Transhuman

Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs) are biological events with the potential to alter humanity's long-term trajectory or result in human extinction. Cassidy will argue that while the relative probability of a GCBR event may be low, reducing biological threats is arguably very cost-effective given the potential long-term consequences. She will also discuss how recent advancements in synthetic biology and genetic engineering have made anthropogenic pandemics an increasingly real possibility, making biosecurity an effective altruism cause area worthy of close consideration. Speaker Bio: Cassidy is an Affiliate Scholar at the Future of Humanity Institute. Previously she was a medical doctor working in communicable disease public health for the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services and human biosecurity for the Australian Government. She has previously worked in hospital and laboratory medicine around Australia and volunteered with the Waterwell ...

First part in an interview series with Scott Aaronson - this one is on quantum computing - future segments will be on Existential Risk, consciousness (including Scott's thoughts on IIT) and thoughts on whether the universe is discrete or continuous. See 'Complexity-Theoretic Foundations of Quantum Supremacy Experiments' https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/quantumsupre.pdf Bio : Scott Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist and David J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary areas of research are quantum computing and computational complexity theory. He blogs at Shtetl-Optimized: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/