I am a research analyst at Open Philanthropy and a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford. 

 

I was a PhD student in philosophy at NYU from 2016-2018. I have a BPhil in philosophy from Oxford, and a BA in philosophy from Yale.

 

I blog at Hands and Cities. My favorite posts so far are:

 

• Against neutrality about creating happy lives (podcast version here)

• On future people, looking back at 21st century longtermism

• Actually possible: thoughts on Utopia

• Thoughts on being mortal

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Here is a 2020 report I wrote about the computational power sufficient to the match the human brain. Here is a draft report about existential risk from artificial intelligence. 

 

I spent the academic year of 2017-18 helping Toby Ord write The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, which is a clear statement of a number of ideas that matter to me: notably, that human history might be just beginning; that the future could be incomprehensibly vast and extraordinary; and that it is extremely important that we do not mess up in a way that destroys this possibility. Here's a video of a talk I gave about this. This New Yorker piece about Toby and the book is also a good summary.

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I am also interested in meditation. I've spent over a year of my life on silent meditation retreat, in stretches ranging from a few days to three months.

 

Email: joseph [dot] k [dot] carlsmith [at] gmail [dot] com

 

Here is my CV.

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Other writing: 

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• Killing the ants (Portuguese translation here)

• Wholehearted choices and "morality as taxes"

• On the limits of idealized values

• The innocent gene

• Care and demandingness

• The despair of normative realism bot

• On clinging

• Contact with reality

• The importance of how you weigh it

• Problems of evil

• Believing in things you cannot see

• Subjectivism and moral authority

• Grokking illusionism

• Alienation and meta-ethics (or: is it possible you should maximize helium?)

• Thoughts on personal identity

• The impact merge

• A ghost

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