One of my many blessings: living at a time when we’re poking at the nature of mind with engineering, after thousands of years of pure philosophy and hundreds of years of crudely experimenting on brains.

Predictions I’m interested in:

1. On reality: Donald Hoffman is directionally correct w/r/t our perceptions being solely an interface on top of reality. He is right about the evolutionary argument for this.
   • He is right to follow the logic all the way to questioning whether spacetime or consciousness is fundamental. Which conclusion is correct, however…
2. On consciousness: both Hoffman and Michael Levin are right that understanding consciousness will require new physics^*
   • If AI never develops conscious experience, it will be because Hoffman is ~correct that consciousness is fundamental or requires new physics we do not yet have power over.
   • If AI does develop conscious experience (or already has), it will be because Levin is ~correct in his “cognition all the way down” / pan-cognition beliefs about minds arising from patterns hiding elsewhere in physics, so we get consciousness for “free” in many things.
   • Either of the above two outcomes will result in an understanding of conscious experience that is rooted in something far “simpler” than current tendencies towards consciousness emerging from high complexity (either computational or biological). Consciousness will not end up being hand-waved away as ephemeral / “side-effect”-ish.
3. On AI: intelligence and capability will continue exploding and accelerating, but the complexity of the world will rear its ugly head in most applications and drag down the speed of its impact (e.g. slower than expected self-driving car rollout but for every problem). It will still be an incredible force for good, particularly as a tool for knowledge work, most importantly in biology.
4. On optimism: Humanity will continue to have productive, meaningful things to do while AI marches on due to (A) the fractal complexity of the world and each problem to be solved, and (B) the fact that future jobs that are hard to predict.
   • Specific jobs will dramatically change. Near term = massive uncertainty and change. Medium-term = human jobs and purpose remain / thrive.
5. On aging: Aging will be dramatically slowed. First, a dramatic impact on skin aging or dog aging will ignite our imagination. It will take us a while to realize we’ve succeeded and its impacts. It will be the greatest reduction of biological suffering ever. Future generations will remember us with whimsical sadness and respect, as those who suffered under aging’s scourge and laid the foundation to fight it.
6. Bonus personal prediction: I’m 42. If I live to >= 77, I will be cured of Type 1 diabetes (functional cure = healthy glucose while never needing to think about it).

^{* Specifically talking about the phenomenology / “what it’s like” parts of consciousness.}