To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing quite like SIAI or lesswrong in continental western Europe. People aren’t into AI as much as in the US, and if there’s rationality thinking being done, it’s mostly traditional rationality, skepticism, etc.
Atheism can score high in many countries, as a rule of thumb countries to the north are more atheistic, those to the south (Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc.) are more religious.
There are a few scattered transhumanist as well as a few life-extension organizations, which are loosely starting to cooperate together.
The European commission itself started prioritizing small-scale healthy life extension a year or two ago. This could help focus more people on such questions in the years to come.
To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing quite like SIAI or lesswrong in continental western Europe. People aren’t into AI as much as in the US, and if there’s rationality thinking being done, it’s mostly traditional rationality, skepticism, etc.
This is true, at least in Italy. Most of the concept of LW version of rationality are simply not known.
Atheism can score high in many countries, as a rule of thumb countries to the north are more atheistic, those to the south (Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc.) are more religious.
While Spain and Italy are nominally quite religious (i.e. most people would classify themselves as christian), the majority of people are definitely not fervent believers . Nothing to do with what I understood is the situation in the U.S.: most people never go to church if not for weddings and funeral, and even fewer people follow the (catholic) religious orthodoxy. It’s usually a classic case of belief in belief/cached thought: it has happened to me more than once to have a discussion with a “religious” person, only for her to realize in the end that she was more likely agnostic or mildly theist.
Religion has still his enormous political and social weight, of course, but it’s mostly inertia.
No, it’s more than inertia. Think about lobbies instead.
Sure, the whole picture is rather complicate, and my purpose wasn’t to fully analyze it. I was mostly focusing on the bottom view, i.e. most people without any specific economical/political interest in supporting religion. For them it’s mostly inertia.
At the higher levels, for sure, there’s an intricate web of relationships that has to be balanced, and religion is still a powerful instrument for some power groups.
I was mostly focusing on the bottom view, i.e. most people without any specific economical/political interest in supporting religion.
Since the second-last paragraph of your post was indeed about such people, I assumed that the last (one-sentence) paragraph was about the higher levels for contrast.
In the scandinavian countries SIAI-style thinking seems at least as common to me as in the US (eg comparing Sweden to New York, which I believe is of similar size).
To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing quite like SIAI or lesswrong in continental western Europe. People aren’t into AI as much as in the US, and if there’s rationality thinking being done, it’s mostly traditional rationality, skepticism, etc.
Atheism can score high in many countries, as a rule of thumb countries to the north are more atheistic, those to the south (Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc.) are more religious.
There are a few scattered transhumanist as well as a few life-extension organizations, which are loosely starting to cooperate together.
The European commission itself started prioritizing small-scale healthy life extension a year or two ago. This could help focus more people on such questions in the years to come.
This is true, at least in Italy. Most of the concept of LW version of rationality are simply not known.
While Spain and Italy are nominally quite religious (i.e. most people would classify themselves as christian), the majority of people are definitely not fervent believers . Nothing to do with what I understood is the situation in the U.S.: most people never go to church if not for weddings and funeral, and even fewer people follow the (catholic) religious orthodoxy. It’s usually a classic case of belief in belief/cached thought: it has happened to me more than once to have a discussion with a “religious” person, only for her to realize in the end that she was more likely agnostic or mildly theist.
Religion has still his enormous political and social weight, of course, but it’s mostly inertia.
No, it’s more than inertia. Think about lobbies instead.
At the higher levels, for sure, there’s an intricate web of relationships that has to be balanced, and religion is still a powerful instrument for some power groups.
(You need to put a blank line after a quotation, otherwise the rest of the paragraph is shown as if it were part of the quotation too.)
Since the second-last paragraph of your post was indeed about such people, I assumed that the last (one-sentence) paragraph was about the higher levels for contrast.
Is that just the historical Catholic-Protestant divide?
In the scandinavian countries SIAI-style thinking seems at least as common to me as in the US (eg comparing Sweden to New York, which I believe is of similar size).