THE HUMAN
EVENT

Spring 2024 — Barrett, The Honors College

Learning Objectives: This course required critical analysis and essay writing on major philosophical and sociopolitical texts, with the goal of developing multicultural awareness through engagement with diverse intellectual traditions.

Through essays on Descartes, Kant, Tolstoy, Marx, Douglass, and Martineau, I developed a substantive understanding of European intellectual traditions and their influence on societal structures. As someone who grew up entirely in India before attending ASU, engaging with these Western texts provided a cross-cultural analytical framework — enabling me to compare how different philosophical traditions approach questions of authority, individual rights, and social organization.

This cross-cultural analysis extends to considerations of technology and security: understanding how Western philosophical foundations have shaped global approaches to governance, surveillance, and technological development provides essential context for my work in AI safety.

Referencing Kant and Descartes to assess societal needs for stability and uniformity, I developed the ability to propose technological solutions that are mindful of cultural frameworks. Understanding how cultural norms shape problem-solving helped me think about how engineering solutions must align with existing societal structures.

Through 2,500+ words of essays examining Western philosophical views and their impact on society, I applied a multicultural lens to contemporary issues like freedom, patriotism, capitalism, and social hierarchy.

CULTURAL
FRAMEWORKS

RELATION
TO MY
THEME

This course enhanced my understanding of how Security is perceived across societies and time periods. My reflections on Descartes, Kant, and Tolstoy examine how philosophical traditions shape views on stability and authority. My second essay covers censorship, patriotism, and aggression, directly relevant to war security and cultural narratives around national security.

Studying Marx and Douglass let me analyze social security through economic structures and human rights, while Martineau's work illuminated how gender dynamics affect societal stability.

Studying how different societies across history addressed questions of trust, authority, and stability provided a richer analytical framework for understanding security in the digital age. Writing 2,500+ words of essays examining Western perspectives on science, technology, and societal stability also strengthened my academic writing, which has directly benefited my research publications. In my current AI safety work at DMML, I draw on the recognition that different populations have fundamentally different relationships with trust and authority. The Human Event reinforced that security is a human problem before it is a technical one.

VALUE

COURSE
ARTIFACT

Below is one of my essays from HON 272, analyzing Western philosophical texts and their implications for societal structures and security.

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