The Body of the Universe

Let me give you some context to the below document. I have a friend on discord who has been experimenting with very unconventional machine learning models. He recently confided in me some frankly sensationalistic and hard to believe claims of breakthrough. He claims that his model has tapped into a previously invisible “information field“. He … Continue reading The Body of the Universe →

Reasonable Reasons to NOT be THAT Worried about AI Doomsday

Introduction This will be a long article. I was spurred to write it by this post on the SlateStarCodex subreddit. It rubbed me the wrong way. I worry AI safety folks are risking the same fate of the New Atheists. That is, the vast majority of people who disagreed with them had bad philosophical justifications … Continue reading Reasonable Reasons to NOT be THAT Worried about AI Doomsday →

No, self-driving cars don’t require we solve “trolley problem” moral dilemmas

Stop me if you've heard this: Now with self-driving cars, engineers will be faced with dilemmas. They will have to decide the answers to certain contentious questions in moral philosophy. For example, should a car go straight and hit the child, or divert and hit the man? How should the software be programmed to behave? … Continue reading No, self-driving cars don’t require we solve “trolley problem” moral dilemmas →

Find the Absurdities in Your Own Arguments

Part 1: Modus-Tollens Moral arguments are hard because often you are arguing with someone who simply has different fundamental presuppositions than you do. It’s hard to apply formal logic to morality because when reach those base axioms, you’re at an impasse. However, one thing that we can do is show that the opponent’s moral system, … Continue reading Find the Absurdities in Your Own Arguments →

Political Freedom is Really Only About Managing Recursion

Part 1: Free Speech Almost all free-speech-advocates make the argument for free speech in a flawed way. It’s understandable; the complete case for free speech is more complex than even what I will provide in this essay. I think the right case for free speech is from a “political freedom” frame. A good, popular, short-form … Continue reading Political Freedom is Really Only About Managing Recursion →

The 10 Most Society-Damaging XKCD Comics

Everyone in physics and/or computer science reads XKCD. People in these fields frequently reference and link to it. I'll admit I have done so. The vast majority of the comic strips (from here on just "comics") are basically mundane. Some are kind of interesting. A small number are legitimately objectionable. Over the last 2 days, … Continue reading The 10 Most Society-Damaging XKCD Comics →