Eric Schwitzgebel

Top Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazines 2025

My annual ranking of science fiction / fantasy magazines, based on awards nominations and "best of" selections. This year @clarkesworldmagazine.com takes the top spot for the first time.

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/08/top-...

Thanks! On standard formulations of mind-body dualism, consciousness requires an immaterial soul. Most (not all) mainstream scientific cosmologists and philosophers favor a material-only view instead. Materialists can allow "emergence" of surprising higher lever properties from lower-level ones.

That might be so. That would still make it epistemic at least in the sense of being relative to the entities’ understanding.

That's fine. But if there's a justifiable credence of 0.1% that you are a Boltzmann brain or similarly randomly congealed freak, that's plenty of credence in a weird possibility, from my point of view.

If I'm understanding the thrust of this question, epistemological.

Could be! That would solve a lot of problems. Is your justified credence in this greater than 99.9%, though?

Try this link, which I think is free/OA. If that doesn't work, email me and I'd be happy to supply a version.

Weirdness with Eric Schwitzgebel Podcast Episode · Overthink · 07/15/2025 · 57m

Terrific framing of my work on "weirdness" by Ellie and David, before after and during their interview of me on Overthink. Probably the best engagement with that dimension of my work that I've seen so far.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

Consciousness, cosmology, and the collapse of common sense | Eric Schwitzgebel

New op-ed in IAI News: Consciousness, cosmology, and the collapse of common sense.

iai.tv/articles/con...

Evolutionary Considerations Against a Plastic Utopia

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/07/evol...

cover of Bostrom's Deep Utopia

Today's blog post [link in comments]: Evolutionary Considerations Against a Plastic Utopia
... why we shouldn't expect things to be boringly easy for even the most amazingly advanced superintelligences.

Thanks for sharing this. Almost all of us could use a more complete understanding of the many genocides of the 20th century.

Yayflies and Rebugnant Conclusions

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/07/yayf...

cover of Venomous Lumpsucker, Ned Beauman

Today's blog post [link in comment]: Yayflies and the Rebugnant Conclusion. If utilitarian ethics is correct, it's better to create a quadrillion happy insects each with a millionth the happiness of humans than a million happy people.

So close to home!

alignment seems to require creating or destroying entities with moral status? To what extent should designs conform to versus attempt to alter user assumptions and attitudes? 4/4

wrong target). Although presumably attractive, practical implementation faces several challenges including: How can we respect user autonomy while promoting appropriate responses? How should we navigate expert and public disagreement and uncertainty about facts and values? What if emotional 3/

This principle can be violated in two ways: by designing an artificial system that elicits stronger or weaker emotional reactions than its capacities and moral status warrant (overshooting or undershooting), or by designing a system that elicits the wrong type of emotional reaction (hitting the 2/

The Emotional Alignment Design Policy

Link: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...

Abstract: According to what we call the Emotional Alignment Design Policy, artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions from users that appropriately reflect the entities' capacities and moral status, or lack thereof. 1/

Emotional Alignment Design Policy title page

New paper in draft: The Emotional Alignment Design Policy, with @jeffsebo.bsky.social; link and abstract in comments.

The great Riverside tradition of setting Mt Rubidoux on fire every Independence Day

Three Epistemic Problems for Any Universal Theory of Consciousness

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/07/thre...

Part of a table listing theories of consciousness, from Seth and Bayne 2022

Blog post today (link in comments): Three Epistemic Problems for Any Universal Theory of Consciousness

Problem 1: reliance on introspection.
Problem 2: causal confounds.
Problem 3: narrow evidence base.

Yes, that’s also likely and maybe a bigger factor.

Another possible factor here is that articles might be slower to have an impact in philosophy. Impressionistically, it sometimes takes an article 5 years to catch on.

Taking a nap in Van Gogh’s bed, thanks to Mr Brainwash

nterview of me on the metaphysics of human and maybe AI consciousness, at Uncomfortable Conversations: uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/p/ai-artific...

The Conceptual and Methodological Challenges of Developing a Moralometer

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-...

Today's post: The Conceptual and Methodological Challenges of Developing a Moralometer [link in comments]

Plus! A demonstration of a 100% scientifically accurate new moralometer

with: @jessiesun.bsky.social

riendship in work. Your imminent death was a small cloud we saw on the horizon, but its approach did not overwhelm you. It made the gift of your time only sweeter and more precious. 2/2