Joscha Bach on ethical progress, and AI – it’s fascinating to think ‘What’s the ultimate utility function?’ – should we seek the answer in our evolved motivations? Discussion points: 0:07 Future directions in ethical progress 1:13 Pain and suffering – concern for things we cannot regulate or change 1:50 Reward signals – we should only get…
Joscha Bach discusses problems with achieving AI alignment, the current discourse around AI, and inefficiencies of human cognition & communication. Discussion points: 0:08 The AI alignment problem 0:42 Asimov’s Laws: Problems with giving AI (rules) to follow – it’s a form of slavery 1:12 The current discourse around AI 2:52 Ethics – where do they…
Reason was interviewed at the Undoing Aging conference in Berlin 2019 by Adam Ford – focusing on philosophy of anti-aging, ethics, research & advocacy. Here is the audio! And the video: Topics include philosophical reasons to support anti-aging, high impact research (senolytics etc), convincing existence proofs that further research is worth doing, how AI can…
What is the relationship between anti-aging and the reduction of suffering? What are some common objections to the ideas of solving aging? How does Anti-Aging stack up against other cause areas (like climate change, or curing specific diseases)? How can we better convince people of the virtues of undoing the diseases of old age? Keith…
Future Day is nigh – sporting a spectacular line of speakers! Agenda Venue: KPMG Melbourne – 727 Collins St [map link] – Collins Square – Level 36 Room 2 – Drew Berry – Biomedical Animator @ The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research – – Brock Bastian – Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences…
Valence in overview Adam: What is emotional valence (as opposed to valence in chemistry)? Mike: Put simply, emotional valence is how pleasant or unpleasant something is. A somewhat weird fact about our universe is that some conscious experiences do seem to feel better than others. Adam: What makes things feel the way they do?…
Andrés Gómez Emilsson joined in to add very insightful questions for a 3 part interview series with Mike Johnson, covering the relationship of metaphysics to qualia/consciousness/hedonic valence, and defining their terms, whether panpsychism matters, increasing sensitivity to bliss, valence variance, Effective Altruism, cause prioritization, and the importance of consciousness/valence research . Andrés Gómez Emilsson interviews…
What’s the relationship between valence research and AI ethics? Hedonic valence is a measure of the quality of our felt sense of experience, the intrinsic goodness (positive valence) or averseness (negative valence) of an event, object, or situation. It is an important aspect of conscious experience; always present in our waking lives. If we seek to…
In this interview with Christof Koch, he shares some deeply felt ideas about the urgency of reducing suffering (with some caveats), his experience with mindfulness – explaining what it was like to visit the Dali Lama for a week, as well as a heart felt experience of his family dog ‘Nosey’ dying in his arms,…
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…
