{"id":941,"date":"2013-10-15T12:41:12","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T01:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/?p=941"},"modified":"2013-10-15T15:32:06","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T04:32:06","slug":"catching-up-where-have-i-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/2013\/10\/15\/catching-up-where-have-i-been\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up! (Where have I been?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RussellDSC03063\"<\/a>I’ve been missing in action here for the past… hmm, maybe eight weeks? The story behind that is (basically)\u00a0just that I’ve been immersed in working on my next book, Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds<\/em>, which I’m co-editing with Damien Broderick<\/a>. The work on this has been quite intense, as we originally hoped to get the book\u00a0submitted\u00a0by the beginning of October. That is going to slip a\u00a0bit, as, ahem!,\u00a0some of the contracted contributions have been coming in late,\u00a0which then causes consequential disruption to planning\u00a0out of proportion to the lateness. But we’ve still been working hard to go as close as possible to meeting that deadline, and the various chapters are going to be impressive. There’s some great material.<\/p>\n

I’m hopeful that it will appear in late 2014.<\/p>\n

This is not a book in which supporters of such concepts as machine intelligence and mind uploading have everything their own way. The contributors include people with strongly skeptical voices, among them Massimo Pigliucci. Difficulties and complications are raised even by some of the authors\u00a0who think full-scale conscious machine intelligence and\/or mind uploading may be possible. There is a wide range of viewpoints.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, for those who have never had the pleasure of editing a book, it ends up –\u00a0at least with a book of this kind –\u00a0taking up as much time and energy as actually writing a book yourself.<\/p>\n

First, Damien and I have written lengthy introductory chapters\u00a0(6000 words each, and a lot of work went into them). More generally, when you are editing a book like this you end up in endless correspondence with contributors and the publisher to make it all work. Obviously not all\u00a0edited books are the same – e.g. a reprint\u00a0anthology\u00a0is very different in its demands, and someone with\u00a0a large knowledge base of relevant material can even do several of these per\u00a0year. But (largely)\u00a0original\u00a0edited books like this are another\u00a0matter, especially when the people with whom you’re working are not all professional writers with everything that that entails. E.g. some\u00a0may need considerable help in expressing their ideas as clearly\u00a0as possible to a wide audience (and in\u00a0conformity with publisher’s requirements).\u00a0Much work goes in that is not seen by the public.<\/p>\n

During the blog break I’ve also written a number of pieces of my own. Apart from my introductory chapter to Intelligence Unbound<\/em>, they include a new article for Free Inquiry<\/em>, called “Do the best lack all conviction?” This will appear in the December\/January issue. Watch out for it. I think this may be my most important piece for Free Inquiry<\/em> to date.<\/p>\n

I’ve also written a new 10,000-word article on religion and science, which I hope will see print in an anthology related to atheism that I can’t say much about yet (apart from anything else, it needs to find a publisher!). I’ve written a 4,500-word article on skepticism in an age of ideology, for a SIN-related book that I hope we can tell you\u00a0about soon. This draws on my TAM talk <\/a>and a couple of posts here, but also contains much new material.\u00a0I’ve also done some work toward my next piece for New Philosopher<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A lot of other things have also have been happening. I have now seen the cover art for my next book (in the sense of the next one that is actually finished and in the publishing queue), Humanity Enhanced<\/em>,\u00a0which should be available at\u00a0the start of 2014. The Amazon link to the book\u00a0is over here<\/a>, but it will\u00a0have to be a matter of “watch this space” as more information becomes available.<\/p>\n

50 Great Myths About Atheism<\/em><\/a> has appeared in some places\/formats\u00a0over the past couple of months (the link is to\u00a0the\u00a0Kindle edition at US Amazon);\u00a0and\u00a0it is starting to get some attention, including a review by Jerry Coyne\u00a0today<\/a>, along with the new books by Greg Lukianoff (which looks interesting) and Peter Boghossian (which I’ve read in\u00a0page proof and can confirm is a very worthwhile book). I gather that the paperback version is in Australian bookshops this week, but US Amazon still only has that edition for pre-order with an announced date of November 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have some other exciting projects to talk about – more announcements soon! –\u00a0and some more deadlines to try to meet. However, I hope I can now get back to more frequent posting both here and over at Talking Philosophy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been missing in action here for the past… hmm, maybe eight weeks? The story behind that is (basically)\u00a0just that I’ve been immersed in working on my next book, Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds, which I’m co-editing with Damien Broderick. The work on this has been quite intense, as we originally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,98,6,11,13,12,130],"tags":[248,126,82,323,297,217,238,239,320,319,322,321],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements-2","category-books-2","category-personal","category-philosophy","category-religion","category-science","category-skepticism","tag-50-great-myths-about-atheism","tag-damien-broderick","tag-free-inquiry","tag-greg-lukianoff","tag-humanity-enhanced","tag-intelligence-unbound","tag-jerry-coyne","tag-massimo-pigliucci","tag-new-philosopher","tag-peter-boghossian","tag-publishing","tag-talking-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}