Jonathan Moregård

• Jonathan Moregård 4 Aug 2026 14:23 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: Rewrite All the Code, All the Time

  [...] economic forces will push toward simplifying the world in pockets of activity given over to automation – and over time, the fraction of the economy covered by such pockets will grow, and pockets will merge with each other. We should expect collecting unambiguous requirements to get much easier in that world.

  I like the direction of this post, having similar interests. However, I think the bubble metaphor is weaker than the rest of the argument, and that there are clearer ways to show why it makes sense to adopt formal methods.

  Let’s start with the weakness of the bubble metaphor: you don’t go into the externalities, limitations, collaboration and upkeep needed to uphold and maintain a bubble. The world is becoming increasingly standardised, discrete, manageable; yet also increasingly convoluted, non-linear, surprising etc. Keeping up the standards sometimes works as if by magic (clock time seems just part of the territory nowadays). I’m lurking in a protocol research group that is looking into exactly things like this, and it is an interesting and tractable area, but also very messy!

  For me, the argument is simpler: To get an AI to produce an artefact, that artefact needs to be specified. We have different ways to specify an artefact, from natural language, to unit testing, to linters, to e2e acceptance test, type-driven programming with algebraic invariants, to user feedback and testing. I’m surely missing some. These specifications can be seen as constraints in program-space, creating an intersection where variations of the produced artefact lives. The more constraints we have, the better. The “harder” our constraints are (as in not budging, not being flexible), the better. Formal specification is a way to make natural language harder, a better constraint. Nuff said :)

  In my mind, the reason we don’t have pervasive property testing, algebraic laws, strongly typed systems, well-designed programming languages etc, is because adoption requires onboarding, which is costly. I hope ai will change the picture.

• Jonathan Moregård 3 Aug 2026 21:44 UTC

  1 point

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  on: Pause, at least af­ter unipolarity

  “inject it into everyone”

  I assume the resistence would be lesser if it didn’t involve syringes, and I doubt this is an unsolvable hard constraint, even though the scare factor seems load-bearing in your model.

  Option is pervasive, ambient, environmental nanobot protection (together with 222nm light etc)

  For real stability, the AI needs to be powerful enough that if one side tries to pull out of the deal and disable the AI surveillance on their side, they can’t. So the major powers need to trust the AIs enough to give them enough military power that the humans can no longer fight off the AIs, and the AIs are tasked with enforcing by force of arms that no one builds superintelligence or other terrible weapons and none of the major powers invade each other, at least until some condition is fulfilled

  Plan A supposes mutually assured compute destruction, pldeging assets much like proof of stake, MAD all the way yo. (When thinking about it, feudal hostage exchange and marriage-based pacts are a kind of MAD as well).

  I’m not sure what role the weaponized interdependence trend plays here.

  ---

  overall, great post. Just noticed some apparent weak points and want to invite you to refine.

• Jonathan Moregård 3 Aug 2026 20:34 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: DothYsTainGk’s comment on: The Art of Ship­ping Slopware

  making certain classes of bugs evaporates a lot of “bad code” space. Some things like nulls are obvious net-losses given the birth of nullrefs; others like immutability might be hard to grasp if not used, but there’s so many bugs that arise from state not being what you expect it to be. Didn’t assign, copy by value vs reference, etc etc; birthing a class of bugs.

  For types/​lints etc: the more ways you can desribe your constraints for program behaviour, the more different sources of invariants can overlap, leading to feedback, where collisions appear. Same as naming, although that’s more heuristic than programmatic.

  For the most, main issues for adoption has been onboarding, tooling support etc. Well, now it’s easier to build tools, an onboarding is a skill download. Another issue would be that models have less training data. This might be the case, but that’s mostly a problem for very niche languages, rust is sufficient and it can also write nix-derivations, which is famous for bad docs :)

  note that I’m obviously biased by Haskell elitism. Rust avoids a bunch of memory bugs and has more reliable performance, which makes it way feasable in my experience.

• Jonathan Moregård 3 Aug 2026 17:07 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: DothYsTainGk’s comment on: The Art of Ship­ping Slopware

  I see the diference between OP “go slop” vs mine “rebuild not costly”. Pretty much exactly what you said “[...] “embrace the slop” thing and it ends up not working we can move back to “reject the slop” fast and easy using LLMs?”

  When I take a bird’s eye view, I see some interesting features:

  1. natural maintainability. What makes code maintainable by humans, vs maintainable by ai? What’s the overlap? (I think fairly large, esp given AIs are trained on human-written code)

  2. rewriteability: high, with potential slop-costs from having messy UIs that become burdens to keep up. (in a sense “overfit”)

  I read OP as saying: maintainable for llm /​= maintainable for human. Let’s go llm first. I think this is true to some extent, but false in other ways. I’m pretty sure some things hold: immutability, type safety, linters, modularization, unit testing, clean abstractions, etc.

  When I look at the field, most abstraction suck (not composable, leak implementation details, doesn’t carve the domain at it’s joints, etc). So I’m happy with people trying out a low-abstraction approach to llm writing. I’m leaning into rust for bigger things, and keep to python for smaller, scaling maintainability concerns with energy invested

• Jonathan Moregård 3 Aug 2026 16:27 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Carol N’s comment on: When you donate can mat­ter more than where

  If you claim to diversify funding, this seems like a key metric to optimise for. I think there might be some version of quadratic voting (where allocations gets squared~) that leads to proper incentives.

  In simpler terms: instead of donating/​regranting money, you get to allocate/​delegate a percentage of the funds in the total pool. If you choose to allocate, part of the allocation-percentage gets reduced (you can’t hand over your power without sacrificing some of it).

  This could be tuned to hit in different ways. I’m not sure about the economics litterature on it, especially since charitable funding might behave differently, but it’s an interesting thing to tune. Might be hard to explain though :)

• Jonathan Moregård 3 Aug 2026 10:44 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: DothYsTainGk’s comment on: The Art of Ship­ping Slopware

  My point, more succinctly:

  1. badly generated ai code can be transformed into better ai code. So if we slop now, then we likely will be able to reimplement better. This means that your concern needs to be about us never being able to get ais to implement readable and nice code. Which is insane to me, because;

  2. In my experience, AI code, when properly scaffolded, is better than most human code. Hence the idea that we will never (even with better AI) be able to write understandable code is insane.

  There are obvious limits to this argument, including sloppy user facing abstractions (wonky workflows, hacky extension points, etc etc). Rebuilding to capture bad abstractions can be hard, we might inherit a spaghetti mess of UX to replicate. But if the UI is specified and works properly, I don’t think the HOW matters very much, given replicability.

• Jonathan Moregård 2 Aug 2026 19:41 UTC

  2 points

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  on: When you donate can mat­ter more than where

  What’s your “gini coefficient”? Are there “supergranters” who hold a lot of assets due to regrants following exposure/​trust/​status?

  I’ve been thinking about an implementation of liquid quadratic funding to solve some of the issues you spell out here. When I did prior research (mainly DAOs), most of them were supremely centralised.

  Could be a UX thing, though, since DAOs are quite high barrier to entry

• Jonathan Moregård 2 Aug 2026 19:17 UTC

  5 points

  5

  in reply to: DothYsTainGk’s comment on: The Art of Ship­ping Slopware

  When coding with LLMs, observability and iteration is key. Having a loop that nudges closer and closer to a target goal is easier if you have a clear target (your current codebase’s behaviour), and good observability (giving the llm more power to compare and improve).

  So even if you build a slop now, you can always rebuild better. And scaffold the agent properly so it’s able to rebuild it more readable/​structured in the future.

  However, this doesn’t matter. Given the power curve in programming ability (10x programmers etc), most code sucks compared to what is state-of-the-art. Improving upon this code is not hard. LLMs are insane; you can scaffold them to not be lazy, to read the current structure of the project and take that into account, and to research the best practices and to pick and adhere to an architectural pattern.

  Compare to most programmers in the wild; they take pieces that almost fit; smash them together; wire everything in 3 layers of spaghetti; and then duct tape the shit out of it.

  I’ve had to tell a colleague (this was 10 years ago) to use git rather than copying their 8k loc piece of shit file and persisting it by pasting it at the end of it’s own file. ctrl+a → ctrl+c → ctrl+v → ctrl+s. So easy.

  Also, LLMs improve. We discover workflows, share them, good ones gets baked into scaffolding. Meanwhile there are programmers who’d rather not learn a thing, going with a sota 15 years out of date.

  A bit of a rant. I’ve been working with devs for 9,5 years. I much prefer the LLMs, when it comes to code quality. But I’ve put a lot of energy into shifting my mindset for how I work with them, building proper scaffolding, etc. I can easily see people with no clue of what they are doing just leveraging their ability to ship shit.

• Jonathan Moregård 5 Jun 2026 6:32 UTC

  5 points

  0

  on: Beyond Hard­coded Evolu­tion­ary Psychology

  Were I conscious of my intuitive goal instead of merely tracking it,

  How do you define “conscious” vs “merely tracking”? Like, what’s a rough way to explain the most important differences between them?

  Intuitively, to me, “tracking” is synonymous with “being conscious of”; I wonder if you’retrying to point at some specific category of qualia or what :D

Sub­jec­tivity vs Agency: AI “Wak­ing Up”?

• Jonathan Moregård 30 May 2025 14:14 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: Truth or Dare

  This tracks with something I’ve been thinking about in terms of antagonistic and non-antagonistic social environments, where non-antagonistic ones are marked by trust, good intent, respect for boundaries, limited/​benign power moves (scoring points by “outplaying” others socially). Generally marked by the kind of games the norms enforce; do they tend towards positive or zero/​negative sum games? Also marked by how conflicts are resolved—subterfuge or mutual attempts at synthesis? Is it possible to “go meta” (or “go back channel”) and resolve a situation?

  I like how you’re pointing at them being separate equilibria, with “light worlds” actively needing to defend themselves in order to stave off corruption. I’ve though in terms of bubbles for personal change, where people can safely take the risk of shifting between stable personality-equilibria, temporarily becoming frailer while exploring emotions, non-coercive motivations, shame, and similar. These bubbles serve as a kind of incubator, with people coming out on the other side with an updated robust personality-equilibria, ready to spread light to the dark world.

  If we only spread the light world, without hardening it or making it antifragile, I see a risk that any darkness would spread like wildfire. Defence against the dark arts is needed, shadow-world-compatible behaviour patterns that reduce vulnerability while avoiding the increase of shittyness. Power literacy comes to mind, equipping people to spot power games and subterfuge. Curious to explore this more.

  The prion metaphor reminds me of the concept of egregores/​intersubjective parasites, or self-propagating meme-packages gliding through the social spheres. Combined with the notion of “trapped prior” and “inadequate equilibria”, I think a lot of the effect is explained.

  Related:

  Trapped Priors—https://​​www.astralcodexten.com/​​p/​​trapped-priors-as-a-basic-problem
  Intersubjective parasitology (egregores) - https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=v7FGcpVR2hE
  Tea Club < Football Team (on the membrane between dark and light) - https://​​honestliving.substack.com/​​p/​​tea-club-football-team
  On power dynamics—https://​​lessfoolish.substack.com/​​p/​​chillin-with-goofies-a-spiritual

• Jonathan Moregård 29 May 2025 21:14 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Hruss’s comment on: Nerve Blisters: A Stoic Response

  Nope, it’s not part of the Swedish vaccination program, and generally only recommended for people over 50, or those with lowered immune function. I looked it up and there is a recommended waiting time post-infection of 1 year, so I put a reminder to look into it then.
  
  Thanks.

Nerve Blisters: A Stoic Response

Con­sider Breathwork

• Jonathan Moregård 21 Mar 2025 9:20 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: Sapir-Whorf Ego Death

  Makes sense, I’ll see if I manage to get there in time.

  Seems like your approach is cohering across perspectives while including more aspects into conscious awareness. Seems more likely to lead to integration/​wholeness instead of dissociation/​lost purposes.

  edit: I’m also curious about your background/​experience of meditation, if you are open to sharing.

• Jonathan Moregård 19 Mar 2025 11:09 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: Sapir-Whorf Ego Death

  I’ll answer to both your replies here. Sorry about any confusion that the deletion of my first reply caused.
  
  It seems like your argument is roughly:
  1) There’s a difference between “wanting to want” and “object-level wanting”
  2) If I manage to create a strong object-level want, I will boost my attention without needing to coerce myself
  
  With some extra ideas:
  * Having mistaken beliefs about what you want—ones not connected to revealed preference—is harmful, since it leads to self-delusion and stuckness.
  * Actually-viscerally-motivated people can sustain attention to a meditation object, even without much training
  
  If my understanding is correct, then we are largely in agreement. You are highlighting coercive tendencies in my post, and I do believe that there’s great value in anchoring my wants in something visceral. My usage of “should” might point to an inner conflict that’s useful to resolve, and I will look into this.
  
  However, this wasn’t the key thing I wanted to focus on in the post—I was more curious about how the difference between a third-person and a first-person perspective affects my meditation.
  
  I’m also convinced that actual-visceral motivation isn’t sufficient for an untrained person to sustain attention to the breath for a long amount of time, even if it is (roughly) necessary—or at least very helpful/​useful.
  
  Finally—you ask why I am attempting to do such an unusual thing. For me, meditation is connected to wellbeing, the amount of conscious awareness I can bring to my everyday life. I notice when I skip meditation, similarly to how I notice when I mess up my sleep or skip workouts. These factors lead to me treating it as important—in the “wanting to want” sense. Turning that into an actual-visceral motivation is part of the challenge of meditation—it’s a practice arena for challenging mistaken beliefs about my wants and turning them into actual-visceral motivation.
  
  It’s similar to my just-woken-up self after a period of poor sleep hygiene—my momentary “revealed preference” is to stay in bed, snoozing. Giving in to this preference perpetuates the poor sleep hygiene spiral—akin to addiction. When this happens, I have a “wanting to want” (stepping out of bed when I wake up) that I ideally are able to transform into an actual-visceral motivation, similar to the move that is useful in my meditation practice.
  
  Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully engage, I appreciate it.

• Jonathan Moregård 18 Mar 2025 22:07 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: Sapir-Whorf Ego Death

  I initially wrote another comment, that was written hastily. I decided to delete it, and want to give you a proper response.

  --
  
  >It often makes sense to talk about “I”. “I” makes sense. I am writing this, for one. You know exactly what that means, it is clearly true, and there is nothing that noticing this requires you to flinch away from.
  
  Agreed.
  
  >”Should”, on the other hand, falls apart very quickly and is usually functioning to preserve a disconnect from reality. Valentine talks about it here, and So8res talks about it here.
  
  Agreed, I generally like the advice in replacing guilt.
  
  >You say you should focus on your breath. Why? Why aren’t you already drawn to your breath, if that’s what you want to focus on?
  >Sensations of the breath are arising, yes. And so are many other things. If those sensations are interesting and worth attending to (according to you), then simply noticing that they’re there is enough. If it’s not, then “I want to focus on the breath” is empirically shown to be false—so now you have a question of why you’re trying to force yourself to do a thing you don’t want to do.
  
  The post is in the context of focus meditation, where I practice my ability to sustain attention/​focus for unusual amounts of time. Untrained people (and semi-trained people like me) can’t sustain focus for extended amounts of time—even if I set my mind to the breath, it will slip away.
  
  Sustained focus can be practised through a process of self-conditioning:
  1) Try to sustain focus on the breath
  2) Realize that your mind has wandered (auto-switch)
  3) Catch yourself and refocus on the breath
  
  >The lack of “self language” when talking to oneself comes straight from maintaining connection to reality instead of BSing yourself. I might tell my wife I want to eat lunch, if that helps coordinate with her. But if I’m telling myself that I want to eat lunch, then with whom am I attempting to coordinate? I’ll just eat or not eat. It’s not that there’s never any such thing as a “self” that has enough coherence to become a useful model, it’s that when you’re saying “I want to focus on my breath” and then choosing not to, there’s clearly no coherent self wanting to focus on those sensations.
  >There can be though, if that’s what you want.
  
  I’m not sure I follow this part of your comment. I agree there’s no coherent self, I do not understand what you mean with “There can be though, if that’s what you want”. Do you mean “It’s possible to will/​train yourself to have a coherent self”?

Sapir-Whorf Ego Death

• Jonathan Moregård 12 Mar 2025 18:17 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: programjames’s comment on: Your Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Prefer­ences Aren’t Law

  Well, killing each other to resolve arguments does seem like the kind of thing I would frown upon (unless the killers seem to dislike other people frowning at them)
  
  This post is targeted more towards people picking up things like Nonviolent communication (which I think can be great*) and ending up angry at their parents/​friends for not being skilled.

  When someone new to nvc ends up judging non-practitioners, focusing more on failures than understanding, then they’re shooting themselves in the foot.

  Even if you want to convert everyone, I would argue that irritation & correcting others aren’t an optimal way to drive adoption.

  *) more info here: https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​PCrTQDbciG4oLgmQ5/​​sapir-whorf-for-rationalists

Your Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Prefer­ences Aren’t Law