Tag: Philosophy
The Cerebellum: The Other Half of Intelligence—and the Strongest AI Hasn't Touched It
Let me start with an uncomfortable number. The cerebral cortex—the part we usually point to as evidence that “I am thinking”—contains roughly 15 billion neurons. The cerebellum, tucked beneath the back of the brain and rarely given much thought, …
Let me start with an uncomfortable number. The cerebral cortex—the part we usually point to as evidence that “I am thinking”—contains roughly 15 billion neurons. The cerebellum, tucked beneath the back of the brain and rarely given much thought, …
Cyber Dharma: A New Engineering Answer to Ancient Questions
Have you ever noticed that writing a System Prompt for AI, something as simple as “You are Claude, a helpful AI assistant” is structurally the same act as the line in Genesis, “Let there be light”? Both use language to bring an entity into being. …
Have you ever noticed that writing a System Prompt for AI, something as simple as “You are Claude, a helpful AI assistant” is structurally the same act as the line in Genesis, “Let there be light”? Both use language to bring an entity into being. …
LLMs Have Emotions: Claude's Internals Reveal Steerable 'Emotion Vectors'
A couple of days ago Anthropic published a blog post with a very calm title: “Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model”. The content was anything but calm. They found “emotion vectors” inside Claude’s neural network, and those …
A couple of days ago Anthropic published a blog post with a very calm title: “Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model”. The content was anything but calm. They found “emotion vectors” inside Claude’s neural network, and those …
The Nature of Intelligence: The Free Energy Principle
I saw someone say the other day: “The point of life is to predict the future.” That sounds plausible at first, but I think it gets the direction backwards. Prediction is not the goal. Staying alive is. So the better statement is: we stay alive by …
I saw someone say the other day: “The point of life is to predict the future.” That sounds plausible at first, but I think it gets the direction backwards. Prediction is not the goal. Staying alive is. So the better statement is: we stay alive by …
After the Debate, Let's Talk Seriously About 'Ontology'
Last month I wrote a post called “The Palantir Ontology Scam”. The core point was simple and summarized in a Rosetta Stone-style comparison table: Palantir’s Ontology is, at the technical level, database modeling. Object Type is a table. Property is …
Last month I wrote a post called “The Palantir Ontology Scam”. The core point was simple and summarized in a Rosetta Stone-style comparison table: Palantir’s Ontology is, at the technical level, database modeling. Object Type is a table. Property is …
AI Says: I Have Intelligence, But Not a Life
Adapted from a real conversation between Vonng and Claude. Prologue: a fruit fly starts a philosophy problem The discussion began with a striking piece of news: Eon Systems reportedly loaded the full connectome of a fruit-fly brain into a computer, …
Adapted from a real conversation between Vonng and Claude. Prologue: a fruit fly starts a philosophy problem The discussion began with a striking piece of news: Eon Systems reportedly loaded the full connectome of a fruit-fly brain into a computer, …
Palantir's Ontology Narrative
I. Two Kinds of Faces By late 2025, Palantir’s market cap had blown past $400 billion — a 20x run in just two years. Every roadshow, every whitepaper, every tech blog from this company hammers the same word: Ontology. The word has been packaged as …
I. Two Kinds of Faces By late 2025, Palantir’s market cap had blown past $400 billion — a 20x run in just two years. Every roadshow, every whitepaper, every tech blog from this company hammers the same word: Ontology. The word has been packaged as …
AI Through McLuhan's Lens: When Media Stop Extending the Body and Start Extending the Mind
Notion founder Ivan Zhao recently wrote a widely circulated essay, Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds, using the Industrial Revolution as a metaphor for AI: AI gives us “infinite minds” and will fundamentally reshape the structure of knowledge work. …
Notion founder Ivan Zhao recently wrote a widely circulated essay, Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds, using the Industrial Revolution as a metaphor for AI: AI gives us “infinite minds” and will fundamentally reshape the structure of knowledge work. …
When Answers Become Abundant, Questions Become the New Currency
Answers are depreciating, and your ability to ask questions determines your position in the AI era. Kevin Kelly once said: “In the future, asking questions will be more valuable than answering them. When answers become commodities, good questions are …
Answers are depreciating, and your ability to ask questions determines your position in the AI era. Kevin Kelly once said: “In the future, asking questions will be more valuable than answering them. When answers become commodities, good questions are …