I've created a new website for my ebook Facing the Intelligence Explosion:
Sometime this century, machines will surpass human levels of intelligence and ability, and the human era will be over. This will be the most important event in Earth’s history, and navigating it wisely may be the most important thing we can ever do.
Luminaries from Alan Turing and Jack Good to Bill Joy and Stephen Hawking have warned us about this. Why do I think they’re right, and what can we do about it?
Facing the Intelligence Explosion is my attempt to answer those questions.
This page is the dedicated discussion page for Facing the Intelligence Explosion.
If you'd like to comment on a particular chapter, please give the chapter name at top of your comment so that others can more easily understand your comment. For example:
Re: From Skepticism to Technical Rationality
Here, Luke neglects to mention that...
Re: Engineering Utopia
When you say "Imagine a life without pain", many people will imagine life without Ólafur Arnalds (sad music) and other meaningful experiences. Advocating the elimination of suffering is a good way to make people fear your project. David Pearce suggests instead that we advocate the elimination of involuntary suffering.
Same thing with death, really. We don't want to force people to stay alive, so when I say that we should support research to end aging, I emphasise that death should be voluntary. We don't want to force people to live against their will and we don't want the status quo, where people are forced to die.
Of course, if people are afraid that you will eliminate sad music when you say that you wish to eliminate suffering, you could accuse them of failing to understand the definition of suffering: "if sad music is enjoyable, surely it's not suffering, so I wouldn't eliminate it". But you're not trying to make a terminologically "correct" summary of your project, you're trying to use words to paint as accurate a picture as possible of your project into the heads of the people you're talking to, and using the word "voluntary" helps with painting that picture.