Hi, I'm a philosopher specializing in epistemology and rationality. I learned about Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism from my mentor David Deutsch and I helped with his book The Beginning of Infinity. That gives a sense of the general point of view I'm coming from. I have two main things to suggest which are mostly independent but synergize well.

I developed improvements on Critical Rationalism, which I named Critical Fallibilism, which center around evaluating ideas in a binary way using decisive arguments rather than weighing arguments or evidence (which, like induction, doesn't actually work).

And I developed a plan for how to make progress in the world: encourage all public intellectuals to have written debate policies which specify in advance what debates they will accept and how they will behave...

Many technologies can be used in both healthy and unhealthy ways. You can indulge in food to the point of obesity, or even make it the subject of anxiety. Media can keep us informed, but it can also steal our focus and drain our energy, especially social media. AI can help students learn, or it can help them avoid learning. Technology itself has no agency to choose between these paths; we do.

This responsibility exists at all levels: from society as a whole, to institutions, to families, down to each individual. Companies should strive to design healthier products—snack foods that aren’t calorie-dense, smartphones with screen time controls built in to the operating system. There is a role for law and regulation as well, but that is a blunt...

Some people are very interested in neurotechnology, e.g. BCIs, neuromodulation through transcranial direct current stimulation/pulsed ultrasound/magnetic stimulation or even deep brain stimulation.

The applications people seem most excited by in relation to neurotechnology appear to fall into the categories of (1) outputting information from the brain and (2) inputting information into the brain at a higher throughput/higher fidelity/lower latency, as well as the resulting compound ability to (3) send mental gestalts/felt senses/ideas between people. I'll call these "I/O applications".

E.g. a common imagination is that with BCIs, one'd be able to control computers much more quickly and accurately than with a mouse and keyboard, or retrieve arbitrary facts from Wikipedia as-if from long term memory, or send one's own understanding of a complicated political issue to a conversation partner and have them understand ones perspective.

I think those are great goals, and hope people make progress...

epistemic status: Stating impressions, but I don't know much about quantum physics (or computing!). Someone more qualified please write the accurate version of this post.

I think people have been hyping quantum computing backwards. The specific algorithms that are always brought up as providing a relevant speedup over their classical counterparts are Shor's algorithm and Grover's algorithm, but not much relevant economic activity is tied up with finding the prime factors of numbers, and while getting a radical speedup in unsorted search, the setup costs may only be worth it for extremely large searches:

Even when considering only problem instances that can be solved within one day, we find that there are potentially large quantum speedups available. ... However, the number of physical qubits used is extremely large, ... . In particular, the quantum advantage disappears if one includes the cost of the classical

The Open Philanthropy Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness (BPP) team is hiring and is also looking for promising new grantees! 

The BPP team's focus is on reducing catastrophic and existential risks from biology -- work that we think is currently neglected by the EA community and requires substantially more effort. While AI risks may be larger, the strategy for mitigating biological risks is both much clearer and likely more tractable, though the cause area is severely lacking in talent to execute well. Notably, we don’t think you need a background in biology to do most of these roles well.

Some of the focus areas they're excited for more work in include: physical transmission suppression, metagenomic sequencing, personal protective equipment, medical countermeasures, capacity building for the biosecurity field, and work at...

[This is a linkpost from https://thegreymatter.substack.com/p/book-review-the-system]

Robert Reich wants you to be angry. He wants you to be furious at the rich, outraged at corporations, and incensed by the unfairness of it all. In his book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, Reich paints a picture of an America ruled by oligarchs, where democracy is a sham and people are powerless against the machinations of the ultra-wealthy.

It's a compelling narrative. It's also deeply flawed.

This matters because Reich isn't just another pundit. He's a former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, a Berkeley professor, and a bestselling author with millions of social media followers. "The System" itself became a national bestseller. When someone with his platform and credentials makes sweeping economic claims, people listen. They form...

Metaphors and short explanations have a large influence on how we think and talk about the future. Some examples are: AGI is like nukes, out-of-control race dynamics, LLMs as stochastic parrots.

But most of our common reference points lean dystopian: P(doom), the paperclip maximizer, Black Mirror, Brave New World, 1984. Where are the equally compelling ones for positive futures — abundant clean energy, infinite knowledge, no infectious disease, no poverty, solved aging, effective global coordination?

As one small step toward filling this gap, Foresight Institute is launching the Existential Hope Meme Prize:

• $10,000 for the best meme that conveys a scientifically grounded, positive vision of the future
• Open globally

We’re grateful to have Jason Crawford (Roots of Progress) on the judging panel, alongside others from science, media, and progress communities.

Details and submissions here: existentialhope.com/existential-hope-meme-prize

We’d appreciate your help spreading the word, and if you make memes yourself, we’d love to see your submissions.

We're excited to announce our September book discussion featuring After the Spike by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso. 

Pathways to Progress is a community of individuals committed to understanding and contributing to human prosperity. Through our discussions, we examine technological and scientific innovation, economic development, and their role in advancing human prosperity. Each month, we read selected book(s), followed by a Q&A event with the author. Previous books include Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush, Where's My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall, and Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen. We also host speaker events with guests such as Jason Crawford, Matt Clancy, and Saloni Dattani. Most speaker events are recorded and available on YouTube and Spotify.

Here's our schedule:

• Discussion Meetings: We'll have two sessions to discuss After the Spike, with an option