Working map
Source & attribution
Authorship is not specified in the source. The A26Z version was selected by Stefan for this beta.
Obsidian: @xi-Existential Intelligence/a26z/Alphabet Essays.md
Note: have a somewhat older version in Google: only 1 option per letter, fewer columns with reformatted, better reader-focused descriptions.
an Abecedary [reference]
Likely will add this to Substack, perhaps as a Map of Content (MOC), linked to each essay/post/thesis. May also link unfinished to a summary or/& draft of WIP and invite folks to critique
| Week/issue: | Letter | Candidate Title | Core Idea | Status | Source Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting April 1st | BOLD = lead candidate | re-decide categories | or noteS | |||
| 1 | A | April Fool’s Day [reference] LAUNCH | Jester, Stanczyk [reference] | ideas | April Fool’s Day [reference] Stanczyk [reference] | |
| 1 | A | Algogracy | Bureaucracies of Code | draft | algocracy [reference] | |
| A | Apocalypse | reveals, not ends, the world (Antichrist, Armagedeon) | many fragments | |||
| A | “Alignment [reference]” | WTF: define | idea | |||
| 2 | B | “Between Scylla and Charybdis” | navigating lesser of 2 evils; Odyssey | fragment | Scylla and Charybdis [reference] | |
| B | Between ‘Duh!’ & ‘Huh?’ | Could be sidebar, meta commentary | ||||
| 3 | C | Cassandras and Confident Men | idea | Cassandras and The Confident [reference] | ||
| 4 | D | De-Claude | 2nd brain lock out | draft | De-Claude [reference] | |
| 5 | E | ?E Pluribus [reference]… | HIVE MIND happy zombies on Apple TV show | idea | Pluribus [reference] | |
| E | Entitled Laborers | Tech Reveals Bhagavad Gita’s Fruitless Prophecy | mid | Entitled Laborers [reference] | ||
| E | Earth flatteners | Earth Flatteners [reference] | ||||
| 6 | F | “Failure of Imagination” | What we didn’t learn (quote from 9-11 report) | thin | ||
| “FAVORITE FEARS” | 2ND-ORDER Fears | Sloppy seconds [reference] | ||||
| Fracking for Meaning | Psychological Depth >> Synthetic Data | draftS | Fracking for Meaning | |||
| Failed job app | 80K AGI PodHost | |||||
| 7 | G | Games, Goals & Goodharting | Gamify ⇒ Goalodicy | mid | goalodicy [reference], Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse [reference] | |
| 8 | H | Hydra-headed Black Swan(s) | thin | |||
| 9 | I | Inner space race | inner space race [reference] | |||
| 9 | I | irredentism [reference] | fragment | Individuation [reference] | ||
| 10 | J | Journalism / “Jarrod wants to be your friend” | mid | ‘Jarrod wants to be your friend’ [reference] | ||
| 11 | K | K-shaped… Everything | epistemology, biology… | thin | K-shaped… [reference] | |
| Kessler Syndrome [reference] | collision shit show in LEO | Kessler Syndrome [reference] | ||||
| 12 | L | Left-brained LLM bake-in | warnings from The Master and His Emissary | ideas- plenty | Iain McGilchrist [reference], LBMs [reference] | |
| 13 | M | MEANING → Meta Crises | idea | |||
| M | Mor(t)al Catastrophy | drafts (rough) | Moral Catastrophe [reference] | |||
| M | MEAT ROBOTS | Meat Robots [reference] | ||||
| 14 | N | Normalization of Deviance | Sociology of Challenger disaster | thin | Normalization of Deviance [reference] | |
| O | Other Horsemen (of Apocalypse) | failures to learn from other (potential) crises | thin | |||
| 15 | O | oughtocracy [reference] | what rules us from IN & OUT | much | ||
| P | Peak Data | limits of training data | idea | |||
| 16 | P | Personal Demons > Antichrist | Antichrist = E Pluribus Unum of many demons (&/Or: prediction markets, Pseudonymous Identity?) | idea | Antichrist = E Pluribus Unum of many demons | |
| 17 | Q | ?Q2-Q2 | already in a new century | thin | ||
| Quantum Quandaries | -breaks encryption, exposing sensitive data (e.g., military, financial, or personal records). - Entanglement scramble for post-quantum cryptography, potential espionage crises, and economic espionage. | |||||
| R | Resource Curse | (downstream from Fracking for Meaning) | Tristan Harris quoted | |||
| R | Regularity Capture | |||||
| R | Right-tail Risk | Careful what you wish for. Boom means bust / Bonfire blinds the builder. | idea | Righty Mighty Tighty [reference] | ||
| S | Second-Order Effects | e.g. wants, fears… | idea | Sloppy seconds [reference] | ||
| Synthetic Biology Accident | lab-engineered pathogen GMO release - Entanglement: Could intersect with bioterrorism risks, public distrust in science, and regulatory crackdowns on research. | |||||
| 20 | T | Trumps’ 2nd Biggest Real Estate Deal | attention economy [reference] + p. 120 (Royal Bujo) | mid | ||
| T | Trustafarians at Scale | UBI, UHI…and Too Much Free Time | Trustafarians… at Scale [reference] | |||
| T | Trans…human | Transplain me? | ||||
| U | Unlived Experts | Who really risks?, tries?.. #etym | unlived [reference] | |||
| 21 | U | upstream [reference]… | Monocausal | thin | upstream [reference], IdentityAtWork [reference] | |
| 22 | V | Vampires | must invite them in -Sinners | thin | ||
| 23 | W | WEIRD™ [reference] | idea | |||
| wicked problem [reference] | ||||||
| X | Xenonoia | Living with Alien Minds | idea | |||
| 24 | X | X (x) 8: layers | Layers of Meaning Existential Risk [reference] | Graphic (says it all) | ||
| 25 | Y | Y2K, this Ain’t | w/o clear endpoint psychologically brutal. moral injury / burnout … | mid | ||
| Y | Yes-Men | sycophancy from culture to LLMs | med | Sycophancy [reference] | ||
| 26 | Z | Zombies! | nonbinary, ?curable? | lots |