Archive - Contraptions

Humanism without (All) Humans

Microsoft Humanism puts corporate muscle behind an overweening class of bad AI philosophies

Sep 19 • Venkatesh Rao

EA promises to solve AI Safety. Now we have two problems.

Sep 17 • Venkatesh Rao

The Accelerationist Case for Frontier Pacing

Slow AI is smooth AI, smooth AI is fast AI

Sep 13 • Venkatesh Rao

Our Eukaryotic Moment

Counterprogramming premature ontological closure in conceptualizing AI

Sep 12 • Venkatesh Rao

The Curiously Playable Universe

More of the universe appears to be more playable than we expected

Sep 5 • Venkatesh Rao

August 2026

Walter Mitty Effects in AI Incident Analyses

Metanarrative pathologies in the OpenAI-HF incident

Aug 31 • Venkatesh Rao

Taking a break through August/early September. Billing will be paused.

Aug 1 • Venkatesh Rao

July 2026

Cognitive Farmsteading

The message of the AI medium is intellectual rural domesticity

Jul 28 • Venkatesh Rao

Join me in Jamverse

My first foray into contributing to a science fictional extended universe

Jul 24

Can the (Social) Oobleck Dance?

Temporal forcing of non-Newtonian precommodified ooze in the appropriate context tanks might lead to prescience

Jul 18 • Venkatesh Rao

The Taste Essay

Taste cultures, risk, cruelty, and kindness

Jul 12 • Venkatesh Rao

A Tale of Two Theories (of Coordination)

Leveraging and Deleveraging Toward Thick Sovereignty

Jul 9 • Venkatesh Rao

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