This anthology discusses a number of interdisciplinary cultural, psychological, metaphysical, and moral issues and controversies related to death, life extension, and anti-death. This volume is in honor of the 19th century Russian philosopher Fedorov. (Philosophy)

Anthropic Bias explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy.

There are the philosophical thought...

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, and misguided ideologies and totalitarian regimes have darkened an entire era or a region. Advances in technology are adding dangers of a new kind. It could happen again.
In Global Catastrophic Risks 25 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts, Earth-based natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming,...

This work draws attention to certain kinds of biases that permeate many parts of science. Data are constrained not only by limitations of measurement instruments but also by the precondition that there is some suitably positioned observer there to have the data (and to build the instruments). This simple truth turns out to have wide-ranging implications for fields as diverse as cosmology, evolution theory, imperfect recall problems in game theory, theology, traffic analysis, the foundations of thermodynamics and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Yet, disturbing paradoxes lie in ambush....