Objections and Responses

Note 1. Feynman, R.P., “Cargo Cult Science,” commencement address, California Institute of Technology (1974). The address appeared in Engineering and Science 37(7), 10–13, and is preserved in the Caltech Archives.

Note 2. Benatar, D. (2006). Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Oxford University Press.

Note 5. Bratton, Benjamin H., “After Alignment: Orienting Synthetic Intelligence Beyond Human Reflection,” lecture at Central Saint Martins, London, June 28, 2023; lecture film distributed by Antikythera / Berggruen Institute. Bratton argues that “alignment overfitting” (making AI reflect human desires as its North Star) is itself an existential risk, and that computation’s value as an “existential technology” (in Lem’s sense: one that changes how we understand the universe) depends on preserving space for “productive disalignment.” The slot machine observation is from Bratton, “A Philosophy of Planetary Computation,” Long Now Foundation Seminar, January 2025. See also Bratton, The Terraforming (Strelka Press, 2019), ch. “Black Star,” for the broader framework; and Bratton, “A New Philosophy of Planetary Computation,” Noema Magazine, October 5, 2022.