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Robin Hanson

As seen in: Minds Almost Meeting, Apple Podcasts, Aol, Nonzero Newsletter, Substack, Reason, The Unz Review, The Spectator, Cato Institute, OpenMind, Conservative Review and
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Articles

No-New-Physics Consciousness

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By Robin Hanson
| Overcoming Bias
There is a vast literature near the topic of this post, much of which has developed specialized vocabularies and concepts. And I can’t be bothered to master enough of it to make this post match it well. So please try to treat my words here as if their meanings came from other less specialized literatures. Consider three kinds of systems: Experience - Seen from the inside, a mind is aware of, can reason about, and might even “feel” a structure of experiences across time.
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Digital Mind Suicide

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By Robin Hanson
| Overcoming Bias
Greg Egan’s 1994 novel Permutation City depicts digital minds having a right to suicide; if they push a particular internal button, they end. And this does seem like a robust way to avoid many horrible scenarios. (I also discuss this idea in AgeOfEm.) But the novel also depicts such buttons sometimes being illegally disabled, and sometimes others frequently restarting recent copies from before a suicide request. Both of which undermine the policy.
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Tool Vs. Companion Digital Minds

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By Robin Hanson
| Overcoming Bias
Humans have two main relations to animals: they are either food or pets. We ban dogs, cats, and horses from use as food in the U.S. We require humane slaughter for most livestock, but not poultry, and require minimizing pain and distress for animals in research, except for rats, mice, and birds bred for research. We let folks use most any species as a pet. This all seems only somewhat about deep principles, as it entrenches many historical accidents.
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