Sep 30, 2017
The human population has been growing exponentially for a long time. It’s been continuously growing since the Black Death in the 1300s – and although wars, famines, and plagues cause occasional blips in the growth since, it’s been pretty close to exponential since the Industrial Revolution kicked off. Now Malthus...
Sep 24, 2017
We have a guest on the show today – Phil Torres. Phil Torres is an author, Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, former contributor at the Future of Life Institute, and founding Director of the X-Risks Institute. He has published in Bulletin of the...
Sep 15, 2017
75,000 years ago, the human race was on the brink of
extinction.
The cause was the Toba supervolcanic eruption, which had plunged
the earth into a volcanic winter and killed all but a few thousand
remaining humans. This moment was the closest we have come to
extinction since our species began.
Even smaller volcanic...
Sep 10, 2017
Occasionally, in the world, we observe empirical laws – the laws of experiment - that seem to be spookily accurate. There’s no theoretical reason why they should be obeyed, but they just happen to describe the world remarkably well. Perhaps the best example of this, that has changed and will change the world the...
Sep 2, 2017
We know that a great deal of our critical national infrastructure depends on complex cyber-systems; but in the fast-changing world of the internet and computer systems, it's become impossible for slow-moving legislators to catch up to the shifting goalposts. Hackers and similar groups have had major impacts on society....