Anders Sandberg on Transhumanism: We Are All Amazingly Stupid, But We Can Get Better

Dr. Anders Sandberg is a well known transhumanist, futurist, computational neuroscientist and currently a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford University. I have been thinking of inviting him on Singularity 1 on 1 for some time and when one of my readers actually asked me to do it I could not be happier to oblige. (Thanks Shahan!) Dr. Sandberg is one of those rare individuals who clearly loves his work and is always very enthusiastic to discuss it. I really enjoyed talking to him and feel that we could have talked a lot more than we did. Thus I will try to bring him back on the show for little more focused discussion on one of his areas of expertise – transhumanism, mind uploading and the ethics thereof. During our first discussion with Anders we cover a wide variety of topics such as: his childhood and early passion for science fiction; his intellectual journey from science fiction to science and – eventually – to ethics; the goals and benchmarks of his work; human enhancement, body modification and the risks of early adopters; the problem of finding the right priorities; the technological singularity and our chances of surviving it; other existential threats to humanity. My second favorite quote that I will take away from Anders Sandberg is: The Singularity should not stop us from thinking! (The first one, of course, is the title.)