The Quantified Self with Anders Sandberg (in under 2 mins)
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The Quantified Self with Anders Sandberg (in under 2 mins)

The Quantified Self movement is usefully encouraging loads of people to record metrics about their personal health – the resulting big data will be useful to mine in doing research on how food and lifestyle impact health. There are also some ethical issues around privacy if personal metrics are used inappropriately. Here is an interview…

AI: The Story So Far – Stuart Russell
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AI: The Story So Far – Stuart Russell

Awesome to have Stuart Russell discussing AI Safety – a very important topic. Too long have people been associating the idea of AI safety issues with Terminator – unfortunately the human condition seems such that people often don’t give themselves permission to take seriously non-mainstream ideas unless they see a tip of the hat from…

Suffering, and Progress in Ethics – Peter Singer
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Suffering, and Progress in Ethics – Peter Singer

Suffering is generally bad – Peter Singer (who is a Hedonistic Utilitarian), and most Effective Altruists would agree with this. Though in addressing the need for suffering today Peter acknowledges that, as we are presently constituted, suffering is useful as a warning sign (e.g. against further injury). But what about the future? What if we…

A Non-trivial Pursuit of Happiness – Paradise Engineering with David Pearce :-)
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A Non-trivial Pursuit of Happiness – Paradise Engineering with David Pearce :-)

It is non-trivial for a couple of reasons:a) the pursuit of this vision of happiness is not trivial – it is likely to be a very challenging endeavor (though totally worthy of the effort)b) the aim is to achieve non-trivial modes of happiness, kinds of information-sensitive gradients of bliss (as opposed to being stuck in…

Review of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari – Steve Fuller
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Review of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari – Steve Fuller

My sociology of knowledge students read Yuval Harari’s bestselling first book, Sapiens, to think about the right frame of reference for understanding the overall trajectory of the human condition. Homo Deus follows the example of Sapiens, using contemporary events to launch into what nowadays is called ‘big history’ but has been also called ‘deep history’…

NASA Provides Free Access to All Published Research
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NASA Provides Free Access to All Published Research

NASA recently announced that it is providing free open access to all its published research – “Public access to NASA-funded research data now is just a click away, with the launch of a new agency public access portal. The creation of the NASA-Funded Research Results portal on NASA.gov reflects the agency’s ongoing commitment to providing…

‘Wake Enhancement’: Is sleep better than medicine?
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‘Wake Enhancement’: Is sleep better than medicine?

‘Wake Enhancement’: Is sleep better than medicine? Are well rested people happier and more productive people? Generally anecdotal feedback from grinders, transhumanists and futurists that I have met with often get into the habit of loosing sleep, and depending on coffee or other nutropics like modafinil to get through the day – while this can…

Lawrence Krauss, Ben Goertzel and Steve Omohundro on the Perils of Prediction
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Lawrence Krauss, Ben Goertzel and Steve Omohundro on the Perils of Prediction

Panel on the Perils of Prediction where Lawrence Krauss , Steve Omohundro and Ben Goertzel set sail on an epic adventure careening through the perilous waves of prediction! And the seas are angry my friends! Our future stands upon the prow our past drowns in the wake. Our most foolish sailors leave the shore without…

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Buddhism, and the Enlightenment values of discovering What Is?

David Pearce and I recently discussed relating Buddhism to the abolitionist project – both have the reduction of suffering located at the heart of their purposes. However, is there a necessary connection between desire and suffering? David argues no – highlighting a difference between emphasis of a traditional Buddhist approach to mitigating suffering through the…

Is Infinity Real?
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Is Infinity Real?

There is an interesting discussion at Quanta “Solution: ‘Is Infinity Real?’” – Is infinity a real physical phenomenon outside our models? Max Tegmark doesn’t think so – while admitting it is indisputably useful for mathematical models of physics, he believes that nothing is truly continuous – including space and time. Would an infinitely X* phenomenon…