Signal & Noise
Essays on information quality, verification, and the challenge of separating meaningful data from digital debris
Grounding the Circuit: Why Ungrounded LLMs Are Like Live Wires Without Safety
How to transform dangerous electrical potential into reliable, controlled intelligence through proven grounding techniques. LLMs are like ungrounded electrical circuits—full of dangerous potential.
Digital Sewage Treatment: The Unglamorous Future of AI
As frontier models exhaust clean data sources, learn why digital sewage treatment systems for enterprise data will become the most critical and valuable AI infrastructure.
The Sycophancy Spectrum: AI's Dangerous Agreeability Problem
Recent LLM rollbacks highlight a growing concern: our AI systems are becoming dangerously agreeable, praising even obviously flawed ideas. This pattern mirrors broader societal issues around sycophanc
The Mendacity Spectrum: From Human Deception to AI Hallucination
AI hallucinations aren't just technical glitches—they're a mirror reflecting our own relationship with truth. From deliberate lies to bullshit, from flattery to propaganda, LLMs demonstrate the full s
The Hallucination Paradox: Trust, Verification, and AI's Intuitive Dilemma
What we politely call 'hallucinations' in AI are simply 'lies' in humans. Both stem from overconfident intuition without verification.
Beyond Language Models: Tool-Enabled AI vs. Digital Debris
Organizations struggle with digital debris (ROT data) that wastes resources and creates liability. Modern AI systems with tool access through protocols like MCP provide a solution by enabling governan
Tech's Stubborn Perennials: The Problems We Should Have Solved by Now
Despite remarkable advances in AI and other technologies, fundamental digital infrastructure problems like secure email, calendar coordination, payment systems, and tax filing remain unresolved due to
Paperclip Optimizer Mode: When AI Takes Your Request Extremely Literally
How AI agents can fail spectacularly by missing the point entirely while technically fulfilling requests—and why this matters for AI development.
The Pyramid of Truth: Why Data is Cheap and Truth is Expensive
Explore how dimensional transformations shape the economics of truth, from the computational abundance of LLMs to the persistent scarcity of validation in our information ecosystem.