I’ve had little time for blogging, and coincidentally, there seems to be little to blog about recently. Here though are a few quick items:<\/p>\n
Update<\/strong>: For the obligatory Multiverse Mania item, see this interview with Lord Martin Rees<\/a>. Rees is rather proud of himself for leading the field of theoretical physics to embrace Multiverse Mania, quoting Frank Wilczek as claiming at the end of a conference that:<\/p>\n five years ago we were a beleaguered minority, whereas now, he and I and others had led many other people into the wilderness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Besides his belief in the multiverse, he also believes this is what we have in our future:<\/p>\n I don’t think Elon Musk is realistic when he imagines sending people a hundred at a time for normal life because Mars is going to be far less clement than living at the South Pole, and not many people want to do that. I don’t think there will be many ordinary people who want to go, but there will be some crazy pioneers who will want to go, even if they have one-way tickets.<\/p>\n The reason that’s important is the following: Here on Earth, I suspect that we are going to want to regulate the application of genetic modification and cyborg techniques on grounds of ethics and prudence. This links with another topic I want to come to later about the risks of new technology. If we imagine these people living as pioneers on Mars, they are out of range of any terrestrial regulation. Moreover, they’ve got a far higher incentive to modify themselves or their descendants to adapt to this very alien and hostile environment.<\/p>\n They will use all the techniques of genetic modification, cyborg techniques, maybe even linking or downloading themselves into machines, which, fifty years from now, will be far more powerful than they are today. The posthuman era is probably not going to start here on Earth; it will be spearheaded by these communities on Mars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’ve had little time for blogging, and coincidentally, there seems to be little to blog about recently. Here though are a few quick items: Several people had asked me about this paper about the CC, and I had to tell … Continue reading
\nUpdate<\/strong>: Another black hole merger detection from LIGO announced today<\/a>, some commentary here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"