There has been a lot of talk about how red street lights could reduce light pollution. Unfortunately, like a bull seeing red, it apparently increases the level of violent crime severely. How unfortunate.
This certainly does make one think.
Studies have shown that simply looking at the stars is good for you and improves mental health.
Perhaps we haven’t done enough to treasure our skies?
I feel it is important to note.
If by helping everyone, you raise standards as a whole, then it will inevitably help the people in front of you.
By ending cancer, the people in front of you will never have to worry about dying from the countless different variants of cancer.
By improving the worlds economy, the people in front of you will be less likely to suffer poverty and will be able to attain things they might not have otherwise. Sure, those might be exclusively material desires, but they don’t have to be.
By improving technology, you can grant people and knowledge and freedom, that in turn allows them to help others.
This is the meaning of Good. By helping one, you help many, and in turn others follow. Good leads to more Good. Evil leads to more Evil.
There’s been a lot of debate on whether AI can be conscious or not, and whether that might be good or bad.
What concerns me though is that we have yet to uncover what consciousness even is, and why we are conscious in the first place.
I feel that if there is a state inbetween being sentient and sophont, that AI may very well reach it without us knowing and that there could be unpredictable ramifications.
Of course, the possibility of AI helping us uncover these very things should not be disregarded in of itself, but it should ideall not come at a cost.
Greetings. I’m Samson Tombs, a science enthusiast and author. I came across this site through Yudkowsky’s youtube channel, which was shared to me by a friend. I’ve long been interested in philosophy and how we can improve people’s lives with science and knowledge, and how we can avoid doing the opposite.
Thank you for reading.
I last read that article nearly a decade ago. I had a cursory search for it using google, but found nothing, though I did find a few articles on colour psychology.
I guess I may have misremembered it?
If it’s not true, that would be ideal. Red lighting would significantly reduce light pollution.