Marriage, the Giving What We Can Pledge, and the damage caused by vague public commitments
I think honesty is important. We should make and ask for clear commitments that we will likely keep.
Posts by Year
2022
A world of trees and flowers
This post contains DALL-E 2 art of a fantasy world concept that Jonathan Salt and I created in 2013.
My vision of a good future, part I
In this post I write about the future that I am fighting for, and the problems that need to be solved before it becomes reality.
AI art is going to keep getting better
Check out these results from Google’s Parti models at different sizes.
Fun with DALL-E 2
A collection of DALL-E-generated art.
Are Large Language Models like laMDA sentient?
In this post I explain what we can and can’t learn about AI sentience from conversations with Large Language Models.
Bipedal transport: A ponderous review
Today I decided to test out a form of last-mile transport that is relatively unusual for me and has some surprising appeals.
Onewheel vs. push scooter: A confession
A few months ago I made a post extolling the virtues of Onewheels, but recently I realized that my standard (not electric) push scooter is better in basicall...
Comment on Eliezer Yudkowky’s AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities
In this post I respond to Eliezer’s AGI Ruin post and encourage researchers working on this to go boldly ahead and search for and test strategies.
Don’t die with dignity; instead play to your outs
In this post I respond to Eliezer’s Death With Dignity post, suggesting that instead of dying with dignity, you play to your outs.
US Citizens: Targeted political contributions are probably the best passive donation opportunities for mitigating existential risk
Highly aligned political candidates have a lot of leverage to affect policies that could impact the long-term future and are uniquely benefited from individu...
Information security considerations for AI and the long term future
This post, which I authored with Lennart Heim, provides a brief overview on how information security might impact the long term future and why we’d like the ...
Choose your wars
If we survive the next few centuries, I think we’ll find ways to eliminate violent, destructive competition. To that end I’m going to prioritize which battle...
2021
Integrity is not a binary and environmental incentives matter
I’ve been thinking a lot about integrity recently and finding that it’s a more difficult subject than I thought at first.
EA Hangout Prisoners’ Dilemma
I ran a Petrov’s day experiment on Facebook and learned some interesting game dynamics!
Reroute.fm podcast: Technological Risk and Reward
Jeffrey and Gavan get meta/nerd out on the dual-use model of risk assessment for emerging technologies, discuss the lab origin theory for SARS-CoV-2, and Jef...
Comment on the Lab Leak Hypothesis
A friend of mine requested that I write up some of my comments on the lab leak hypothesis, since I had done quite a bit of research into this in 2020. This w...
Happy transhumanist awareness day!
I’m a transhumanist: I like to augment my natural abilities with technology to fundamentally change what I can do.
Retrospective on Catalyst, a 100-person biosecurity summit
This is a retrospective on Catalyst, a one-day collaborative biosecurity summit that was held in February 2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area, written by the ...
2020
Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction
A number of people have claimed that a full-scale nuclear war is likely to cause human extinction. I have investigated this issue in depth and concluded that...
U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Jeffrey Ladish
At a time when US political thinking is obsessed with maps of reds and blues, it’s nice to take a step back and think about the longer term potential of coun...
Was SARS-CoV-2 actually present in March 2019 wastewater samples?
While likely a false positive, I argue that, given the scale and uncertainties of the pandemic, a rigorous investigation of the preprint claim mentioned in R...
Video: Getting Ahead of Future Catastrophes
I really enjoyed talking with Keith about the future of civilization, what risks we face, and how we navigate through them! Also I encourage you to check out...
Video: Two Salons on digital contact tracing and privacy
In these two Salons, I discuss contact tracing and privacy with my fellow panelists. There are real tradeoffs between privacy and disease survelliance, but n...
COVID-19 Molecular Diagnostics Brief
This report was part of an effort to provide a technology overview and policy recommendations on COVID-19 diagnostics for policy makers in the midst of the C...
Update on civilizational collapse research
In this post I share my thoughts on civilizational collapse and answer some questions on the topic posed by Oliver Habryka.
Anatomy of a rental phishing scam 🎣
I was recently the (unsuccessful) target of a very well-crafted phishing scam. As part of a housing search a few weeks ago, I was trawling craigslist and zil...
Absent coordination, future technology will cause human extinction
The atom bomb, together with the long range bomber, marked the first time a small group of people could destroy dozens of cities in a matter of hours. The ph...
2019
One Hundred Opinions on Nuclear War
One of my friends on Twitter, Venkatesh Rao, recently challenged people to write one hundred tweets on one topic. I took the bait, and wrote one hundred op...
The Problem with San Francisco
Smoke chokes the city, the nearby forests are on fire, and towns are burning down as I sit here writing this. It is the fall of 2019 in San Francisco and som...
AI Impacts on Escalation Paths to Nuclear Conflicts
This is an excerpt from the Foresight 2019 AGI Cooperation Report. At the workshop, I led a session on the impact of AI on nuclear escalation paths. Here I s...
Does the US nuclear policy still target cities?
Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine brought my attention to a horrifying fact about early US nuclear targeting policy. In 1961, the US had only one nuclea...
Video: Civilization Collapse - Scenarios, Prevention, Response
At this Salon hosted by the Foresight Institute, David Denkenberger and I talk about the risks of civilizational collapse and how we can mitigate them.
2018
Letting Go Without Giving Up Permalink
I wrote this for the 2018 bay area solstice celebration. A recording is available here.
Schelling Network Oracles are Vulnerable to Manipulation Permalink
Schelling oracles should be abandoned in favor of better systems. It’s better to have a small group of verified & trusted reporters than a trivially gama...
How to use Yubikeys for your Gmail second factor
Created by Landfish This tutorial explains how to configure your account with two security keys and an authenticator app. This is the highest form of Gmail ...
How to set up Signal Messenger
Android How to: Use Signal for Android iOS How to: Use Signal on iOS Desktop - Mac or Windows How do I install Signal Desktop? – Support ...
Security Checklist
Instructions for using this checklist Go through each section of the checklist. I recommend setting aside at least an hour to go through all of these thin...
Setting up 2FA and a Password Manager
This document describes the basic steps to setting up a password manager, generating secure passwords, and setting up 2FA on your accounts. 1. Install a Pas...
Smart contracts will make ransomware more profitable part 2 Permalink
Following post 1, I explain a flaw in the simplified model, and how a more complex key exchange model could facilitate ransomware key exchange. I also explai...
Smart contracts will make ransomware more profitable part 1 Permalink
Ransomware operators would benefit from being able to credibly commit to restoring people’s data. Smart contracts could make this possible.
2016
Be like Stanislav Petrov Permalink
Stanislav Petrov may have saved the world when he refused to tell his superiors that five Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles were incoming from the United S...
The world is better and worse than you think Permalink
If you read the news, then you are confronted with daily updates on wars, diseases, and celebrity gossip. It’s hard to get a sense of how humans on this plan...
The Notable Lack of Disturbance in The Force Awakens Permalink
Take a moment to remember the saddest scene in The Force Awakens. Was it Kylo Ren kills Han Solo? When R2D2 wouldn’t wake up, a loyal droid grieving for its ...