I've liked all of Tim Urbans articles. Very thorough and in depth.

Thanks for posting the text. It was very entertaining.

Istvan's constant self-promotion bothers me. I never heard of this guy until two years ago, when he published The Transhumanist Wager. I read that and reviewed in Cryonics magazine because it involves cryonics as a subplot.

Then I started to see his writings in several places. And last summer he got on one of John Stossel's specials on the Fox network, where both he and Stossel represented him as a leader in the cryonics community.

Again, I signed up with Alcor a quarter century ago, and I never heard of Istvan until early in 2013. Who made him a "leader" in the cryonics movement, and based on what criteria?

Now he has started a "Transhumanist Party" and he wants to insert himself into American national politics. We could see him in one of those debates with the other off-brand Presidential candidates from the Green Party, the Libertarian Party and other fringe groups.

Now, I approve of the fact that he wants to draw attention to some ideas for technological progress that we should push on a lot harder than we have so far. But what has he really offered us other than telling us about his action-hero life on the sailboat, how he doesn't want to die, please read his novel (he often discounts his Kindle version, or even offers it for free), and vote for him for President?

I didn't see Ray Kurzwiels name on there. I guess he wants AI asap, and figures it's worth the risk.

I just downloaded the free Kindle version of Istvan's book, and it seems he's advocating a fusion of Objectivism/egoism and Transhumanism. Transhumanism and objectivism would seem to go together very naturally from a philosophical perspective, yet it seems to me that the great majority of transhumanists are left-liberals.

So if an AI were created that had consciousness and sentience, like in the new Chappie movie. Would they advocate killing it?

I am definitely interested in getting better at both "talking with other people" and "observing"; how would you measure your progress in these two cases?

On the subject of SENS vs givewell, I think givewell have already kind of abandoned the goal of rational philanthropy in the way that they dismissed x-risk and continue to pour money into developing world aid. SENS could at least change the world eventually and affect billions/trillions of lives, whereas givewell's third world aid is always going to be a tiny drop in a gargantuan ocean.