Aging is a technical problem with a technical solution – finding the solution requires clear thinking and focused effort. Once solving aging becomes demonstrably feasible, it is likely attitudes will shift regarding its desirability. There is huge potential, for individuals and for society, in reducing suffering through the use of rejuvenation therapy to achieve new…
The Antispeciesist Revolution [Original text found here] Speciesism. When is it ethically acceptable to harm another sentient being? On some fairly modest(1) assumptions, to harm or kill someone simply on the grounds they belong to a different gender, sexual orientation or ethnic group is unjustified. Such distinctions are real but ethically irrelevant. On the other…
The topic of is controversial (and often misrepresented); it is considered by many to be repugnant – provocative questions arise like “who’s morals?”, “who are the ones to be morally enhanced?”, “will it be compulsory?”, “won’t taking a morality pill decrease the value of the intended morality if it skips the difficult process we normally…
At a recent conference in Beijing (the Global Innovators Conference) – I did yet another video interview with the legendary AGI guru – Ben Goertzel. This is the first part of the interview, where he talks about some of the ‘amazing’ progress in AI over recent years, including Deep Mind’s AlphaGo sealing a 4-1 victory…
San Harris (author of The Moral Landscape and host of the Waking Up podcast) discusses the need for AI Safety – while fun to think about, we are unable to “martial an appropriate emotional response” to improvements in AI and automation and the prospect of dangerous AI – it’s a failure of intuition to respond…
The simulation hypothesis doesn’t seem to be a terse parsimonious explanation for the universe we live in. If what is most important is to simulate ancestors, what’s the motivation for all the hugely detailed rendering of space? Why not just simulate earth or our solar system or our galaxy? People often jump to the conclusions…
An exploration of the philosophical concept of metaphysical identity, using numerous variations on the infamous Ship of Theseus thought experiment. Video interview with Keith Wiley Note: a separate text interview is below. Keith Wiley is the author of A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading, available on Amazon. The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus’…
“Longevity Day” (based on the UN International Day of Older Persons – October 1) is a day of support for biomedical aging and longevity research. This has been a worldwide international campaign successfully adopted by many longevity activists groups. In this interview Aubrey de Grey lends support to Longevity Day and covers a variety of…
Anders gives a short tutorial on the Singularity – clearing up confusion and highlighting important aspects of the Technological Singularity and related ideas, such as accelerating change, horizons of predictability, self-improving artificial intelligence, and the intelligence explosion. Tutorial Video: Points covered in the tutorial: The Mathematical Singularity The Technological Singularity: A Horizon of predictability Confusion…
Andrew Dun provides an interesting discussion on the rights of sentient entities. Drawing inspiration from quantum complementarity, defends a complementary notion of ontological dualism, countering zombie hypotheses. Sans zombie concerns, ethical discussions should therefore focus on assessing consciousness purely in terms of the physical-functional properties of any putatively conscious entity. Below is the video of…
