Almost four hundred years ago, René Descartes
upended philosophical thought with his simple observation “Cogito, ergo sum - I think therefore I am". This elegant chisel blow cleaved the brittle dogma of the day and helped usher in the
A Brave New Worldview
Do you ever feel like we might be enjoying the pleasantly warm portion of a frog boiling exercise? The seductive conveniences of the modern world are undeniable, but in a few decades climate change, gene editing and artificial intelligence will
The Future Might Not Be Friendly
Reasoning with Robots
AI would not be the first time we have tried to communicate with an alien intelligence. The farthest human object from Earth is the Voyager I spacecraft now over 20 billion km from Earth travelling at 17 kilometers a second.
Casting Off Our Umwelt
German is the linguistic equivalent of Lego. A language seemingly designed by mechanical engineers, it offers endless utilitarian constructs unconcerned with outward charm or elegance. Need a word that doesn’t exist? Just snap together three or four small ones. Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister
Lessons From Resident Aliens
If you conjure up a mental image of a vampire bat it will be unlikely to ooze the human virtue of empathy. Like their undead namesakes of gothic fiction, these tropical flying mammals make their living by biting necks by
The Puzzle of Empathy
Charles Whitman was a handsome, bright engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin. A former US Marine, he enjoyed playing piano, volunteering as Boy Scout leader and spending time with his young wife Kathleen. By most accounts he
Of Astronauts and Ashrams
There are no poets in space. Of the 600 or so humans who have gazed on the Earth from orbit, virtually all have been military personnel, engineers, doctors or scientists. All are highly trained and carefully selected to remain rational
The Real Alignment Problem: Aligning Humanity with Ourselves
How will the world end? As history accelerates there are some leading contenders in what is shaping up to be a tight race towards various varieties of Armageddon. A recent article in Science News picked climate, nuclear war, and pandemics
Whose Human Values?
On October 22, 1844 the world did not end. This was a heartbreaking blow for the thousands of evangelical followers of preacher William Miller of upstate New York, who had calculated the exact End of Days from his mathematical study