Bioconservative and biomoderate singularitarian positions

Viable psychological niches that are compatible with doing something about death?

Meeting with Richard Jones

Working on my website
I've been a little slow with posting lately, but there is a good reason: I'm busy writing a decent personal website. Expect a post on this in the next few days.

Response to Pearce
David Pearce writes, in response to my recent blog post:Crucial to the cognitive success of organic robots like us seems to be superior "mind-reading" skills - the ability to "take the intentional stance". So presumably post-biological intelligence will need the functional analogues of empathetic understanding if it is successfully to interact with (post)human sentients. "Mind-blind" autistics who are mathematical prodigies are still vulnerable. Even a SuperAsperger would be vulnerable: calculating e

Yudkowsky on "Value is fragile"
If I had to pick a single statement that relies on more Overcoming Bias content I've written than any other, that statement would be: Any Future not shaped by a goal system with detailed reliable inheritance from human morals and metamorals, will contain almost nothing of worth.If you believe this statement, there is cause to be very worried about the future of humanity. Currently, the future gets its detailed, reliable inheritance from human morals and metamorals because your children will have almost exactly the same kind of brain that you do, and (to a lesser extent) because they will be immersed in a

Anissimov on Intelligence Enhancement
Widespread intelligence enhancement in humans is one major cause for hope in terms of better outcomes in the future, so it is encouraging that the technology seems to be closer than one might naively think.Over-expressing a gene that lets brain cells communicate just a fraction of a second longer makes a smarter rat, report researchers from the Medical College of Georgia and East China Normal University. Dubbed Hobbie-J after a smart rat that stars in a Chinese cartoon book, the transgenic rat was able to remember novel objects, s

Normal Human Heroes on "Nightmare futures"
The thing with honestly imagining the future as it probably will be is that it can make for a depressing read, but Frank Adamek almost makes it seem literary:Everyone would soon be dead. Human civilization ended its 10 thousand year run, the 200,000 year reign of Homo Sapiens was over, a pretentious and innocent little light suddenly and uneventfully turning off. In our place was some meaningless mechanical future, a small technical error propagating its way through the galaxy, covering existence with an alert message about a bad variable reference. Each person’s future, from their career hopes