George Dvorsky

Template:Short description Template:Multiple issues Template:Infobox person George P. Dvorsky (born May 11, 1970) is a Canadian bioethicist, transhumanist and futurist. He is a contributing editor at io9<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and producer of the Sentient Developments blog and podcast. He was chair of the board for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)<ref name="Humphrey 2004">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Mayer 2005">Template:Cite journal</ref> and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> a group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence).

Dvorsky is a secular Buddhist,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> progressive environmentalist,<ref name="Dvorsky 2003">Template:Cite journal</ref> ancestral health advocate,<ref name="Dvorsky 1">Template:Cite journal</ref> and animal rights activist.<ref name="Dvorsky 2">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Primary source inline Primarily concerned with the ethical and sociological impacts of emerging technologies, specifically, "human enhancement" technologies; he seeks to promote open discussion for the purposes of education and foresight.Template:Citation needed He writes and speaks on a wide range of topics, including technoscience, ethics, existential risks, artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and futurology, from a democratic transhumanist perspective.<ref name="Humphrey 2004"/><ref name="Mayer 2005"/>

Nonhuman rights and ethics

Uplift ethics

Dvorsky presented an argument for non-human animal biological uplift at the IEET Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights conference at Stanford University in May 2006;<ref name="Dvorsky 2006">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Bailey 2006">Template:Cite journal</ref> and wrote the first published article in defence of the Ashley Treatment in November 2006,<ref name="Dvorsky">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Primary source inline and subsequently the only bioethicist cited by Ashley X's parents in their defense.<ref name="Dvorsky 2007">Template:Cite journalTemplate:Primary source inline</ref>

Existential risk

Dvorsky also presented an argument warning of the decline of democratic values and institutions in the face of existential and catastrophic risks at the Global Catastrophic Risks: Building a Resilient Civilization conference in November 2008.<ref name="Dvorsky 2008">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Primary source inline

Dysonian SETI

Dvorsky, along with Milan M. Ćirković and Robert Bradbury, published a critique of SETI in the May 2012 Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) arguing that SETI techniques and practices have become outdated. In its place, Dvorsky, Ćirković, and Bradbury advocated for what they called Dysonian SETI, namely the search for those signatures and artefacts indicative of highly advanced extraterrestrial life.<ref name="Dvorsky, Bradbury and Ćirković 2012">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Primary source inline

Space development

Dvorsky has written extensively in favor of space exploration and has both promoted and criticized various Megascale engineering concepts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=dysonsphere /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Primary source inline

Dyson sphere

Dvorsky gained some notoriety in 2012 after writing about Dyson spheres, hypothetical structures intended to collect the entire energetic output of a star with solar power collectors. While Dvorsky presented it as a solution to humanity's resource needs including power and living space,<ref name=dysonsphere>Template:Cite web</ref> Forbes blogger Alex Knapp and astronomer Phil Plait, among others, have criticized Dvorsky's article.

Other publications including Popular Science, Vice, and skeptical blog Weird Things followed up on this exchange.<ref name=popsci2012>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=vice2012>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=weirdthings2012>Template:Cite web</ref> None of them note the above numerical inaccuracies, although Weird Things does point out Plait's misunderstanding regarding bootstrapping, which Knapp agreed with in an update to his post.<ref name=knapp2012 /><ref name=weirdthings2012 /> James Nicoll noted in his blog that Knapp seriously underestimated the area of a sphere.<ref name=nicholl2012>Template:Cite webTemplate:Dead link</ref>

External links

• Will death die? Dvorsky as a guest on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos