Site Recommendation -- Wait But Why

In my previous post on Quantum Teleportation, one of the many links in there was on a fun Philosophical discussion called "What Makes You You?".  After enjoying that write up immensly, I tried a few more on this site "Wait But Why", run by a smart/funny Harvard grad (Tim Urban) and they were great as well.  He's not a true expert in any of these topics but he really does his research (sources are usually impeccable, for non-experts that's already an accomplishment!) and has a knack for making these serious/very technical topics fun for all levels of expertise!

I'll paste the 3 articles I enjoyed, will surely read more in the future!

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/what-makes-you-you.html

Note: I thought Tim did a great job covering the many cases/angles to look at this question, my fave example naturally is the Transporter one.  My personal evolving (somewhat still) view isn't any of the ones he listed, it's that I disagree with the way most people incl. Tim think about what is "You", they've made it almost as sacred & permanent as a Soul (which I also don't believe in ;-)  My view (actually matches almost perfectly 1 of the commenters on this article named Joel) is that "You" is most likely an illusory emergent phenomenon, created by the complex processes of any sentient being, be it Carbon or Silicon or Other based when the "Mind" is fully awake/conscious & receiving power/energy/inputs.  For example, my theory applied to the great Teleporter example is that, 2 "You"'s were created, one in Boston & the other in London at that exact moment of creation (effectively there is no difference between the 2). But once the 2 "You"'s step off the Teleporter pad, they are receiving different sensory inputs and of course each brain has generated a conscious mind...neither will be OK with being obliterated!  Which one is the real "You"?  They both are but it's almost like traveling back in time say 1 minute, which is the real "You"?  Both are!  I'm quite different now in every way then when I was a teenager but nobody argues I'm not "Me" anymore (There's many degrees/shades of "You", these 2 Me's from the Transporter are much closer then I am with my teenage self!). It is quite a mess though to have that kind of malfunction, as essentially now you have someone even closer than a twin brother!  What if your married?  I guess you can have the wife go thru the same accident then we have 2 pairs again ha!  I'll point out, that Quantum Teleportation which is likely the only way we could ever achieve this in reality will never have this "accident" as a crucial step in the process is that the original quantum state is destroyed (well this is messy because I'm not sure that this necessarily means the person is destroyed)...anyway I digress!  There was a brilliant Star Trek Next Gen ep on this, check here!

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

Seems this one above is WBW's most popular article, it's a fairly long 2 parts but even for me that knew 99% of this already it was a fun read...well it's a weighty topic so not sure fun is the right word. This has to do with AI and the exponetial growth of Technology, something I go on about a lot but Tim writes it up for a general audience much better than I could.  At the very start he makes a statement that he did not know much about this topic prior to this research he underwent and it has now blown his mind and changed his worldview!  I think he covered pretty much every important facet except the Mind Uploading angle, I personally think we likely have no chance to contain an ASI and frankly I'd feel better if the 1st ASI was a Human (not Trump plz!!) who uploaded and evolved online to ASI level...but I dunno if that's how it'll go down. The other related topic is Merging, we need to merge with the AI's once they get to AGI level else we get left behind or worse!  2045 here we come!

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Finally, I haven't finished this one yet but an old interesting thought on Aliens by the genius Enrico Fermi, is called the Fermi Paradox.  Have an enjoyable read about it above.