In their recent book Warnings, former US national security advisors Richard Clarke and R.P. Reddy take an evidence-based approach to identifying persons they call Cassandras. Cassandras are credible forecasters, with solid track records in their…
Shock therapy is a concept proposed by some economists before the Soviet union collapsed. Essentially, it’s the idea that a command and control economy should be immediately dismantled, to be replaced by market mechanisms. Adam…
I am an admirer of Peter Diamandis. He and Steven Kotler have been largely responsible for shifting the planetary conversation from endless doom and gloom within a context of scarcity to the possibility of sustainable…
Meat consumption is a problem is many ways. A substitute for industrial “farming” of animals is needed. This could take the form of vegetable “meats” (more on this below) or a 21st century alternative to…
When one paid worker appears or disappears in a community, it causes what economists call a “multiplier effect”. This has historically been estimated at 5 times the salary of the worker. Here’s how it works:…
In movies such as The Terminator, The Matrix and so forth, self-aware AIs come into existence and soon threaten humanity. This thinking is reflected in the arguments by Musk, Hawking and others against creating strong…
In this world, however much we might wish it otherwise, there is no perfection to be found. Every beautiful thing has its limitations or deficiencies. Even mathematics has Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems. So, too, must a…
Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs. If we are to…
I expect that the US government has already figured out how to end much of the world’s terrorism in the next several decades. This opinion is based on the following facts: 1. Drone strikes are…
The AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber has argued in a talk that there is a precise way to optimize a self-improving superintelligence based upon Godel’s mathematics. He further explained this in a paper audaciously named “Formal…