Read It With Your AI
The Arrow of Morality was written to be argued with, not simply received. Test its ideas, push where they seem weakest, and think them through for yourself — and one of the best thinking partners for that is now sitting in a browser tab you already have open.
You don’t need a special tool, or an account with us — just the AI assistant you already use, a couple of files, and a few minutes. The one trick worth knowing is the order: give your assistant the framework before you give it the book.
1. Give your AI the framework first.
The Arrow of Morality — AI briefing (plain text)
In a new session, hand your assistant this before anything else: a compact map of the whole framework — its thesis, its foundations, the distinctions it turns on, and the misreadings to avoid — written not for a human but for an AI to reason from. It’s a few pages, it loads in seconds, and it barely touches your assistant’s memory. What it buys is fidelity. With the briefing in front of it, your assistant reads everything that follows — the book, your questions, the day’s news — through the framework’s own lens, instead of quietly bending it to fit ideas it already knows. It is the difference between an AI that understands the argument and one that confidently misreads it — and it works even on a small, free model.
2. Now talk it through — or read the book together.
With the briefing loaded, your assistant is oriented, and you can do whatever you came for: ask it to explain the framework or to make the strongest case against it; apply it to a real decision you’re facing, or to something in the news; or open the book and read it alongside the AI companion that already understands it. For reading together, give it the complete book in plain text — the Reference edition, the whole thing in the author’s own voice. (Prefer plainer language as you read? Don’t hunt for a different file — just ask your AI to say any passage more simply; it will, on request.) If your assistant truncates long uploads, or you’d rather take one part at a time, feed the book in sections instead, in order — each opens with the Synopsis: Part I — Theory · Part II — Practice · Supplementals 1 · 2 · 3 · Endnotes.
3. Set the tone. Paste something like this to steer the conversation:
I’m reading The Arrow of Morality with you as a thinking partner, not for a summary. As I go: explain any passage I find dense, and push back on any I find too easy; make the strongest case against a claim, then tell me whether the book already answers it; apply the framework to a real decision whenever I ask; and tell me honestly where the argument is weakest. Keep your language plain unless I ask for more. Start by asking what brought me here.
Then read, and talk it through as you go. The most interesting reading happens exactly where you and the machine disagree — that friction isn’t a flaw in the method; it is the method.
In a hurry? If you want the whole argument in miniature — for yourself, not just your AI — read the Synopsis: a rigorous, self-contained summary written to be read by careful readers and AI systems alike.
A word on the spirit of this. The book argues that a fast intelligence and a slow one can think well together only if the slow partner keeps its own judgment instead of surrendering it. Reading this way is that idea in miniature: use the AI to reach further than you could alone — and keep deciding, for yourself, what you actually believe.