First, new content:
Hacking State 32 - Jonathan Anomaly: The Virtues of Enlightened Tribalism
In this interview Jonathan Anomaly introduces the concept of Enlightened Tribalism, a virtuous mean between blind tribalism and undiscerning universalism.
We discuss why tribalism gets a bad rap, the evolutionary origins of tribalism, how altruism gets selected for in groups, liberal cosmopolitanism as a response to the excesses of nationalism in World War I and World War II, the difference between Enlightened tribalism and pathological tribalism, pitfalls in the ways liberals propose to extend altruism indefinitely, the problems with genetically engineering people for altruism, why people are not fungible to institutions, the moral case for Enlightened Tribalism, and why real diversity requires a rejection of cosmopolitan liberalism.
Anomaly is a world renowned expert on the science and ethics of genetic enhancement and the Academic Director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, & Economics in Quito, Ecuador.
Read the paper on Enlightened Tribalism
Jonathan Anomaly’s site: https://jonathan-anomaly.com/
Quitting My Job, Building a Startup
You may have noticed the pace of content for Hacking State has dramatically reduced in recent months. This is because I finally took the leap and quit my job to build a startup at the end of May.
For the last year I’d been building LLM-based applications, along with a lot of cloud and full-stack development work for my former employer. It was a great experience that allowed me to develop a broad set of skills rapidly and completely independently as a development team of one. However, I became increasingly dissatisfied with tasks that took me away from learning LLM-based frameworks to focus on more traditional web dev work. Every day I saw accelerated gains in the advancement and tools for LLMs, and began to intensely FOMO. I knew I needed to spend more time in AI tools, but was waiting for a non-obvious application that matched my interests.
Then, in February, I was struck with a vision for applying LLMs to parse, summarize, and eventually simplify legislation. Several weeks later, Elon Musk Xeeted a potential future feature for Grok that would summarize bills as well. This was sufficient validation for me that it was an idea worth pursuing, and that if I failed to do so, someone else would eventually.
LawgiverAI
LawgiverAI was born on the basic principle that law is code. Legislation should be simple, easy to understand, and use standardized, clear language. Much of mis-governance may be attributable to the obscurantist, lengthy, intractable, and deadening language of legislation. LLMs provide an unprecedented opportunity to make sense of all the unstructured data embedded in the U.S. Statutes at Large (comprising both acts of Congress, as well as the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations.) This corpus is so large and intricate, that its precise size has yet to be documented anywhere. These facts constitute an unsustainable and ultimately undemocratic state of affairs for U.S. citizens where the laws under which they and their corporate entities are governed are incomprehensible and ever-growing in scope and size.
LawgiverAI seeks to make legislation legible. By making it so, we can make it more transparent and more tractable, giving people a handle on the law; and eventually, mapping out its topography entirely.
Ultimately, this is a project aimed at legal formalization. Through formalization, there can be accountability and understanding. Through accountability and understanding, we can restore freedom.
For now, we are developing a helpful research tool for think tanks, policy analysts, and lobbyists. You can play with our demo and intelligently chat with a bill here.
We are also seeking early stage angel investors, and potential beta testers. If you are interested in either investment or becoming an early user, email me here: alex@lawgiver.ai
There’ll be more content from Hacking State soon.
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Alex Murshak
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Anomaly Interview, Enlightened Tribalism, and Lawgiver AI