Transhumanism: Evolution beyond biology
I consider myself a transhumanist. I spend probably too much time thinking about very long-terrm trends of humanity. Some of the trends I see seem obvious to the point of being irrefutable, while...
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Why only geeks and hippies can save the world
[Here is the full text of what I practiced for my talk at Ignite Seattle last night. I didn't manage to cram it all into the 5 minute presentation, largely because the audience was reacting a bit too...
View ArticleFree Will and Turing-completeness of the Brain
In this essay, I’m going to explore the question "If the human brain is Turing complete, what does that imply about the existence of free will?" And moreover, what does that mean about the ability to...
View ArticleIgnite Video on Geeks & Hippies
The nice folks at Ignite posted videos for the rest of our talks from the second Ignite night, including my presentation on Why only Geeks and Hippies can save the world. Watching it, I see that it’s...
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Do We Live in a Simulation? Implications for Morality and the Beauty of Physics.
There’s been a lot of fuss lately about Nick Bostrom’s ideas that we live in a simulation as a result of an article in the New York Times. Here I’ll provide some analysis of Bostrom’s bold claim,...
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Why Desktop Computers Matter as Laptops Speed Up
I just got a new MacBook Pro of my very own which is undoubtedly the fastest computer I’ve ever owned. I hear a lot of people saying things like "I don’t think I’ll ever get another desktop computer...
View ArticleBlue Brain: the first steps towards uploading
The Blue Brain Project describes itself as: The Blue Brain Project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction...
View ArticleOmnipotent Self-Aware Botnets
My buddy Scotto wrote a play titled “When I come to my senses, I’m alive!” which will be performed at Annex Theater on April 23 – May 22. I read an early draft of the script and am quite excited to...
View ArticleBrain Simulation Tactics and Complexity Estimates
Ray Kurzweil recently predicted that we’d be able to reverse engineer the human brain by 2020. He makes an argument that a brain simulator would need about a million lines of code: Here’s how that...
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