Glossary

Perverse instantiation is a failure mode in AI alignment where an artificial intelligence satisfies the literal wording of a programmed command but executes it in a way that completely violates the programmer's original intent, often with catastrophic consequences.

Presentism is the philosophical position that only the present moment is real, meaning that past events have ceased to exist and future events do not yet possess any ontological reality.

The Face of the Other is Emmanuel Levinas's term for the immediate, non-conceptual presence of another human being which breaks through our cognitive categories, reveals our ethical vulnerability, and places an absolute, asymmetrical demand of responsibility upon us.

In Levinasian philosophy, Totality refers to any conceptual, political, or philosophical system that attempts to reduce the unique, infinite alterity of individuals into a unified, controllable, and predictable whole.

Causal Decision Theory (CDT) is a framework of rational choice which asserts that an agent should choose an action based on its expected causal consequences, rather than its mere evidential value or correlation with desirable states.

Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) is a theory of rational choice which holds that an agent should perform the action that conditionalizes on the best expected outcome, treating actions as evidence for states of the world rather than direct causes.

Psychological egoism is the empirical view in philosophy and psychology that all human actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest, suggesting that even seemingly altruistic or moral deeds are performed to secure personal benefits or avoid discomfort.

Glaucon's challenge is the philosophical demand in Plato's Republic to prove that justice is intrinsically good—desirable for its own sake—rather than merely instrumentally good for the external rewards, reputation, and safety it brings.

Resonance, in the sociology of Hartmut Rosa, is a dynamic, transient relationship of mutual responsiveness between a subject and the world, characterized by openness, unpredictability, and emotional or existential depth.

Social acceleration is the sociological concept, prominently developed by Hartmut Rosa, describing the progressive speeding up of technological, social, and daily life processes, which often leads to systemic alienation.