(-Death)rant.net

The future will definitely look interesting with all its highly adaptable technology. Hopefully, we will finally even develop technology which will help us intervene in nature effectively and reduce wild animal suffering, which is definitely a good thing according to Prof. Oscar Horta.

A step into the right direction would be to go vegan now to reduce the suffering of domesticated animals, which is based on the ideology of speciesism – the ideology of treating members of some species worse than members of other privileged species. Maybe you wonder what all that moral fuss is about. Recently I had the insight that it’s basically a result of living the logical implications of an ethical system, which is as simple as possible. Utilitarianism is a line of thinking, which is rather natural and quite easy in its most basic foundations: Pleasant emotions are good, unpleasant emotions are bad, and it doesn’t matter who has these emotions. That last point means that we have to consider the emotions of other sentient beings, and not just our own. It seems like that the more we learn, the less we can keep up the artificial barriers that have been postulated between different members of a group and between different groups of sentient beings. In this context, it’s also worth to consider the great article The Other Singularity: The Singularity of Connectedness, which points to a future where even the natural barriers between different individuals will start to disappear through the use of advanced technology.

But it’s actually not certain whether we will survive for long enough to turn this vision into reality. Luke Muehlhauser has written a quite insightful article about possible existential risks (to which I have commented), which indicates that unfriendly superintelligence is the greatest threat to human survival. Sure, that’s a grave potential threat to which I would respond with Capability Augmentation (which would surely be good for the economy in any case). Learning how to get better at nearly everything is what can save us, which is why that has become one of my most important interests (besides general philosophy and writing science-fiction stories).

1. Potential Causes of Total Human Extinction in the Next 200 Years http://t.co/Z4pL25j
2. Amazing documentation about future technologies: @DocsOnline Future Intelligence http://tinyurl.com/6xlb9tx
3. 10 Ways the Next 10 Years Are Going To Be Mind-Blowing http://t.co/y9MDcLG via @highexistence
4. RT @danielpink Why you should come up with at least 1 bad idea today http://t.co/juf22bB
5. Transcript of Prof. Oscar Horta’s Live Guest Chat about Speciesism on Animal Rights Zone: http://ning.it/gHM8Ln
6. Oscar Horta: Intervention in nature: The fox, the rabbit and the vegan food rations: http://t.co/JEDO0Ql via @OlharAnimal
7. Checking out “A Vegan World in 8 Years ~ Tim Gier” on Animal Rights Zone: http://ning.it/aHcQSx
8. Sentient Developments: The moral lives of animals…and humans http://t.co/U4Q0AUA
9. Vegan Mainstream: Kathy Freston writes in @huffingtonpost, “Steps to Becoming a Veganist” –> http://huff.to/emGHaE #vegan #veganist
10. Women Who Drink Coffee Live Longer?: http://bit.ly/dGhM9L
11. Public health and nutrition determines a lot of per capita IQ which determines a lot of per capita GDP http://t.co/yYXWTOL
12. Ben Goertzel: My general theory of general intelligence…. 5 papers, 2 of them new (A Geometry of Mind; Self-Adaptable Learning): http://bit.ly/gVWgD5
13. Sociopath World – Inside the mind of a sociopath: Empathy and self control http://t.co/wfzPNe8
14. Meet The New Face of Terrorism: White Guys: http://bit.ly/gP2LtX
15. Inside Anonymous‘ Secret War Room (via @Gawker) http://t.co/wXHKM6N
16. Cool: Projected screen and keyboard The New Soul PC Of The Future By Xi Chen « FGadgets http://t.co/CW4FtU9
17. YouTube – Thom Hartmann Germany creates 300,000 jobs in 10 years with solar & renewable energy: http://bit.ly/fwGhY6 via @addthis
18. YouTube – A Day Made of Glass… Made possible by Corning.: http://bit.ly/frMLSC via @addthis
19. IEEE Spectrum: Top 10 Robot Videos of the Month http://bit.ly/eatqKk
20. Looks like fun – too bad my current financial situation isn’t really great: Flattr – Social micropayments: http://flattr.com/
21. WeeManStudios: How come Marketing graduates don’t know about freemium http://bit.ly/ia6f (explained) http://bit.ly/f0uMbN (example)?
22. 30 Runaway Cows Shot In Front of Children: http://bit.ly/i1eAuI
23. British People Think Pigs Have Wings: http://bit.ly/f4EXzh
24. “If you don’t link to primary sources, I just don’t trust you.” | Ben Goldacre | The Guardian: http://bit.ly/eeIWcq via @addthis
25. Radiation Chart « xkcd: http://bit.ly/fmTakk