Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

Wolfram Summer School

Alumni

Dag Sørebø

Summer School

Class of 2009

Bio

Dag Sørebø has a degree in philosophy from the University of Bergen, Norway (2004), and he studied cognitive science in Australia (1998) and technopreneurship in Singapore (2004). He attended NKS Summer School in 2003 and 2007. Commencing in August 2009, he plans to do a double master’s degree in international security studies and policing, intelligence, and counterterrorism at Macquarie University, Australia. He enjoys traveling, literature, and outdoor activities like skiing and mountain biking.

Project: Programming and Meta-programming the Immune System of Individual and Collective Entities

For his simulation argument (SA), Nick Bostrom drew upon insights from John Leslie’s book The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction—in particular for classification of risk scenarios with regard to the existential risks humankind faces. In a continuation of an NKS Summer School 2007 project, the SA will here be studied in more depth.

It has been noted that the SA can be seen as a version of Pascal’s Wager. In a new perspective, Stephen Wolfram pointed out that the question of the future of humankind can be reformulated as the question of the future of Copernicanism, and suggested that this subject matter can be studied by investigating how human motivation maps into action. This ties in with the study of the intellectual agenda in transhumanist philosophy, of which Bostrom is a leading proponent.

Favorite Three-Color Cellular Automaton

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