Philosophy
13 practitioners working with Philosophy:
cognitive prosthetic vs cognitive crutch
when does AI assistance enhance cognition and when does it replace it? the bicycle-for-the-mind versus the wheelchair-for-the-mind, and how to tell the difference.
context collapse and personal AI
sociology's context collapse — when all your audiences merge into one — is now an AI problem. your AI doesn't know which you it's talking to.
convivial AI: Ivan Illich for the agent age
Illich argued tools should enhance autonomy, not create dependence. applied to personal AI: what convivial design means, why your AI should be burnable, and the three tests every tool must pass.
digital gardens are graveyards without a gardener
digital gardens were beautiful, ambitious, and almost always abandoned. AI can be the gardener — but only if it knows what to cultivate. that requires identity, not just content.
identity as protocol
identity isn't a profile or a personality test. it's a living protocol — a machine-readable document that routes AI behavior based on who you are, not what you've saved.
self as process, not profile
MBTI, enneagram, 'I'm a visual learner' — frozen snapshots pretending to be people. real identity is tensions in motion, not labels in a database.
stateless agents: why your AI shouldn't remember you
the discomfort principle
good AI should challenge you. if your personal AI only confirms what you already believe, it's a recommendation engine wearing a philosophy costume.
the narcissism trap
the dark side of personal AI: when self-knowledge becomes self-obsession, when the mirror starts shaping the face, and why every route must end in action.
the protocol thesis: why self.md is a file format, not an app
lessons from email, the web, and failed protocols. why self.md must be open, portable, and never locked — and why the money is in routing, not in the file.
the qualified self
beyond quantified self, beyond second brain. from numbers to notes to narratives — the evolution toward self-knowledge that actually routes.
the three tests: Illich, discomfort, freezing
three diagnostic questions for any personal AI system. can you burn it? does it challenge you? does it freeze you? a framework for evaluating whether your tools serve you or own you.
why your second brain is dead
the storage-first PKM paradigm was built for a pre-AI world. the bottleneck moved from finding to routing. what you need isn't a second brain — it's a first self.