Despite thesetrail-blazers, not much has changed since then; a startling number ofso-called ‘intellectuals‘ remain grossly ignorant of pendingtechnologies and the revealing sciences (the postmodernists immediatelycome to mind). Today‘s intelligentsia, in order to qualify for such adesignation, must have the requisite vocabulary with which to addressvalid social concerns and effectively assess the future.
Here is a list of must-know terms (there are many, many more, but these are IMO the most critical and fundamental):
Pleaselet me know if you feel I have left something out, or if you believesomething does not belong on this list. For example, I wanted tomention advanced weapons, but that seems awfully vague. In particular,I‘m thinking of autonomous robotic soldiers, neuro-weapons, advancednon-lethal weapons, and non-human decision making on the battlefield.Also, I would have liked to mention something about how consciousnessis still a hard problem in science, but I‘m not sure how I couldencapsulate that in a simple term.accelerating change artificial general intelligence augmented reality automation cosmological eschatology existential risks Fermi Paradox friendly AI human enhancement human exceptionalism (aka human racism) information theoretic death memetic engineering mind transfer (aka ‘uploading‘) molecular assembler engineered negligible senescence non-anthropocentric personhood neural interface device open source participatory panopticon political globalization post-scarcity economy postbiological organism posthuman quantum computation radical Luddism remedial ecology self-improving and autopotent intelligence self-replicating device substrate chauvinism Simulation Argument Singularity superintelligence ubiquitous surveillance uplift virtual reality
