Dr. Mihaela Ulieru is a robotics pioneer, an AI ethics advisor and a governance expert. She grew up in Romania and lived through the 1989 revolution. Mark “Moose” McGrath and I asked her how the OODA loop can trap people in dependency or help them flourish.
The moral stack
Mihaela lays out what she calls the moral stack: morality, ethics and justice. She argues a society needs all three to keep takers from capturing its systems. She also explains why so many societies reward extraction over the makers who create. We look at lessons from Vietnam and Romania, and at the moral side of conflict in Boyd’s work.
Media, AI and isolation
We talk about how modern media and AI can cut people off from each other. Mihaela brings in the cypherpunk hope for digital freedom, and epigenetics.
Consciousness
The conversation goes a long way. Mihaela shares her views on plant medicine, collective intent, telepathy and universal patterns. These are her accounts, and we take them as outside information to run against orientation. Orientation sits at the center of John Boyd’s real OODA loop, and an open loop depends on how much outside information each of us will take in.
Where in your own work are you a maker?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.