In the Bio and Genetics section there are some good ones and some answers already (kinda). I'll try to be brief: > What’s the minimum viable human population (

In the Bio and Genetics section there are some good ones and some answers already (kinda). I'll try to be brief: > What’s the minimum viable human population (from the perspective of genetic diversity)? ~500 people. It's not a 'firm' answer, as the research is still ongoing (aka, its complicated) but it looks like the number is ~500 but likely a bit more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population > What future possibilities are there for brain-computer interfacing and how does this interact with issues in AI safety? It all come down to scarring. Current attempts typically end in scarring, at least in the Central Nervous System. We've not got a good way around it yet, at least for little tetrode like probes you have to insert. The most exciting (to me) is to use Clarity and Optogenetics. Clarity to make the brain, well, clear-er. And Optogenetics to stimulate cells with light. Shine light, nerves fire. Trouble is the Clarity makes the brain swell ~3x, and nerves are smaller than the diffraction limit of light, mostly. Maybe attach some iron atoms in the optogenetic pore and then pull on them in a magnetic gradient, thereby separating out the frequencies needed. Still it's a long ways off. > What do we know from animals about how cognitive abilities scale with brain size, learning time, environmental complexity, etc.? There's been some good work out of the Hercule lab (U. Chile I think?) about this. The trouble is in getting a reliable brain marker for 'learning ability'. You can use markers for the number of layers of the cortex, and their cross connectivity, but it's still tough to understand. Turns out, the 'wrinklage' of a mammalian brain is correlated with increasing 'learning-ness', but atmospheric/hydodynamic pressure plays a huge role in the 'wrinklage'. Sorry, my google-fu is not good today and I don't have the paper citation > Why has Mohism almost died out in China, relative to other schools of thought? Damn! Now that is a good question. For those just seeing Mozi for the first time, he was a defensive siege engineer during the early Warring states period (~470BC). Guy's ethos would really fit well in Silicon Valley, he was a kinda engineery-hippy dude, kinda Kevin Kelly-esque: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi