Beren's Blog

A big factor in AI risk is the possibility of recursive self improvement. An AI is created with some level of intelligence and it uses that intelligence to research AI techniques to make itself more intelligent, and then as it is more intelligent, it becomes better at researching ways to... [Read More]

Here I just want to add a brief addendum to my previous post. One fascinating line of arguments in favour of moral realism compares morality to mathematics. The argument, in simplistic terms, runs roughly as follows: [Read More]

For the past few days I’ve been procrastinating by reading reddit’s askphilosophy, and moral realism has come up again and again. Moral realism has always seemed to me to be a strange, even quixotic, position, so I was very surprised to hear that it is apparently the majority position among... [Read More]

Overall, I didn’t feel this book lived up to expectations. It might have been a function of reading it in small, disjointed blocks, but the book never seemed to tie together cohesively. The section on Richelieu’s early life and education and rise to power was good, but as soon as... [Read More]

I’ve just started reading this set of essays - http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/Books/spacepower.pdf, which looks really interesting ( and reminded me that I need to do much more reading on Mahan), but before I start I thought I’d write up some of my own thoughts on space power and space combat, so as... [Read More]