George P. Dvorsky (born May 11, 1970) is a Canadian

bioethicist Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

, transhumanist and futurist. He is a contributing editor at io9 and producer of the ''Sentient Developments'' blog and podcast. He was chair of the board for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program, a group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Dvorsky is a secular Buddhist, progressive environmentalist,

ancestral health The Paleolithic diet, Paleo diet, caveman diet, or stone-age diet is a modern fad diet consisting of foods thought by its proponents to mirror those eaten by humans during the Paleolithic era. The diet avoids processed food and typically incl ...

advocate, and

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the s ...

activist. Primarily concerned with the

ethical Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...

and

sociological Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...

impacts of

emerging technologies Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally new but also include older technologies finding new applications. Emerging technologies a ...

, specifically, " human enhancement" technologies; he seeks to promote open discussion for the purposes of education and foresight. He writes and speaks on a wide range of topics, including technoscience,

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

, existential risks,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and futurology, from a

democratic transhumanist Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. History The term "transhumanism" with its present meaning was popularised by J ...

perspective.

Nonhuman rights and ethics

Uplift ethics

Dvorsky presented an argument for non-human animal

biological uplift In science fiction, uplift is a developmental process to transform a certain species of animals into more intelligent beings by other, already-intelligent beings. This is usually accomplished by cultural, technological, or evolutional intervention ...

at the IEET ''Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights'' conference at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

in May 2006; and wrote the first published article in defence of the Ashley Treatment in November 2006, and subsequently the only

cited by Ashley X's parents in their defense.

Existential risk

Dvorsky also presented an argument warning of the decline of democratic values and institutions in the face of existential and catastrophic risks at the ''Global Catastrophic Risks: Building a Resilient Civilization'' conference in November 2008.

Dysonian SETI

Dvorsky, along with Milan M. Ćirković and Robert Bradbury, published a critique of SETI in the May 2012 '' Journal of the British Interplanetary Society'' (JBIS) arguing that SETI techniques and practices have become outdated. In its place, Dvorsky, Ćirković, and Bradbury advocated for what they called Dysonian SETI, namely the search for those signatures and artefacts indicative of highly advanced extraterrestrial life.

Space development

Dvorsky has written extensively in favor of space exploration and has both promoted and criticized various Megascale engineering concepts.

Dyson sphere

Dvorsky gained some notoriety in 2012 after writing about Dyson spheres, hypothetical structures intended to collect the entire energetic output of a star with solar power collectors. While Dvorsky presented it as a solution to humanity's resource needs including power and living space,

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

blogger Alex Knapp and astronomer

Phil Plait Philip Cary Plait (born September 30, 1964), also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objec ...

, among others, have criticized Dvorsky's article. Other publications including ''Popular Science'', ''Vice'', and skeptical blog ''Weird Things'' followed up on this exchange. None of them note the above numerical inaccuracies, although ''Weird Things'' does point out Plait's misunderstanding regarding bootstrapping, which Knapp agreed with in an update to his post.

James Nicoll James Davis Nicoll (born March 18, 1961) is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usenet p ...

noted in his blog that Knapp seriously underestimated the area of a sphere.

Notes

References

External links

''Will death die?''
Dvorsky as a guest on ''The Hour with

George Stroumboulopoulos George Mark Paul Stroumboulopoulos (; Greek: Γεώργιος Μάρκος Παύλος Στρουμπουλόπουλος; born August 16, 1972) is a Canadian media personality. He is one of Canada's most popular broadcasters and best known as f ...

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