Pursuing Reality

Consciousness is the mystery that sits at the core of science and philosophy. Not only does it escape our understanding, but everything that is valuable derives from it.

This blog takes a consciousness first perspective on the biggest and most important questions:

• what is reality?

• what can we know?

• how should we live and act?

Drawing from my interests in physics, philosophy and artificial intelligence, I’m aiming to do what I can to help consciousness prevail over pure replicators.

About me

I have a PhD in particle physics and currently work for a tech company applying the latest research in Artificial Intelligence.

You can connect with me in various places:

• I’m on Twitter @AdamCElwood

• My professional experience is on Linkedin

• Send emails to adam@pursuingreality.com

• Listen to some of my music on SoundCloud

I worked at CERN for a while, searching for evidence of Dark Matter and Supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. After losing enthusiasm for particle physics, I became interested in the latest developments in machine learning and what it could teach us about how we perceive reality. This interest has matured into concern about the potential dangers of advanced AI, which seems to be coming rather quickly.

I was initially drawn to fundamental physics because I believed it offered the best way to answer big existential questions, but I found something lacking. I’ve therefore taken up a meditation practice and started diving more deeply into philosophy, two things which are bringing me more value than I could have imagined.

I am British, grew up in the UK, and have lived in different places around Europe. I am currently based in Milan, Italy.

Sample posts

“The ways of knowing” was shared by Donald Hoffman on Twitter. It explores how we understand the world and how this fundamentally limits scientific materialism:

Pursuing Reality

The ways of knowing

When trying to understand the nature of reality, we have to grapple with the question of how it is that we can know something of it. As we are limited to view the universe through a human lens, it is not clear how our mental constructs correspond to reality. To explore this, we should look at our lens in detail…

Read more

5 years ago · Adam Elwood

“The limits of rationality” was widely discussed on Hacker News and argues for the importance of listening to our values that come from beyond rational thought:

Pursuing Reality

The limits of rationality

It's easy to idealise rationality. After all, it has produced many of the modern wonders of the world, through its application in science and engineering. It's even tempting to let it replace religion, through a faith that all of the great existential questions will eventually succumb to careful reasoning and the appl…

Read more

5 years ago · Adam Elwood