I am a geek, transhumanist, singularitarian, role-player, seeker of rationality, wannabe philosopher and future cognitive scientist, occasional fiction writer and essayist, currently a human being but wishing to transcend that at some point. There are just far too many limitations inherent in possessing a purely human body and brain - the hardware isn't nearly as modifiable as I'd like it to be. Maybe one day that will change, hopefully in the not-all-too-distant future - but that's a future that won't become real unless we all work to build it.

Despite my hopes for future technology, I also find the future worrying, enough that I regularly donate money to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. So far it has received over 1000 USD worth of my money.

The main reasons for my worry are the development of nanotechnology and the development of artificial intelligence. While true AI could be the Best Thing Ever, it could just as easily turn out to be the Worst Thing Ever.

I am author to a total of three books. Jokapiraatinoikeus (free PDF version), written together with Ahto Apajalahti, discusses file-sharing and the problems in modern copyright law. Kehittyvä ihmiskunta (free PDF version) discusses a number of developing technologies ranging from intelligence enhancement to radical life extension. Roolipelikirja, written together with Jukka Särkijärvi is an RPG guidebook covering over 40 role-playing games, briefly explaining both their setting and the game system used for them.

I'm also active over at the Finnish Pirate Party, and attempt to regularly write at the FPP blog (in Finnish only).

Me in brief - things about me, and opinions that I happen to have

NAME	Kaj "Xuenay" Sotala
SEX	Male.
GENDER	To paraphrase rm: "If there are men and women, then I'm a man. If there are men, women and transsexuals, then I'm a man. If there are men, women, transsexuals and something else, then I am something else."
DATE OF BIRTH	5th of September, 1986.
PLACE OF BIRTH	Turku, Finland.
PLACE OF RESIDENCE	Helsinki, Finland.
TRANSHUMANISM	The notion that we should use technology to overcome humanity's physical and mental limitations. Which, now that I spell it out that way, should be an obvious goal to everyone. People wear glasses to overcome the limitations of their eyes and write down things on paper to overcome the limitations of their memory. More radical technologies, such as life extension and radical cognitive enhancement, are only the logical next steps. For my Finnish readers, I recommend Marko Naumanen's Ihmisyyden näkymättömät ongelmat as a good introduction to transhumanism. The Transhumanist Declaration also sums up the main points pretty well - as does, of course, my own essay.
COGNITIVE SCIENCE	The most interesting discipline in the world, both due to the technological singularity and otherwise. We perceive the world through our minds, thus making the study of cognitive science a deeply enlightening quest to our very souls. Also, discovering the roots of artificial intelligence and human intelligence enhancement will make all the other problems much, much easier to solve. Tackling them now seems somewhat inefficient, though probably necessary for the improvements they can produce while we wait for the biggest achievements.
ROLEPLAYING	Heaps of fun. I've played in a bunch of campaigns, from D&D hack'n'slash to nearly diceless immersionist games, in settings ranging from space opera to childhood terror. (And I've co-written a book about different games.) I currently prefer games with a strong immersionist/storytelling bent, and have a particular liking to indie games. However, the occasional min-maxing and dungeon crawling is fun as well. The role-playing books I own, the games I've played or GM'ed.
RATIONALITY	Something to strive for. At least I do. Rationality is what helps us stay mindful of our own errors and avoid stupid mistakes. Rationality is what makes us consider twice when we feel an emotional disgust to a topic, helping our reason to overcome the desire to oppose something that makes people happy. Rationality is what opposes destructive overconfidence. Rationality is the thing which, were it in more plentiful supply, would change things for the better. A lack of it may very well destroy the world, while an abundance of it would cure prejudices and heal the world. The rationalist community Less Wrong, run by University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, is very much recommended to all seekers of rationality - nay, to everyone.
TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY	A term that has acquired so many meanings that it's almost worthless by now. I define it as the development of truly smarter-than-human intelligence, which is the most important event in human history - a mind smarter, as well as different from us, will overturn all the rules we've learned to expect. Hopefully, this may happen in a good way, but it has a good chance of happening in a humanity-destroying way, as well. (I would like to explictly note that this definition does not contain exponential growth or current-day acceleration of scientific research - these may further the Singularity, but they have nothing to do with the term itself.) Artificial intelligence, and through it superintelligence, is likely to occur within our lifetimes. To understand the issue better, read my essay about the significance of artificial intelligence.
ETHICS (PERSONAL LEVEL)	Utilitarian, leaning towards negative utilitarianism. All non-voluntary, extreme suffering should be eradicated to the best of our ability, including the suffering felt by animals in natural ecosystems. A somewhat lower priority is to ensure that everybody will be as happy as possible. The best way to achieve these goals are via new technology. Even though the realization of an existential risk - an event destroying humanity or radically curtailing its potential - might eliminate suffering, it would also eliminate both the future potential for a world of unlimited happiness with no non-voluntary suffering at all. In addition, it seems likely that portions of humanity would survive the risk, making for a very painful existence. In keeping with these principles, I donate regularly to organizations working to combat existential risk, especially the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
ETHICS (GLOBAL LEVEL)	There are many sets of values which might all be correct, but still in conflict with each other. To help solve the issue of multiple mutually conflicting value systems existing, I hope that an AI system programmed to implement Coherent Extrapolated Volition would help. In the extremely unlikely situation of an objective morality existing, it still wouldn't have much of an effect on anything - space and games explains this best.
FREE WILL	What's this free will you speak of? Causal determinist. The notion of us having a true choice over anything, not simply being programmed by our genes and environment, would require the suspension of causality. Every effect must have a cause, and so must each of our thoughts and actions have a cause, ultimately found beyond our own selves. Each thought is ultimately pre-programmed, every action certain. Quantum randomness may be the one thing altering this, but even that wouldn't give us free will - it would only make our actions more random. Unlike some people claim, this does not diminish personal responsibility. On the contrary, it enhances it - by understanding and identifying the causal mechanisms that drive behavior, we become increasingly capable of modifying it. Just as we can impair our judgment by drinking alcohol, one day we'll be able to improve parts of our personality that we consider desirable by directly modifying the activity of our brain.
LOVE	Though I do have certain possessive tendencies, I tend to lean towards polyamory. A mother of three doesn't love her children any less than a mother of one, and neither does pursuing several multiple relationships diminish the value of any of them. Sure, monogamy no doubt works for many, but even taken people tend to both desire and fall in love even with other people. Even in monogamous relationships, having affairs is common, so why not make it socially acceptable to have several relationships instead of the current relationship-breaker that it is? Of course, the problem with this is that there is a powerful evolutionary reason for sexual jealousy, which strongly manifests itself in many people. Given that we will one day have the tools to either make ourselves less jealous or make ourselves less desiring of more than one partner, which one should we pick? Ultimately, the choice is up to the individuals involved, but as a society we should be accepting of both alternatives. Personally I would probably choose to suppress jealousy, for the same reason that I choose to have more friends than just one.
A ROMANTIC	When it comes to fiction, thinking about romantic relationships and pairing fictional characters with each other? Hopelessly so. When it comes to real life? Not so much. Give me statistics and the scientific method, please.
RELIGION	I rate myself as an atheist, since I have not encountered any evidence supporting the existence of a God - if a hypothesis has no evidence in its favor, its probability of being true is something on the order of one divided by infinity. Also, many discoveries of science do make it hard to rationalize the existence of a God who has a hand in earthly matters. Take conservation of energy, for instance - the only way to affect matter or transform energy is to act upon it with other matter or energy. If not composed of matter or energy, one can't affect anything in the universe - and we haven't, as far as I know, encountered any forms of energy independently moving about that could be God doing his work in Earthly matters. Similar considerations also make belief in incorporeal souls difficult. (Sure, you could invent explanations around this, but they'd require some evidence for the existence of God to be worth considering in the first place. There's simply no reason to do so.)
ATTITUDES CONCERNING RELIGION	I think it can be useful for your psyche to be religious, at least for individuals. On the other hand, I think that being religious might be harmful for society at large - I am personally much more useful to mankind if I adopt a worldview which rejects any possibility of the existence of an afterlife. Were I more religious, I would be less motivated to, for instance, help avoid existential risks, since I'd believe that we would all end up in an afterlife in any case. (If it afterwards turns out that I was wrong and there is a place where we go after we've died, I'll still have done more good to the world when I thought that each life was unspeakably precious.) I could rationalize to myself a view that supported the existence of a God, and my mental health would probably be a bit better in exchange - having a faith would help ward off depression and all that - but since it would both impinge on the standard of rationality I seek to achieve and quite possibly reduce the amount of good that I do, I don't consider it worth the trade-off. Furthermore, religion pretty much by definition encourages irrational thought, which is often contrary to global happiness (people rejecting social or technological advances due to irrational beliefs, for instance). I also wonder how the work of scientists is affected by the compartmentalization of belief that's necessary for them to maintain religious thoughts. While people can be religious and still remain rational in other matters, a tendency towards irrationality in one field is bound to make it more easy in others.
COPYRIGHT	The duration of copyright should be cut to around 10 years, to encourage artists and companies to keep coming up with fresh material and to make quality art more readily available to the general public. File sharing for non-commercial use should also be legalized - online piracy is no more theft than choosing not to buy goods from a certain store is theft. If a person doesn't spend money on buying a certain product, then his money will go to somebody else, so no net harm is done. The key thing is to realize that copyright is a remainder of the monopolies that were commonly awarded during the age of mercantilism, before they were understood to be inefficient and far inferior to free competition. Often it does not further art, culture and science, but rather hinder it. This does not mean that artists wouldn't be entitled to an income for their work - they are, but strict copyright legislation of the kind used today is unnecessary for it. For more on this, and even though I have not fully finished reading it, I recommend Against Intellectual Monopoly as a good (free!) book on copyright issues.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH	Strong social security systems are a necessity. As machines start increasingly taking over more and more jobs, instituting a guaranteed minimum income, or citizen's wage, will become not only desirable, but a necessity. Freeing people from the need to work would let them devote themselves to the things they loved the most. Regardless of the exact level of technology, redistribution of wealth is still desirable due to considerations of marginal utility. Giving a poor person $10 helps them more than a rich person would be helped if they'd be given the same amount. If you have enough money to pay for all your basic needs - say, rent, food and healthcare - then having twice that amount is less than twice as good. Therefore redistributing money to a larger amount of people produces more net good than letting it be concentrated to a small amount of people.
MEDICAL REGULATION	Current medicine research involves very long development cycles, much due to the need of intensive, many-stage safety trials. In the US, it can take 12 years for the Federal Drug Administration to approve a new drug. For each year that a safe drug is delayed from entering the markets, people who would otherwise be helped by it may suffer or even die. It might be a good idea to introduce a "partially approved" state for medicine, where drugs that had only passed preliminary trials could still be sold, but marked clearly as such. This would allow those willing to take risks to take them in exchange for potentially improving their quality of life, while letting those desiring greater to safety to wait until all trials were finished.
BROADENING THE SCOPE OF MEDICINE	Currently, medicine aims mainly to cure diseases, with a reluctance towards enhancing humans beyond normal capacity. This is a rather arbitrary division, and leads to several problems. Attention Defict Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a controversial state which is considered by some as not as a disorder as such, but only a label given to individuals whose personality falls on the extreme ends of the normal distribution. In order to help people concentrate better, the medicinal profession needs to create a classification for a disease for which medicine is then prescribed. A more natural approach would be to expand medicine's scope to enhancement, and then make drugs improving concentration freely available to anyone who wants them. Medicine aimed at enhancing cognition is under development, but slowed down by unnecessary resistance from the regulating agencies. For example, Modafinil, a drug developed to treat attention disorders, has been shown to act as a cognitive enhancer and to have very few side-effects, yet in Finland it is not available without a special prescription. Due to over-zealous regulation and a focus on only curing disease, a potentially very useful technique of cognitive enhancement is made unavailable to the general public. Nick Bostrom's Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement is recommended for a deeper discussion about how the curing/enhancement division is an artificial one.
CRYONICS	That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die. -- H.P. Lovecraft. Despite being widely dismissed and ridiculed, cryonics actually makes very much sense. Consider that people can be clinically dead for over an hour and still be revived afterwards, if their body temperature was low enough. Cryonic suspension preserves the structure of the brain, so there's no reason why technology couldn't one day revive the person, just as we've revived hypothermiacs today. It should be standard procedure to cryonically preserve the brain of anyone who dies and who hasn't explictly forbidden it. Furthermore, anybody with serious physical or mental illnesses not curable by modern technology should have the option of entering cryonic suspension in order to wait for a time when their ailments could be cured. Countless of lives could be saved this way.
HAVING OPINIONS	Is something I consider fun, and forming them I consider even more fun. Would you have guessed?