, I asked GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s new model, to review my book, ‘The Social Roots of…
Most Questions About AI Aren’t About AI
Why the AI revolution is a golden age for polymaths, philosophers, and moderate epistemic despair
Navigating the Intelligence Explosion (with Fin Moorhouse)
Watch now | Explosive technological progress, the "grand challenges" on the path to superintelligence, space expansion, and the ethics and politics of artificial minds
The Social Roots of Delusions
Clinical delusions, collective irrationality, and the fragile achievement of human knowledge
We Are Stuck With Human Nature, Not Human Ignorance
Why a tragic view of human nature need not imply a pessimistic view of human reason
Who Will Control Europe’s AI Future? (with Judith Dada)
Watch now | 'Europe 2031', AI sovereignty, and the geopolitics of compute
Highbrow Propaganda
Ideological power, populist distrust, and the strongest rational case against rationalism
Can Humanity Survive Superintelligence? (with Robert Wright)
Robert Wright on AI as humanity’s “God Test”: AI progress, superintelligence, the US-China race, global coordination, evolution’s purpose, and consciousness.
How Tribes Construct Rival Realities
Henry Nowak, George Floyd, and the hidden interpretive machinery that drives political conflict.
What If Artificial Intelligence Progress Explodes? (with Benjamin Todd)
Benjamin Todd on whether transformative AI is only a few years away, the feedback loops that could compress decades of progress into months, and how to navigate the transition to a post-AGI society.
Academics Must Wake Up on AI (with Alexander Kustov)
Is AI already better at many research tasks than humans? And if so, is this a reflection of how good AI is, or how bad much existing research is?
In Europe, There Is No Simple Immigration-Crime Story
Here are some statements that you might have heard at different times and in different venues concerning immigrants and crime in Europe:
Are We Building Conscious AI Servants?
Was Richard Dawkins right to attribute consciousness to Claude? Can we turn to consciousness "experts" to settle such questions? Is it ethical to design AIs that love being servants?
"Speaking Truth to Power" Is Bad Epistemology
If intellectuals want to hold power accountable, they should focus less on power and more on truth.
Aliens, Superintelligence, and the Future of Science (with David Kipping)
What the search for alien life can teach us about AI — and vice versa
How Brexit Created Britain’s New Political Tribes
This is a guest post by James Tilley, a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, about his excellent new book with Sara Hobolt, Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain.
Should We Care About AI Welfare? (with Robert Long)
We spend a lot of time worrying about what AI might do to us. What about what we might be doing to it?
On Becoming Less Left-Wing (Part 3)
The reality of progress, the fragility of civilisation, the left’s role in making the world both better and worse, the case for capitalism, and how to think about “the West”
Wishful Thinking Is A Myth
How social games, not comforting falsehoods, distort what we believe.
Time To Start Panicking About AI?
Watch now | In this episode, Henry and I finally do something we probably should have done in the first episode: introduce ourselves.
How AI Will Reshape Public Opinion
Social media democratised public opinion, shifting influence away from elites and experts to ordinary people. LLMs will partly reverse this trend. They are a powerful, new technocratising force.
AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth)
Watch now | What is it like to be a ChatGPT?
What Kind Of Apes Are We?
This is a guest post by David Pinsof, who writes the excellent ‘Everything is Bullshit’ Substack.
Why Have Academics Failed To Study Social Justice Ideology?
This is a guest post by Thomas Prosser (who writes at The Path Not Taken) and Edmund King (who writes at Paroxysms) about their very interesting new book, Beyond Woke and Anti-Woke: Explaining the Rise of Social Justice Ideology.
We Are Confused, Maladapted Apes Who Need Enlightenment
With Homo sapiens, Darwinian evolution produced a new kind of animal: a species that builds worlds it struggles to understand.
AI Sessions #8: Misinformation, Social Media, and Deepfakes (with Sacha Altay)
Watch now | Henry and I chat with Dr Sacha Altay about:
The harder it is to find the truth, the easier it is to lie to ourselves
A simple observation with complex implications
AI Sessions #7: How Close is "AGI"?
Listen now | And does the concept even make sense?
2025: Review and Recommendations
My top ten essays, how I use AI to read, and my favourite books, articles, and more.