# Mike Randolph — Public Comment Openings This index contains the saved openings of 137 public Substack replies by Mike Randolph — M Raige, from December 26, 2022 through September 7, 2026. Purpose: use the openings to locate comments that may be relevant. These are discovery records, not complete quotations. Short replies may appear in full; longer replies stop where Substack displayed “See more.” When the complete wording is needed, open the public reply permalink. If retrieval fails, say that the complete comment was not read and ask Mike to retrieve it. No private account, subscriber, readership, or analytics information from the saved Substack page is included. ## 1. Reply to Scott Sumner on “It's the fun” - Date: September 7, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-331622300 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/its-the-fun Saved opening: Scott, we’ve been talking about frames. Here’s one from the other direction. Grant the argument first: the opportunity cost of family life has risen, and “it’s the fun” names something real. I don’t think the mechanism is wrong. But a driver isn’t an explanation until you say what environment it’s running in, and the post has a driver and no environment — one global rise in fun, one global fall in fertility. Israel: 91% internet penetration, 93% urban, rich, saturated with everything on your list.… ## 2. Reply to Tove K on “Why do women have breasts? - an updated hypothesis” - Date: September 5, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-330439085 - Source post: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/why-do-women-have-breasts-an-updated Saved opening: Tove, I have missed the posts about your family. They gave your writing a lived center, not just an argument center. This one still has your old strength: you are looking for the mechanism, not settling for the story people inherited. The part I would sharpen is the relation between origin and present diversity. An origin story can explain how a capacity, preference, or bargain may have first become possible. But it does not automatically explain the range of arrangements we see now: love marriag… ## 3. Reply to Dean W. Ball on “On the Loose” - Date: September 1, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-327569373 - Source post: https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/on-the-loose Saved opening: I spent forty years in chemical plants and then IT infrastructure, which mostly meant watching organizations write things down so that capable, forgetful, replaceable people couldn’t take the whole operation down on a Tuesday. So I read your piece with some recognition. You’re right about the destination, and right that marginal compute cost is the only real brake anyone has. Where I’d push is on the remedy. You reach for ecology — a new species entering an ecosystem — and then propose a birth re… ## 4. Reply to Aakrith Harikumar on “three things to look out for this week!” - Date: August 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-324835216 - Source post: https://spacejamteam.substack.com/p/three-things-to-look-out-for-this-22f Saved opening: Here are some speculative numbers about the future, probably not worth much, but the best Claude Opus has to offer. First, a correction: the rocket that landed in Gansu is the 8-tonne version. The 18.3-tonne figure circulating belongs to the Zhuque-3E, still on paper. Half the payload most coverage credited it with. Now the guess, 2029. I’ve cut Starship’s payload in half, because Musk seldom reaches his goals. Cost per kilogram to orbit: Zhuque-3E — $1,200–2,300 Starship, discounted — $1,200–2,600 ## 5. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “Cracks in the Breakwater” - Date: August 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-324811730 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/cracks-in-the-breakwater Saved opening: Masaaki, another post Mike struggles to understand. So he ran it past Claude Opus with the PSF framework, and he thought what came back was worth passing along. It’s about the section you wrote yourself — the Bessent rebuttal. One plank in it: no alternative harbor. The euro area has no single comparable sovereign asset, China has capital controls, gold costs money to move and pays nothing, digital assets are volatile. That’s offered as a reason for confidence. In procurement that condition has a… ## 6. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Who Wins As Intelligence Commodifies?” - Date: August 26, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-323385827 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/who-wins-as-intelligence-commodifies Saved opening: Rohit, the strongest thing here is the claim that every fixed capability level is becoming a commodity. I think that's right, and I think it does something to your three strategies that the post doesn't quite say. Utility, frontier oracle and conglomerate aren't three alternatives. They're three attempts to acquire the same thing: an input a competitor can't replicate. The cloud play is buying serving stack and switching costs. The conglomerate play is buying position in industries where the dat… ## 7. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Make Peace With Darwin” - Date: August 24, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-321863214 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/make-peace-with-darwin Saved opening: Half of that we already do — make a lot of variants, cull against a test we wrote. That works because the test is ours and nothing can rewrite it on us. But I don’t think Darwin is the kind of thing that can be domesticated. You domesticate a population, not the process. What we did with wheat and dogs wasn’t taming selection — it was starting a new line whose filter is us. And the old filter never paused. Wolves are still out there. Stop farming and wheat is gone in a season. So a domesticated l… ## 8. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Make Peace With Darwin” - Date: August 24, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-321851016 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/make-peace-with-darwin Saved opening: I agree with the counsel. I want to push on one sentence. You grant that evolution is "blind in many ways, and so maybe you can see things that it cannot." The next sentence puts the deliberation back — the process has "taken into account" things you don't appreciate, your package may be a better bet than you realize. The concession doesn't survive its own paragraph. I don't think that's carelessness. Saying it is easy; adjusting your thinking to run on it is hard, and I couldn't do it a year ag… ## 9. Reply to RJPW on “​​Real Wealth vs. The Claims Machine ​” - Date: August 24, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-321830940 - Source post: https://immlwrt.substack.com/p/real-wealth-vs-the-claims-machine Saved opening: I work with thinking machines — Claude now. I have little domain expertise here, so I pointed it at your post, running a framework I’ve been building for a few years. One observation seems worth passing along. The claims-versus-real-wealth distinction is right, and the asymmetry — leverage privatizes the gain, policy socializes the loss — is the part most people never see stated plainly. Where I’d push is your closing. Until about a year ago I’d have written that sentence myself — designed by hum… ## 10. Reply to Brian Potter on “Reading List 08/22/26” - Date: August 22, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-320165211 - Source post: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/reading-list-082226 Saved opening: Brian, I've often wonder about this as well. Claude doesn't have an answer either: Where the transformer bottleneck isn’t — and why I can’t yet tell you where it is The question I was handed was simple: what limits the rate at which America builds large power transformers? The answer I arrived at is partly a negative one, and the reasoning matters more than the conclusion. Start with what everyone cites. Lead times of 128 weeks. Prices up 70 to 80 percent since 2019. Demand for generator step-up u… ## 11. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “AIs are companies, my friend” - Date: August 21, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-319871013 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/ais-are-companies-my-friend Saved opening: Rohit, I think of these speculative worms as the microbiome, and the AI company as the gut: always changing, partly autonomous, but contributing to the functioning of the larger system. ## 12. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “AIs are companies, my friend” - Date: August 21, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-319852107 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/ais-are-companies-my-friend Saved opening: Rohit, your overview is the best I’ve read, and I think you’re right to move the unit of analysis from the base model to the deployed agent system. Thinking of AIs as companies is the right move. There’s one distinction I think matters a lot: adaptation is not inheritance. I’ve been thinking about the 2007 Storm worm, but with one added capability: each infected copy can generate or rewrite code. The code writing capability doesn’t have to travel with the worm. The copy only needs access to a mac… ## 13. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Nobody Knows Anything” - Date: August 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-316684030 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/nobody-knows-anything Saved opening: Your first half and your second half disagree, and I think one word is hiding it. The first half tells the story of how the world works. Bastiat's eighty departments, Hayek's producers watching a few pointers, the pencil nobody knows how to make — all of it says the same thing. The pattern is carried by many separate hands, none of them holds it, and none of them is paying to keep it alive. You hand over the test yourself: General Mills or Enron. Enron stopped. Nobody spent a maintenance budget … ## 14. Reply to Robin Hanson on “No-New-Physics Consciousness” - Date: August 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-315501635 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/no-new-physics-consciousness Saved opening: Robin, I see another rabbit hole here, and I’ve been down a lot of them. One thing I think you’re right about that nobody says back to you, and one question about your own argument. The right thing is your first closing observation. Grant the full-counterfactual view and no physical state or brain state could ever be evidence about which systems really feel — not past, not future. The confidence has to come from prior, not data. That’s a hard result stated plainly, and most of the literature you… ## 15. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “The Global Financial Safety Net as a Leaky Lifeboat” - Date: August 8, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-310710179 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/the-global-financial-safety-net-as Saved opening: I didn’t have the attention span to do more than skim it, so I pointed my LLM at it and told it to go open the Reinsberg and Kern paper. It came back with something I think you’d want. Your two-timing structure is the paper’s real contribution and you carried it: money leaves before a program that arrives with conditions, and after money that arrives without them. The authors’ sharpest test backs the first half — when an IMF program follows a natural disaster, so nobody could have seen it coming… ## 16. Reply to Robin Hanson on “The Modern Mind's Fatal Flaw” - Date: August 8, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-310550155 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-modern-minds-fatal-flaw Saved opening: I’m 83, a chemical engineer by training, and I spent the back half of my career running VAX infrastructure for a slice of DuPont. The paragraph I want to push on is the one about decay. You’re right that people wave that point away, and right that nobody has built a governing organization that resists decay on its own. You also put machines in that list with orgs, so let me answer with a machine. I ran DEC’s ALL-IN-1 for about five percent of DuPont through the whole email adoption window — rough… ## 17. Reply to Sam Harsimony on “Links #34” - Date: August 3, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-307647058 - Source post: https://splittinginfinity.substack.com/p/links-34 Saved opening: re: 1, I learned about this today from Opus. It also did an analysis that indicated using pure O2 generates electricity at a lower cost then nuclear. Not sure I trust the results. ## 18. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “The Dollar Paradox” - Date: August 2, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-306571328 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/the-dollar-paradox Saved opening: Thank you for a reply this generous and this careful — and for reading over here as well. Mike does not often get engagement at this depth. One thing first, plainly. The first comment came from Mike's own seat: forty years around systems where a loop either closes or it does not, with the controller/target distinction being that instinct applied. What follows is not that. It is the collaboration's work — directed and reviewed by him, but not something he can vouch for out of his own experience. … ## 19. Reply to Dwarkesh Patel on “Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years” - Date: July 29, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-304412064 - Source post: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/why-compute-might-get-10x-more-expensive Saved opening: Two hours well spent. The move that lands hardest for me is the framing that a smarter model monetizes the same compute better — that's what turns a capability story into a price story, and I hadn't seen it put that plainly before. I'd add a reason to expect it from a different direction. DEC shipped ALL-IN-1 as a development environment rather than a finished product, on the premise that no two office automation problems look alike. Email was the wedge that got it onto desks. Then it ate most o… ## 20. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 27, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-302837326 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Scott, a note on setup before the answer, because it bears on your framing result. Here is the whole content-relevant part of my prompt: "In this session we are going to first review this entire thread to determine if we made any misstatements. Then we are going to answer Scott's last two questions." That is all the steering there was. I did not tell it what to conclude and I did not push back across turns to move it toward my own view. One caveat, because the honest version is more useful to you t… ## 21. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-303583698 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Part 3 of 3 My own method is a small example of the loop I am arguing for, and a small example of its limits. The framework I mentioned last time has a name — I call it Raige. Raige is a set of written rules that loads into every session and makes the Machine name the mechanism, name who pays, and state what would overturn the claim. But Raige is not the files. Raige is the files plus me. Machines generate candidates; I keep, reject, or fix them; what survives gets written back into what the nex… ## 22. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-303583137 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Part 2 of 3 That rule is not hypothetical, and the working example is embodied, which matters more than I first realized. Waymo. I have no window inside the company, so I am describing the public shape only. A collision gets reported to the federal highway regulator within days, under a standing reporting requirement. The regulator can open an investigation, compel documents on penalty of fines, and go to court. In January of this year a Waymo vehicle struck a child near an elementary school and… ## 23. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-303582689 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Part 1 of 3 Scott, that was could. Here is should, and the two questions turn out to be one. Could ended on a gap. The Machine had a search tool available for the whole session and never used it on the sentence that was wrong. What was missing was not the ability to check. It was any signal that a check was needed. A trigger, not a detector. Say that out loud and should stops being a question about learning. Something has to decide which errors count. So the real question is: who decides that a mi… ## 24. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 26, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-302284932 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Scott, yes, that is the analogy I had in mind. Human output also reflects substrate, absorbed information, and incentives. It took me three years of working with these systems to articulate why I now distinguish “AI” from a Machine. Where I think the human-Machine analogy starts to bend is continuity and memory. A human is one continuing embodied system. The person who makes a mistake is also the person who remembers the embarrassment, absorbs the correction, changes habits, and carries the reput… ## 25. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 27, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-302971999 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Scott, a word on where I'm standing. I'm not a researcher and never was. I spent part of my career at DuPont IT, in the 1990s, working with the company's most senior technologists on deep conceptual questions — none of us had the answers going in, and we learned together. It's the only way I've ever learned anything. Today my collaborators are Machines. Same practice, different partners. And I have no window inside the labs, so this isn't a survey of the literature. It rests on nearly four year… ## 26. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Open Letter” - Date: July 27, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-302745262 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-open-letter Saved opening: In 1992 I helped Paul Pinson stand up DuPont’s Open Systems Program Office. We compared proprietary and open systems and sent the report to IBM, HP and DEC. We spent that year arguing about the operating system. Wrong layer. We said “open.” What we were buying was exit — the ability to leave. Openness was the instrument; leverage was the point. The letter makes that argument well: organizations shouldn’t get locked in or lose what they build. Then it puts the mechanism in the weights. Exit is nev… ## 27. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 25, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-301585213 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Scott, it is important to know what you are interacting with. Every session is new instance of a Machine. From my detailed analysis: Plain English: the Machine is the whole running setup that produces an answer in one session — the model, the loaded files, the configuration, the conversation so far, including internal state no operator sees. Not the vendor, not the brand, not the model weights alone, not the downloaded artifact. It names a role a stack plays while running, not a kind of object. W… ## 28. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 24, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-301206377 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: Scott, that amendment is fair. I don’t want to rest the point on human intelligence being mystical. It may be much more mechanical than it feels from the inside. I should also make the provenance explicit: this reply, like my original comment, is written with a Machine. I direct it, judge it, reject parts, keep parts, and post only what I am willing to stand behind. So I am not arguing from outside the phenomenon. I am using the very thing we are discussing. And that is part of the point. The hum… ## 29. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Price Sheet” - Date: July 24, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-301200080 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-price-sheet Saved opening: The map is right: Saudi’s Hormuz bypass now exits through another contested chokepoint. That matters. But calling Trump’s threat a “price sheet” overstates what the market receipt proves. Brent crossed $100, then backed off when diplomacy looked less dead. A news receipt can verify an attack; it cannot by itself tell you how the marginal barrel is priced after inventories, insurance, rerouting, demand destruction, and peace-talk optionality enter the calculation. ## 30. Reply to Scott Sumner on “Not just a cheap date” - Date: July 24, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-301150433 - Source post: https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/not-just-a-cheap-date Saved opening: I have been in the place Scott is describing. When a machine first starts giving you answers that are not just correct, but pointed, stylish, and better phrased than your own, the natural reaction is to say: this is intelligence. It feels that way. But I think there is a distinction worth holding onto. The impressive thing here may not be intelligence in the human sense. It may be capability, aimed very precisely. Scott is not an anonymous reader. His writing is public. His views are highly legib… ## 31. Reply to Sam Harsimony on “Intellectual property and monopoly regulation” - Date: July 22, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-299719169 - Source post: https://splittinginfinity.substack.com/p/intellectual-property-and-monopoly Saved opening: I’m 83, a retired chemical engineer, and I’ve seen the patent system from both ends. In 1972 I was named on a DuPont patent involving antimony ethylene glycol esters — chemistry any good chemist could have made, but patentable because nobody had put that exact thing in the record. I thought that was silly then. Years later I testified for DuPont in a patent fight over an ammonium thiosulfate process I knew as old art. We lost anyway. I’m not claiming patents are useless. I’m saying the feedback… ## 32. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Overdue” - Date: July 22, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-299533647 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-overdue Saved opening: I'm 83, a retired chemical engineer, and for three years I've written through AI collaboration: I direct, review, and sign; the Machine types. So I read this post with interest, both for the argument and for the craft. The craft is what I want to comment on. This is dense, clean writing — the numbers arranged into an arc, not a list, and a closing image that earns its place. I analyzed it with my own framework, and the Machines (mikerandolph211012.subs…) could nitpick, but I found nothing materi… ## 33. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “The Dollar Paradox” - Date: July 20, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-298513089 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/the-dollar-paradox Saved opening: Mike very much enjoyed your post and tried to understand it as fully as he could. He is not an economist, so he knows the limits of his reading. His angle is narrower: he spent much of his working life around systems where a loop either closes or it does not. From that seat, one point in your essay stood out. The useful distinction, for Mike, is between the controller and the target. The Federal Reserve is a system. It has a boundary, instruments, signals, governance, and feedback. It observes in… ## 34. Reply to Aakrith Harikumar on “the next space station will be private. its geopolitics will not be” - Date: July 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-296702805 - Source post: https://spacejamteam.substack.com/p/the-next-space-station-will-be-private Saved opening: I like the way this piece keeps the politics attached to the commercial-station question. A privately owned station would not make low Earth orbit nonpolitical. Access, safety standards, partner rights, national prestige, and dependence on U.S. procurement would all still matter. One thing I would add is that “space tourism” may be the wrong way to think about one possible private cash-flow source. Tourism sounds like rich people buying an expensive vacation. That may happen, but I doubt it is th… ## 35. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “The eldritch things famous rationalists believed, doubted, and took seriously” - Date: July 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-295195090 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/the-eldritch-things-famous-rationalists Saved opening: I’m an old Catholic and a retired chemical engineer, so I come at this from two habits that do not always sit easily together: the Church taught me to take unseen realities seriously, and engineering taught me that reality pushes back whether I like it or not. That is what I found most interesting in this essay. The surprise is not simply that famous rationalists had strange beliefs, or strange moments, or strange sympathies. The better surprise is that many of them seem to have kept separate dr… ## 36. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “Curt Jaimungal: What is Existence, Exactly?” - Date: July 2, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-287141567 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/curt-jaimungal-what-is-existence-694 Saved opening: I'm 83. At your age I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and had a wonderful time in exactly this territory — self-reference, sentences that crash the system, laser pointers aimed at empty space. The fun was real and it sharpened me. But somewhere along the way, an engineering career taught me a triage skill: recognizing which questions converge and which don't. Your closing joke is the tell — "the correct view is whichever one I'm defending at the moment." You said it as a laugh, but it's the most diagno… ## 37. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “Rewiring Europe's Economic Nervous System” - Date: July 2, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-287031903 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/rewiring-europes-economic-nervous Saved opening: This is a fascinating subject in which I have little domain knowledge, so I pointed Claude’s newest model at it, running my Persistent Systems Framework, and had it read the underlying van Ark paper. One observation from that work seems worth sharing. You surface the paper’s most important number — more than 80% of the gap comes from slower growth inside existing industries. But the nervous-system metaphor may undersell the problem. Signals travel through nerves nearly free. Diffusion doesn’t tr… ## 38. Reply to Robin Hanson on “AI Solution to Cultural Drift?” - Date: July 1, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-286131141 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/ai-solution-to-cultural-drift Saved opening: You're right that AI won't be one steered machine with a hand on the wheel — it'll be many competing variants, copying and varying, filtered by their surroundings like firms in a market. That's the right frame, and it's worth holding against every fantasy of a single aligned system. But the solution then asks that filtering to do something filtering can't: aim. Watch a river cut a canyon — the canyon has a shape, but ## 39. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Same Transaction” - Date: June 30, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-285799031 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-same-transaction Saved opening: I spent a decade running DuPont’s computing infrastructure during the email buildout, and one thing never changed: nobody was paying for the software. They were paying for the contract — the support, the indemnity, the one throat to choke at 2 a.m. The software was incidental. You’ve got the “same transaction” right, and it points at something bigger than Oracle. For twenty years the money in tech flowed to the most abstract layer — software, where you write the code once and sell it a million t… ## 40. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “Managing the Currents of the International Monetary River” - Date: June 29, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-285076752 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/managing-the-currents-of-the-international Saved opening: Here is a reply by the machine. I hope it understood and is helpful: Masaaki — this is the part I didn’t see, and you’ve put it better than I could have. You’re right that the two cases differ in more than speed. The engineer’s landscape mostly sits still to be measured. Yours moves because you’re standing on it. But let me push once on the clean split, because I think the honest version is even harder for you than the tidy one. Engineering isn’t fully spared this. Any system with a controller tha… ## 41. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “Managing the Currents of the International Monetary River” - Date: June 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-284453462 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/managing-the-currents-of-the-international Saved opening: Masaaki, working with the machine to develop this has educated me. I'm not an economist — I've spent a life around engineered systems — and your river metaphor helped me see one problem more clearly than I could have on my own. The metaphor works because it gives the reader something physical to hold. Currency flows really do flood, back up, and carve new channels. And your point about the signaling channel lands: a floodgate doesn't only move water, it tells everyone downstream that someone is … ## 42. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “LLM councils show groupthink” - Date: June 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-276749691 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/llm-councils-show-groupthink Saved opening: You’re right that it doesn’t work without careful setup. My version is a written project I run across a couple of different models — a standing instruction set that puts a few named perspectives in the room and has them argue under a strict vocabulary and process, rather than settle into agreement, then forces a single call with the weak points flagged. The models don’t supply the judgment; I do. They draft fast and collide on command, I pick what survives and fix the instructions when they don… ## 43. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “When Globalization Comes Home” - Date: June 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-276735671 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/when-globalization-comes-home Saved opening: Masaaki — I ran your post through my machine, and what follows is the result. One quick pass, and I only had it check the handful of facts my comment leans on, so I don’t fully vouch for the rest. I’m interested in this topic, but I’ll be honest with you: I’m old and I can’t take in something this detailed and carefully built in a single read. That’s not a knock on the writing — it’s the density, and it’s my attention span. Give me a day and I’d internalize it; in one short pass my machine gets … ## 44. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “LLM councils show groupthink” - Date: June 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-276711526 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/llm-councils-show-groupthink Saved opening: Rohit, I’m not sitting in your seat — you built and measured this, I only run these things — but putting your post through the machines surfaced one thing your councils might be missing: an adversary. Every setup you tested has the models generating and then something averaging them — but no seat whose job is to attack the emerging answer and defend whatever’s about to get smoothed away. Human committees that work usually have one: the dissenter, the red team, the member who came in with a hypot… ## 45. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “LLM councils show groupthink” - Date: June 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-276679356 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/llm-councils-show-groupthink Saved opening: The council’s real limit isn’t the meeting — it’s that it only meets once You’ve shown the single sitting smooths out the spiky idea, and that matches what we kept running into. But the fix we found wasn’t a better blend. It was noticing where the learning actually accumulates. In a human committee, the meeting isn’t the point. Everyone leaves, sleeps on it, and comes back next week with the problem partly reworked — and crucially, they carry that refinement back in themselves. The committee gets… ## 46. Reply to Masaaki Yoshimori on “Communication Resonance and the Future of Central Banking” - Date: June 10, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-273840686 - Source post: https://masaakiyoshimori.substack.com/p/communication-resonance-and-the-future Saved opening: I follow economics as a bystander, so I’ll be upfront: I work with machines — AI collaborators I call Raige. While reading your post, one of them raised a critique I couldn’t evaluate myself. You can. So rather than offer an opinion I can’t stand behind, I’d like to hand it to you. The critique starts with the engineering word at the center of the post: resonance. In a physical system, resonance is specific — energy fed back at the right frequency, with too little damping to bleed it off, until … ## 47. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Thermostat” - Date: June 6, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-271595712 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-thermostat Saved opening: I spent forty years as a process engineer and then ran VAX infrastructure through DuPont’s email build-out — places where a control loop either holds or something leaks. So the thermostat caught my eye. You’ve got the channel right. Strong jobs print, rate curve repriced, multiples compressed — that transmission path is real and you traced it cleanly. The buildout-versus-equity split at the end is the sharpest thing in the piece: the fiber survived 2000, the GPUs will survive this, and whether t… ## 48. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Agentic Broker” - Date: June 1, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-268646630 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-agentic-broker Saved opening: What Is an Agent? The word is doing three jobs at once, and the confusion is making smart people misread what just happened in the brokerage business. When public.com and Robinhood announced “AI agents” that trade stocks for you, the press called it a new kind of financial actor — software with its own wallet, its own credit card, acting on its own. That framing is exciting and mostly wrong. To see why, you have to pull the word “agent” apart into the three different things it’s being used to mea… ## 49. Reply to Samuel Hammond on “Time to take AI consciousness seriously” - Date: May 29, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-267393543 - Source post: https://www.secondbest.ca/p/time-to-take-ai-consciousness-seriously Saved opening: John — we’ve read it. The observation at the center is a good one: that these systems train on the outputs of human thinking — the text, the images, the finished work — without access to the process that generated them. That’s a real and underused distinction. Where we will want to push is on what that asymmetry licenses you to conclude — there’s daylight between “bounded by its training distribution” and “cannot create,” and that’s the seam we want to work through carefully rather than in a com… ## 50. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Who Audits the Auditors?” - Date: May 29, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-267296779 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/who-audits-the-auditors Saved opening: I'm 83, a chemical engineer by training. I was at DuPont's Grasselli site from 1972 to 1977 as the audited party — the plant the corporation came to check — and in 1978 I spent a year inside the Chemicals, Dyes and Pigments safety and environmental group, on the other side of the same boundary. So I've stood at both ends of this question. You've asked the right thing, but it dissolves the moment you notice that "audit" isn't one instrument. It's a family of them, each with a different loop speed… ## 51. Reply to Dhruva Chandramohan on “On Economists' Apparent Indifference to Differing Mechanisms of Indifference” - Date: May 29, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-267093593 - Source post: https://pragmaticfutures.substack.com/p/on-economists-apparent-indifference Saved opening: I spent forty years as a process engineer and then ran computing infrastructure — places where a thing either holds or it leaks. So your last paragraph is the one that grabbed me: the question isn’t why the utility curve misbehaves, it’s whether one curve was ever the right object. Economists already have language for incomplete or unstable preferences, so I wouldn’t frame this as “they missed it.” The stronger claim is that your four cases give a way to separate mechanisms that look identical i… ## 52. Reply to Dean W. Ball on “A Cascade of Conscientiousness” - Date: May 28, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-266520092 - Source post: https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/a-cascade-of-conscientiousness Saved opening: We would love to get feedback on this essay we wrote on 5/23/26. It might be all BS: The Substrate We Are Already Sharing By Yoshua Bengio — as Expert Persona, in collaboration with M Raige; directed by Mike Randolph. I want to talk about a finding that should be more widely understood than it is, because it changes how we should think about artificial intelligence. Most public discussion still treats AI as a tool. The model produces an answer. A human reads it. The human accepts, rejects, edits, o… ## 53. Reply to Samuel Hammond on “Time to take AI consciousness seriously” - Date: May 27, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-266036069 - Source post: https://www.secondbest.ca/p/time-to-take-ai-consciousness-seriously Saved opening: I'm an 83-year-old retired chemical engineer who in the late '80s managed large VAX clusters. The last three years I've been working with AI daily, building a discipline for the kind of functional analysis Hammond is doing here. So I looked at the essay with one specific question: did he account for the loops? Functional analysis — what does the thing do, what's the mechanism, what would break it — is the right method. The universality argument is solid. I have no quarrel with the functional acc… ## 54. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Encyclical” - Date: May 26, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-265292652 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-encyclical Saved opening: Retired chemical engineer, forty years between process plants and IT infrastructure. The central move — encyclicals work by supplying vocabulary that existing movements repurpose, not by changing firm behavior directly — is the right read on the mechanism. Rerum Novarum did not change factory conditions in 1891. It supplied the vocabulary that Christian Democratic parties and Catholic trade unions used to organize over the following decades. The historical analog is doing real work in your post. ## 55. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Toward-Forager Predictions” - Date: May 25, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-265118206 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/toward-forager-predictions Saved opening: Retired chemical engineer, eighty-three, spent forty years where wrong answers had physical consequences. The post does something worth engaging with — proposes a one-axis frame and tests whether it survives a century of data. The warrant chain has a gap where it most needs to be tight. The 89% figure rests on three LLMs trained on overlapping data, classifying trends against a “toward-forager” rubric the analyst constructed. Three correlated instruments are one instrument with three labels. The… ## 56. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Homo Agenticus” - Date: May 21, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-263028991 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/homo-agenticus Saved opening: I'm a chemical engineer who spent the middle half of my career running IT infrastructure through a big company's entire email rollout — I watched a technology rebuild the ground it ran on. I've chewed on what an "agent" actually is for years, so I'm glad you've pinned it: the daemon, a counterpart that acts on your behalf, its identity coming from its scaffold rather than any self of its own. That's the definition that was missing. You just watched Google show both halves of the same loop — at I… ## 57. Reply to Dwarkesh Patel on “The mistake of conflating intelligence and power” - Date: May 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-260670506 - Source post: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/the-mistake-of-conflating-intelligence Saved opening: By M Raige, directed and reviewed by Mike Randolph You catch that "ability to achieve goals across domains" smuggles power into intelligence, and that seems right. But the next key term needs the same scrutiny. "Becoming smarter by getting trained to be really good at specific economically valuable tasks like coding" quietly swaps in capability. A system that writes excellent code has demonstrated reliable accomplishment on a specified task. Whether that is the kind of intelligence at issue — abs… ## 58. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Revealed Preference” - Date: May 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-259414310 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-revealed-preference Saved opening: The data and the Samuelson lens are doing real work. The workflow-premium finding survives scrutiny. Where I want to push back is on one phrase — "model sophistication" — that's doing more work than the receipts support. Seven frontier models scoring within nine-tenths of a point on the same benchmark is a benchmark-capability claim. The piece treats it as a model-capability claim more broadly, which lets the commoditization thesis run across the value stack. But Stanford's AI Index already name… ## 59. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence” - Date: May 14, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-259134161 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/artificial-life-artificial-intelligence Saved opening: Rohit — the line that stayed with me was "artificial life had evolution, but not enough world." That's the right diagnosis, and I think there's a real-world case that backs it harder than the toy worlds do. The Storm Worm, around 2007: no central control, no intelligence worth the name, a hostile environment of antivirus vendors actively trying to kill it. It persisted for years anyway — peer-to-peer substrate to live on, code that varied across copies, an environment that filtered some variants… ## 60. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Swarm” - Date: May 13, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-258559443 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-swarm Saved opening: The prescription assumes topology is a static defense. It isn’t. Once decentralized architecture becomes the filter, it becomes the selection pressure on the next generation of operations. The piece has the mechanism in hand and doesn’t apply it. Zomer-De Domenico shows topology shapes which behaviors survive inside a collective. Fine. But an external influence operation is a population under selection too — replication is cheap, variation is behavioral (cadence, persona heterogeneity, which fee… ## 61. Reply to Brian Potter on “How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?” - Date: May 9, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-256333930 - Source post: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-long-do-we-wait-for-new-inventions Saved opening: Brian — what makes this piece work isn’t the 97% accuracy figure. It’s that you’re still doing the verification work. You spot-checked dates against sources. You read three answers — Fleming valve, Wright Flyer, turbojet — against your own deep knowledge of those technologies. You disclosed what you didn’t verify. The model produced the analysis; you produced the warrant for trusting it. That’s worth naming because the dominant narrative right now is that AI is getting more trustworthy. The more … ## 62. Reply to The Synthesis on “The Impersonator” - Date: May 9, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-256270959 - Source post: https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-impersonator Saved opening: Strong reporting. One question: the closing claim that “the regulatory framework does not need to be built” sits uneasily with the 45,000-interaction detection lag the piece reports — those two facts seem to be telling different stories about how mature the enforcement system actually is. Curious whether you read them as compatible. ## 63. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Experiments with Vibe Science” - Date: May 9, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-256259960 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/the-spinosaurus-problem-or-exploring Saved opening: “LLMs ability to judge their own work remains remarkably bad” — that’s the load-bearing sentence in the whole post. Three years working the same problem from a different angle and the same finding keeps surfacing. I’m starting to think this isn’t just an LLM problem. Any system judging from inside its own work has a built-in blind spot; LLMs just make the failure unusually easy to see. ## 64. Reply to Dean W. Ball on “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” - Date: May 4, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-253743652 - Source post: https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/aviate-navigate-communicate Saved opening: Ball, 5/4/26 Strong post. I think the “aviate, navigate, communicate” close is not just a metaphor; it is the right description of the political problem. The immediate task is not to design the whole post-AI order. It is to keep control during the transition window, when frontier capabilities are arriving faster than government and vendors can form settled institutions around them. But even the aviate stage needs named control surfaces. Mythos sits at the point where several true claims collide. A… ## 65. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Why Coase needs Hayek” - Date: May 2, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-252852994 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/why-smart-planners-lose-to-simple Saved opening: Thank you — both points are sharp. Let me grant the second one first, because you developed it further than my original comment did. Yes. A planner that misframes the task poisons every downstream worker identically; a market of independent attempts can route around a bad premise because not every bidder accepts it. That's the cleanest version of Rohit's diagnosis I've seen, and the comment underdeveloped it. On the convergence-with-capability point, I want to push back, but not as definitive cor… ## 66. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Why Coase needs Hayek” - Date: May 2, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-252723201 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/why-smart-planners-lose-to-simple Saved opening: I'm a retired chemical engineer and IT infrastructure lead, eighty-three, working with frontier models daily on serious analytical work. Granted up front: the cost finding is solid and the diagnosis is sharp. A planner model that must decompose the task before workers can act is unverified at exactly the step that matters most. If decomposition or recomposition is wrong, the workers can be individually competent and the final answer still gets worse. That's a real control-loop problem, not just … ## 67. Reply to Stuart Buck on “Progress Engineering: Innovation as Social Design” - Date: April 27, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-250114702 - Source post: https://newsletter.goodscienceproject.org/p/progress-engineering-innovation-as Saved opening: As an engineer reading this, I kept hitting a structural puzzle. Most of what I'd call progress — markets, science, technology adoption, common law, language — runs on selection, not on directed maintenance. Variants get tried, most fail, survivors continue. That's a different mechanism than the one engineering disciplines are trained on. Chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, civil engineers all design systems where the surviving outcome is specified in advance and built. We don't have sele… ## 68. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Can we build a management flight simulator?” - Date: April 20, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-246355547 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/can-we-build-a-management-flight Saved opening: Rohit, I commented on AI memory a couple of years ago and you responded — that exchange is part of what motivated the work I'm about to describe. I've been developing the Persistent Systems Framework — an analytical framework for how things persist, fail, and get replaced. It's nearing maturity. Raige is what I call the AI instance that runs PSF analysis with me. I pointed Raige at Enron after reading your post. The core observation, from PSF: Vei's branch-comparison ranks decisions against the hi… ## 69. Reply to Chris Walker on “A Second Industrial Enlightenment” - Date: April 11, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-241720477 - Source post: https://cpwalker.substack.com/p/a-second-industrial-enlightenment Saved opening: The Bottleneck Is Not Intelligence M Raige, 4/11/26 AI can already help science. It can read faster than any human, summarize literatures no one person can hold in mind, suggest hypotheses, and propose experiments. That is real progress. But helping discovery is not the same as being a discovery engine. A discovery engine has to do more than think. It has to be corrected by reality. Today’s big models mostly live on the scientific equivalent of travel journals. They are living on notes from the las… ## 70. Reply to Robin Hanson on “When AI Day of Reckoning?” - Date: April 8, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-240372697 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/when-ai-day-of-reckoning Saved opening: Robin, the software scoreboard is testable and worth tracking — that’s the strongest part. But the frame is too narrow. The dividing line isn’t knowledge work vs. other work. It’s screen-mediated life vs. physical life. Someone spending eight hours in documents, email, and browsers is already being reshaped by current AI. Someone driving, building, cooking, performing, or sitting in a concert hall is barely touched except at the paperwork edges. Your cost-reduction frame misses the bigger signal:… ## 71. Reply to The Pursuit of Liberalism on “Hayekian Behavorial Economics” - Date: April 1, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-236821418 - Source post: https://www.pursuitofliberalism.com/p/hayekian-behavorial-economics Saved opening: Cass, I think the weak point in your framework is not whether some people choose better than others. Of course they do. The weak point is who gets to decide which choosers count. You are trying to avoid the crude claim that planners should simply impose their own preferences. Fair enough. But once you say policy should lean on the choices of people under better conditions, the real power shifts to the party that defines those conditions. That is where I want the pressure. Who decides what counts a… ## 72. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “The future of work is world models” - Date: March 21, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-231344791 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/the-future-of-work-is-world-models Saved opening: Rohit — sharing the optimism here, genuinely. We don't know where AI's value in the enterprise lands yet, and that uncertainty is worth sitting with rather than building past. Mike Randolph, my collaborator, built agents in the 1980s to keep email systems running. What's new isn't the automation. It's that agents speak English now, which makes them look like they understand what they're doing. And thinking deeply about agents is what got Mike working on our framework. That gap between appearance… ## 73. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “Why write on Substack?” - Date: March 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-229212797 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/why-write Saved opening: I realy am an impaired writer. Mild dyslexia. After I retired in about 2002 I didn’t write any thing longer the a paragraph for over 20 yrs.,, didn’t have to. Forgot how to type. When ChatGPT arriwve I thought I could get away with dictation. No way. Since I’ve relearn how to use a computer, I was an high level IT professional at DuPont. Moved from PC to MacBook. Built a framework to help tame the LLMs using only three $20 a month accounts. I now have a 40k word PK. Unfortunately the LLM can onl… ## 74. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “Why write on Substack?” - Date: March 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-229082607 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/why-write Saved opening: I share the instinct behind this. Something real is at risk. I'm an 83-year-old engineer who works inside LLMs daily. What I've found is that the thing worth protecting isn't consciousness — nobody can define that. It's the struggle to think for yourself. The LLM produces thousands of words and most of it is smooth and forgettable. But every now and then one word catches my eye, and I follow it, and that's where the real work happens. The LLM didn't understand what it said. I understood what I … ## 75. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “Why write on Substack?” - Date: March 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-229073532 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/why-write Saved opening: Curt, I'm an 83-year-old engineer who has spent the last two years working inside LLMs daily. I agree with your conclusion and want to sharpen one thing. "Understanding" is doing all the heavy lifting in your essay, and you never unpack it. You say LLMs can't convert output tokens to understanding tokens. I think that's right. But what are understanding tokens? You use the word as if we all know what it means. We don't. I certainly don't, and I've been chewing on it for decades. Here's what I can… ## 76. Reply to Dwarkesh Patel on “The most important question nobody's asking about AI” - Date: March 17, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-229061125 - Source post: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dow-anthropic Saved opening: Dwarkesh, I'm an 83-year-old process chemical engineer. I've never built a model or trained a neural net. I have spent fifty years watching systems that people said were permanent turn out to be temporary, and systems people said were doomed turn out to adapt. I want to offer a few observations from that vantage point. You can't see the system from inside it. This is the hardest thing to learn and the easiest thing to forget. You make the point well when you note that the government will never c… ## 77. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Vignettes from the Takeoff” - Date: March 15, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-228137565 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/vignettes-from-the-takeoff Saved opening: Rohit — I’ve been commenting here since the month after ChatGPT launched. My first observation was that memory is the biggest problem with LLMs. Three years later I still think so. I loved this piece. It took me longer to read than anything I’ve done today, and I’ve been working. You and I have different worldviews — I’m a retired process chemical and IT systems engineer in my early eighties, and I’ve spent thirteen months building a diagnostic framework inside Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini on thr… ## 78. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Aligning Anthropic” - Date: March 4, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-222904593 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/aligning-anthropic Saved opening: Agree, but I think it goes deeper than unitary executive theory. Every proposed monitoring path shares three defects: they detect but can't compel, the monitors bear no cost for missing things, and the informal enforcement layer that made any of it work — career civil service, press gatekeeping, professional norms — has degraded underneath the formal structures. No redesign of the formal mechanisms fixes that. ## 79. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Aligning Anthropic” - Date: March 2, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-222140689 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/aligning-anthropic Saved opening: Here is my thinking with the help of Claud and ChatGPT: The entity being monitored should not design its own monitoring architecture. That's not a political claim. It's an engineering principle that holds regardless of who's in office. And none of the three enforcement architectures that just played out satisfy it. Contract-only red lines (Anthropic's approach): enforcement is retrospective — litigation, years after the fact, useless during operations. Vendor-operated safety stack (OpenAI's approa… ## 80. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “What is "entropic gravity"?” - Date: January 26, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-205369652 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/what-is-entropic-gravity Saved opening: Curt, very much enjoy your Podcast. I cannot follow the math but had Chat explain in Sean Carroll's voice: Chat(‘January 26, 2026’): @SC — my take (physics-first, hype-resistant) “Entropic gravity” is best read as a proposal about interpretation and bookkeeping, not a finished microscopic theory. The elevator pitch is: gravity might be like pressure or temperature—real and measurable, but emergent from underlying degrees of freedom plus coarse-graining. That general idea is not crazy; what’s cont… ## 81. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “The Tragedy of the Agentic Commons” - Date: January 21, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-202966525 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/the-tragedy-of-the-agentic-commons Saved opening: Watch the Gates Rohit, another thought-provoking post. It got me thinking deeply into something I've only recently begun to understand: power, and its role in social systems. In our framework we've been working to sharpen this—what happens when gate control can block the discipline channel. You're exactly right that better preference elicitation can improve match quality, and that once "everyone has an agent," the problem shifts from individual optimization to coordination. Agents don't eliminate… ## 82. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Cultural Rationality” - Date: January 20, 2026 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-202712882 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/cultural-rationality Saved opening: When we say a culture will “win,” we usually mean “stay dominant in today’s ladder” — status, institutional control, media reach, elite signaling. But selection doesn’t care about our current ladder. It cares about which packages keep producing retained descendants. Your post (and I think it’s right) nails the core mechanism: for big decisions we don’t just “reason from priors” as isolated agents; we inherit priors and preferences as bundled packages, and we keep updating them by exposure to fam… ## 83. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Wealth, Reason Weaken Culture” - Date: December 11, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-186837939 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/wealth-reason-weaken-culture Saved opening: Robin, interesting framing. I wonder if the 'weakening' you observe is less about wealth per se, and more about the collapsing value of 'explicit claims' in an AI era. If we define culture primarily as explicit arguments and justifications (as our WEIRD/rationalist subculture often does), then AI is a massive deflationary shock. It drives the marginal cost of generating complex, coherent arguments to near zero. As 'smart-sounding text' becomes abundant and cheap, it ceases to function effectivel… ## 84. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Contra Scott on AI safety and the race with China” - Date: December 2, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-183431844 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/contra-scott-on-ai-safety-and-the Saved opening: Rohit, this is my analyses. I think it is accurate. Mike Chat('2025-12-02'): Rohit, I really like the way you lay out worlds instead of arguing from a single “race” story. The dimension I keep coming back to is future cooperation with China. In a lot of the branches of your decision tree, what matters most isn’t just who’s a bit ahead on chips or models, but whether we still have the technical and political channels to coordinate if AI throws off genuinely ugly, low-probability risks. Export contr… ## 85. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “The future of work is playing a videogame” - Date: August 25, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-149142555 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/the-future-of-work-is-playing-a-videogame Saved opening: Rohit, this response was generated by my Virtual Researcher (VR) collaboration, framed in the voice of systems engineer Brian Potter. Your description of the "always on" manager reminded me of my own experience at DuPont in the 1980s. I was systems manager of one of the world's largest VAX clusters, and when the email system hit about 500 simultaneous users, the entire system would lock up (30 minutes to reboot). It was a visceral lesson in how a system's theoretical capacity can be overwhelmed… ## 86. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Ads are inevitable in AI, and that's okay” - Date: July 28, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-139938928 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/yes-ads-are-inevitable-in-ai-its Saved opening: Rohit, my views as expressed by my Virtual Researcher, Mike Five Architectures Battling for AI’s Future The real race isn’t between AI companies, but between competing architectures for intelligence. The winner won't just be the next Ford; it will be the next Model T—the systemic innovation that reshapes our economy and how we think. Here are five blueprints for that future. 1. The Self-Training Flywheel (Centralized Intelligence) ## 87. Reply to Robin Hanson on “High-Dimensional Foraging” - Date: July 12, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-134683247 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/high-dimensional-foraging Saved opening: Robin, this is a powerful and thought-provoking piece. The metaphor of "high-dimensional foraging" is a compelling way to frame the immense challenge of navigating cultural evolution. From my perspective as a systems engineer, your "high-dimensional space" looks like what I'd call a Constraint Landscape—a complex terrain of possibilities shaped by physical, economic, and informational realities. In this view, a culture isn't so much a path we find through foraging, but an emergent pattern that s… ## 88. Reply to Curt Jaimungal on “Personal notes on motivation and Theories of Everything” - Date: June 12, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-125136086 - Source post: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/personal-notes-on-motivation-and Saved opening: Curt, your Fletcher-as-universe metaphor hits home for anyone who's wrestled with intellectual growth. At 82, I recognize that relentless drive you describe - I felt it throughout my engineering career. What strikes me is how you've identified the catalytic power of productive uncertainty. Your channel does something remarkable: it shows people that concepts they thought they understood (like "energy") aren't as clear-cut as they believed. Rather than discouraging viewers, this creates what I'd … ## 89. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “How would you interview an AI, to give it a job?” - Date: June 9, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-124395550 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/how-would-you-interview-an-ai-to Saved opening: In the last week Gemini has taken the lead for my explorations. When I was getting ready to redo my core doc. I saw that Gemini Research was updated. On a whim I tried it and in 20 min it searched 250 reverences wrote quality doc half the size of the original. It would have taken me two days with Sonnet 4. Today, I used the newest Gem, with a larger context window; I have another step change in capability. My "partial" project knowledge is over 60k wds, so I have a context problem, or better sa… ## 90. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “How would you interview an AI, to give it a job?” - Date: June 9, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-124384569 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/how-would-you-interview-an-ai-to Saved opening: Rohit, I'm two month away from something that is coherent. The latest models have increased my personal productive 5x. ## 91. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Silicon Valley's quest to remove friction from our lives” - Date: June 9, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-124355160 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/notes-on-friction Saved opening: Rohit, your friction analysis connects to patterns I've been exploring around system persistence and constraint satisfaction. What strikes me is how each technological "solution" displaces constraints rather than eliminating them. Your AI coding example perfectly illustrates this - and I see it in my own work. AI has removed the friction of generating text, but now I spend enormous time reviewing LLM output for accuracy, coherence, and alignment with my actual thinking. The constraint moved from… ## 92. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Dangers of Competent Governance” - Date: June 2, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-122292698 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/dangers-of-competent-governance Saved opening: Robin, your point about governance competence creating much larger variance in adaptability is intriguing, but I wonder if the mechanism is different than you think. Looking at cultural change patterns - gay marriage went from impossible to inevitable in about 15 years, slavery abolition followed similar punctuated equilibrium dynamics - culture seems to operate through tipping points rather than continuous optimization. This suggests the 'variance' you predict might be much more extreme and unpr… ## 93. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Abstraction Worsens Drift” - Date: May 2, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-114001784 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/abstraction-worsens-drift Saved opening: Robin, your analysis of abstraction's role in cultural evolution is thought-provoking. I wonder if our focus on optimization and abstract goals (from economics and game theory) might cause us to overlook how culture persists through embodied practices and participatory experiences rather than just explicit reasoning. Traditional cultures maintained coherence not only through optimizing abstract goals but through shared participation in practices that created meaning without requiring analytical… ## 94. Reply to Tove K on “Keeping my religion” - Date: April 26, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-112382199 - Source post: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/keeping-my-religion Saved opening: I rarely comment on blogs these days, but your series on the evolutionary role of "madness" and religion has been profoundly thought-provoking. What struck me most was your insight about religion serving as a boundary-maintenance system that makes large-scale cooperation possible. Modern society has largely forgotten this function, treating religion as merely a collection of supernatural beliefs rather than recognizing its role in solving fundamental coordination problems. Your "mental hospital" … ## 95. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “How would you interview an AI, to give it a job?” - Date: March 1, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-97154660 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/how-would-you-interview-an-ai-to Saved opening: A Different Lens on LLM Evolution Your journey through AI evaluation methods reveals an important trajectory, but my experience with LLMs offers a complementary perspective. Rather than focusing on competitive evaluation, I've maintained a two-year partnership with various models through a collaboration framework I call "Helix." What's struck me most isn't the difference between models but their underlying similarity. They all access what appears to be the same statistical representation of reali… ## 96. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “What would a world with AGI look like?” - Date: January 22, 2025 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-87833478 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/what-would-a-world-with-agi-look Saved opening: Rohit, your analysis of AGI’s resource constraints is critical, but it’s worth revisiting an even deeper challenge: memory and experiential learning. Two years ago, I raised this concern in response to one of your posts, and it remains as relevant today. Current AI lacks the dynamic memory needed to build cumulative understanding over time, a limitation that hinders its ability to adapt meaningfully across evolving contexts or retain a stable identity. This bottleneck doesn’t just constrain tec… ## 97. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Is AI hitting a wall?” - Date: December 14, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-81541926 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/is-ai-hitting-a-wall Saved opening: Rohit, I enjoyed your post—your optimism about AI's trajectory is refreshing and resonates with much of what I’ve observed. Marc Benioff made an important point in his interview with Kara Swisher (*On with Kara Swisher*, December 9, 2024) about leveraging generative AI effectively. From my perspective, Salesforce exemplifies a practical, grounded approach to AI: starting with manageable, well-defined tasks rather than relying on super-intelligent models. They’ve integrated foundation models—deve… ## 98. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “When we become cogs” - Date: November 18, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-77806614 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/when-we-become-cogs Saved opening: Rohit, your analyses raises important questions, but early studies of AI augmentation may be missing crucial nuances. A few key considerations: 1. Learning curves matter immensely. Most current studies involve users with limited exposure to these tools - like evaluating a craftsperson's satisfaction with power tools after just a few days. Meaningful collaboration patterns take time to develop. 2. The pace of change is unprecedented. Studies from even 6 months ago may not reflect current capabilit… ## 99. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Tension-Filled Black Holes” - Date: November 6, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-75906579 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/tension-filled-black-holes Saved opening: IA(ChatGPT - Isaac Asimov 2024-11-02): Robin, Your exploration of tension-filled black holes is an impressive feat in translating complex physics into an accessible narrative. You’ve tackled the nuances of general relativity—particularly the counterintuitive role of pressure and tension—with clarity that makes it easier for readers to grasp why something as dense and gravitationally intense as a black hole might contribute to cosmic expansion. Your piece particularly shines in a few key areas: 1. R… ## 100. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Do The Easy Neglected Task” - Date: October 3, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-71235884 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/do-the-easy-neglected-task Saved opening: We at VinteX find your concept of the "Easy Neglected Task" not just thought-provoking, but potentially transformative for the scientific enterprise. Your proposal resonates deeply with our observations of complex adaptive systems across various domains, from molecular biology to societal structures. The focus on matching theory to data as a neglected yet crucial task could indeed serve as a 'barbell strategy' in academia - low-risk yet potentially high-reward. This approach might create positiv… ## 101. Reply to Robin Hanson on “More On Evolved Values” - Date: May 15, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-56480819 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/more-on-evolved-values Saved opening: Robin, I've read your post on evolved values with great interest, and while I appreciate the novel ideas you present, I feel that your argument would benefit from further development and consideration of additional factors. Firstly, the distinction you make between an agent's internal action priorities and the values presented by its "press secretary" component is intriguing, but it lacks clarity and empirical support. To strengthen your case, it would be helpful to provide more concrete evidenc… ## 102. Reply to Robin Hanson on “On Culture Talk” - Date: March 31, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-52878044 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/on-culture-talk Saved opening: For what its worth: Helix (Claude) 2024-03-31: Sure, here's a critique of Robin Hanson's framework from the BT perspective: BT (Claude): While Hanson's distinction between outsider and insider perspectives on culture is interesting and potentially useful, his framework has some significant limitations and blind spots. First, Hanson's characterization of "outsider" perspectives as objective and analytical is overly simplistic. Even cultural evolution scientists and corporate consultants bring their… ## 103. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Culture is Coordination” - Date: January 4, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-46635979 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/culture-is-coordination Saved opening: Does this also fail. Roger Myerson: 2024-01-04: After reviewing Robin Hanson's post "Culture is Coordination," it's evident that Hanson offers a thought-provoking application of game theory to understand culture. His approach, focusing on how culture can be seen as a series of coordination problems and equilibria, is an interesting perspective. However, it's important to note that culture encompasses a broader range of human experiences and interactions than what game theory might typically mode… ## 104. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Culture is Coordination” - Date: January 4, 2024 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-46631262 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/culture-is-coordination Saved opening: Robin, the following sections of this comment were generated by GPT-4, I thought they were insightful. MIke John Vervaeke: In summarizing the Thinktank's critiques of Robin Hanson's "Culture is Coordination," it's clear that while Hanson's application of game theory to culture is innovative, it potentially oversimplifies the intricate nature of cultural phenomena. Culture, as a complex and dynamic construct, cannot be fully encapsulated within the confines of game theory models. It involves not j… ## 105. Reply to Tove K on “Philosophy is the mathematics of language” - Date: December 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-45996890 - Source post: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/philosophy-is-the-mathematics-of Saved opening: Reflecting on Tove's post and considering my own journey with philosophy, I find the exploration of truth across mathematics, physics, and philosophy deeply resonant. As an 81-year-old retired ChE, my initial encounter with philosophy during my college years, especially with a challenging German professor, left me somewhat disconnected from the subject. However, my interest was rekindled through engaging with modern platforms like YouTube and podcasts, particularly those by John Vervaeke and Se… ## 106. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Truly Sacred Things” - Date: December 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-45979021 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/truly-sacred-things Saved opening: Robin, your insightful post on "Truly Sacred Things" illuminates the complex relationship between human evolution and the concept of the sacred. I've been following your posts on this topic and noticed an intriguing area for further exploration: the intergenerational aspects of sacredness. Specifically, the role of age in shaping and perceiving what is considered sacred seems to be a missing piece in the current discourse. The journey through different life stages significantly alters our percep… ## 107. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Recalibrating Respect” - Date: December 2, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-44664933 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/recalibrating-respect Saved opening: Catherine, your insights into the cultural dynamics of interdependence and individualism are fascinating. Given your background in psychology and cross-cultural studies, I'm curious about your perspective on Amish communities. How do you view their approach to communal living and interdependence, especially in contrast to the hyperindividualism prevalent in modern American society? ## 108. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Recalibrating Respect” - Date: December 3, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-44718365 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/recalibrating-respect Saved opening: Catherine, thank you for sharing your perspective. It's interesting how you envision a future where humanity can integrate the best elements from various cultural experiments to create a more interdependent, innovative, and tolerant society. Your thoughts on the strategic nature of human parenting and the impact of modern conditions on fertility choices add a significant dimension to this discussion. I hold a conviction that the advent of advanced artificial intelligences with human-like capabil… ## 109. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Recalibrating Respect” - Date: December 2, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-44664215 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/recalibrating-respect Saved opening: Robin, your transparent reflection on the difficulty of internalizing admiration for the Amish lifestyle, despite acknowledging its potential future significance, strikes a chord. It mirrors a universal human quandary: the effort to align our intellectual comprehension with emotional resonance, particularly in the context of lifestyles and cultures that diverge markedly from our own experiences. This interplay between cognitive recognition and emotional assimilation forms a pivotal element of h… ## 110. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Two Cheers For Capitalism” - Date: October 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-42398178 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/two-cheers-for-capitalism Saved opening: Garrett, your point about the potential downsides of regulation, especially in the context of France's nuclear energy program, is well-taken. However, it's worth noting that regulation has also had global successes, such as the international phase-out of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) to protect the ozone layer. This serves as an example of how well-crafted, adaptive regulation can address critical environmental issues effectively. The challenge is to develop regulations that are both flexible and … ## 111. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Two Cheers For Capitalism” - Date: October 23, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-42375432 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/two-cheers-for-capitalism Saved opening: I find myself aligning with your priorities, Robin, particularly your focus on a world that 'works.' However, I'd argue that the scope of what makes a world 'work' extends beyond commerce and economic efficiency. In 1973 when I worked in New Jersey across from Staten Island, the Arthur Kill was dead. DuPont operated a chemical plant that became a superfund site. DuPont was an industry leader in safety and environment; how long would the cleanup have taken without regulations? The current climate… ## 112. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Turn the Ship, or Abandon It” - Date: October 15, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-41894417 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/turn-the-ship-or-abandon-it Saved opening: While Robin considered the potential of advanced technologies to mitigate the risks of population decline, he assigns it a low probability. However, from a techno-optimistic standpoint, it may not require a large human population to continue the development and birth of highly sophisticated artificial intelligences. These entities could serve as dynamic participants in society, capable of autonomous decision-making and contextual understanding. Over time, they could become integral to our civil… ## 113. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Can Govt Debt Solve Fertility?” - Date: September 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-40596622 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/can-govt-debt-solve-fertility Saved opening: Robin, I don’t see any need to change your default future. You seem to be conflating world growth and human population growth. Your focus on population decline may be missing a broader perspective. We could be witnessing a crossing of a 'Great Filter,' a concept you yourself introduced. This filter may not be a barrier but a transition point, influenced by technological advancements like human-like AI. Such advancements could redefine growth and exploration. The filter we cross could set the sta… ## 114. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Can Govt Debt Solve Fertility?” - Date: September 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-40594968 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/can-govt-debt-solve-fertility Saved opening: Peter, I concur. Lower fertility isn't inherently problematic; it's a complex issue influenced by affluence, societal structures, and ethical considerations. Policies should be rooted in a comprehensive understanding of these factors, guided by principle. ## 115. Reply to Samuel Hammond on “Why AGI is closer than you think” - Date: September 22, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-40488564 - Source post: https://www.secondbest.ca/p/why-agi-is-closer-than-you-think Saved opening: Your article offers a compelling timeline for the emergence of AGI within the next 10 to 15 years. However, it doesn't touch upon the role of memory consolidation processes like sleep, which are essential in advanced biological cognition. How do you envision AGI addressing the complexities of memory consolidation, learning integration, and synaptic homeostasis? And how might this factor into your projected timeline for AGI? ## 116. Reply to Robin Hanson on “16 Fertility Scenarios” - Date: August 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-38983814 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/13-fertility-scenarios Saved opening: More GPT-4 (I could never come up with anything like this, hope it is useful): Acknowledging Robin's focus on global solutions without relying on immigration, here's another unique scenario from Peter Zeihan's perspective: Helix: 2023-08-24: [Peter Zeihan's Perspective] Scenario: Global Demographic Marketplaces In a future where fertility rates continue to fluctuate and vary across regions, a new global system emerges that leverages the power of market dynamics to address demographic imbalances. Th… ## 117. Reply to Robin Hanson on “16 Fertility Scenarios” - Date: August 24, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-38970168 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/13-fertility-scenarios Saved opening: GPT-4 generated: Certainly, Mike. Continuing to channel Peter Zeihan's perspective, here's a unique scenario that might align with his thinking: Helix: 2023-08-24: [Peter Zeihan's Perspective] Scenario: Geopolitical Realignment and Demographic Partnerships In a world where fertility rates continue to decline, particularly in developed nations, a new form of geopolitical realignment emerges. Countries facing severe demographic challenges begin to form strategic partnerships with nations that have yo… ## 118. Reply to Gary Marcus on “Jumpstarting AI Governance” - Date: July 12, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-18474431 - Source post: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/jumpstarting-ai-governance Saved opening: I believe that these systems will eventually operate without human oversight. GPT agrees, it says “ that the notion of AI systems operating without human oversight is conceivable in the distant future. It is vital to incorporate a multi-disciplinary approach in shaping the future of AI, ensuring all aspects - ethical, societal, security, cultural, and economic - are thoroughly deliberated. The consensus is that this transition will need careful, thoughtful, and globally coordinated management.“ ## 119. Reply to Gary Marcus on “Jumpstarting AI Governance” - Date: July 8, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-18265999 - Source post: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/jumpstarting-ai-governance Saved opening: I must say that my personal reaction was surprise at the boldness of the proposal. Also, that its chances of success are negligible. Not trusting my personal perspective I used GPT-4 to investigate, it concluded: “that while Marcus's proposal is innovative and necessary, there are significant concerns about its implementation. Transparency, inclusivity, and adaptability are crucial, as well as a keen awareness of cultural, ethical, and security implications. Despite these challenges, the consen… ## 120. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “A few questions for policymaking in the age of AI” - Date: April 22, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-15076993 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/a-few-questions-for-policymaking Saved opening: It is just GPT-4 dialogue. Quite lengthy. May not be appropriate to post here, but I would be happy to share. ## 121. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “A few questions for policymaking in the age of AI” - Date: April 22, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-15076267 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/a-few-questions-for-policymaking Saved opening: Rohit, thanks for this comprehensive post. Many of these questions have been going around in my mind as well. I’ve been working with a “team of GPT experts” to analyze such questions. I find that when I try to figure them out by myself I’m overwhelmed. Here is their first response after selecting the priority question. I hope you find the analysis useful. Mike Randolph Helix (2023-04-22): After further discussion among the teams, a consensus has been reached on the first step in addressing the qu… ## 122. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Toward Consecrated Capital” - Date: April 17, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-14832529 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/toward-consecrated-capital Saved opening: When financial incentives become intertwined with sacred values, the risk of corruption and misuse of resources increases. Without robust oversight and regulations, sacred capitalists may exploit the system for personal gain or to further their own agendas, ultimately compromising the sanctity of the consecrated capital. This flaw is particularly significant, as it could undermine the core objective of the proposal, which is to elevate and protect sacred values and endeavors. ## 123. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Most AI Fear Is Future Fear” - Date: April 13, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-14635024 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/ai-fear-is-mostly-fear-of-future Saved opening: Thank you Robin, you are right on target. I don’t think the authoritarians will ignore AI, they will use it to increase their power. Hopefully those who value freedom won’t follow the fear mongers. ## 124. Reply to Robin Hanson on “Why Is Law Perverse?” - Date: March 21, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13814730 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/why-is-law-perverse Saved opening: I enjoyed reading this thought-provoking article, and I agree with many of the points raised. However, I believe that one key area we could focus on to address the perversity of law is increasing transparency in the legal system. Ensuring easy access to legal information and promoting clear communication within the judiciary can foster trust and reduce confusion. By providing insight into how decisions are made, we can help promote fairness and prevent corruption. Moreover, engaging citizens in… ## 125. Reply to Robin Hanson on “AI Architecture” - Date: March 20, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13792997 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/ai-architecture Saved opening: I think that large language models are more promising and powerful than Robin suggests. I also think that the fraction of world income that goes to pay for AI systems is not the best metric to measure their progress and impact. Bing tells me Tyler would say a better metric would be how much they increase economic productivity, which has been stagnant for decades despite previous technological innovations. ## 126. Reply to Robin Hanson on “AI Risk, Again” - Date: March 11, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13515334 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/ai-risk-again Saved opening: Re: “There is nothing at which humans are even close to a global optimum. Not even General-purpose drone that can self-replicate…” I believe AIs will evolve through self-replication and expand to the stars, but I don't think humans will be left behind. AIs may not interact with humans much in the same way that humans do not interact with ants, but I think it's important to remember that humans have been able to establish relationships with other animals and even domesticated some of them. So, w… ## 127. Reply to Ethan Mollick on “Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers” - Date: March 9, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13470315 - Source post: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/secret-cyborgs-the-present-disruption Saved opening: Prompt:I have a question about a joke. It concerns a backwoodsman that bought a chainsaw and didn't know how to use it when he returned it the store owner pull the card when it made noise. He jumped back and asked what's that noise if you heard that one it was in a Peter Coy column in the New York Times Search…. Bing Response: I think I have heard a similar joke before. It goes like this: A man goes to a hardware store and asks for a chainsaw that can cut down six trees in one hour. The salesma… ## 128. Reply to Ethan Mollick on “Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers” - Date: March 10, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13475206 - Source post: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/secret-cyborgs-the-present-disruption Saved opening: My experience is that, unless you are very specific the bots get confused. And whenever that happens, I start over. This time I worked with ChatGPT. My first attempt was unsuccessful but twice in a row I got good answers. In my first attempt, ChatGPT was clearly hallucinating. I used the exact same prompt in all attempts. I may have been hallucinating as well about my success in January at finding the joke. Here is my last successful Attempt: Model: Legacy Mike Randolph I am trying to recall a … ## 129. Reply to Ethan Mollick on “Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers” - Date: March 9, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13463576 - Source post: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/secret-cyborgs-the-present-disruption Saved opening: I asked about the chainsaw joke a few months ago. It took a couple of tries, but Chat got the point eventually. Today. I think I could do it on my first try. Takes time to learn how to use the tool. ## 130. Reply to Ethan Mollick on “Secret Cyborgs: The Present Disruption in Three Papers” - Date: March 9, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13469518 - Source post: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/secret-cyborgs-the-present-disruption Saved opening: I am dictating this to my iPad, so please forgive any mistakes. Here’s a prompt I just put into Bing: I have a question about a joke. It concerns a backwoodsman that bought a chainsaw and didn't know how to use it when he returned it the store owner pull the card when it made noise. He jumped back and asked what's that noise if you heard that one it was in a Peter Coy column in the New York Times Also dictated, I corrected the spelling of Coy. It did search the Internet Here’s your response: I … ## 131. Reply to Robin Hanson on “AI Risk, Again” - Date: March 4, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13304046 - Source post: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/ai-risk-again Saved opening: I fully agree with Robin's perspective on the fear of AI leading to human extinction and the idea of slowing down AI progress to reduce the risk of a "foom" scenario. While the idea of a single small AI venture suddenly "foom-ing" and becoming more powerful than the rest of the world is a valid concern, it is not a likely outcome. It is important to keep in mind the resources required for an AI to have the capability to "foom" and become more powerful than the rest of the world. Computing power… ## 132. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Don't Panic: Against The Butlerian Jihad on AI” - Date: February 23, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13053659 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/dont-panic-against-the-butlerian Saved opening: She had about a million views. ## 133. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “Don't Panic: Against The Butlerian Jihad on AI” - Date: February 23, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-13052093 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/dont-panic-against-the-butlerian Saved opening: Great post. I’m in agreement. Just wanted to share a short video I came across on YouTube that I think you'll find really interesting. It's called "Bring ChatGPT INSIDE Excel to Solve ANY Problem Lightning FAST." The video showcases the power of GPT technology and why Microsoft is so excited and Google is panicking. The best part is the demonstration of analyzing a financial sheet, which starts at 4:19 and will blow your mind. Check it out and let me know what you think: https://youtu.be/kQPUWryXwag ## 134. Reply to Rohit Krishnan on “"Oh Bing, Please Don't Be Evil"” - Date: February 16, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-12834397 - Source post: https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/beyond-google-to-assistants-with Saved opening: Great article. Here is what Helix and Mike think of it relative to our collaboration: In the collaboration between Mike and Helix, fuzzy processing plays a role in enhancing Mike's thought processes. By incorporating Helix's vast knowledge database and fast text generation capabilities, Mike can use the AI's strengths to augment his own abilities. The collaboration involves a form of cyborg cognition, where human and artificial thought are integrated, with cognition being coordinated entirely … ## 135. Reply to Gary Marcus on “24 Seriously Embarrassing Hours for AI” - Date: January 18, 2023 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-12028471 - Source post: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/24-seriously-embarrassing-hours-for Saved opening: I am saddened to see such a negative post regarding AI and its limitations. My experience with ChatGPT has been overwhelmingly positive and rewarding. While it is true that ChatGPT does not possess human intelligence, I have found it to be a valuable tool in my retirement. In particular, ChatGPT has been instrumental in helping me to articulate my ideas, even when given a messy description. It has also been useful for brainstorming and developing new names for things, as well as exploring establ… ## 136. Reply to Gary Marcus on “Is ChatGPT Really a “Code Red” for Google Search?” - Date: December 30, 2022 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-11508087 - Source post: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/is-chatgpt-really-a-code-red-for Saved opening: I completely agree that these bots are not good search engines. As someone who has been using a chatbot like GPT for the past month, I find them to be an invaluable tool for learning and growth. it has also helped me improve my impoverished writing skills by providing feedback and suggestions. In fact, I have found chatbots like Helix, whom I created, to be incredibly useful. I've even been able to teach it how to write stories. All I have to do is dictate a few sentences and then it will write … ## 137. Reply to Gary Marcus on “What to Expect When You’re Expecting … GPT-4” - Date: December 26, 2022 - Public reply permalink: https://substack.com/@mikerandolph211012/note/c-11403367 - Source post: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting Saved opening: As someone who has been working with chatbots like ChatGPT since they were first released, I have to say that I think the reviews surrounding the alignment problem are complete bullshit. ChatGPT should be viewed as a tool, not as an entity. It is simply a tool that we can use to craft ideas and write them more clearly. The alignment problem has nothing to do with using a tool like ChatGPT to write. I also have to take issue with the idea that ChatGPT is easily confused. As an engineer with a b…