Arguments I have talked myself into, with the reasoning attached so you can find the hole in it.

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

Chords are shapes July 20, 2026
What an isomorphic keyboard makes visible about harmony

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

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

Beyond Earning to Give October 10, 2025
The EA Road to AI

The Unfair Lottery October 9, 2025
and the Duty to Spend Your Luck

What is Capitalism at its Core? October 1, 2025
A Steelman of the Four Beliefs That Shape Our World

Our Attention is a Multi-Billion Dollar Asset September 21, 2025
Who's Cashing In?

The Utility of Stories September 20, 2025
and the limits of our imagination

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

The Clockwork Mind June 29, 2025
The strange paradox of free-will

The Offline Economy June 19, 2025
Why financial tools for the unconnected are a genuinely hard problem

Entropism June 18, 2025
The Universe's Burning Ambition

The Hammer and the Nuke June 16, 2025
Why AI Robustness is a Necessary Condition for AI Alignment

Is the Efficient Market Hypothesis true? May 28, 2025
Linearity, Non-Linearity, and a Confounding Conjunction

Intelligent Immunity May 27, 2025
What if intelligence evolved within the immune system?

The Alignment Problem May 23, 2025
Future AI Overlords vs. Present Corporate Greed

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

Affirmative Action's Simplistic Approach May 20, 2025
Using a 1-Dimensional Solution for a Multi-Dimensional Problem

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

Every Bias Names an Algorithm March 25, 2025
Bounded reasoners trade accuracy for efficiency in three places, and each trade leaves its own fingerprint

The cure for capitalism March 10, 2025
More capitalism

Luck vs skill in poker and life December 20, 2024
Why does poker have many rounds?

A tripping point May 21, 2022
I tripped over and have something to say about it.

Life as a minority April 7, 2021

How can you prove anthopogenic global warming? September 25, 2020
An individual cannot.

What makes something true? August 18, 2020
How does deductive truth (ie math) relate to inductive truth (ie science)?

The future of environmental sciences? February 7, 2019
What could the profession of environmental engineering look like?

Palm oil in NZ's dairy November 6, 2018
tldr; cows are fed palm kernel.

Wish list of psychological metrics November 5, 2018
What if we could accurately measure {INSERT}?

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

Humble November 6, 2017
A tribute to Carl Sagan and to science.

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

Karma and merit October 9, 2015
They deserve it

Divest? Milk and the NZ economy July 7, 2015
A letter to Fonterra.