Richard Saunders - Skepticism, Vintage Woo & Fake News

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Peter Singer - Extinction Risk & Effective Altruism

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Many Effective Altruists think a lot about the future, and there are questions of course in how much we should invest in trying to prevent small risks that we will become extinct. Another cognitive bias might be that we are not very good at accounting for small risks - we tend to dismiss them.  We can't see the difference between a 1 in 1000 chance and a 1 in 100,000 or a 1 in 1,000,000 is all that important. But really when you think about it, if there is a lot at stake, there is a huge gain in reducing the chance of risk from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 1,000,000.  Meaning it is only 1 thousandth as likely to occur...  And if what we are concerned about is the future of our species, and if we do value the idea that there should be human beings in the future, if you like the human story will continue, and that we hope there will be progress and that we will solve the problems that we are immediately faced with, and that eventually we will have potentially very large numbers of pe...
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Avatar Polymorph - The Ethics of Boosting Animals from Sentience to Self...

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This video was posthumously published - RIP Avatar Polymorph.  The question of boosting the intelligence of animals other than humans, to the level of self-awareness and consciousness, is one that cannot be considered in isolation from the general process at work in the social and speculative movement known as Transhumanism. Transhumanism is partly about augmentation of the human body, for example by molecular computational nanotechnology (cell repair and DNA repair molecular machines, and rod logic molecular supercomputers for enhanced memory). More generally is is the movement to ‘self-directed’ evolution (replacing evolution by random mutation and natural selection). This was pointed out by myself in 1996 and by Damien Broderick in his book The Spike, which was the first popular book on the idea of the ‘technological Singularity’ (a time when technology surges forward based on accelerating computing). This is a radical movement away from evolution as we understand it, and un...
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The End of Aging - Short Documentary

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"The End of Aging'' mini-doco got first prize in the Longevity Film Competition 2018! Synopsis : "Aging is a technical problem with a technical solution - finding the solution requires clear thinking and focused effort. Once solving aging becomes demonstrably feasible, it is likely attitudes will shift regarding its desirability.  There is huge potential, for individuals and for society, in reducing suffering through the use of rejuvenation therapy to achieve new heights of physical well-being.  I also discuss the looming economic implications of large percentages of illness among aging populations - and put forward that focusing on solving fundamental problems of aging will reduce the incidents of debilitating diseases of aging - which will in turn reduce the economic burden of illness.  This mini-documentary discusses the implications of actually solving aging, as well as some misconceptions about aging.  The 21st century is a time of unprecedented change - we are...
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