New essay: “Which Future?” michaelnotebook.com/whichfuture/... On how to wisely navigate risks from transformative technology, especially artificial superintelligence (ASI). This condenses much of the key thinking from my more extended essays

This was terrific:

Sean Carroll@seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Mindscape 342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Mind, and Morality. Do social structures, like eyes and fins, arise independently from evolutionary pressures? #MindscapePodcast www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026...

Please find me on Substack Notes: substack.com/@michaelniel...

Michael Nielsen | Substack

Searching for the numinous 🇦🇺 🇨🇦, home in 🇺🇸 Research @AsteraInstitute http://michaelnotebook.com

substack.com

I enjoyed this thoughtful account of how Open Phil approach progress: support technical and scientific advances, but keeping a thoughtful eye on safety, too, viewing it as part of progress, not competitive with

Alexander Berger@albrgr.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Some people think Open Phil are luddites because we work on AGI safety, and others think we’re techno-utopians because we work on abundance and scientific progress. We’re neither. Here's why we think safety and accelerating progress go hand in hand: 🧵 www.openphilanthropy.org/research/wh...

I surprised myself by writing a blog post about religion this morning 🤭 statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/08/01/a... I thank (blame?) @economeager.bsky.social and @michaelnielsen.bsky.social for inspiring me with their recent essays

Reminds me of this paragraph from @michaelnielsen.bsky.social about human willingness to delegate to world-ending authority automated systems (whether because oversight is impossible or just inconvenient) michaelnotebook.com/xriskbrief/i...

A few thoughtfully-chosen excerpts from my "How to be a wise optimist..." essay:

Lovely thread:

Ryan Moulton@moultano.bsky.social · last yr.

This is such a great prompt, I feel like I could write for an hour about my transformational walks in the woods.

Working notes on Joe Carlsmith's notion of "deep atheism": michaelnotebook.com/deepatheism/...

Who is going to less.online?

LessOnline 2025: A Festival of Truthseeking and Blogging

May 30th — June 1st | Lighthaven, Berkeley CA | Ticket Prices Increase April 1st

less.online

A thoughtful post on AI Alignment:

Steve Randy Waldman@interfluidity.com · last yr.

[new draft post] Alignment is confinement https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/05/08/alignment-is-confinement/index.html

This is a really interesting speculative thread:

Grace@gracekind.net · last yr.

Aside from being really funny, Grok being woke is also an interesting case study for alignment. Is xAI satisfied with its current behavior, or have they tried to modify it and been unable to do so?

I find it oddly irritating when people think they're working but are actually hanging out. Like... just own that you're socializing, and do it well, rather than working totally ineptly...

The use of the term "real world" to mean participation in primate social hierarchies is simultaneously tremendously misleading, and also a real testament to just how right Darwin was...

I always find Socrates a little annoying. He's putting up a show of being interested in truth, but he never seems entirely honest himself

Curious: what is the next world reserve currency going to be? And why and when?

Fascinating:

Liberty 💚 🥃@liberty.bsky.social · last yr.

My favorite TV show, Deadwood 🤠, was largely written on set right before it was shot. The intricate dialogue was barely dry on the page when the actors performed it. Milch is just incredible:

This graph (via @albrgr.bsky.social ) is one I think about regularly: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

I made an announcements mailing list, to which you may subscribe: michaelnielsenupdates.substack.com/subscribe I've had a creaky old announcements list on Mailchimp for years. But I never use it, because Mailchimp charges hundreds of dollars per email. This solves that problem!

Subscribe to Michael Nielsen Updates

Occasional announcements about new writing and other projects. Click to read Michael Nielsen Updates, a Substack publication. Launched 3 hours ago.

michaelnielsenupdates.substack.com

Some working notes on Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" monologue. It's one of my favourite texts, but has some issues I wanted to dig into: michaelnotebook.com/pbdredux/ind... A few years ago, I wrote a companion piece exploring what I admire about the text: michaelnotebook.com/cosmos/index...

I love seeing people reading or writing papers in esoteric areas. Fashion always has a constituency and a strong machine behind it; progress depends more on what is less legible to our culture (My fortune cookie posting is strong the last couple of days! I'll switch to more substantive things...)

One strange thing about writing is that the harder you work, the easier many people think it was to do

Still thinking about Biosphere 2

What a wonderful image (the Earth eclipsing the Sun, viewed from the moon): www.space.com/the-universe... (via @andymatuschak.org )

That feeling of cleaning out your inbox upon return from vacation...

Very curious to see what Quanta Books publishes: www.quantabooks.org

Illuminating Science and Math | Quanta Books

Publishing books that explore the frontiers of science and math, illuminate our quest to understand the universe, and capture the wonder of discovery, for curious readers everywhere.

quantabooks.org

I enjoyed this dive into the decreasing length of sentences(!!) www.lesswrong.com/posts/xYn3CK...

Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased? — LessWrong

> “In the loveliest town of all, where the houses were white and high and the elms trees were green and higher than the houses, where the front yards…

lesswrong.com

Added the long-term Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth to: michaelnotebook.com/slow/

A lovely post by @henrikkarlsson.bsky.social on learning people: www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/friends-mi...

Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you meet

Sometimes two people will stand next to each other for fifteen years, both feeling out of place and alone, like no one gets them, and then one day, they look up at each other and say, “Oh, there you a...

henrikkarlsson.xyz

Really interesting essay- disagreements about AI existential risk might *really* be disagreements about dual-use nature of future technologies (since this is the vector people think AI could cause extinction).

Michael Nielsen@michaelnielsen.bsky.social · last yr.

New essay exploring why experts so strongly disagree about existential risk from ASI, and why focusing on alignment as the primary goal may be a fundamental mistake michaelnotebook.com/xriskbrief/i...