What is ‘Before Porcelain’?

This is a place for me, Zachary Brown, to collect my writing on things I think are important. In practice, this means a lot of classic effective altruist fare: expect topics like AI governance and how farmed animals suffer a lot.

Why call it Before Porcelain? In a 1780 letter to his wife Abigail, USA President #2 John Adams wrote:

I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c. &c. -- if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons1 may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

The blog’s title is a knowing nod to Adams’s remark. Despite the ~250 years since 1780, we’re still in an era of obligations, of Politicks and War, of shivering need and desperate triage. Every moment I write here, billions of animals are suffering on factory farms, millions of people are suffering from violence and disease, and new technologies are altering the future irreversibly. I don’t want to forget that. The stakes are high; the opportunity costs are high; I want this blog to be writing I can justify. And that means writing about all the important stuff that comes before porcelain.

Maybe someday, though, if I’m old, if things go well, I’ll repost my grandchild’s blog post here. And maybe that post, finally, will be about porcelain.

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