Anders Sandberg
@arenamontanus.bsky.social
Academic jack-of-all-trades.
Yes! Financial autopsies of gods, Mesoamerican-style kaijus, the link between property law and parkour, off-shore theology... (If I ever cosplay, I will go as a nicely suited associate of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao.)
November 13, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Yes! Financial autopsies of gods, Mesoamerican-style kaijus, the link between property law and parkour, off-shore theology... (If I ever cosplay, I will go as a nicely suited associate of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao.)
Obligatory AI generated song:
suno.com/song/1899eb4...
suno.com/song/1899eb4...
Digital Scar Tissue
Listen and make your own on Suno.
suno.com
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Obligatory AI generated song:
suno.com/song/1899eb4...
suno.com/song/1899eb4...
Digital scar tissue will continue to accumulate. The question is whether we’ll develop the social technologies to manage it before it begins to seriously impair our collective digital function in an ageing digital culture.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Digital scar tissue will continue to accumulate. The question is whether we’ll develop the social technologies to manage it before it begins to seriously impair our collective digital function in an ageing digital culture.
This requires understanding how to create incentive coordination where market forces, individual choice and political interest fail. This is hard, but likely the best upstream approach.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
This requires understanding how to create incentive coordination where market forces, individual choice and political interest fail. This is hard, but likely the best upstream approach.
Hence we – people interested in having digital longevity and health – need to investigate how to make incentives stronger and more pervasive for any organization or individual managing identities.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Hence we – people interested in having digital longevity and health – need to investigate how to make incentives stronger and more pervasive for any organization or individual managing identities.
One can try to do individual digital hygiene, but this is likely too limited. Enshrining rights to correction, identity sunset protocols, doing federated identity right, right to digital death or reincarnation - great, but weak incentives.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
One can try to do individual digital hygiene, but this is likely too limited. Enshrining rights to correction, identity sunset protocols, doing federated identity right, right to digital death or reincarnation - great, but weak incentives.
We can design against it by building software and organisations carefully, but the incentives may not be strong enough. After all, the cost is externalised to the users for the most part, and users rarely select platforms based on thinking about their long-term effects.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
We can design against it by building software and organisations carefully, but the incentives may not be strong enough. After all, the cost is externalised to the users for the most part, and users rarely select platforms based on thinking about their long-term effects.
Digital scar tissue is a chronic condition rather than a straightforward problem to solve. The causes are too manifold. Like cancer, there are a myriad things that can trigger a digital scar, and each combination is individually rare and and a special case.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Digital scar tissue is a chronic condition rather than a straightforward problem to solve. The causes are too manifold. Like cancer, there are a myriad things that can trigger a digital scar, and each combination is individually rare and and a special case.
My concern is that past a certain threshold of complexity, some people may become effectively locked out of full digital participation not through lack of access, but through accumulated identity problems. Digital exclusion through technical debt.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
My concern is that past a certain threshold of complexity, some people may become effectively locked out of full digital participation not through lack of access, but through accumulated identity problems. Digital exclusion through technical debt.
The scar tissue develops mostly at the interface between systems. Platforms solve identity in isolation, and then link them somewhat ad hoc. The more systems and the longer time, the more risk of a snarl emerging and persisting indefinitely.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
The scar tissue develops mostly at the interface between systems. Platforms solve identity in isolation, and then link them somewhat ad hoc. The more systems and the longer time, the more risk of a snarl emerging and persisting indefinitely.
Early adopters are particularly vulnerable to this problem. I have found myself grandfathered into systems where I cannot update my settings since that requires e.g. 2FA that did not exist when I started.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Early adopters are particularly vulnerable to this problem. I have found myself grandfathered into systems where I cannot update my settings since that requires e.g. 2FA that did not exist when I started.
Digital systems are designed with an implicit assumption of stable, long-term identities. But human lives operate on a different timescale – we change jobs every few years, institutions reorganize, services pivot. The mismatch accumulates as friction.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Digital systems are designed with an implicit assumption of stable, long-term identities. But human lives operate on a different timescale – we change jobs every few years, institutions reorganize, services pivot. The mismatch accumulates as friction.
Scar tissue in biology is functionally different tissue from the original that is typically less flexible, sometimes painful, and can restrict movement. Digital scar tissue similarly restricts the “range of motion” online.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Scar tissue in biology is functionally different tissue from the original that is typically less flexible, sometimes painful, and can restrict movement. Digital scar tissue similarly restricts the “range of motion” online.
I cannot use Slack. I have had several different accounts linked to different projects, often set up by people unaware that the email address they know me under is not the identity my browser knows me by. The snarl is unbelievable, and makes Slack useless.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
I cannot use Slack. I have had several different accounts linked to different projects, often set up by people unaware that the email address they know me under is not the identity my browser knows me by. The snarl is unbelievable, and makes Slack useless.
My Windows ID is not my legal name but a villain from a horror story: when I was forced by Windows to select a live.com identity I wanted to preserve privacy. It got merged with my Skype ID, and now it shows up in Teams - causing practical problems in meetings.
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
My Windows ID is not my legal name but a villain from a horror story: when I was forced by Windows to select a live.com identity I wanted to preserve privacy. It got merged with my Skype ID, and now it shows up in Teams - causing practical problems in meetings.
My email nv91-asa@nada.kth.se from 1991 is still found widely across the net due to old webpages and papers. The mailbox is gone. NADA changed to CSC, which was reorganized to something else (and in the KTH namespace CSC now appears to mean a defunct, different program).
November 12, 2025 at 12:29 AM
My email nv91-asa@nada.kth.se from 1991 is still found widely across the net due to old webpages and papers. The mailbox is gone. NADA changed to CSC, which was reorganized to something else (and in the KTH namespace CSC now appears to mean a defunct, different program).
Very cool. I like how it seems to link to the idea that intelligent representations compress the thing they model into a more low-dimensional form.
November 8, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Very cool. I like how it seems to link to the idea that intelligent representations compress the thing they model into a more low-dimensional form.
I like the treatment of bismuth. It is very much its own lovely thing. Somebody described it as "nice, gay lead" and I think it is correct.
November 8, 2025 at 7:12 PM
I like the treatment of bismuth. It is very much its own lovely thing. Somebody described it as "nice, gay lead" and I think it is correct.
I know, calling for nuance online (on social media!) is slightly less useful than being an old man yelling at clouds.
suno.com/s/DSySjapAAc...
suno.com/s/DSySjapAAc...
Shades of Gray in a Binary World
Listen and make your own on Suno.
suno.com
November 8, 2025 at 4:55 PM
I know, calling for nuance online (on social media!) is slightly less useful than being an old man yelling at clouds.
suno.com/s/DSySjapAAc...
suno.com/s/DSySjapAAc...
Actually focusing on the things we think are bad makes it clearer how to fix them and find allies in doing it. AI companies don't want to consume expensive power. Coalitions against superintelligence can still be in favor of tool AI. Slop threatens training data.
November 8, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Actually focusing on the things we think are bad makes it clearer how to fix them and find allies in doing it. AI companies don't want to consume expensive power. Coalitions against superintelligence can still be in favor of tool AI. Slop threatens training data.
I think AI superintelligence xrisk is a major issue we need to coordinate against. I think we have serious threats from AI enabled totalitarianism, and find slop annoying. Yet I am delighted by many AI products and find them genuinely helpful.
November 8, 2025 at 4:55 PM
I think AI superintelligence xrisk is a major issue we need to coordinate against. I think we have serious threats from AI enabled totalitarianism, and find slop annoying. Yet I am delighted by many AI products and find them genuinely helpful.