Janet Shin joined @EdgeEsmeralda's Fellowship Program to explore mental health tech. She left with two internship offers, EEG data for building neural foundation models, and lifelong friendships. Read her reflections below ⬇️ (ps: our next Fellowship opens soon!)

The volunteers behind @JoinEdgeCity are some of the most incredible people we’ve ever met 🫡 They’re already laying the groundwork for Patagonia and early support makes all the difference. Patagonia is quickly approaching, and pledging early unlocks discounted tickets while giving organizers and volunteers the support they need to plan ahead. Pledge today:

We’re looking for a Volunteer Lead to organize, empower, and support the incredible people who make Edge City Patagonia run. You’ll be the bridge between the core team and the volunteers. Find the full role description below! 👇

Consciousness research report. I share this partially because @EdgeEsmeralda was that good. I was lucky to speak there. Unlucky because I didn’t realize how special it is. If I was really rich I would go there for a month every year.

last month I attended @EdgeEsmeralda to write a report on the cutting edge of consciousness research topics included everything from meditation and enlightenment to epistemology, vasocomputation, active inference, AI, and moral realism. the article i wrote integrates findings from all of these fields into a comprehensive map of experience 🗺️✨ linked below! featuring insights from special guests @johnsonmxe, @xercyn, @ThouArtThat, @Andercot, @bjtoomey, @eshear, @adamsafron, @rivatez, @alexvawter, @DorKonforty, @stephen_zerfas, and @ginevlily ♥️

We're looking for the special person who will help us grow Edge City into a generational project. If you help us find the right person, I will give you a sweet gift ☀️

Edge City is hiring! ☀️ We’re looking for a Growth & Community Lead to help scale our ecosystem for human flourishing. Responsibilities: content strategy, deepening engagement & turning curiosity into action. Link with more info in next post! ⬇️ (Tag a friend who should apply)

Every builder's first duty is philosophical: to decide what they should build for. AI is beginning to decide what ideas reach your mind—your next action, your next job, your next relationship. It will tempt you to outsource your thinking in ways you’ve never been tempted before. Left unchecked, this becomes autocomplete for life. 200 years ago, when mechanization was starting to transform the world, the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt warned of this very dynamic: To flourish as humans, we have to be self-directed. We are the architects of our own becoming. But if we offload our thinking—if we let AI automate what we once pursued with intention—is it still our life to live? To build AI that advances human flourishing, we need technologists who combine technical ability with moral vision. Silicon Valley once embodied this: Jobs and Wozniak asked what kind of creative life personal computers should enable; ARPANET's pioneers envisioned what kind of connected society networks should foster. But today, we now see three dominant archetypes: 1. The puzzle-absorbed: Solving technical challenges without reflecting on broader ends 2. The reductionists: Collapsing morality into math 3. The dismissers: Waving off philosophy as irrelevant to progress All three abdicate the fundamental question: What should we build for? This is where philosophy is essential. Because the job of a builder isn’t just to ship. It’s to shape a shared world. We need a new kind of technologist—one who builds with human flourishing in mind. Who resists centralized control. Who strengthens autonomy instead of mining attention. We call them Philosopher-Builders. @cosmos_inst exists to train and support them—people who translate deep thinking into systems, institutions, and infrastructure that serve human ends. If you believe the future of AI should expand human freedom and lift human potential, read the full essay.

We loved seeing people at Edge Esmeralda vibecode their ideas into reality. Including the kids! ☀️ The path from imagination to creation is completely compressed, and kids have the best imaginations. Thanks to @Replit for making it possible!

Frontiers of science ✨