We Are Not Saved

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.