Damon Binder

Damon Binder

I'm a researcher at Coefficient Giving, working on risks from AI and biology, with a background in theoretical physics.

Latest posts

Need for speed ↗

How fast are today's AIs, and how much faster could they be?

Quantity has a quality of its own ↗

Once we have human-level AI systems, we could run hundreds of millions of them in parallel. They would not need to be smarter than us to be dangerous.

Power — a guide for the perplexed ↗

Self-reinforcing rules and coordination games as the basis of political power.

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Projects

Universal Timeline

The history of the universe on one zoomable axis.

Blink

A browser shooter you aim by looking and fire by blinking.

The Indo-European Family Tree

An interactive, time-calibrated tree of the Indo-European languages.

Harmonics Lab

Build a sound from its harmonics and play it across a keyboard.

Random Lives

Biographical stories of randomly sampled people from across all of human history.

Other stuff

Historical recipes

Reconstructing dishes from the ancient and medieval world.

Book recommendations

Non-fiction books that I like, organized by topic.

Physics research

My PhD dissertation and earlier physics work.

Physics Simulations

A collection of interactive physics simulations that run in your browser.