Commenting on MSR, Part 2: Cooperation heuristics

Published on the CLR blog, where researchers are free to explore their own ideas on how humanity can best reduce suffering. (more) Summary This post was originally written for internal discussions only; it is half-baked and unpolished. The post assumes familiarity with the ideas discussed in Caspar Oesterheld’s paper Multiverse-wide cooperation via coordinated decision-making. I wrote a short introduction to multiverse-wide cooperation in an earlier post (but I still recommend reading parts of Caspar’s original paper, or this more advanced introduction, because several of the points that follow below build on topics not covered in my introduction). With that out of the way: In this post, I will comment on what I think might be interesting aspects of multiverse-wide cooperation […]

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Commenting on MSR, Part 1: Multiverse-wide cooperation in a nutshell

Published on the CLR blog, where researchers are free to explore their own ideas on how humanity can best reduce suffering. (more) This is a post I wrote about Caspar Oesterheld’s long paper Multiverse-wide cooperation via coordinated decision-making. Because I have found the idea tricky to explain – which unfortunately makes it difficult to get feedback from others on whether the thinking behind it makes sense – I decided to write a shorter summary. While I am hoping that my text can serve as a standalone piece, for additional introductory content I also recommend reading the beginning of Caspar’s paper, or watching the short video introduction here (requires basic knowledge of the “CDT, EDT or something else” debate in decision […]

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A reply to Thomas Metzinger’s BAAN thought experiment

Published on the CLR blog, where researchers are free to explore their own ideas on how humanity can best reduce suffering. (more) This is a reply to Metzinger’s essay on Benevolent Artificial Anti-natalism (BAAN), which appeared on EDGE.org (7.8.2017). Metzinger invites us to consider a hypothetical scenario where smarter-than-human artificial intelligence (AI) is built with the goal of assisting us with ethical deliberation. Being superior to us in its understanding of how our own minds function, the envisioned AI could come to a deeper understanding of our values than we may be able to arrive at ourselves. Metzinger has us envision that this artificial super-ethicist comes to conclude that biological existence – at least in its current form – is […]

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Identifying Plausible Paths to Impact and their Strategic Implications

FRI’s research seeks to identify the best intervention(s) for suffering reducers to work on. Rather than continuing our research indefinitely, we will eventually have to focus our efforts on an intervention directly targeted at improving the world. This report outlines plausible candidates for FRI’s “path to impact” and distills some advice on how current movement building efforts can best prepare for them.

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Our Mission

This is a snapshot of the Center on Long-Term Risk’s (formerly Foundational Research Institute) previous "Our Mission" page. The Foundational Research Institute (FRI) conducts research on how to best reduce the suffering of sentient beings in the long-term future. We publish essays and academic articles, make grants to support research on our priorities, and advise individuals and policymakers. Our focus is on exploring effective, robust and cooperative strategies to avoid risks of dystopian futures and working toward a future guided by careful ethical reflection. Our scope ranges from foundational questions about ethics, consciousness and game theory to policy implications for global cooperation or AI safety. Reflectiveness, values and technology The term “dystopian futures” elicits associations of cruel leadership and totalitarian […]

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