Blog Posts
119 entries2026
5 entries
- Apr 10EssayWorld Machines The Cosmos and the Model
Humboldt, the Romantics, and What AI Loses by Averaging
19 min - Mar 27EssayWorld Machines The Octotypic Mind
Carcinization, Cognitive Prosthetics, and the Shape of Intelligence After AI
11 min - Mar 8EssayWorld Machines The End of Identity: AI, Plasticity, and the Divergence Machine
Over the past year, the Contraptions club has been reading through history—from Giordano Bruno and Montaigne to Spinoza, Adam Smith, and Hume. We are now using using Venkatesh Rao’s Divergence Machine …
4 min - Feb 7Essay How the Fox with the Long Tail Learned to Play in the Dark Forest
I. Everything is a Balinese Cockfight # It was after a police chase and a conspiratorial lie that Clifford Geertz and his wife Hildred were accepted into the social fabric of 1958 Bali. Until then …
13 min - Jan 11EssayWorld Machines The Kernel and the Ark
I. The Wall and the Infinite # It is possible that the history of the modern West hinges on a single, melancholic misreading of Voltaire. When Candide, exhausted by the Lisbon earthquake and the …
12 min