Introduction
What is this about?
Observer Effect is a blog about:
Phenomenology, subjective experience, and qualia;
Anthropics, cosmology, and quantum foundations;
The physics of intelligence, and more broadly of optimality and inference;
Metaethics and metaphilosophy;
Animal and digital welfare, and how we can secure and improve them;
…and much more.
The vast majority of posts will be free, and free subscribers can comment and chat, but a few rare kinds of posts will be paid-only:
Technical exposition / derivations: for when I don’t want to expose casual readers to a long formal detour in the middle of some ordinary prose, but I do want to take a long formal detour.
Extremely controversial arguments: for when I’d rather aim certain arguments at a smaller group that has opted into careful reading.
Experimental formats: for very dense/nonlinear/hyperlinked forms of writing that would be too hard to make legible to an ordinary audience.
Perhaps in the future I’ll add scummy paywalls to half my posts, but, for now, consider freely subscribing, since my writings are high-quality, informative, and not all that frequent.
That said, I do want your money (yes, you in particular), and interpret money as a signal that I should do more of this, so consider getting a paid subscription if you think you’ve gotten a lot out of my writings (currently, those on my website or on X), or if you’d prefer the world to have more of what I’m doing.