---
title: "Elias Kunnas"
author: Elias Kunnas
description: "Essays on why systems fail and what physics requires for them to persist. Governance, civilizational collapse, AI alignment, epistemology."
canonical: https://kunnas.com/
url: https://kunnas.com/index.md
---
# Elias Kunnas

## Talk — 19 August 2026

[**Composite I**](articles/composite-i.md) — many components, one answerable principal. Companion to a talk at the [Mind in the Age of AI](https://sites.utu.fi/mindintheageofai/) pre-workshop, University of Turku, 19 August 2026 ([programme](https://sites.utu.fi/mindintheageofai/information/)).

## Podcasts

[**Mechanism Realism**](https://open.spotify.com/show/3oFEKoRuAwcrJaFMsKsgqD) (English, Spotify) — audio companion to the essay corpus: mechanism design, governance failure, and what physics requires for systems to persist.

[**Mekanismirealismi**](https://open.spotify.com/show/42PBTaaYMz4Wi9QejCuBlE) (suomeksi, Spotify) — jaksot kirjasta, mekanismitestit hallituksen esityksistä ja esseet ääniformaatissa.

## Selected Essays

- [The Question Nobody Asks](articles/the-question-nobody-asks.md) — What physics requires for complex systems to persist.
- [Values Are Replicators](articles/values-are-replicators.md) — Your values aren't yours. They inhabit you like viruses inhabit cells.
- [The Original Sin of History](articles/the-original-sin-of-history.md) — How the West became a paperclip maximizer.
- [The Last Step](articles/the-last-step.md) — Where the rationalist and mechanist traditions diverge. MacAskill built the right telescope with the wrong lens.
- [Telocracy](articles/telocracy.md) — Democracy answers "who decides." Nobody answers "what for."
- [Ethics Is an Engineering Problem](articles/ethics-is-an-engineering-problem.md) — From disposition training to architectural constraints.

[All 148 essays →](articles/index.md)

## Mekanismirealismi

[<img src="https://mekanismirealismi.fi/assets/cover_front_600.jpg" width="170" height="270" alt="Mekanismirealismi — kansi" />](https://mekanismirealismi.fi)

[Mekanismirealismi: Sivilisaation käyttöohje](https://mekanismirealismi.fi) (2026). Ongelma ei ole kuljettajassa vaan koneessa. Katsomme ihmisiä, puolueita, lupauksia — emme kannustimia, takaisinkytkentöjä, aikahorisontteja. Ja syvempi ongelma: Suomella ei ole päämäärää. Korjaus: telokratia ja [Mekanismivirasto (MeV)](https://mekanismirealismi.fi/mekanismivirasto).

**EN:** [Mechanism Authority](https://mekanismirealismi.fi/mechanism-authority) — a proposed independent agency ensuring that laws and incentive structures actually work.

## LawVM

[LawVM](https://lawvm.org) — an open-source compiler that replays amendment acts into point-in-time legal text-state. Deterministic, no AI. Finland proof case: \>99% text agreement with official consolidation, 22 verified divergences reported to the government. Experimental frontends for the UK, Estonia, Norway, and Sweden. Essays: [The Law in Force Should Be Knowable](https://lawvm.org/the-law-in-force-should-be-knowable/) · [Why Law Is Law-Shaped](https://lawvm.org/why-law-is-law-shaped/).

## farchive

[farchive](https://github.com/eliask/farchive) — a content-addressed archive format backed by SQLite with zstd dictionary-trained compression and deduplicated blobs. Efficient scraping, corpus management, and reproducible data work: preserves exact bytes at named locators with full provenance.

## Aliveness

The [Aliveness framework](aliveness/index.md) analyzes what sustains existence indefinitely. An 820-page book deriving ethics from physics: not "what should we value?" but "what must be true for a system to persist?" Free PDF, CC BY-SA 4.0.

## Parempi Suomi

[Parempi Suomi](https://parempisuomi.kunnas.com) — kansalaisaloitteita ja ehdotuksia Suomen institutionaalisten mekanismien parantamiseksi.