After many tribulations, my astrobiology bloggery is back up and running using Wordpress rather than Blogger because Blogger is completely unusable these days.  I've taken the opportunity of the move to make better graphs for my old posts. 

"The Solar System: Why Earth?"

https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/the-solar-system-why-earth/

Here, I try to look at our own solar system and what the presence of only ONE known biosphere, here on Earth, tells us about life and perhaps more importantly what it does not.  In particular, I explore what aspects of Earth make it special and I make the distinction between a big biosphere here on Earth that has utterly rebuilt the geochemistry and a smaller biosphere living off smaller amounts of energy that we probably would never notice elsewhere in our own solar system given the evidence at hand. 

Commentary appreciated.

Previous works:

Space and Time, Part I

https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/space-and-time-part-i

Space and Time, Part II

https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/space-and-time-part-ii

Hi, I'm an entrepreneur looking for a startup idea.

In my experience, the reason most startups fail is because they never actually solve anyone's problem. So I'm cheating and starting out by identifying a specific person with a specific problem.

So I'm asking you, what's the most annoying part of your life/job? Also, how much would you pay for a solution?

MIRI is running an AMA on the Effective Altruism Forum tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 11): Ask MIRI Anything. Questions are welcome in the interim!

Nate also recently posted a more detailed version of our 2016 fundraising pitch to the EA Forum. One of the additions is about our first funding target:

We feel reasonably good about our chance of hitting target 1, but it isn't a sure thing; we'll probably need to see support from new donors in order to hit our target, to offset the fact that a few of our regular donors are giving less than usual this year.

The Why MIRI's Approach? section also touches on new topics that we haven't talked about in much detail in the past, but plan to write up some blog posts about in the future. In particular:

Loosely speaking, we can imagine the space of all smarter-than-human AI systems as an extremely wide and heterogeneous space, in which "alignable AI designs" is a small and narrow target (and "aligned AI designs" smaller and narrower still). I think that the most important thing a marginal alignment researcher can do today is help ensure that the first generally intelligent systems humans design are in the “alignable” region. I think that this is unlikely to happen unless researchers have a fairly principled understanding of how the systems they're developing reason, and how that reasoning connects to the intended objectives.

Most of our work is therefore aimed at seeding the field with ideas that may inspire more AI research in the vicinity of (what we expect to be) alignable AI designs. When the first general reasoning machines are developed, we want the developers to be sampling from a space of designs and techniques that are more understandable and reliable than what’s possible in AI today.

In other news, we've uploaded a new intro talk on our most recent result, "Logical Induction," that goes into more of the technical details than our previous talk.

See also Shtetl-Optimized and n-Category Café for recent discussions of the paper.

https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/ra/

A detailed look at the belief that high status social structures can be so much better than anything one can think of that there's no point in even trying to think about the details of what to do, and how debilitating this is.

Discussion of the essay

Originally I sat down to write about the large-scale history of Earth, and line up the big developments that our biosphere has undergone in the last 4 billion years.  But after writing about the reason that Earth is unique in our solar system (that is, photosynthesis being an option here), I guess I needed to explore photosynthesis and other forms of metabolism on Earth in a little more detail and before I knew it I’d written more than 3000 words about it.  So, here we are, taking a deep dive into photosynthesis and energy metabolism, and trying to determine if the origin of photosynthesis is a rare event or likely anywhere you get a biosphere with light falling on it.  Warning:  gets a little technical.

https://thegreatatuin.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/energy-metabolism-and-photosynthesis/

In short, I think it’s clear from the fact that there are multiple origins of it that phototrophy, using light for energy, is likely to show up anywhere there is light and life.  I suspect, but cannot rigorously prove, that even though photosynthesis of biomass only emerged once it was an early development in life on Earth emerging very near the root of the Bacterial tree and just produced a very strong first-mover advantage crowding out secondary origins of it, and would probably also show up where there is life and light.  As for oxygen-producing photosynthesis, its origin from more mundane other forms of photosynthesis is still being studied.  It required a strange chaining together of multiple modes of photosynthesis to make it work, and only ever happened once as well.  Its time of emergence, early or late, is pretty unconstrained and I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to say one way or another if it is likely to happen anywhere there is photosynthesis.  It could be subject to the same ‘first mover advantage’ situation that other photosynthesis may have encountered as well.  But once it got going, it would naturally take over biomass production and crowd out other forms of photosynthesis due to the inherent chemical advantages it has on any wet planet (that have nothing to do with making oxygen) and its effects on other forms of photosynthesis.

Oxygen in the atmosphere had some important side effects, one which most people care about being allowing big complicated energy-gobbling organisms like animals – all that energy that organisms can get burning biomass in oxygen lets organisms that do so do a lot of interesting stuff.  Looking for oxygen in the atmospheres of other terrestrial planets would be an extremely informative experiment, as the presence of this substance would suggest that a process very similar to the process that created our huge diverse and active biosphere were underway.

If you want to engage with the rationalist community, LessWrong is mostly no longer the place to do it. Discussions aside, most of the activity has moved into the diaspora. There are a few big voices like Robin and Scott, but most of the online discussion happens on individual blogs, Tumblr, semi-private Facebook walls, and Reddit. And while these serve us well enough, I find that they leave me wanting for something like what LessWrong was: a vibrant group blog exploring our perspectives on cognition and building insights towards a deeper understanding of the world.

Maybe I'm yearning for a golden age of LessWrong that never was, but the fact remains that there is a gap in the rationalist community that LessWrong once filled. A space for multiple voices to come together in a dialectic that weaves together our individual threads of thought into a broader narrative. A home for discourse we are proud to call our own.

So with a lot of help from fellow rationalist bloggers, we've put together Map and Territory, a new group blog to bring our voices together. Each week you'll find new writing from the likes of Ben Hoffman, Mike Plotz, Malcolm Ocean, Duncan Sabien, Anders Huitfeldt, and myself working to build a more complete view of reality within the context of rationality.

And we're only just getting started, so if you're a rationalist blogger please consider joining us. We're doing this on Medium, so if you write something other folks in the rationalist community would like to read, we'd love to consider sharing it through Map and Territory (cross-positing encouraged). Reach out to me on Facebook or email and we'll get the process rolling.

https://medium.com/map-and-territory

I've been watching Steven Universe with my fiancee (a children's cartoon on Cartoon Network by Rebecca Sugar), and it wasn't until I got to Season 3 that I realized there's been a cryonics metaphor running in the background since the very first episode. If you want to introduce your kids to the idea of cryonics, this series seems like a spectacularly good way to do it.

If you don't want any spoilers, just go watch it, then come back.

Otherwise, here's the metaphor I'm seeing, and why it's great:

• In the very first episode, we find out that the main characters are a group called the Crystal Gems, who fight 'gem monsters'. When they defeat a monster, a gem is left behind, which they lock in a bubble-forcefield and store in their headquarters.

• One of the Crystal Gems is injured in a training accident, and we find out that their bodies are just projections; each Crystal Gem has a gem located somewhere on their body, which contains their minds. So long as their gem isn't damaged, they can project a new body after some time to recover. So we already have the insight that minds and bodies are separate.

• This is driven home by a second episode where one of the Crystal Gems has their crystal cracked; this is actually dangerous to their mind, not just body, and is treated as a dire emergency instead of merely an inconvenience.

• Then we eventually find out that the gem monsters are actually corrupted members of the same species as the Crystal Gems. They are 'bubbled' and stored in the temple in hopes of eventually restoring them to sanity and their previous forms.

• An attempt is made to cure one of the monsters, which doesn't fully succeed, but at least restores them to sanity. This allows them to remain unbubbled and to be reunited with their old comrades (who are also corrupted). This was the episode where I finally made the connection to cryonics.

• The Crystal Gems are also revealed to be over 5000 years old, and effectively immortal. They don't make a big deal out of this; for them, this is totally normal.

• This also implies that they've made no progress in curing the gem monsters in 5000 years, but that doesn't stop them from preserving them anyway.

• Finally, a secret weapon is revealed which is capable of directly shattering gems (thus killing the target permanently), but the use of it is rejected as unethical.

So, all in all, you have a series where when someone is hurt or sick in a way that you can't help, you preserve their mind in a safe way until you can figure out a way to help them. Even your worst enemy deserves no less.

Also, Steven Universe has an entire episode devoted to mindfulness meditation.  

Three known attempts to make a map of x-risks prevention in the field of science exist:

1. First is the list from the Global Catastrophic Risks Institute in 2012-2013, and many links there are already not working:

2. The second was done by S. Armstrong in 2014

3. And the most beautiful and useful map was created by Andrew Critch. But its ecosystem ignores organizations which have a different view of the nature of global risks (that is, they share the value of x-risks prevention, but have another world view).

In my map I have tried to add all currently active organizations which share the value of global risks prevention.

It also regards some active independent people as organizations, if they have an important blog or field of research, but not all people are mentioned in the map. If you think that you (or someone) should be in it, please write to me at alexei.turchin@gmail.com

I used only open sources and public statements to learn about people and organizations, so I can’t provide information on the underlying net of relations.

I tried to give all organizations a short description based on its public statement and also my opinion about its activity. 

In general it seems that all small organizations are focused on their collaboration with larger ones, that is MIRI and FHI, and small organizations tend to ignore each other; this is easily explainable from the social singnaling theory. Another explanation is that larger organizations have a great ability to make contacts.

It also appears that there are several organizations with similar goal statements. 

It looks like the most cooperation exists in the field of AI safety, but most of the structure of this cooperation is not visible to the external viewer, in contrast to Wikipedia, where contributions of all individuals are visible. 

It seems that the community in general lacks three things: a united internet forum for public discussion, an x-risks wikipedia and an x-risks related scientific journal.

Ideally, a forum should be used to brainstorm ideas, a scientific journal to publish the best ideas, peer review them and present them to the outer scientific community, and a wiki to collect results.

Currently it seems more like each organization is interested in creating its own research and hoping that someone will read it. Each small organization seems to want to be the only one to present the solutions to global problems and gain full attention from the UN and governments. It raises the problem of noise and rivalry; and also raises the problem of possible incompatible solutions, especially in AI safety.

The pdf is here: http://immortality-roadmap.com/riskorg5.pdf

The University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is recruiting for an Academic Project Manager. This is an opportunity to play a shaping role as CSER builds on its first year's momentum towards becoming a permanent world-class research centre. We seek an ambitious candidate with initiative and a broad intellectual range for a postdoctoral role combining academic and project management responsibilities.

The Academic Project Manager will work with CSER's Executive Director and research team to co-ordinate and develop CSER's projects and overall profile, and to develop new research directions. The post-holder will also build and maintain collaborations with academic centres, industry leaders and policy makers in the UK and worldwide, and will act as an ambassador for the Centre’s research externally. Research topics will include AI safety, bio risk, extreme environmental risk, future technological advances, and cross-cutting work on governance, philosophy and foresight. Candidates will have a PhD in a relevant subject, or have equivalent experience in a relevant setting (e.g. policy, industry, think tank, NGO).

Application deadline: November 11th. http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/11684/

Based on known archaeological data, we are the first technological and symbol-using civilisation on Earth (but not the first tool-using species). 
This leads to an analogy that fits Fermi’s paradox: Why are we the first civilisation on Earth? For example, flight was invented by evolution independently several times. 
We could imagine that on our planet, many civilisations appeared and also became extinct, and based on mediocre principles, we should be somewhere in the middle. For example, if 10 civilisations appeared, we have only a 10 per cent chance of being the first one.

The fact that we are the first such civilisation has strong predictive power about our expected future: it lowers the probability that there will be any other civilisations on Earth, including non-humans or even a restarting of human civilisation from scratch. It is because, if there will be many civiizations, we should not find ourselves to be the first one (It is some form of Doomsday argument, the same logic is used in Bostrom's article “Adam and Eve”).

If we are the only civilisation to exist in the history of the Earth, then we will probably become extinct not in mild way, but rather in a way which will prevent any other civilisation from appearing. There is higher probability of future (man-made) catastrophes which will not only end human civilisation, but also prevent any existence of any other civilisations on Earth.

Such catastrophes would kill most multicellular life. Nuclear war or pandemic is not that type of a catastrophe. The catastrophe must be really huge: such as irreversible global warming, grey goo or black hole in a collider.

Now, I will list possible explanations of the Fermi paradox of human past and corresponding x-risks implications:

1. We are the first civilisation on Earth, because we will prevent the existence of any future civilisations.

If our existence prevents other civilisations from appearing in the future, how could we do it? We will either become extinct in a very catastrophic way, killing all earthly life, or become a super-civilisation, which will prevent other species from becoming sapient. So, if we are really the first, then it means that "mild extinctions" are not typical for human style civilisations. Thus, pandemics, nuclear wars, devolutions and everything reversible are ruled out as main possible methods of human extinction.

If we become a super-civilisation, we will not be interested in preserving biosphera, as it will be able to create new sapient species. Or, it may be that we care about biosphere so strongly, that we will hide very well from new appearing sapient species. It will be like a cosmic zoo. It means that past civilisations on Earth may have existed, but decided to hide all traces of their existence from us, as it would help us to develop independently. So, the fact that we are the first raises the probability of a very large scale catastrophe in the future, like UFAI, or dangerous physical experiments, and reduces chances of mild x-risks such as pandemics or nuclear war. Another explanation is that any first civilisation exhausts all resources which are needed for a technological civilisation restart, such as oil, ores etc. But, in several million years most such resources will be filled again or replaced by new by tectonic movement.

2. We are not the first civilisation.

2.1. We didn't find any traces of a previous technological civilisation, yet based on what we know, there are very strong limitations for their existence. For example, every civilisation makes genetic marks, because it moves animals from one continent to another, just as humans brought dingos to Australia. It also must exhaust several important ores, create artefacts, and create new isotopes. We could be sure that we are the first tech civilisation on Earth in last 10 million years.

But, could we be sure for the past 100 million years? Maybe it was a very long time ago, like 60 million years ago (and killed dinosaurs). Carl Sagan argued that it could not have happened, because we should find traces mostly as exhausted oil reserves. The main counter argument here is that cephalisation, that is the evolutionary development of the brains, was not advanced enough 60 millions ago, to support general intelligence. Dinosaurian brains were very small. But, bird’s brains are more mass effective than mammalians. All these arguments in detail are presented in this excellent article by Brian Trent “Was there ever a dinosaurian civilisation”? 

The main x-risks here are that we will find dangerous artefacts from previous civilisation, such as weapons, nanobots, viruses, or AIs. And, if previous civilisations went extinct, it increases the chances that it is typical for civilisations to become extinct. It also means that there was some reason why an extinction occurred, and this killing force may be still active, and we could excavate it. If they existed recently, they were probably hominids, and if they were killed by a virus, it may also affect humans.

2.2. We killed them. Maya civilisation created writing independently, but Spaniards destroy their civilisation. The same is true for Neanderthals and Homo Florentines.

2.3. Myths about gods may be signs of such previous civilisation. Highly improbable.

2.4. They are still here, but they try not to intervene in human history. So, it is similar to Fermi’s Zoo solution.

2.5. They were a non-tech civilisation, and that is why we can’t find their remnants.

2.6 They may be still here, like dolphins and ants, but their intelligence is non-human and they don’t create tech.

2.7 Some groups of humans created advanced tech long before now, but prefer to hide it. Highly improbable as most tech requires large manufacturing and market.

2.8 Previous humanoid civilisation was killed by virus or prion, and our archaeological research could bring it back to life. One hypothesis of Neanderthal extinction is prionic infection because of cannibalism. The fact is - several hominid species went extinct in the last several million years.

3. Civilisations are rare

Millions of species existed on Earth, but only one was able to create technology. So, it is a rare event.Consequences: cyclic civilisations on earth are improbable. So the chances that we will be resurrected by another civilisation on Earth is small.

The chances that we will be able to reconstruct civilisation after a large scale catastrophe, are also small (as such catastrophes are atypical for civilisations and they quickly proceed to total annihilation or singularity).

It also means that technological intelligence is a difficult step in the evolutionary process, so it could be one of the solutions of the main Fermi paradox.

Safety of remains of previous civilisations (if any exist) depends on two things: the time distance from them and their level of intelligence. The greater the distance, the safer they are (as the biggest part of dangerous technology will be destructed by time or will not be dangerous to humans, like species specific viruses).

The risks also depend on the level of intelligence they reached: the higher intelligence the riskier. If anything like their remnants are ever found, strong caution is recommend.

For example, the most dangerous scenario for us will be one similar to the beginning of the book of V. Vinge “A Fire upon the deep.” We could find remnants of a very old, but very sophisticated civilisation, which will include unfriendly AI or its description, or hostile nanobots.

The most likely place for such artefacts to be preserved is on the Moon, in some cavities near the pole. It is the most stable and radiation shielded place near Earth.

I think that based on (no) evidence, estimation of the probability of past tech civilisation should be less than 1 per cent. While it is enough to think that they most likely don’t exist, it is not enough to completely ignore risk of their artefacts, which anyway is less than 0.1 per cent.

Meta: the main idea for this post came to me in a night dream, several years ago.