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Earth: A Status Report - by Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias

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In a universe that is (so far) almost entirely dead, we find ourselves to be on a rare planet full not only of life, but now also of human-level intelligent self-aware creatures. This makes our planet a roughly a once-per-million-galaxy rarity, and if we ever get grabby we can expect to meet other grabby aliens in roughly a billion years. We see that our world, our minds, and our preferences have been shaped by at least four billions years of natural selection. And we see that evolution going especially fast lately, as we humans pioneer many powerful new innovations. Our latest big thing: larger scale organizations, which have induced our current brief dreamtime, wherein we are unusually rich. For preferences, evolution has given us humans a mix of (a) some robust general preferences, like wanting to be respected and rich, (b) some less robust but deeply embedded preferences, like preferring certain human body shapes, and (c) some less robust but cultural plastic preferences, such as w

Earth: A Status Report Robin Hanson Jan 02, 2023 2 30 Share In a universe that is (so far) almost entirely dead, we find ourselves to be on a rare planet full not only of life, but now also of human-level intelligent self-aware creatures. This makes our planet a roughly a once-per-million-galaxy rarity, and if we ever get grabby we can expect to meet other grabby aliens in roughly a billion years. We see that our world, our minds, and our preferences have been shaped by at least four billions years of natural selection. And we see that evolution going especially fast lately, as we humans pione

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