Gradient Ascendant

Gradient Ascendant

Home
Archive
About
Extropia's Children, Chapter 1
Back in the nineties, a teenage supergenius joined a mailing list. That odd seed led, via Harry Potter, to today's Effective Altruism and AI Risk…
 • 
Jon Evans
Extropia's Children, Chapter 2
The rise of the rationalist movement has led to multiple strange and dark offshoots - demons, cults, hells, suicides. How and why could dedication to…
 • 
Jon Evans
Extropia's Children, Chapter 7
What really is the fabled AI x-risk? Will our meddling with artificial intelligence cause us to inadvertently create a dread superintelligent godlike…
 • 
Jon Evans
2
Fear and Loathing of A.I.
Where there is rage, there is arbitrage.
 • 
Jon Evans
Attention is all you need to understand
Unfortunately, it is also true that attention must be paid.
 • 
Jon Evans
Extropia's Children Redux
All surreal contents tabled in one convenient location.
 • 
Jon Evans
1
Extropia's Children, Chapter 3
Many of the 90s cypherpunks were also 90s extropians. That's why the person most closely connected with Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto is ... while…
 • 
Jon Evans
Extropia's Children, Chapter 4
Is the increasingly controversial "effective altruism" movement about helping the most people in the most efficient ways, or about saving trillions of…
 • 
Jon Evans
Return of the Zizians
When I promised to write about "AI weirdness," this wasn't really what I had in mind.
 • 
Jon Evans
What's Wrong With Journalism
Power dissipates, and absolute power dissipates absolutely.
 • 
Jon Evans
1
Extropia's Children, Chapter 5
The driving force behind rationalism, and founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, seems to think it's already too late for humanity; we…
 • 
Jon Evans
Extropia's Children, Chapter 6
How and why did a custom-built online home for rational thinking attract a tiny but thriving coterie of far-right authoritarian racists who want to…
 • 
Jon Evans
© 2025 Jon Evans
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture