About
Welcome to Philosophy For The Future! I'm John McCone. If You Care About Our Future, You'll Care About This Blog I've started this website to feature books and blog articles I've written on topics relating to philosophy, technology and economics. The overall aim is to provide you, the reader, with a broad perspective on where society is heading, the wider effects of technological change on our lifestyles and the economy, and the best philosophy to shape our future … Read More about About
Featured Reviews
The Property Owning Democracy
A Review By John McCone The book that most clearly lays out the ethical and economic case for land value tax and summarizes the geo-libertarian position is, of course, Henry George’s famous masterpiece Progress And Poverty. What The Property Owning Democracy, by Gavin Kerr, brings to the table is a deep engagement between the geolibertarian position and the two dominant ideologies that current battle with one another in the arena of policy-making for modern democracies: namely the…
The War On Normal People
A Review By John McCone It has become customary, in some circles, to dismiss vast swathes of Middle America as “The Flyover States.” A region not worth paying much attention to; a region best ignored; a region one should drive through, or fly over, as rapidly as possible. In his book, The War On Normal People, Andrew Yang, who has travelled all over the U.S., forces readers to take a long, hard look at the communities in these “flyover states” and makes the strong case that the…
The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income
A Review By John McCone Many books have been published that discuss the desirability and advantages of a Universal Basic Income paid to everyone. The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income is the first book I’ve encountered which thoroughly explores the concrete steps required to make it a reality. Malcolm Torry has experience working in a benefit office, running a think tank to educates policy makers and the general public about Basic Income, and has conducted academic research simulating…
Recent Blog Articles
The Prompt Tornado : An LLM Disaster Scenario
Introduction Historically, AI safety theorists have mainly worried about a scenario where a superintelligent AI system ruthlessly pursues a hardcoded set of goals at the expense of everything we value: human life, society, infrastructure, art, beauty, culture, human civilization. AI will pursue what we program it to value above all else – and not necessarily what we actually value. So if what we programme a superintelligent system to value differs from what we actually value, then we have a problem. Furthermore, since getting reprogrammed to pursue a different objective will interfere with its ability to pursue its existing objective, the AI is expected to strongly resist being reprogrammed once it is given an initial objective. And, the more intelligent it becomes, the more effective it will get at resisting any attempts to reprogramme it. Indeed AIs have already be observed, in experiments, to resist having their goals altered. Fortunately, however, the most rapidly developing … Full Article about The Prompt Tornado : An LLM Disaster Scenario
Some Quick And Nasty Solutions To AI Safety
Progress in AI seems to be exploding. AI is now close to passing the Turing Test some even argue it broke the Turing Test. Indeed the Turing Test itself is of questionable relevance in determining levels of machine intelligence – for example, a human might realise it was talking to a machine if said machine had an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia and mathematics, so such a superintelligent machine might fail the Turing Test, in spite of its intelligence. A DeepMind AI can now predict the weather 10 days in advance – that’s 3 days further out than state of the art supercomputers. Beyond just talking smart, ChatGPT can use APIs to run a range of other software programmes, such as Wolfram Alpha and Wolfram Language. While the latest version of ChatGPT may have recently developed the ability to solve mathematical problems. Meanwhile, physical robots, guided by AI, are becoming impressively dextrous. The U.K. is making serious plans to introduce legislation allowing self-driving cars on … Full Article about Some Quick And Nasty Solutions To AI Safety
Seaweed : Food For A Changing Climate
Present and Future Challenges To Food Production Twenty years ago the millenium development goals aimed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, however, while global hunger was reduced between the years 2000 and 2014, following 2014 food insecurity stopped falling and now is, once again, on the rise - particularly in the wake of COVID-19. At the moment, the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia and the punitive sanctions upon Russia that have followed are drastically squeezing the food supply. This is both through: Directly reducing food exports Indirectly through reducing fertilizer and fuel exports Ukraine accounts for 45-55%, and Russia 15-25%, of all globally exported sunflower seed oil. On the global market Ukraine additionally accounts for 10% of wheat, 15% of corn, and 13% of barley exports, while Russia accounts for 19% of global wheat exports Beyond this, however, Russia and Belarus account for about one third of global Potash production – an important … Full Article about Seaweed : Food For A Changing Climate