Singularity Bros   /     Episode 113: Future Monsters

Will the future judge us harshly? Well, will it? Tell us, future listeners.

Notes

• Hey, we came in at #43 on the 2017 World Press Freedom Index! U, S, A! U, S, A!
• Perhaps I spoke hastily when reporting those figures for vegetarianism/veganism. This 2010 study found that, worldwide, “there are one and half billion vegetarians. Only 75 million are vegetarians of choice, a number that will gradually grow with increasing affluence and education. The other 1,450 million are vegetarians of necessity. They will start to eat meat as soon as they can afford it.” There are loads of data on the share of American vegetarians in the study too, but they frighten and confuse me; parse them at your own risk. Meanwhile, this 2017 study reports that “6% of US consumers now claim to be vegan, up from just 1% in 2014.” If that’s true, then the share of vegetarians would likely be much higher, right?
• “Google shows off wireless headphones that it says can translate languages on the fly”
• “‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia” (via The Guardian)
• If you must news, the PBS NewsHour is among your best bets.
• Hey—again—“choice architecture” was coined by Cass Sunstein (and the coauthor of their book Nudge, Richard Thaler).
• In case you missed it: DeepMind is really good at Atari.
• “Project Loon authorized to deploy balloons in Puerto Rico to provide emergency service”
• “Why India snubbed Facebook’s free Internet offer”
• “Google Says It Will Run Entirely on Renewable Energy in 2017”
• “China Is Showing the World What Renewable Energy Dominance Looks Like, Says New IEA Report”
• Christakis’s (and Shirado’s) paper, “Locally noisy autonomous agents improve global human coordination in network experiments”, is behind such a paywall, and therefore I didn’t read it. However, this short audio captures the gist of it.

Media Mentions™

Tom

• Ozark
• Bad Words
• Icarus
• Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular at the Roger Williams Park Zoo

Scott

• Arrested Development: The Three Original Seasons
• “If You May Do It for Free, You May Do It for Money” by Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski
• “Mary Poppins 3000s of the World Unite: A Moral Paradox in the Creation of Artificial Intelligence” by Mark Walker
• “Designing People to Serve” by Steve Petersen (also available as a chapter in Robot Ethics)
• UFC 216
• Early stuff from the Gin Blossoms: Dusted and Up and Crumbling

Zach

• Tim Allen movies!
  • Galaxy Quest
  • For Richer or Poorer
  • Joe Somebody
  • Big Trouble
  • Redbelt
• The Adventures of Pete & Pete (with music by Polaris)