Daniel Van Zant

Karma: 5

Who am I?

My name is Daniel Van Zant. I am most of the way through a PhD in computational and theoretical neuroscience. I am focused on shortening the timeline from scientific exploration to tangible impact. Here’s my personal website: www.danielvanzant.com

What am I up to right now?

Evaluating decentralized alternatives to grant committees with the Wolfram Institute
Building the tech stack for a new kind of impact-focused educational institution with The Residency
Helping neuroscientists build clinically robust theories more efficiently with Dr. Elan Barenholtz

What have I done before that I’m proud of?

I have worked in both industry and academia in machine learning with a psych/neuro focus for about 7 years. I’ve done ML consulting with many startups and companies. I was invited to present at the 2025 MIT Human Augmentation Summit. I founded a startup focused on AI-assisted knowledge organization for knowledge workers. I received a National Research Service Award fellowship for my work with the National Drug Early Warning System. I got a grant from O’Shaughnessy Ventures for my work in AI-assisted systems for researchers. I got a crowdfunded grant to support my work exploring decentralized alternatives to grant committees, which was funded in large part by a generous donation from bio.xyz.

What organizations am I associated with?

Affiliate researcher with the Wolfram Institute.
Technical staff member at The Residency.
Contributing member of ekkolápto . An interdisciplinary research institute.
2025 fellows and grantees cohort with O’Shaughnessy Ventures.
Affiliate student with the FAU Center for Complex Systems
Researcher at the Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.
Member of the Center for the Future of AI, Mind & Society (AIMS).

Daniel Van Zant 7 Oct 2025 1:59 UTC
3 points
0
on: Masks: On the benefits and drawbacks of a society where everyone covering their face is the norm
A large portion of the world already wears masks regularly in the form of niqabs. I’m sure there’s some research out there on niqab-wearing that could help support or falsify some of your hypotheses. It may be worth looking into if you are interested in pursuing this question further. For future posts on this I would also be interested in what you think would be most likely to lead to most of the world wearing masks. I think that would shape a lot of how masks are used and the effects and social connotations that they have.

Daniel Van Zant 7 Oct 2025 1:45 UTC
4 points
1
on: One Does Not Simply Walk Away from Omelas
1. I have always enjoyed the Omelas story and I think this is a useful thought. This feels like an extension of some of the ideas in The emotional dog and its rational tail to handle cognitive dissonance. When we are faced with large societal issues (whether utilitarian or not) that we find objectionable, we are faced with two choices. We can either change our actions to put ourselves in opposition to the practice, or we can figure out a way to justify it morally. The latter can often be the path of least resistance and I would put 74% odds that it is the one that leads to higher subjective well-being. I don’t know of a good way to solve this but it seems like a very large flaw for democracy.
2. That being said, there are absolutely things that people talk and think about as “necessary evils” where they find it objectionable but it satisfies some greater utilitarian goal. The way people often talk about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes to mind as an example. I have a few similar examples I can think of but I am trying to avoid throwing in anything politically incendiary. I would be very curious what about a person/issue can create this “necessary evil” view, vs. trying to find some sort of justification of why a thing is actually good. My knee-jerk opinion is that it is probably very helpful to view highly utilitarian things through the “necessary evil” lens as opposed to seeing them as completely good or bad. It’s possible that it fosters a “slow change” paradigm (let’s figure out how we can get the benefits of Emolas while minimizing torture to this child). This may be helpful in being experimental and purposeful with policy to get the utilitarian benefits of a thing without the ethical downsides, which I think could be more helpful than something more disruptive. This is my first time thinking about any of this though.