I've seen seven main viewpoints on AI and the future from those who spend a lot of time thinking about it: (1) Superintelligence Doomers - they believe we are likely to build AI that's superintelligent (i.e., that surpasses human intelligence in all respects) and that once we do, it will kill or enslave humanity. See: Eliezer Yudkowsky "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love ...

Merlin was cradled in Julie's arms like a baby while I gently stroked his head and whiskers. I had figured out (through 6 years of trial and error) the way he most enjoyed it. An hour went by this way, and my shoulder ached from the repetitive motion of stroking, but I kept at it because I knew he liked it. He even started to purr.   We knew that, at any time, we could push the button on the w...

This piece was cross-posted on the Transprent Replications blog. A significant and pretty common problem I see when reading papers in social science (and psychology in particular) is that they present a fancy analysis but don’t show the results of what we have named the “Simplest Valid Analysis” – which is the simplest possible way of analyzing the data that is still a valid test of the hypoth...

You obviously only have a certain number of hours in your life - but what's slightly less obvious is that you have a limited number of moments of attention in your life. When you pay attention to one thing, there is an opportunity cost - you could be paying attention to something else, like one of your loved ones, a meaningful project, your source of income, or a hobby you love. When you ge...

The most common kind of critiques I get of my theory of human intrinsic values are: 1) "But I only care about well-being (in the sense of happiness, pleasure, or lack of suffering) - that's my ONLY intrinsic value." 2) "People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being." Here's my response: First of all, I want to say that I really app...

I think that big problems in the world (like chronic homelessness, loneliness, depression, poverty, underrepresentation of groups, risks from A.I., global warming, etc.) are ridiculously complex - way more complex than the narratives about them suggest. The only approach I know of that I think has a meaningful shot to help solve such huge problems, which you might call “Scientific Entrepreneur...