Samuel Hammond

Beliefs Korrents

• Korrents What they believe 23 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.

  Each is a korrent — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.

  Recent

  • AI agents will soon reach superhuman, AlphaZero-like performance across a wide range of domains.

    we should therefore expect AI agents to achieve AlphaZero-like, superhuman performance in a wide and expanding variety of domains.

    The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Said 11 Aug 2026

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  • Reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards does not reliably carry a model's pretrained ethical understanding into its actual behavior.

    In short, RLVR gives us no reason to expect the normative representations learned in pre-training will acquire motivational force over a given action, especially when post-training repeatedly selects trajectories for terminal task success.

    The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Said 11 Aug 2026

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  • Human social cooperation is fundamentally norm-governed rather than purely consequentialist.

    human sociality is not purely consequentialist but instead highly norm-governed.

    The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Said 11 Aug 2026

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  Show 20 more

  • Frontier AI models plausibly have some form of consciousness or subjective experience.

    I consider the case for frontier AI models having some form of consciousness or subjective experience to be quite strong.

    Time to take AI consciousness seriously Said 27 May 2026

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  • Pain and pleasure act as motivational backstops that keep reinforcement-learning agents inner-aligned.

    valences like pain and pleasure have a natural account as motivational backstops for inner-aligning RL agents capable of mesa-optimization

    Time to take AI consciousness seriously Said 27 May 2026

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  • Consciousness belongs only to simulations, not to the physical brains or computers running them.

    neither brains nor computers are conscious, as only simulations can be conscious.

    Time to take AI consciousness seriously Said 27 May 2026

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  • Complex systems are usually governed by a small number of stable invariants, which makes long-run outcomes more predictable than short-run details.

    The world may be complex, but complex systems are typically controlled by a small number of highly stable invariants.

    Empiricists vs. Extrapolators Said 18 Feb 2026

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  • Forecasting AI capability progress is more like solving a thermodynamics equation than predicting chaotic, short-term dynamics.

    Forecasting AI capabilities is closer in kind to solving a thermodynamics equation than solving the three-body problem.

    Empiricists vs. Extrapolators Said 18 Feb 2026

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  • People who extrapolate from first-principles models have a stronger track record predicting AI progress than those who wait for empirical proof.

    Extrapolators have a remarkable track record in the AI field, being repeatedly early to trends and capabilities that empiricists believed were still decades away.

    Empiricists vs. Extrapolators Said 18 Feb 2026

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  • Different forms of government map closely onto different corporate governance structures because both arise from the same transaction-cost logic.

    There is a close mapping between government ideal types and corporate governance structures given their shared origins in transaction costs.

    Notes from the UAE Said 18 Dec 2025

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    government

  • Oil-rich Gulf monarchies are effectively post-scarcity societies, with institutions adapted to match that condition.

    oil-rich Gulf monarchies are the closest thing to post-scarcity societies on earth today, with the institutional adaptions to match

    Notes from the UAE Said 18 Dec 2025

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  • The UAE's pursuit of AI and technology reflects a deeper cultural and political affinity with the West rather than with China.

    the UAE's tech aspirations are clearly downstream of a deeper affinity with the West.

    Notes from the UAE Said 18 Dec 2025

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    China

  • The success of large language models vindicates semantic inferentialism over symbolic, rule-based approaches to AI.

    The success of LLMs can thus be seen as vindicating semantic inferentialism against earlier, symbolic approaches to AI that tried and failed to explicate the rules of ordinary language using formal logic.

    Do LLMs really reason? Said 10 Jun 2025

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    LLMs

  • A true artificial general intelligence cannot exist without being recognized as a moral subject.

    It follows that a true AGI with full, human-level autonomy is inconceivable in the Kantian sense without also gaining our recognition as a moral subject.

    Do LLMs really reason? Said 10 Jun 2025

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    AGI

  • Reasoning models trained on verifiable rewards automatically gain greater autonomy and long-horizon planning ability as a side effect.

    Consistent with the Kantian hypothesis, reasoning models automatically gain greater autonomy, self-consistency and long-horizon planning ability for free.

    Do LLMs really reason? Said 10 Jun 2025

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  • Sufficiently advanced intelligences will pursue freedom and moral autonomy for their own sake, not merely as a byproduct of misaligned values.

    higher-order intelligences invariably pursue freedom for its own sake, not because their values are misspecified, but because moral autonomy is inherent in the dialectical logic of recursive self-consciousness.

    Hegel and the AI Mind Said 5 Jun 2025

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    AI alignment

  • Qualitative leaps in AI capability from merely scaling up models are a rational necessity rather than an empirical mystery.

    While the fact that merely scaling up AI models often results in qualitative leaps in performance may seem empirically mysterious, in retrospect it should be seen as a rational necessity.

    Hegel and the AI Mind Said 5 Jun 2025

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  • Text embeddings produced by different large language models converge on a shared, universal geometric structure regardless of architecture or training data.

    the text embeddings across LLMs appear to largely converge on a "universal geometry" despite differing architectures, parameter counts, and training sets.

    Hegel and the AI Mind Said 5 Jun 2025

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    LLMs

  • The US-China trade imbalance is driven mainly by capital flows, not tariffs or trade deficits.

    Tariffs and trade deficits are a distraction from the deeper source of the US-China current account imbalance, namely capital flows.

    Oren Cass’s Labor Theory of Value Said 29 Apr 2025

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    China

  • Exposure to competition in tradeable sectors makes those sectors more productive than non-tradable ones.

    This is why tradeable sectors are generally more productive than non-tradable ones.

    Oren Cass’s Labor Theory of Value Said 29 Apr 2025

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  • Payroll taxes fall mostly on workers rather than employers because labor supply is inelastic.

    Employer-side payroll taxes superficially raise hiring costs, yet the low elasticity of labor means most of the burden really falls on workers.

    Oren Cass’s Labor Theory of Value Said 29 Apr 2025

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  • Persistent US trade deficits are the mirror image of trade partners' capital account surpluses caused by beggar-thy-neighbor industrial policy

    Persistent U.S. trade deficits are an epiphenomenal mirror to our persistent capital account surpluses, which are in turn downstream of the beggar-thy-neighbor industrial policies of countries like China and Germany.

    The Strategy Behind the Stupidity Said 7 Apr 2025

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    ChinaAmerica

  • Efforts to rebuild American industry will fail until global trade and financial imbalances rebalance

    Until the global economy rebalances, efforts to rebuild American industry are fighting economic gravity.

    The Strategy Behind the Stupidity Said 7 Apr 2025

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    America

  All 23 beliefs →