We Are Not Saved

Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/06/a-judgment-day-for-ais/ If AIs are going to act as independent agents then they should be praised for the virtues and judged for their sins just as we all are. And in fact this judgment is one of the few things that will ensure their morality.

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/the-politics-of-the-zombie-apocalypse-e4c Per Scott Alexander it's possible that the right optimizes for survival, while the left optimizes for thriving. If so would a society entirely optimized around thriving actually function?

Transcript: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/2023/06/morality-for-robots-and-ais/ AI risk has been in the news a lot lately. One way to reduce that risk is to make sure that AIs are moral. But what does morality even mean when you're talking about robots and AIs?

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/burning-man-dreamtime-and-dragons-8b8 Burning Man aspires to reinvent the culture of the Earth. I don't think it's going to, which is to say in 1,000 years I don't think that people will look back on this era as the Dawn of the Burners. But what will they think of us? That's the question we cover in this episode.

Artificial Intelligence has many attributes, which previously have been qualities we've only associated with the divine.  This is cross posted from my Patheos column which you can find here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatchesendofworld/

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/the-10-books-i-finished-in-may-and  I'm still figure out how to do anchor links. Also I really need to figure out how to write shorter reviews...

Religion and technology relate to each other in strange and subtle ways. Religion must, of necessity grapple with technology, but how to do that remains unclear. This is the first post of my new Patheos column. If you could subscribe that would be fantastic.  

Transcript: https://www.wearenotsaved.com/p/nukes-2023  A updating of one of my past posts. I actually changed a lot more than I thought would. Also since it's not appearing on Substack I went a little bit crazy with footnotes. Let me know what you think of how I handled them on audio.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/05/25/decisions-as-a-barbell-also-a-very-meta-post/  At the end of this episode I announce some significant changes to my blog, so make sure to stay till then. Before then I discuss decision making. How we need to spend most of our time perfecting our habits and thinking carefully about big decisions, but in reality we spend most of our time doing neither. Obsessed with things that don't matter...

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by: Eric Schlosser Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less by: Alex Epstein The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by: Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing  Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment by: Yanis Varoufakis  Apollo: The Race to the Moon by: Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox Ender’s Game (The Ender Saga, 1) by: Orson Scott Card The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 3 by: Matt Dinniman Faith, Hope and Carnage by: Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/04/30/eschatologist-28-if-ye-are-prepared-ye-shall-not-fear/ I'm not a hardcore prepper, but I'm always surprised by how little preperation most people are willing to make, particularly compared to how much they're willing to panic.

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/04/27/the-modern-landscape-of-harm/ It is not just our ability to cause harm, but our ability to mitigate harm which has grown in an unprecedented fashion. Life has done whatever it could get away with for billions of year, but in the last few hundred humans have come along able to inflict or prevent great harms and the consciousness to decide whether and how. Recent debates have pitted maximalists from both sides. Those who believe we need to do everything possible to prevent certain harms and those who thing that any attempt to prevent harm is likely to cause more harm because it stalls progress.

In 2014, just a few days before Christmas I was fired and served with a lawsuit. The next two years were some of the toughest of my life. (Which actually makes me pretty lucky.) This is the story of that lawsuit. How it started and how it ended. I made a lot of mistakes, hopefully this will enable you to not make the same mistakes.

What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by: Tim Urban The Machinery of Freedom – Guide to a Radical Capitalism by: David Friedman The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown by: Various A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by: Edwin H. Friedman Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass by: Theodore Dalrymple Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us by: Russ Roberts Darkness at Noon by: Arthur Koestler The Horse and His Boy by: C. S. Lewis Prince Caspian by: C. S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader by: C. S. Lewis The Silver Chair by: C. S. Lewis The Last Battle by: C. S. Lewis Till We Have Faces by: C. S. Lewis

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/03/31/eschatologist-27-golems-and-genies/  I recently read a book which claimed to describe the central problem of the modern world, What's Our Problem by Tim Urban. No one can say he lacked for ambition, but I feel like his analysis overlooks several large problems. In particularly I think he doesn't go nearly deep enough into how technology has changed the rules of the game. He has divided the political landscape up into golems and genies. And he asserts that we just need stronger genies, the problem is that technology has developed in such a way that it actively sabotages genies while empowering golems. And this problem is not going to go away...

There have been some competing explanations for the Nord Stream explosions. Seymour Hersh claims the US did it. The New York Times claims it was Pro-Ukrainian forces and a somewhat obscure blogger claims he has evidence that it was the Russians. How is one to decide? And is it even necessary to decide? Is it perhaps more important to have a robust framework for conspiracy theories in general, than to have firm opinions about specific theories? How has the modern world made the whole entreprise more difficult?

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by: David Graeber and David Wengrow America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present by: John Ghazvinian Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by: M. Nolan Gray Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by: Ben R. Rich The Hedonistic Imperative by: David Pearce Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health—and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More by: Christopher M. Palmer MD  Nicomachean Ethics by: Aristotle Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction by: Jonathan Barnes Dungeon Crawler Carl: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure by: Matt Dinniman Carl’s Doomsday Scenario: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2 by: Matt Dinniman The Magician’s Nephew by: C. S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by: C. S. Lewis

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/28/eschatologist-26-a-crisis-of-change-and-choice/  In my last newsletter we talked about spiritual health, and a few options for acquiring that health, such as overcoming suffering or, alternatively, gaining material abundance. In this newsletter we’re going to go beyond talking about the merits of different options to discussing the way in which these options have multiplied.  Go back a few centuries, and there was one religion, one staple crop, and one way of doing things. These days, however, we’re spoiled for choices and options for both spiritual and physical health, and beyond that our emotional and mental health as well. We have countless religions to choose from: some secular, some informal. Beyond that there are a bewildering variety of diet and exercise programs, and tens of thousands of self-help books. We are offered a truly insane number of choices, all backed up by a deluge of data drawing sometimes contradictory conclusions. Everybody wants to be

Transcript along with pictures of all the docs mentioned in the episode: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/25/a-cautionary-tale/  In the interest of not spoiling things you're just going to have to listen...

Transcript: https://wearenotsaved.com/2023/02/16/polycrises-or-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/  In general any individual catastrophe is probably overblown. Global warming is not going to cause human extinction. Despite the severity of the war in Ukraine, nukes will probably not be used. Or at least none of these bad things are going to happen all by themselves. The problem is that we face numerous crises and while each individual crisis might be managable on their own, in combination they often feed off each other and create a polycrisis that's far more severe than any of the crises considered in isolation. Bad things are happening everywhere, and all at once...