Older assorted links

May 31, 2014 by Luke

Immediately before launching this new site I was posting regular assorted links to Facebook. I’ve collected those links below.

May 31st links

Scott Aaronson’s reply to Giulio Tononi’s reply to Scott Aaronson on the integrated information theory of consciousness.
Equity market guru accuracy ratings, based on 6500+ forecasts from 68 gurus.
Machines vs. lawyers.
Robin Goldstein pranks Wine Spectator with a fake restaurant.
Steven Pinker’s next book is available for pre-order.

May 29th links

FLI’s inaugural talks and panel: “The future of technology, benefits and risks” (video).
How much do Y Combinator founders earn?
Megaprojects (> $1B budget) almost never finish on time, on budget, and with the promised benefits.
Google has a working prototype of a fully self-driving car with no steering wheel (video).
SIGGRAPH 2014 technical papers preview (video).

May 27th links

Sandberg, “Smarter policymaking through improved collective cognition.”
Johann Schumann on high-assurance systems.
“Communicating values to autonomous agents.”
Robotic arm catches everything tossed in its direction (video).

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Feynman on dealing with nanotechnology risks

May 30, 2014 by Luke

Nano (p. 113) quotes Eric Drexler describing the time he first met Richard Feynman at a party:

We talked about the PNAS article [on nanotechnology], and generally he indicated that, yeah, this was a sensible thing… at one point I was talking about the need for institutions to handle some of the problems [nanotechnology] raised, and [Feynman] remarked [that] institutions were made up of people and therefore of fools.

Feynman sounds downright Yudkowskian on this point, if you ask me. 🙂

Two anecdotes on the social responsibility of scientists

May 30, 2014 by Luke

During the Future of Life Institute’s inaugural talks and panel (video), Alan Alda and Jaan Tallinn shared two anecdotes on the social responsibility of scientists.

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