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Category: existential risks

What happens when intelligence escapes the bounds of flesh and bone? In this episode, we explore post-biological civilizations—entities that may trade biology for digital minds, machine bodies, or stranger forms still—and ask what becomes of identity, purpose, and humanity when the body is no longer required.

Watch my exclusive video Antimatter Propulsion: Harnessing the Power of Annihilation — https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur–… Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur Get a Lifetime Membership to Nebula for only $300: https://go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=isa… Use the link gift.nebula.tv/isaacarthur to give a year of Nebula to a friend for just $30. SFIA Discord Server: / discord Credits: Post-Biological Civilizations: Life Beyond Flesh and Bone Episode 498a; May 11, 2025 Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur Edited by: Ludwig Luska Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator Chris Zabriskie, “Unfoldment, Revealment” Phase Shift, “Forest Night” Lewis Gill, “The Phobos Diary” Stellardrone, “Red Giant” 0:00 Intro 1:24 The Physical Presence of Post-Biological Civilizations 3:38 Societal & Cultural Aspects of Post-Biological Life 5:08 The Scifi Path to Post-Biological Life 8:03 The Singularity and the Ultimate Transition 9:47 Many Paths to Post-Biological Life 17:50 The Fermi Paradox & Post-Biological Civilizations 27:39 Ethics & the Fate of Humanity 29:17 The Transition Process at a Civilizational Scale.
Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur.
Get a Lifetime Membership to Nebula for only $300: https://go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=isa…
Use the link gift.nebula.tv/isaacarthur to give a year of Nebula to a friend for just $30.

SFIA Discord Server: / discord.
Credits:
Post-Biological Civilizations: Life Beyond Flesh and Bone.
Episode 498a; May 11, 2025
Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur.
Edited by: Ludwig Luska.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator.
Chris Zabriskie, \

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A new study suggests that, in the case of global catastrophe, urban agriculture alone could sustain only about one fifth of the population of a temperate, median-sized city, but the whole city could be fed by also farming land within a short distance of the urban area.

Matt Boyd of Adapt Research Ltd, New Zealand, and Nick Wilson of the University of Otago, New Zealand, present these findings in PLOS One.

Abrupt global catastrophes—such as nuclear wars, extreme pandemics, or solar storms—could severely hamper . Shortages of resources like could disrupt food production and transport, possibly leading to famine. Prior research has suggested that this impact could be mitigated by , which includes such approaches as home, community, and rooftop gardens.

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Recent Extinction Rebellion protests saw key sites across London shut down in an attempt to force the government to declare an ‘eco-emergency.’

Our dissatisfaction with breakdown on a global, individual and societal level pushes many of us into activism. Increased numbers of people report suffering from ‘eco-anxiety’, and a recent study showed only 29% of American millennials currently believe that the country is heading in the right direction.

But can decay be completely reversed by human effort?

In this podcast, Tom Cozens speaks with Dr Mark Hocknull, who points out that decay finds its cause in deeper laws governing the physical universe. According to the principle of entropy, breakdown and decay are inescapable aspects of the natural world. The second law of thermodynamics states that decay and disorder are inescapable, and will always increase over time, despite human effort to reverse the process.

In the face of a world inescapably programmed towards breakdown, should we fight back or give up?

Owl in space at https://owlinspace.com

Continue reading “Entropy: The Universal Disorder | A conversation with Dr Mark Hocknull” | >

In this episode, we return to the subject of existential risks, but with a focus on what actions can be taken to eliminate or reduce these risks.

Our guest is James Norris, who describes himself on his website as an existential safety advocate. The website lists four primary organizations which he leads: the International AI Governance Alliance, Upgradable, the Center for Existential Safety, and Survival Sanctuaries.

Previously, one of James’ many successful initiatives was Effective Altruism Global, the international conference series for effective altruists. He also spent some time as the organizer of a kind of sibling organization to London Futurists, namely Bay Area Futurists. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a triple major in psychology, sociology, and philosophy, as well as with minors in too many subjects to mention.

Selected follow-ups:

• James Norris website (https://www.jamesnorris.org/)
• Upgrade your life & legacy (https://www.upgradable.org/) — Upgradable.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (https://www.franklincovey.com/courses… (Stephen Covey)
• Beneficial AI 2017 (https://futureoflife.org/event/bai-2017/) — Asilomar conference.
• \

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Comets that have hit Earth have been a mixed bag. Early in Earth’s history, during the solar system’s chaotic beginning, they were likely the source of our planet’s water, ultimately making up about 0.02% of the planet’s mass. (Mars and Venus received a similar fraction.)

Comets brought complex organic molecules and the biosphere, but later posed a threat to the same in cometary collisions. A (or asteroid) likely caused the Tunguska Event in 1908 in Russia, and a comet fragment likely triggered the rapid climate shift of the Younger Dryas 12,800 years ago, with its widespread extinctions.

If such collisions happen here, they likely take place in other solar systems as well. Now three scientists in the United Kingdom have modeled the impacts of an icy cometary collision with an Earth-like, tidally locked terrestrial planet. Such objects are prime candidates in the search for habitable exoplanets outside our solar system.

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A new University of Zurich study shows that people are more concerned about the immediate risks of AI, like bias and misinformation, than about distant existential threats. Most people are more concerned about the immediate risks of artificial intelligence than about distant, theoretical threats

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“Second Variety” is a science fiction novelette by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in Space Science Fiction magazine, in May 1953. Set in a world where war between the Soviet Union and United Nations has reduced most of the world to a barren wasteland, the story concerns the discovery, by the few remaining soldiers left, that self-replicating robots originally built to assassinate Soviet agents have gained sentience and are now plotting against both sides. It is one of many stories by Dick to examine the implications of nuclear war, particularly after it has destroyed much or all of the planet. The story was adapted into the movie Screamers in 1995. 00:00 Intro 01:03 Peek into the plot 03:33 Self-Replication and Technological Autonomy 06:51 Current Autonomous Warfare Capabilities 10:30 Space Warfare and the Projection of Terrestrial Conflict 13:14 Current State of Space Warfare 15:22 Wrapping Up =============== 🎬 Loitering munitions system WARMATE • Loitering munitions system WARMATE 📙 🇺🇸 Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies https://bookshop.org/a/98861/97801987… The Human Terrain Project — PENTAGON’S attempt to understand The Enemy | ENDEVR Documentary • The Human Terrain Project — PENTAGON’… 📙 🇺🇸 War in the Age of Intelligent Machines https://monoskop.org/images/c/c0/DeLa… =============== Buy the book featured in this video: 📙 🇺🇸 Buy the book Second Variety https://bookshop.org/a/98861/97988883… 🎧 Free Audiobook • Post-Apocalyptic Story “Second Variet… =============== You can find my take on things summarised in the books I wrote. 📙🇺🇸Chronicles of the Machine — Simulated conversations with Philip K. Dick https://buchshop.bod.ch/chronicles-of… 📙🇺🇸Zero Person: Reframing Autistic Cognition Beyond the Self https://buchshop.bod.ch/zero-person-e… 📙🇩🇪Zero Person: Autistische Kognition jenseits des Selbst https://buchshop.bod.ch/zero-person-e… 📙🇺🇸Book order: The end of the I https://www.bod.ch/buchshop/the-end-o… 📙🇩🇪Book order: Das Ende des Ichs https://www.bod.ch/buchshop/das-ende–… 📙🇺🇸 #actuallyautistic — Living with Autism – A Poetic Exploration of the Spectrum https://buchshop.bod.ch/actuallyautis… =============== Image credits: Freepik.

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Astronomers analyzing Webb’s data have found that early galaxies seem to favor a particular spin direction—an observation that defies the Cosmological Principle. If confirmed, this could suggest that the universe was born with a fundamental rotation, pointing toward radical theories like black hole cosmology.

But this is just the beginning. The telescope has also spotted galaxies forming far earlier than they should have, some potentially dating back to just 168 million years after the Big Bang. These findings contradict existing models of cosmic evolution, raising the possibility that our understanding of time, expansion, and even reality itself may be flawed.

Adding to the mystery, supermassive black holes have been detected in the early universe, defying expectations of how they should form. Could they be remnants of a previous cosmic cycle? Some researchers are now revisiting the Cyclical Universe Theory, which suggests our universe may be part of an infinite loop of creation and destruction.

With every new revelation, JWST is not just answering questions—it’s creating new ones. Are we on the verge of a fundamental shift in physics, or is there a simpler explanation we have yet to uncover?

The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered some of the most perplexing discoveries in modern astronomy, challenging everything we thought we knew about the cosmos. From galaxies that appear too massive and too developed for their age to a potential imbalance in galactic rotation, these findings are shaking the foundations of the Big Bang model. Could our universe itself have been born inside a black hole?

Continue reading “JWST Advanced Deep Survey Suggests Our Universe is Trapped inside a Supermassive Black Hole” | >

How likely is it that we live in a simulation? Are virtual worlds real?

In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and philosophers begun to assess the statistical probabilities that our shared reality could in fact be some kind of representation rather than a physical place.
As we become more open to these possibilities, other difficult questions start to come into focus. How can we create a common language to talk about matter and energy, that bridges the simulated and simulating worlds. Who could have created such a simulation? Could it be an artificial intelligence rather than a biological or conscious being? Do we have ethical obligations to the virtual beings we interact with in our virtual worlds and to what extent are those beings and worlds ‘real’? The list is long and mind bending.

Fortunately, to untangle our thoughts on this, we have one of the best known philosophers of all things mind bending in the world, Dr. David Chalmers; who has just released a book ‘Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy’ about this very topic. Dr. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specialising in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness. He’s the founder of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference’ at which he coined the term in 1994 The Hard Problem of Consciousness, kicking off a renaissance in consciousness studies, which has been increasing in popularity and research output ever since.

Donate here: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes.

What we discuss in this episode:
00:00 Short Intro.
06:00 Synesthesia.
08:27 The science of knowing the nature of reality.
11:02 The Simulation Hypothesis explained.
15:25 The statistical probability evaluation.
18:00 Knowing for sure is beyond the reaches of science.
19:00 You’d only have to render the part you’re interacting with.
20:00 Clues from physics.
22:00 John Wheeler — ‘It from bit’
23:32 Eugene Wigner: measurement as a conscious observation.
27:00 Information theory as a useful but risky hold-all language tool.
34:30 Virtual realities are real and virtual interactions are meaningful.
37:00 Ethical approaches to Non-player Characters (NPC’s) and their rights.
38:45 Will advanced AI be conscious?
42:45 Is god a hacker in the universe up? Simulation Theology.
44:30 Simulation theory meets the argument for the existence of God from design.
51:00 The Hard problem of consciousness applies to AI too.
55:00 Testing AI’s consciousness with the Turing test.
59:30 Ethical value applied to immoral actions in virtual worlds.

References:

Continue reading “THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS & VIRTUAL WORLDS — David Chalmers PHD #16” | >

In around a period of 30 minutes the United States can launch over 1,000 nuclear weapons against its enemies. This video is a realtime simulation of such an action.

Sources:

Probable Nuclear Targets in United Kingdom, 1972: https://robedwards.typepad.com/files/probable-nuclear-target…chives.pdf.

Probable Nuclear Targets in France: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/NA…en.svg.png.

Soviet Union Central European Target List, 1979: https://brilliantmaps.com/ww3-europe/

United States Target List, 1956: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear…plete.pdf.

Continue reading “US Nuclear War Simulation in REALTIME!!!” | >