algekalipso

Here are some diagrams I’ve been meaning to make for some time now. Three tiers of dynamical systems, distinguished by which assumptions they drop: Top tier: The standard cellular automaton (CA). It has fixed cells, fixed neighborhoods, fixed local rules, and a “Newtonian conception of space-time” that enables a synchronous...

Subtitle: On Rich Buckets, Meta-Rules, and the Strange Way Reality Does Its Accounting ~Qualia of the Day: PageRank Monadology~ In the previous two recent posts on Computationalism (1, 2), I argued against statistical/perspectival accounts of binding. But I’ve been more negative than constructive (cf. Apophatic views of the Divine, aka....

This post was written for Convergence Analysis. Overview We introduce the concept of memetic downside risks (MDR): risks of unintended negative effects that arise from how ideas “evolve” over time (as a result of replication, mutation, and selection). We discuss how this concept relates to the existing concepts of memetics,...

This post was written for Convergence Analysis. Overview We argue that many people should consider the risk that they could cause harm by developing or sharing (true) information. We think that harm from such information hazards may sometimes be very substantial, and that this applies especially to people who research...

[Originally published in Qualia Computing] Singer called the movement that grew up around him “effective altruism”, and its rallying cry was that one ought to spend every ounce of one’s energy doing whatever most relieves human suffering, most likely either feeding the poor or curing various tropical diseases. Again, something...

[Update]: I received 720+ responses to the survey. Thanks everyone who helped! I have also concluded the statistical analysis (factor analysis, mediation analysis, clustering and prediction). I have not, however, done the writeup. This may take some time since I just started working. It will be done :) I just...