ESSAYS
Does the Environment Matter After the Singularity?
The environment matters only insomuch as it is required to support sentient life. Granite, molten lava, clouds, and puddles all seem unlikely to be aware of themselves. If a granite planet the size of a billion earths was destroyed tomorrow in some far away and...
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The Posthuman Transition in 7 Phases – The Slippery Slope of 1998 Mariah Carey
The transition from biological to non-biological will come in phases, and it will be driven by our own human drives. I’ve written about this at length back in 2014 in an essay called “Human Ideals Will Tear Us From Humanity”, but that essay only fleshed out the...
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The Transhuman Transition – What it is and Why it Matters
Definition: The 'transhuman transition' describes the means and phases of change from the current state of homo sapiens (the human condition as we know it in 2019), to drastically altered state of expanded physical and mental capabilities. This likely leads to an...
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The Screaming Shame of Science – We Don’t Understand Consciousness
Straight up: The screaming shame of modern science is our lack of understanding of consciousness itself. It is things that are conscious that hold moral weight. A coffee mug or a granite stone or an iPhone are unlikely to have an "internal movie" (qualia) of...
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Unquestioned Assumptions About Happiness and Motivation – The Water We Swim In
The following are assumptions that most of us hold as iron truths: Happiness is only made possible because of its opposite: Pain. Without pain, there is no real happiness. If anyone could ever experience continued pleasurable states (no pain), this would diminish all...
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A Dialogue on the Simulation Interview
Last week I posted an annotated version of my interview on Allan Saakyan's Simulation Series show. Directly after the video went live I got personal messages (in some cases from people I hadn't heard from in years). Some messages were excited, but most were disturbed...
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The Bumpy Road to Post-Human Experience – Simulation Series Interview 2019
This week my second interview on Simulation Series is live. If you aren't familiar with Allen Saakyan's Simulation Series video series, I recommend checking out his YouTube playlists page. Allen and I touched on a lot of ideas in this conversation, and I either pulled...
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AGI and Suffering – Potential Responses to the Violence of Nature
The following quote is as good an introduction to this article as I could ask for: "...he saw in Java a plain far as the eye could reach entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a battlefield; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles, five...
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AI, Neurotech, and Human Irrelevance – A Three-Part Thought Experiment
I believe that it’s important to question the human-centric view of the future. In many parts of the world, humans are increasingly aware of their impact on future generations, on other animal species, and on the natural ecosystem that supports all life. Still, when...
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On the Virtue of Montaigne – AI Governance Considerations
Michel de Montaigne isn't particularly popular in the twenty-first century. Born to a well-to-do family in 1533 near modern-day Bordeaux, France, Montaigne was a politician and thinker who recorded his thoughts in many essays. Montaigne is widely regarded as the...
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