Hi all, I'm Vlad, 35, from Romania. I've been working in software engineering for 12 years. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in Physics.
I'm here because I read "What we owe the future", after it was recommended to me by a friend.
I got the book recommended to me because I had an idea which is a little unconfortable for some people, but I think this idea is extremely important, and this friend of mine instantly classified my thoughts as "a branch of long-termism". I also think my idea is extremely relevant to this group, and I'm interested in getting feedback about it.
Context for the idea: Long-termism is concerned about people as far into the future as possible, up to the end of the universe.
The idea: ...what if we can make it so there doesn't have to be an end? If we had a limitless source of energy, there wouldn't have to be an end. Not only that, but we could make a lot of people very happy (like billions of billions of billions .....of billions of them? a literal infinity of them even)
It sounds crazy, I realize, but my best knowledge on this topic says this:
- We know that we don't know all the laws of the universe
- Even the known laws kind of have a loop-hole in them. Energy is supposed to be conserved, but we don't necessarily know how much energy exists out there - if an infinite amount exists, we can both use it, and conserve it
- I received feedback from a few physicists already, none of them said that infinite energy is clearly impossible - just that we don't know how we could get it
So my conclusion is: some amount of effort into the topic of infinite energy should be invested.
Is anyone interested in talking about this? I can show you what I have so far.
P.S. fusion is not a source of infinite energy, but merely a source of energy potentially far better than most others we know
P.P.S. I created this website for the initiative: https://github.com/vladiibine/infinite-energy



Hello all,
long time lurker here. I was doing a bunch of reading today about polygenic screening, and one of the papers was so good that I had to share it, in case anyone interested in animal welfare was unfamiliar with it. The post is awaiting moderation but will presumably be here in due time.
So while I am making my first post I might as well introduce myself.
I have been sort of vaguely EA aligned since I discovered the movement 5ish years ago, listened to every episode of the 80k podcast and read a tonne of related books and blog posts.
I have a background in biophysics, though I am currently working as a software engineer in a scrappy startup to improve my programming skills. I have vague plans to return to research and do a phd at some point but lets see.
EA things I am interested in:
Recently I have also been reading some interesting criticisms of EA that have expanded my horizons a little, the ones I enjoyed the most were
But at the end of the day I think EAs own personal brand of minimally deontic utilitarianism is simple and useful enough for most circumstances. Maybe a little bit of Nietzschean spice when I am feeling in the mood.. and frankly I think fundamentally e/acc is mostly quite compatible, aside from the details of the coming AI apocalypse and [how|whether] to deal with it.
I also felt a little bit like coming out of the woodwork recently after all the twitter drama and cancellation shitstorms. Just to say that I think you folks are doing a fine thing actually, and hopefully the assassins will move on to the next campaign before too long.
Best regards! I will perhaps be slightly more engaged henceforth.