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Why Free-Market Advocates Are Not Obligated to Defend the Economic Status Quo – G. Stolyarov II
Many on the political left today equate advocacy of free-market capitalism with an “anything goes” support for the economic status quo. Many on the political right give credence to this perception by, indeed, seeking to defend the status quo just because it happens to be so. Yet this is neither an obligatory nor an advisable approach for characterizing a genuinely well-considered free-market outlook. Suppose that you are a free-market advocate and also an engineer, well-versed in the principles and methods for constructing durable, safe structures. You hold that individuals and businesses should have the freedom to be able to build structures which would improve human well-being, in exchange for the…
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Refuting Ayn Rand’s “Immortal Robot” Argument – G. Stolyarov II
Here I refute an argument that has been leveled against proponents of indefinite human longevity from a surprising direction – those sympathetic to the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. Some advocates of Ayn Rand’s philosophy believe that indefinite life would turn human beings into “immortal, indestructible robots” that, according to Ayn Rand, would have no genuine values. Both of these claims are false. Indefinite life would not turn humans into indestructible robots, nor would an indestructible robot with human abilities lack values or motivation for doing great things. In Ayn Rand’s own words, “Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.” (John Galt’s speech in For the New Intellectual, p. 135)…
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Google … Might Save Humanity From Extinction
The headline over at Huff Post Tech actually reads “Google’s New A.I. Ethics Board Might Save Humanity From Extinction” and the article is filled with a lot of the typical nonsensical, fear-mongering nonsense — BUT the predominant side-effect of a well-funded, high-profile, COMPETENT Ethics Board could well mitigate a world of pain . . . . (Hopefully some of them will be named soon enough that they can be invited to our Implementing Safe Selves portion of the AAAI Spring Symposium series at Stanford, March 24-26.) There’s a lot of traction for the “machines annihilate humanity” storyline — but a clear-headed look at reality shows that it is as scientifically…
