Felicifia is an online community for all things related to the utilitarianism ethics system. See the tag list for catergories.
New users: see this welcome message.
The literature on existential risk is shockingly small and this site's users know it as well as anyone, so as a service to anyone conducting x-risk research (including ourselves), maybe we could collectively accumulate relevant references in the comment thread here. Eventually a formal list on a separate web page would be nice, but for now let's just get as many references as we can in on place and worry about organizing them later.
The State of the Future is a yearly report published by the American Council of the United Nations University since 1997 to summarize the results of their research and studies under the Millennium Project. (link)
The State of the Future is an informative publication that gives invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its Member States, and civil society.
- Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations (link)
The new one's out. H/t John Moravec, Education Futures. Details below.
I've heard a lot of talk recently suggesting that the survival of humanity is but a fringe issue without even the potential for broad appeal. I couldn't disagree more. Details below.
According to total utilitarianism, we should maximize the total amount of utility that ever gets experienced, regardless of who it occurs in. According to prior existence utilitarianism, we should maximize the total amount of utility that gets experienced by those individuals who would exist regardless of what we do. Thus, T says we can do good by bringing an individual into existence, whereas PE says we cannot.
Below: Some examples of where this debate comes up, and why I support T.
I don't bring politics here often because I find it difficult to sort out which stances and candidates are utilitarian-optimal, because I want this site to be welcoming to people of all political stripes, and because there are so many other online forums for political discussion. (I think the only other time I've brought something political here was HR 2069: A US Carbon Tax Proposal.) However, something Al Gore, who of course is not officially a politician at the moment, said in a recent Rolling Stone interview (h/t "Linda in SFNM"/DailyKos) caught my eye and seems worthy of bring over here:
There's a philosophical question embedded in what you're asking: Is this important enough for us to make sacrifices? The answer is yes, of course - we're talking about the survival of human civilization.
If we're going to have infinite utility (and I hope we do), then it appears that we'll need for utility to continue being experienced for an infinite amount of time. Here we'll look at whether or not this is possible given our current understanding of the future of the universe.
The physics community's understanding on this remains incomplete, as is my understanding of the current physics, so bear with me, and please add anything you've got to help us out. However, so far, it the odds of there being infinite utility look slim unless we can pull off some fancy tricks well beyond our current capabilities.
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence has recently launched a blog. Roughly speaking, SIAI works on making sure that if an AI singularity occurs, it's a good thing. They're also interested in existential risks more generally. I've been very impressed with the organization since I started following it not too long ago. They seem to handle this topic, which is very technically challenging, socially important, and (at present) outside the mainstream with both class and resolve. It's very worthy of being on our shortlist of where to donate.
Given that, I'm proud to have been taken on by them as a guest blogger- along with some other names familiar to this site. I'm also adding them to our Links blox at right (which is always open to suggestions). More generally, I'm all for mixing with other communities, online or off. (See for example the Philosophers' Carnival and my DailyKos page). This site will continue to be my top priority (that is, beyond my day job), but outside interaction brings our ideas to others and new ideas to us, as well as helping us grow our community here.
I will briefly add that, in addition to having different topic focuses, Felicia differs from the SIAI blog and other traditional blogs in that it's completely unmoderated and open to anyone signing up and posting diaries, as explained in the welcome message.
In a few short weeks, I move to Penn State to begin work towards a PhD in Geography. I'm very excited for the opportunity. Perhaps the most interesting part will be how to factor in some of the topics discussed here, especially regarding other existential risks and positive advanced technology. These are topics I was barely even aware of when I applied to the program. Below, I've got some thoughts on how to pull it all together, and I'd love to hear any thoughts yinz have.
From TED, which holds videos of "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers", we have this video (streaming, 17mins) of Bostrom discussing what he considers the 3 most important issues: (1) death, (2) existential risk, and (3) life not being experienced as well as it could be. (3) got the most time, even though I'd say (2) is the most important. He did give an OK argument for (1), that when people die, we lose their knowledge, but I still don't have this (or (3)) on my list of priorities. If nothing else, for all the attention I've paid his work, it was nice to finally see it presented in a format richer than text.
Utilitarianism's got a problem: It recommends maximizing total utility, but if there's even the slightest chance that this total utility could be infinitely large, then the whole system breaks down. Or at least that's the impression we get from reading Nick Bostrom's Infinite Ethics (pdf) paper.
I wrestled with this topic for quite some time recently. I've enjoyed this work more than just about anything else I've ever done (that's me in a nutshell: abstract math + ethics = fun), but it has also left me distressed for my beloved utilitarianism on more than one occasion. I've now got an approach that satisfies me, but perhaps yinz can pick it apart and send me back to square one.
Foreign Policy magazine has a series of articles "21 Solutions to Save the World". More accurately, they "asked 21 leading thinkers: What is one solution that would make the world a better place?" It's an interesting list of contributors, including chess champion Gary Kasparov and the MIT Poverty Action Lab's Esther Duflo. Unfortunately, the articles are not available without a subscription beyond the first few paragraphs.
What did FP leave out? What would your article have discussed?
ER's have received attention at Felicifia (see also this and this), and with good reason: they threaten to significantly curtail or even eliminate all utility from the point they occur until, well, perhaps until forever. I have little to add to this now but wanted to open a thread for discussion on the topic. The important question seems to be what we should be doing about ER's that we're not already doing, in terms of both further study and action.
I ought to donate more money than I do. But it's hard to know where to donate my money. The cost-effectiveness of projects varies widely. Some human welfare projects cost between $1 and $10,000 per life-year. But many of these gains in human welfare are offset by losses in animal welfare, as longer human lives and higher incomes typically lead to a net decrease in the number of animals who exist and a net increase in suffering per animal. Compared to human welfare projects, animal welfare projects are probably more efficient, with costs as low as $0.02 per life-year.
The value of all these life-years is probably small, however. Humans and other animals probably evolved
In light of the recent global veganism discussion, I got an interview with Jason Matheny, Director of the New Harvest organization that's helping develop cultured meat technology. The Q&A is below. If you have any follow-up questions, post them here.
