About

Mental Contractions is my blog on how to enhance, extend and explore existence as safely as possible.

The coming decades constitute a particularly turbulent transition period for our civilization, one that will be very difficult overcome. I think any civilization on the eve of radical self-modification through artificial intelligence is not ready for that transition. So one half of my research is focused developing insights on what that will look like and how to anticipate it, how to get through it, how to mitigate risks, and even how to improve our approach to society today anticipating that transition.

To manage these difficult inter-disciplinary topics, I often come up with new concepts and terms. One way to look at my work is to see it as conceptual engineering for the future and future-proofing our ideas so we can more securely move forward as a civilization. Of course a good part of this can be highly speculative, and with in that sense I try to anticipate what is currently not science, but may become fringe, proto and ultimately science proper.

A large part of the other half of my research is foundational work in cognitive science, cosmology, computer science and philosophy. I am interested in understanding our current selves, our current world, our future selves and our future world. I approach almost all problems multidisciplinarily, taking both science and philosophy into account in almost all most cases. As far as I’m concerned, one cannot do without the other, especially in the case of big open questions.

If you’re interested in original insights on the future we face as a civilization as well as related challenges and foundational issues, subscribe to mental contractions.