Who am I? What is this?
I’m Alex Zhu, and I’m here to share my thoughts about how to reconcile religion and spirituality with a rational scientific worldview. (And also anything else I find interesting, lol.) Some relevant details about me:
I was a math competition junkie back in the day (2012 was my best year; I placed 1st on the USA Math Olympiad, and 15th on the Putnam).
In 2017, out of concern for short AGI timelines, I left the series A startup I’d co-founded to talk to everyone I could in the AI alignment space and see where I could help. I’ve written some well-received pieces on AI alignment, and helped the Long-Term Future Fund with AI alignment grantmaking.
In late 2018, I became convinced that insights from religion and spirituality are crucial for AI alignment. My primary focuses since then have been (1) figuring out how to communicate these insights to the broader AI alignment community, and (2) furthering my own spiritual development (highlights include spending ~6 weeks in the Amazon drinking ayahuasca, and mending relationships with family).
From 2022 through 2024, I hosted retreats with respected AI alignment thinkers in which we “came out of the closet” to each other about our outside-the-Overton-window beliefs about religion / spirituality / self-work, and their relevance to AI alignment. Concepts now in our Overton window: God, karma, reincarnation, and the Second Coming of Christ.
My epistemic insecurities led me to feel uncomfortable discussing my views in public for a while. I'm bad at forecasting, my beliefs are regularly over-optimistic, and I often hallucinate signals into noise. Some parts of me had feared that this whole exploration was just a big trap of wishful thinking, and that the disdainful gossip about me was true — that I'd actually corrupted my epistemology and gone off the deep end.
My spiritual path, which initially involved a lot of anger and bitterness toward all the skeptics who I'd felt were unfairly dismissing me, eventually demanded that I become a better skeptic myself. I'd found myself rereading old Eliezer Yudkowsky posts for the sake of my spiritual growth, at which point I’d realized that I’d gone so deep down the post-rationalist rabbithole that I’d ended up on the other side as a rationalist again.1 (Granted, the borderline-heretical kind of rationalist who professes his love for Jesus,2 gets accused of “dangerously bad epistemics”, and has coalitions formed against him.)
With the help of my friends, I have since sharpened my thinking to the point that I feel comfortable beginning a public dialogue about my ideas. I am now confident that I have not gone off the deep end, and confident that my explorations are not just a big trap of wishful thinking (although I certainly haven't ruled that out). I also respect that many of you may remain skeptical of my self-assessments, and that I will only earn your trust if I succeed in my mission of bringing mathematical rigor and precision to my ideas.
If you wish to dialogue with me about my views, my primary request is that you engage them with curiosity and respect — and, in particular, that you not dismiss them before making earnest attempts to understand what I mean by the things that I say. If you're not willing to do this, I will probably not consider it worth my time to engage with you. I will also intend to harbor no ill-will toward you, and to keep my door open if you ever decide you are willing.
Hedging aside, welcome to Numinous Rationality, and get ready for some out-of-this-world crazy shit.
I’d like to dedicate all that’s good about my work to my parents, who conceived me, clothed me, fed me, and continue to love me with all their heart. Mom & Dad, I recognize now that my worth to you as a son had never once been in question. I’m done seeing my work as a way for me to prove my worth to you, and I’m ready to see it instead as a vehicle for honoring all that you’ve done for me.
It was very heartwarming for me to show up at less.online, and see so many familiar faces smile at me and wave at me, especially when some parts of me had feared that I'd been exiled. For all the shortcomings of the Bay Area rationalists, I consider them my friends, and I consider myself incredibly indebted to them, especially given how crucial their intellectual, moral, and financial support have been for my career, my spiritual path, and my overall life trajectory.
I once had an experience of “feeling saved by Jesus”, and felt so awed that I considered becoming a Christian. I decided against after thinking for 3 seconds, because the standard atheist arguments still seemed compelling.