Month: January 2026

The Silly Adventures Of Toddler-Kitten

On January 23, 2026

My wife and I really like cats. It’s to the point that she has several nicknames for me that riff on that. So, almost since he was born, my silly nickname for the baby (now toddler) has been <firstname>-kitten. He recently learned how to actually say his nickname, which is kinda adorable. I thought I’d change things up a bit and offer some more silliness from the land of Toddler-kitten. I’m choosing to conceal his actual first name and will use “Toddler” as a placeholder.

Anyways, Toddler-kitten is very silly. He learned a while back to say “light on!” and “light off!” when wanting me to turn the lights on and off. Recently, he’s started saying “piano is on”, when someone is playing the piano, and when he wants me to play the piano, he will go up to the piano and say “piano on!”

He used to also go “yay!” and clap when someone finished a song, but nowadays he just matter-of-factly states “piano off”.

Aside from that, he’s still quite obsessed with turning the lights and fans everywhere in the house on and off over and over again while I hold him up to the switches. It’s quite a workout for me.

Toddler-kitten is very picky about food. Although the daycare somehow feeds him other things, at home we can literally only get him to eat cheese bread, apple slices, and avocado. Oh also, pizza crust. For some reason, he only likes the crust.

I have a very hard time saying no to Toddler-kitten. Luckily, for the most part his personality is relatively happy and friendly and once at daycare when there was a little girl crying nearby, Toddler-kitten went up to her and and went “happy!” to try to cheer her up. He learned the word “happy” pretty early, possibly in part because we have a board book, Happiness With Aristotle.

Toddler-kitten can fuss though. He used to be worse, where if he didn’t get exactly what he wanted he’d cry for like half an hour. These days it seems easier to reason with him, though he still gets upset at times, and says “mad!” I’ll usually then ask, “Is Toddler-kitten mad?” and he’ll go “no!”, but it’s pretty obvious he’s mad.

Before I became a dad, I worried about whether I’d be able to handle changing diapers. Turns out you get used to it quickly and it becomes quite routine. I think I’ve probably changed thousands at this point…

Toddler-kitten grew out of using a pacifier very early. He learned to suck his thumb, but because back then he always wore a cloth bib, he learned to only suck his thumb when there was a loose cloth-like thing nearby he could also hold at the same time, so when we stopped having him wear the bib, he stopped sucking his thumb except for when we put him in the sleepsack, which he used like his bib as a thing he just kinda holds next to his thumb as he sucks it. It’s how he soothes himself to sleep every nap and night.

Speaking of it, Toddler-kitten has, since as early as four months, slept like an angel reliably through the night, or at least, when he wakes up, he quietly soothes himself back to sleep. It’s a blessing.

He also learned to meow. I and my wife have developed a way to convey a surprising amount of information through the intonation of a meow. Naturally, he figured it out too, sorta. One day, out of the blue, he went “mi mi meow!” and I was like… “mi mi meow?” and he was like “yes!” This exact exchange has happened a few times now. He also will say “meow meow meow”, which is something I occasionally say, except unlike me, he sometimes shouts it at the top of his lungs “meow Meow MEOW!!!” I do not know how he learned to be so loud. He can be absurdly loud sometimes. “Toddler-kitten! You are very loud!”

Another random story, we used to soothe him by telling him stories. I generally would start the story with “Once upon a time there was a cat, and this cat was named Toddler-kitten, and Toddler-kitten was wondering the universe in search of friends.” Then I would have the cat go on an adventure, usually meeting Mr. Owl on a planet full of trees and learning the secrets of the universe from him. Occasionally, they would go into space on a rocket ship and enter a black hole or meet The Cosmic Orange Cat, who was very big and bright. Sometimes, to keep the story going, they would get stuck in a time loop, or a situation where within the story, a character was telling another story that also happened to start with “Once upon a time there was a cat…”

Anyways, I just thought I’d share for some reason.

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour

by Josephius

On January 22, 2026

In Life, Projects

Years ago, I remember sitting in a professor’s office. There were stacks and stacks of textbooks, shelves of more textbooks lining the walls. I felt like he had more books than a library.

In those days, I was a master’s student in the course option, looking to try to switch to the thesis option so I could do real research into the thing I thought was really cool, which was neural networks. In those days, AI was still a niche field of science, and connectionism (later called deep learning), the subset that neural nets fell under, was full of eccentric personalities committed to the beautifully foolish endeavour of trying to take our limited understanding of the algorithm of the brain and turn it into something grand and wonderful.

I somehow, back in those days, convinced the professor to take me on as a student, even though neural nets were just the last line on his list of other, at the time, more respectable research interests.

AI back then was very different from what it is now. I feel a sense of incredible sadness at what things have become, possibly also some rage. What was a profoundly interesting scientific endeavour has turned into this giant buzzword and megalithic all-devouring capitalism machine.

I was there before all the hype. Trying to do cool things before it was cool. Back when it was science! And clever engineering, and a bunch of math I didn’t really understand at the time. I remember when the Machine Learning Reddit was a place for random enthusiasts to discuss silly side projects, when papers came out every few weeks, rather than several every hour like now.

AI used to be, used to mean, something else. At least, to me it did. Maybe you could argue the goal was always this. But I think, people like Turing, like Simon, like Minsky, they’d be appalled at what people call AI now.

I mostly didn’t stay in contact with my supervisor after I graduated. He is a kind man who gave me a lot of leeway to finish my thesis despite many delays. I still have the copy of the Machine Learning textbook he gave me as a gift when I successfully defended the thesis, to replace the one I’d borrowed from him and returned earlier.

I kinda miss the days when things were heady and full of promise and potential. The world seems like it’s gone insane. I miss when I was just part of a beautifully foolish endeavour (yes, I know that’s also the title of Hank Green’s apparently fabulous book). I just…

Confessing To Murder

by Josephius

On January 21, 2026

In Life, Philosophy

I have a confession to make. I own a grand piano that originally cost enough to, according to GiveWell, save three lives by instead donating that money to the Against Malaria Foundation. In a sense, I was responsible for the deaths of three people in that way.

It wasn’t even something that I could argue was necessary, like a car to drive to work with. A grand piano is pure unnecessary luxury. And one that depreciates in value, so selling it and donating now wouldn’t save all those lives.

It’s kinda like a Trolley Problem, except on one track it’s three human beings I’ll never meet, and on the other side it’s an old out of tune grand piano that I rarely even play and that mostly gets played by my wife.

Anyways, from the perspective of the saints and angels and probably Peter Singer, I’m actually pretty evil. But then, by that judgment, the overwhelming, vast majority of human beings are no better.

And who am I to judge? Utilitarianism is super demanding like this. It also leads to bizarre conclusions like the Hedonium Shockwave where the greatest good thing to do is to convert all matter in the universe into happybots or pulsating pleasure blobs as quickly as possible, tiling the universe with them, ignoring the concerns of everyone else.

Taking things to their logical conclusion can, intuitively, feel wrong. It’s very easy to focus on particular axioms and prove from first principles that something absolute is true. But… reality is more complicated than that?

From a certain perspective, I am well and truly evil. I am a murderer of innocent lives by virtue of not saving them when I very easily could. But that logic condemns nearly everyone. What use is there in that? Do people stop deserving happiness because they are so far from perfection?

Judgments like this are, in a way, cruel and cold moral calculus, lacking in compassion towards those who, like us, are inherently flawed creatures.

So, what do I do about the piano? I could still sell it and maybe save a life. I could try to play it more, make the most of it. Does it even matter that much? Powerful people toy with the lives of others quite casually these days. My sin seems orders of magnitude less evil. But, in a way, it is still an evil, and I am definitely no saint.

Everyone Is Secretly Awesome

by Josephius

On January 20, 2026

In Fandom, Life

Recently, my wife suggested a new anime to watch: Fate/Strange Fake.

We watched the episodes so far, and the first thing that comes to mind is another anime I adored called Durarara. That should be no surprise, as Fate/Strange Fake’s original light novels are written by none other than Ryogo Narita, who also wrote the original Durarara light novels.

If you liked Durarara, I think you’ll like Fate/Strange Fake.

It’s hilarious, and over the top, and I like it a lot so far. Maybe some of the bloodier scenes are a bit much for me, but the overall impression I have is good. I also like that there’s at least one paladin-like character to cheer for (and for my wife to swoon for).

There are still wonderful things in the world. Silly, wonderful, ridiculous, things, experiences, stuff.

Life spins on, like the ceiling fan my toddler is obsessed with and won’t stop turning on and off while I hold him to the light switch.

Understanding Limitations

by Josephius

On January 16, 2026

In Life, Motivational

When we’re young, we often strive to Achieve Great Things(TM). It’s easy to dream when we have our whole life ahead of us, a vast ocean of possibility and potential.

As we get older, reality starts to set in. The things we planned to have done, are still left unfinished. It becomes more and more apparent that our legacy may not be as great as we had once hoped.

There’s a character in a John Green novel who passes through the world without really any expectations. She chooses not to engage, and just enjoys the tragic beauty of existence. There’s something to be said for that. We don’t have to Achieve Great Things(TM). There is no pass or fail mark at the end of life, except our own evaluation of ourselves, perhaps the evaluations that others have of us, memories that will fade with time.

What we do in this life says a lot about our character. Many of us aren’t given the kinds of opportunities to Achieve Great Things(TM) that a few lucky people get. Given this reality, what we do with what we have, how we try to live our values, whatever they are, is how we can judge ourselves.

When we look in the mirror, who do we see? Who are we to those who love us? To those we love? Perhaps we’ll never truly know.

The world is a mass of atoms, a mess of ideas, and a myriad of people living as best as they can. There is value in this world, but it is up to us to decide where that lies.

Nothing we do matters to the end of the universe. But everything we do matters to someone somewhere for a fleeting moment in their life. All the big journeys are a series of ever so small steps. As long as we try to go in the right direction, we can hope that we’ll find a way home.

In the end, we won’t live forever. No amount of Singularities will make us immortal, because entropy cannot be reversed. Our demise is inevitable. Which makes life inherently seem tragic. But in truth, we don’t need to live forever. The longer we go, the less each moment seems to count in the sea of moments we have. It is better then, to live moments that matter.

The human condition is just this. We can’t escape it. We can defy it with all our might, but as frail human beings, the universe is an uncaring wall of stone against which we cannot pass. But we can write on the wall, and leave our mark.

Ultimately, life is what we make of it. Whether or not we were created for some purpose or not, we exist with dreams formed by our experiences. Dreams that may never be made real, are nonetheless real within us, true as anything, like an equation written in stone. Or perhaps in sand that blows away.

But for a moment, we are real. But for a moment, the universe is something we experience, even if most of it is unfathomable madness. To live is to embrace something beyond ourselves, and to see the beauty in the madness.

Worlds exist within each soul. Constructs of our imagination. Strands of hope and threads of fear, and every string of attachment and folly. All is weaved into the life we live, a thing that brings us both joy and sorrow, at different moments, different waking breaths.

Is there justice, ultimately? We cannot know this. The gods alone know what is truly right. We can seek and strive to fulfill a destiny, or demand our cause is righteous. But in the end, we know only that we were someone somewhere, seeking goodness, seeking to do what was right, failing and falling, but then, getting up again, dusting off our feet, and standing at the edge of eternity.

Our world isn’t real. Not in the sense that we can know what is outside our senses. But our world is real to us. Our world is an innate truth inside our souls. Nothing can take away the happiness and sadness we experience. They are etched into time, though they may yet be forgotten.

So, what are we to do? Take a deep breath. Imagine the world we want to be. Live a life with a mission worth fighting for. Or accept the world as it is. Or both. We can strive and hope, and still recognize the beauty of a world gone mad.

Let us dream of worlds unseen, and search for paths to the future, aware that our life is but a faint light flickering in a world of shadows.

The world continues to turn. We will be what we are and were.

The Idea That Could Save The World

by Josephius

On January 7, 2026

In Philosophy, Projects, Rationality

Author’s Note: This was written while still somewhat sick, so it may not actually make much sense.

Many years ago, I wrote a rather simple and silly post on Less Wrong about what I called The Alpha Omega Theorem. It was, back in those days, not well received by the skeptical crowd of Rationalists, who were overwhelmingly atheists and my description of the Alpha Omega had obvious theistic overtones.

Many years later, I wrote about the concept of Superrational Signalling, in a long-winded essay that almost no one bothered to read.

Both of these posts have to do with an underlying idea, that it would be rational for a powerful entity like an ASI to be benevolent, or at least benign towards lesser entities.

Given the lack of being taken seriously, I wanted to find some way to show that this wasn’t just a hair-brained thought, but could be backed up with logic or math. The natural path towards this end was to show it through a proof using game theory.

I’ve mentioned before about Axelrod’s discovery of Tit-For-Tat winning the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, and arguably showing that cooperation beats aggression fundamentally. But many people seem to see the IPD result as simplified, and not relevant to the case of an ASI facing primitive humans.

So, I decided to try something. Take the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, and iterate on the design. Add Death through having payoff matrices with negative values that could lead to zero or less points, which would then remove the agent from the game. Add Asymmetric Power by allowing these payoff matrices to depend on the relative point totals. Add Aggressor Reputation so that agents could “police” or act as “peacekeepers” similar to what Toby Ord explored long ago…

And so, I came up with Peace Or War Each Round (POWER) with code and analysis and an actual runnable simulation.

Basically, what I thought would probably happen, did. The cooperative (nice) strategies would, gradually, in the very long run, beat out the aggressive (nasty) strategies through a kind of coordination at a distance. Essentially, alliances beat empires. Perhaps more importantly, stronger agents had a strong strategic incentive to cooperate with weaker agents instead of just eating them. This part is what makes it relevant to AI safety.

Though, this goes past aligning just ASI. In theory, if we ever encounter alien superintelligence, the game theoretic proof holds even for them. In effect, this idea could turn evil towards good. It could show that morality is rational to everyone. This could be the idea that saves the world, so to speak.

Given how poorly my past essays on this area of ideas has been received, I’ve been more cautious about voicing this result this time. I want to write up a more rigorous analysis before I post on venues like Less Wrong again.

I did throw it past some other people interested in Game Theory and AI safety, and they seemed to find the idea interesting and potentially a big deal, but they’re probably very biased because of their aligned interests. I know that there are arguments people could use to critique the idea, that it’s too simple and irrelevant to real world situations, etc.

So, if I want to make it a true “proof”, I probably have to take a lot more steps to firm up the result, to confirm it across more complex simulations and expose it to more serious challenges. I’m not sure if I’m ready to push into that space.

Right now, I have what I think is a cool idea. I don’t know if it’ll actually save the world, but it’s nice to imagine.

In truth though, there’s a good chance the idea will be ignored. I could publish a paper, a Less Wrong post, and such, and it’ll probably just be an obscure thing on the Interwebs. I could try to write a series of novels that spread the idea, but that’s likely a moonshot.

This idea, what is it actually worth? I don’t know. I’m probably super biased by motivated reasoning. It’s something I want to believe. That in itself should make me more critical.

But then, I feel like the idea is written in the stars. It seems so obvious with reflection.

Anyways, I just wanted to mention this was a thing I’ve been working on. We’ll see if it ever goes anywhere…

The State Of Joseph 2026 – Random Mundane Stuff

by Josephius

On January 5, 2026

In Fandom, Life, Projects

It’s the new year, and I’m sick. My parents-in-law have been visiting and either they or the toddler coming home from daycare brought a pretty bad strain of something. First the father-in-law had a cough and a fever. Then the toddler got a fever and was lethargic for days.

Then my wife got sick with the fever. Then, I got the fever and also the worst sore throat I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t fall asleep because swallowing saliva felt like knives.

Thankfully that seems past now, although I still have an annoying cough.

A thing I’ve been experimenting with recently is to ask three different chatbots the same questions, treating them almost like a council of advisors. Right now the “council” consists of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, all free tier. My wife likes DeepSeek, but three is already a lot to copy and paste to for every question.

Anyway, my experiences so far are that they are generally yes men who generally agree with and come up with justifications for just about any idea I have, with some obvious exceptions when the idea is just blatantly foolish.

Interestingly, while ChatGPT and Gemini tend to offer very similar advice, Claude sometimes breaks ranks and offers more skeptical, critical advice. That I actually found pretty interesting.

Also, Gemini sometimes comes up with unique ideas or solutions that the other two don’t mention, such as using the Sunshine and Moonlight streaming software to solve the issue of wanting to play PC games on the 4k projector in the basement by streaming them from my office machine.

I had originally been trying to figure out how to fix an old PC I have with an ancient i7-3770 CPU and a 2080 Ti GPU, and whether it made more sense to buy a new PC and put the 2080 Ti in it.

The chatbots, particularly Claude, were actually very useful for helping me troubleshoot these computer problems, letting me fix an Nvidia driver issue in Ubuntu that was preventing me from starting up the computer.

My main reasons for tinkering with PCs again was that I had gotten my wife Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for Christmas, and was thinking she’d prefer playing it on the couch with the 4k projector rather than in my office on my main computer.

I also had aspirations to introduce her to D&D by way of Baldur’s Gate 3 split screen co-op, which also would be nice on the projector.

Also, if I could salvage the 2080 Ti, I’d be able to use it for ML experiments as well.

I spent a lot of time looking at store stock on the local computer store website and trying to discuss with my council what options made the most sense. Alas, I picked an awful time to look at PCs as RAM prices have skyrocketed due to AI demand.

I was too sick to go to the store, so I watched as the ones I was considering got sold out. In the end I decided this wasn’t worth throwing like $1000-$2000 CAD at given my use cases were so limited, and my wife seemed okay with just playing in my office.

Nevertheless, I wasted a ton of time researching options and being told the relative merits of each by my ever agreeable chatbot council.

The old PC still has some issues where I have to literally open up the case and unplug and plug back in some power connectors every time I wanted to boot it up. The power supply is over a decade old, and I’m not sure if the GPU itself is actually not damaged too. It might be a lost cause at this point.

My wife actually got me the Magic: The Gathering Bloomburrow Commander decks for Christmas. We’d played with the Bloomburrow starter preconstructed decks earlier when I first introduced her to the game. She liked how cute the Bloomburrow setting is. Imagine rabbit knights and otter wizards doing battle. It’s probably the cutest Magic set since maybe Lorwyn, possibly cuter.

Alas, it’s really hard to find time to play with my wife. Her job is plenty stressful and she works A LOT. More reason why the gaming on the projector idea needs to be as convenient as possible.

We used to play Stardew Valley on the projector via the Switch. But that was 1080p. Apparently, 4k is much nicer even with a game like that. Though, I can just hook up my laptop to the projector if I want something like that.

And streaming from my office computer to the projector through my laptop for a game like Expedition 33 does actually work and looks and sounds glorious. It’s just a hassle to set up and potentially laggy.

And, again, my wife barely has time to play anyway…

I’m really not sure where I’m going with this ramble. I’m still sick, so I’m typing this on my phone in bed instead of at my computer in my office and man, this is a slow way to write.

It seems like I’m very easily distracted with random rabbit holes or nerdsniped by whatever thing happens to capture my attention. Obsession and flow state. Strange.

Anyways, all this is to say not much is actually happening in my life right now.

I finally got winter tires after much prodding from my wife. I had driven over two decades on all-seasons, but now that I have a kid that I have to take to daycare through snowstorms, I shouldn’t risk it anymore. So far the difference has been noticeable.

I regret procrastinating on getting the flu shot. I haven’t been this sick in a long time…

At least we can look forward to the next season of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End this year. My wife suggested we watch the first season when it was still airing. As a former otaku, it impressed a lot. A strong recommend if you are at all into anime and/or high fantasy.

In other news, the toddler is adorable and learning words fast. He also is very silly. He invented the “no no song”, which is basically going “no no no no” to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

He also likes to go turn light switches and fans on and off over and over, as well as go up and down the stairs, again, over and over, either climbing or by getting me or whoever to carry him. We have a basement and three floors, so this gets arduous.

He also likes me to read certain books over and over. We joke the characters are trapped in a time loop. Graham turns two… again!

He also sometimes says his own name a lot, which kinda reminded my wife of a Pokemon.

I’m still on the bed right now, listening to the joyful shouts of the toddler and the laughter of the grandparents from the third floor.

Anyways, time to put the toddler to bed. Life goes on.