Read It With Your AI
The Arrow of Morality was written to be argued with, not just taken in. Test its ideas, push where they feel weakest, and think them through for yourself — and one of the best partners for that is 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, before anything else, hand your assistant this: a compact map of the whole framework — its thesis, what it rests on, the distinctions it turns on, and the misreadings to steer clear of — 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 accuracy. With the briefing in front of it, your assistant reads everything after — 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’s the difference between an AI that gets the argument and one that confidently gets it wrong — 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; put it to work on a real decision you’re facing, or on something in the news; or open the book and read it next to the AI companion that already understands it. To read together, give it the whole book in plain text — the Reference edition, all of it in the author’s own voice. (Want plainer language as you read? Don’t go looking for a different file — just ask your AI to say any passage more simply; it will, whenever you ask.) If your assistant cuts off long uploads, or you’d rather take one part at a time, hand it the book in sections instead, in order — each one 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 it:
I’m reading The Arrow of Morality with you as a thinking partner, not for a summary. As I go: explain anything I find dense, and push back on anything I find too easy; make the strongest case against a claim, then tell me whether the book already answers it; use the framework on 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 the book and talk it through as you go. The most interesting reading happens right 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 tight, 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 handing it over. 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.