Essays, Trackers and a Book
John Andrew Fredrickson
I write Sentient Horizons: essays on what minds are, how we would recognize new ones, and how to act toward the ones we are building. It began in June 2025 with an old question, why a universe this old and this large looks empty of anyone else, and turned toward the new kinds of mind appearing here on Earth. Out of the essays have grown five public trackers that put numbers on those questions, a small research programme that tests one idea about consciousness, and a book.
The blog's own story, and how I work, are on its About page.
The Work
Each tracker asks one question and answers it with one number, worked out from a public, dated record that is read against the news every week. The numbers below were read from each site when this page was last built, on 25 October 2026.
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Sentient Horizons
The essays, where the thinking is written up: the single mind, the ties between minds, mind at the scale of civilizations and the cosmos, and short pieces on what the news reveals.
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The Belt Equation
What is the chance that, in my lifetime, I live and work in a solar system where human industry reaches past Mars? A forecast built from about seventy concrete events, each with a test of what would count and a probability.
0.5%the chance that by 2071 I work a rotation on a ship, a station or a rock out past Marsas of 11 October 2026 -
The AGI Zeitgeist
How close are we to the singularity, the point where machines improve so fast that the world changes faster than anyone can keep up? A dated record of what experts and the public have said since 2005, beside a four-part test fixed in advance.
32%of the way, across the parts of the test that can be measured. The test itself still answers: not yet.as of 24 October 2026 -
The Quiet Galaxy
Where is everybody? The galaxy is old enough that someone else should have shown up by now. The site runs the Drake Equation, the astronomer Frank Drake's 1961 way of estimating how many civilizations we could detect, through the ranges the published estimates support.
42%the chance that at least one other civilization we could detect is in our galaxy right nowas of 17 October 2026 -
The Upgrade Tree
How much of a human being can we change on purpose today? A count of the specific ways, from an implant that restores hearing to a chip in the brain, each with a plain test and the public record that settles it.
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Outrunning Ageing
When, if ever, does medicine start repairing the body faster than it ages? The kinds of damage a body builds up over a lifetime, the treatments that would have to arrive, and who promised what, held against what has been shown. It recommends nothing and is not medical advice.
2058the middle estimate of the year medicine starts adding more than a year of healthy life for every year that passesas of 19 October 2026 -
Minimum Viable Mind
Can the working parts of a mind be built and tested one at a time? The research side of the project. It builds small systems and measures them, and every experiment says beforehand what result would count against it.
The Book
The Calibration Problem
Moral Seriousness in an Age of Unreadable Systems
How should we act toward minds whose inner life we cannot check? Everything we believe about anyone else's inner life is a guess from outward signs; machines only make the guess visible again. The book works out how to act well while that question stays open: a way to place any thinking system, from a person to a company to a machine, on three measures, an account of consciousness offered as a bet that says how it could lose, and an ethics that does not wait for the science to settle.
Nineteen chapters and three appendices, free to read in full on Sentient Horizons, online or as a PDF. Print and ebook editions are coming soon.
Follow
- The Sentient Horizons newsletterEach new essay, by email
- John Fredrickson on SubstackPieces written for Substack, with my own take
- @jfredson on XMe
- @SentHorizons on XNew essays and tracker news
- r/SentientHorizons on RedditDiscussion of the essays and trackers
- The essays by RSSFor a feed reader
Contact
Write to me at john@johnandrewfredrickson.com.