Why should we prioritize improving the long-term future? Longtermism is an ethical stance motivates the reduction of existential risks such as nuclear war, engineered pandemics and emerging technologies like AI and nanotechnology. Sigal Samuel summarizes the key argument for longtermism as follows: “future people matter morally just as much as people alive today; (…) there…
This panel is part of the ‘Stepping Into the Future‘ conference. What is the most wonderful experience you have had in your life? Now imagine if every moment in your life could be as good as this experience, or even better. Other things being equal, wouldn’t it be nice if we had higher quality lives?…
Panelists: James Hughes, PJ Manney (both at IEET), and Pramod Nayar (Hyderabad Uni) discuss humanities fitness for the future – covering important points including: Are we morally equipped to deal with humanities grand challenges? If the majority population of a democratic state were morally deficient, would it be okay to morally enhance the population, or…
An online panel focusing on reducing suffering & paradise engineering through the lens of science. Panelists: Andrés Gómez Emilsson, David Pearce, Brian Tomasik and Mike Johnson Note, consider skipping to to 10:19 to bypass some audio problems in the beginning!! Topics Andrés Gómez Emilsson: Qualia computing (how to use consciousness for information processing, and why…
Panelists ([from left to right] Hilary Greaves, Peter Singer, Justin Oakley & David Pearce) discuss what they believe are important philosophical aspects of the Effective Altruism movement – from practical philosophy we can use today to possible endpoints implied by various frameworks in applied ethics. The panelists navigate through a wide range of fascinating and…
Panelists: Ben Goertzel, David Chalmers, Steve Omohundro, James Newton-Thomas – held at the Singularity Summit Australia in 2011 Panelists discuss approaches to AGI, progress and impediments now and in the future. Ben Goertzel: Brain Emulation, Broad level roadmap simulation, bottleneck, lack of imaging technology, we don’t know what level of precision we need to reverse…
A discussion among philosophers, mathematicians and AI experts on whether science can be automated, what it means to automate science, and the implications of automating science – including discussion on the technological singularity. – implementing science in a computer – Bayesian methods – most promising normative standard for doing inductive inference – vehicle : causal…
Panelists: Terry Kelly (Former president of Vic Skeptics), Chris Guest (Current president of Vic Skeptics), Bill Hall (Researcher at the Kororoit Institute) Discussion includes the history of skepticism, what skepticism is today, the culture of skepticism as a movement and how skepticism relates to broader philosophy. 00:26 Terry discusses Active Skepticism – Where Science, Skepticism…
The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how to distinguish between science and nonscience, including between science, pseudoscience, other activities, and beliefs. The debate continues after over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method. For Popper,…
