If a rule has to be written before anyone knows what it will govern, how should it be written? Most of what I care about ends up here.

What Makes a Good Politician? August 1, 2026
The one standard we can all agree on, and how our MPs score against it

Ballot Structure from the Preference-Dependency Graph July 17, 2026
Which questions should a ballot ask together? The votes can tell us.

Minimality from uncertainty May 14, 2026
How much of an action set should be foreclosed before you can learn?

Agency as the candidate objective May 14, 2026
Deriving a social utility function from four toy worlds

Why care about institutional design May 14, 2026
How institutions amplify human nature, for good and ill

A model of human nature May 14, 2026
Every political philosophy is a bet on it — and its width matters more than its centre

Designing behind the veil May 14, 2026
How to choose institutions when you don't know what people will want

The Geometry of Governance January 3, 2026
Voting as a compression problem, and the right to be heard

Tradition and Change December 6, 2025
Why We Need Both Conservatism and Progressiveness

A Decision-Theoretic Take on Social Choice September 23, 2025
Using L2 to solve the preference dilution problem

Global coordination problems via game theory July 24, 2025
Why AGI is not like climate change

The DAO Proving Ground July 9, 2025
An Engineering Approach to Building Aligned Organizations

Freedom-Adjusted Life Years July 2, 2025
Are We Solving the Right Problems?

A Market for 'Truth' June 28, 2025
Using Bets to Find a Shared Truth

The Rain Protocol June 26, 2025
A Framework for Verifiable Promises

Money laundering and illicit financial flows May 20, 2025
The industry that facilitates the world's worst crimes

Politics in NZ April 25, 2025
What Is, What Should Be, and How To Get There

The cure for capitalism March 10, 2025
More capitalism

The Treaty of Wai-terra December 1, 2024
A Story of First Contact, Good Intentions, Discrimination and Lost Heritage

Tax optimisation as an adversarial game March 27, 2018
A new perspective on tax law

What are these power-compare websites for? March 26, 2018
An example of how to regulate markets to remove inefficiencies.

Policy search engine December 10, 2017
Motivating a tool for tracking the effects of policies.

A guide to regulation October 31, 2017
If we measure things, we can regulate them, fairly.

UBI: Unconditional basic income August 28, 2017
Why AI's succeses motivate the need for a UBI