We Are Not Saved

If dealing with AI Risk allows us to arrive at something very similar to the LDS Plan of Salvation, what lessons can we draw from that with respect to how we should behave in this life? In this episode we dig deeper into that question as a follow-up to a presentation I gave at the annual conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

Have you actually browsed the official report of Rotherham? It's pretty appalling stuff. I didn't think I was going to, but this week I ended up returning to a discussion of Rotherham, Telford, etc. I answer some of the objections which were raised in the previous post, and talk about the role of culture in the whole affair.

1000's of girls, some as young 11, raped as part of large child sex abuse rings. Why haven't you heard about it? That's the question we ask in this episode...

This episode is largely a review of The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel. In the book Scheidel asserts that the only thing which has ever reduced inequality is some form of violence, either modern war, extreme revolutions, state collapse or pandemics. He backs up this assertion with loads of historical data, leading to the depressing conclusion that we either have to put up with periodic large scale violence or extreme inequality. This podcast is a discussion of that bleak conclusion.

Continuing with the subject I was covering in the last episode I go into more depth on the increase in transgender and gender non-conforming identity. I offer one final theory and then move on to a discussion of suicide risk, and other potential harm.

Last episode I talked about trends, and in this episode I want to talk about a specific trend, the increase in people who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. I offer six theories for why it might be increasing.

Tiny trends are all around us. Some of these trends compound, like compound interest, exponential growth that works like a juggernaut destroying whatever came before. Other trends are slower, and harder to notice, and generally only noticed once their impact is already obvious. Like the opioid epidemic and deaths of despair. Sometimes humans can reverse the trends. Sometimes they reverse naturally and sometimes the only way to reverse them is through instability and violence.

Once again (though perhaps for the last time) John Brockman of Edge.org has asked a variety of intellectuals to answer his question of the year. This year it was "What is the Last Question?" I spend this episode discussing some of the responses, specifically how they relate to things I've mentioned in previous podcasts and how well they fit into the category of a "last question." And then at the end I give my "last question."

After reading a significant number of books from the early 19th century, I noticed that a lot of the better known authors were "communist sympathizers". Which prompted me to examine what communism must have looked like back then, before the full horror of Stalin, and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. My conclusion is that it must have looked pretty good. But then we all know how the story turned out, and however good it looked back then, that was an illusion. And if you had banned criticism based on how bad it looked you would have missed out on the chance to avoid some communism's excesses and failures.

With the advent of social media and the internet the entire landscape of speech has changed. For as long as the concept of freedom of speech it has always been assumed that more speech was better, but what if we have finally reached the point where there can be too much speech, that in fact the quantity of speech is now such that it acts as a form of censorship?