| abstract
| - Interview with Michael Vassar by Jonathan Despres. Go to the Interviews. I try to make money through business and consulting projects and do networking, fund raising and organizing for the Singularity Institute for free. Make money to fund existential risk reduction projects. Find potential Friendly AI developers. Calorie Restriction or intermittent fasting are already real life extension. Resveratrol may also work. Maybe a careful search of exotic diet spaces can give us other easier options with similar magnitude effects. Wearing biomonitors and finding the best local doctors based on track record are also worth a few years. Vision? It's invisible. All the action taking place on the nanoscale. In all probability there's also nothing sentient to see it. Cryonics is more likely than not to save the information required to reconstruct a person. It's not obviously much less than 50% likely given adequate information that people will actually be restored if civilization survives, which isn't that much less than 50% likely. Maybe 10% aggregate probability. Resuscitation will probably wait till the singularity. I worked in labs doing biochemistry, microbiology, plant genetics, and soft lithography. Also waiting tables, teaching in inner city schools in the US, Peace Corps in Kazakhstan, and actuarial work. Currently a music licensing start-up, which has been the most educational of all, but all have taught me more than I have time to share. I think that most sciences progress a bit slowly compared to 40 years ago. Not all, just most. Cryonics is almost unfunded, which hurts it less than people might imagine. I believe that only specific precise things are logically possible and I suspect all logically possible things exist. This fact could be called god and very probably contains many many things that you would call god if you met them. I hate words like Transhumanist and Extropian. Ideology shouldn't be needed as an excuse to think well and honestly. Where to start? OK, for something really simple, end agricultural subsidies and drop trade barriers. Oh, and provide universal free cryonic suspension. Only as art. Leo Szilard because of his breadth and ethical focus. May as well try. My work for SIAI, my aesthetics, my marriage. My non-billionaire status. Save the light cone. Ironically, The Picture of Dorian Grey is pretty great. Hitchhiker's Guide is my favorite SF followed by the first half of The Diamond Age. I also really love Madame Bovary, The Tale of Genji, and The Odyssey. When people talk precisely they call it math. Competition lowers price, which is good, and explores more marketing strategies, which is VERY good, but it dilutes scientific talent. Still a net gain. That sounds like fantasy to me. More realistically, what should we do with hunter gatherers. I wish I knew. Freeze them when they die? Help accelerate progress but less than expected. Statistics above all else. Good management. It always is in large projects and its very rare. I think right now a focus on public health gives the best bang for the buck. It didn't occur to me till I was an adult that a significant fraction of people might really want to die. I'd guess they should market to the rich at first like most new products. Instinctively, the truly rich intuit that they CAN take it with them. Not handy but very intrinsically valuable. How distant? The future stretches much longer than the period with jobs. A few centuries ago jobs weren't normal at all. Very unambitious and unimaginative, but unusually (though imperfectly) honest and very well intentioned. It's the most important thing ever, could save us or kill us, and will probably happen too soon to adequately prepare. I have essays on that online if you search. Robust life extension tops the list unless intelligence enhancement counts. More than mild intelligence enhancement tops the list without equivocations. Stop subsidizing some economic activities, tax pollution to maximize revenues. Trivially, but it creates other problems. Best sf? Primer. Best ever? Dr Strangelove and Casablanca deserve their reputations. Maybe A Long Day's Journey Into Night or Strangers on a Train deserve mention. Recently? American Beauty. Comedy? Little Shop of Horrors. Atonement too. To try to be honest with myself. I like some Hindu Aesthetics VERY much but other parts are jarring and almost horrifying. See above. I generally recommend www.overcomingbias.com Your contact information? michaelaruna at yahoo dot com Comfortably Numb. Varied styles. Really truly try to live well. Also, tithe to a single organization you carefully choose to maximize human survival (SIAI or FHI) human welfare (Givewell)or some particular value of yours and then don't feel guilty as you are doing far more than your share. Try George Dvorsky
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)