Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks

As Donald Knuth put it: “Ai has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires ‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of what people and animals do without thinking …”

What do we have left that is ours and ours alone? Sensorimotor skills that are all but automatic, yes. Consciousness, yes. Emotions. Instinct. Appetites, impulses and dr... See more

Since MacAskill had first sold Sam, back in the fall of 2012, on the idea of earning to give, the EA movement had obviously changed. It had become a lot less interested in saving the lives of existing human beings than future ones. In early 2020, movement cofounder Toby Ord had published a book, The Precipice, which laid out where his thinking (and

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Natural selection and extinction are not just about plants and animals. It is important to understanding how the world changes over time, and how these changes force an adaptive response. If we resist adapting, we ultimately contribute to our own end. There is a constant interplay between environmental changes and a species’ response to them. The v

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The "culture" of a society isn't a blob of random human activity, but an orderly ecosystem arising from the interactions between particular subunits. To maintain ecosystem health, we must reject the cynical “poptimist” framing of culture as a mere vehicle for entertainment and commerce and instead promote the benefits of constant cultural refresh.