Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,976

*** PLEASE alert your friends—Our own continued health and longevity may depend on Steve continuing his work.***

This call for support was also posted by Ilia Stambler on the Longevity Alliance Website, and organized on YouCaring.com by John M. Adams. Eric Schulke has also helped tremendously in spreading the word about the Fundraiser.

Since founding the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group in 1990, Dr. L. Stephen Coles M.D., Ph.D., has worked tirelessly to develop new ways to slow and ultimately reverse human aging.

Everyone active in the LA-GRG or the Worldwide GRG Discussion Group have benefited from his expertise. His continual reporting of news about the latest developments to the List and his work in areas such as gathering blood samples for a complete genome analysis of the oldest people in the world (supercentenarians, aged 110+) is ground breaking and far ahead of anything that has ever been accomplished before. Publication of this work is expected in collaboration with Stanford University before the end of the year. Other accomplishments are equally notable

CLICK HERE TO HELP!

BRIEF summary of his work: L. Stephen Coles, M.D. Ph.D — Cited in more than 250 scientific articles — Profiled as notable person in Wikipedia — Many other contributions to aging research and advancing long, healthy life

Steve Coles was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma (Pancreatic Cancer) at the head of the pancreas on Christmas Eve of last year. Pancreatic cancer is particularly insidious. He underwent a Whipple (Surgical) Procedure on January 3rd that produced a beneficial result. The tumor’s complete obstruction to the common bile duct that had caused jaundice and severe pruritus (skin itching leading to scratching to the point of bleeding) was almost immediately reversed in two days. His subsequent chemotherapy with Gemzar over the past three months will hopefully prevent metastases from spreading to other organs. But we won’t know his prognosis until June 7th when a CT Scan will be compared with a baseline scan performed before the start of chemo interpreted by a cancer radiologist.

We now have the opportunity to carry out a personalized chemo treatment regimen created by a start-up company called Champions Oncology in Baltimore, MD; USA affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Champions is a world class organization that will analyze the tissue sample that has already been sent to them. Then, a custom treatment program will be prescribed for Steve based on a mouse model, since each tumor is unique and pure test tube trials have not been shown to be effective.

Champions Oncology’s service is to test in mice what can work for Dr. Coles. This is done through two steps:

(1) To implant Dr. Coles’s cancer on mice. (This part has been successfully carried out, and it will allow us to test nine different treatment protocols on Dr. Coles’s specific tumor tissue in mice).

(2) Test the treatments on the mice (The treatments have been defined with Dr. James P. Watson, Dr. Coles, and his oncologists.)

Dr. Joao Pedro de Magalhes of Liverpool, UK was the first to propose employing the services of Champions Oncology. They have a good track record. The biggest risk is that the process normally takes so long that the patient dies before the results can be obtained (especially with such an aggressive, malignant cancer, as Dr. Coles’s). Luckily, this part went right. Also, there is a risk is that Step-1 won’t work. Luckily for us, this part went right, too. Therefore, so far, it seems that choosing Champions Oncology’s approach was the right choice. We can’t be sure that Step-2 will be as successful, but we need to try.

In addition to his medical team here in the U.S., our international friends have been active on his behalf. They successfully negotiated a 60 percent reduction in cost.

NOW, YOU CAN HELP IN TWO WAYS:

(1) CONTRIBUTE TO THIS FUND

Time is of the essence. The good people at Champions Oncology have agreed to begin the analysis immediately.

Steve Coles needs your support.

It may make THE difference. Please dig deep and support him by contributing to the fund.

*** Our own continued health and longevity may depend on Steve continuing his work.***

(2) SEND REFERRALS TO CHAMPIONS ONCOLOGY

Champions Oncology is an early-stage for-profit company. Champions is not a philanthropy. Like many companies offering breakthrough technologies, it has light bills to pay, payroll to make on time, and many other typical expenses.

Please think of any oncologists how may refer patients to Champions, then contact any of the individuals listed below so we may get life-saving information about Champions into their hands. Champions is particularly well set up to accommodate physicians and patients in the Eastern U.S., Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan.

We wish to acknowledge the GRG (the Gerontology Research Group—A discussion group of ~400 members worldwide.

We owe a special thank you to The International Longevity Alliance Movement for their support.

Contacts:

1. Edouard Debonneuil [email protected] France Skype ID: edebonneuil

2. Daniel Wuttke [email protected] Germany Skype: admiral_atlan

3. Ilia Stambler [email protected] Israel Skype: iliastam

4. John M. (Johnny) Adams [email protected]

U.S. (949) 922‑9786 Skype: agingintervention

Updates 06/03/2013

by John M. (Johnny) Adams

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Dr. Coles has received a contribution and is forwarding it directly to Champions Oncology.

So as of now, 10:20 am PDT, we have $6175 of the needed $10,000!

I have contacted YouCaring and asked how to change the “$1475 raised of $10000 goal”.

Supporters

Franco Cortese

donated$100.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

PLEASE donate ANYTHING you can to help save the life of L. Stephen Coles, who has spent his entire professional career trying to save yours!

Aubrey de Grey

donated$300.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

Anonymous

Offline Donation

donated$5,000.00

Monday, June 03, 2013

RetirementSingularity.com

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Sunday, June 02, 2013

kg goldberger

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Sunday, June 02, 2013

prayers are on the way for more than 65% of deaths. Aging is a cause of adult cancer, stroke and many others age related diseases. Researchers fighting aging are the best people, they are fighting for all of us. Let’s pay them back!

Bijan Pourat MD

donated$250.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Maxim Kholin

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Saturday, June 01, 2013

Aging is a disease. Aging is responsible

Anonymous

donated$60.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Nils Alexander Hizukuri

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Saturday, June 01, 2013

All the best!

Anonymous

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Saturday, June 01, 2013

Danny Bobrow

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Saturday, June 01, 2013

Steve, win this fight for us all. I send you healing thoughts.

Danny Steve, friends and family, but it is an outstanding, real-world example of the advancing frontier of science and medicine. The entire life-extension community should rally in support of this effort for Steve and for the acquisition of important scientific knowledge.

Cliff Hague

donated $100.00

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Tom Coote

donated $100.00

Friday, May 31, 2013

With Best Wishes!

Anonymous

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Allen Taylor

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john mccormack, Australia

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ingeseim

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TeloMe Inc.

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Not only is this an important cause for

-Preston Estep, Ph.D.

CEO and Chief Scientific Officer, TeloMe, Inc.

Anonymous

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Larry Abrams

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

By Avi Roy, University of Buckingham

In rich countries, more than 80% of the population today will survive past the age of 70. About 150 years ago, only 20% did. In all this while, though, only one person lived beyond the age of 120. This has led experts to believe that there may be a limit to how long humans can live.

Animals display an astounding variety of maximum lifespan ranging from mayflies and gastrotrichs, which live for 2 to 3 days, to giant tortoises and bowhead whales, which can live to 200 years. The record for the longest living animal belongs to the quahog clam, which can live for more than 400 years.

If we look beyond the animal kingdom, among plants the giant sequoia lives past 3000 years, and bristlecone pines reach 5000 years. The record for the longest living plant belongs to the Mediterranean tapeweed, which has been found in a flourishing colony estimated at 100,000 years old.

This jellyfish never dies. Michael W. May

Some animals like the hydra and a species of jellyfish may have found ways to cheat death, but further research is needed to validate this.

The natural laws of physics may dictate that most things must die. But that does not mean we cannot use nature’s templates to extend healthy human lifespan beyond 120 years.

Putting a lid on the can

Gerontologist Leonard Hayflick at the University of California thinks that humans have a definite expiry date. In 1961, he showed that human skin cells grown under laboratory conditions tend to divide approximately 50 times before becoming senescent, which means no longer able to divide. This phenomenon that any cell can multiply only a limited number of times is called the Hayflick limit.

Since then, Hayflick and others have successfully documented the Hayflick limits of cells from animals with varied life spans, including the long-lived Galapagos turtle (200 years) and the relatively short-lived laboratory mouse (3 years). The cells of a Galapagos turtle divide approximately 110 times before senescing, whereas mice cells become senescent within 15 divisions.

The Hayflick limit gained more support when Elizabeth Blackburn and colleagues discovered the ticking clock of the cell in the form of telomeres. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequence at the end of chromosomes which protects the chromosomes from degrading. With every cell division, it seemed these telomeres get shorter. The result of each shortening was that these cells were more likely to become senescent.

Other scientists used census data and complex modelling methods to come to the same conclusion: that maximum human lifespan may be around 120 years. But no one has yet determined whether we can change the human Hayflick limit to become more like long-lived organisms such as the bowhead whales or the giant tortoise.

What gives more hope is that no one has actually proved that the Hayflick limit actually limits the lifespan of an organism. Correlation is not causation. For instance, despite having a very small Hayflick limit, mouse cells typically divide indefinitely when grown in standard laboratory conditions. They behave as if they have no Hayflick limit at all when grown in the concentration of oxygen that they experience in the living animal (3–5% versus 20%). They make enough telomerase, an enzyme that replaces degraded telomeres with new ones. So it might be that currently the Hayflick “limit” is more a the Hayflick “clock”, giving readout of the age of the cell rather than driving the cell to death.

The trouble with limits

Happy last few days? It doesn’t have to end this way. ptimat

The Hayflick limit may represent an organism’s maximal lifespan, but what is it that actually kills us in the end? To test the Hayflick limit’s ability to predict our mortality we can take cell samples from young and old people and grow them in the lab. If the Hayflick limit is the culprit, a 60-year-old person’s cells should divide far fewer times than a 20-year-old’s cells.

But this experiment fails time after time. The 60-year-old’s skin cells still divide approximately 50 times – just as many as the young person’s cells. But what about the telomeres: aren’t they the inbuilt biological clock? Well, it’s complicated.

When cells are grown in a lab their telomeres do indeed shorten with every cell division and can be used to find the cell’s “expiry date”. Unfortunately, this does not seem to relate to actual health of the cells.

It is true that as we get older our telomeres shorten, but only for certain cells and only during certain time. Most importantly, trusty lab mice have telomeres that are five times longer than ours but their lives are 40 times shorter. That is why the relationship between telomere length and lifespan is unclear.

Apparently using the Hayflick limit and telomere length to judge maximum human lifespan is akin to understanding the demise of the Roman empire by studying the material properties of the Colosseum. Rome did not fall because the Colosseum degraded; quite the opposite in fact, the Colosseum degraded because the Roman Empire fell.

Within the human body, most cells do not simply senesce. They are repaired, cleaned or replaced by stem cells. Your skin degrades as you age because your body cannot carry out its normal functions of repair and regeneration.

To infinity and beyond

If we could maintain our body’s ability to repair and regenerate itself, could we substantially increase our lifespans? This question is, unfortunately, vastly under-researched for us to be able to answer confidently. Most institutes on ageing promote research that delays onset of the diseases of ageing and not research that targets human life extension.

Those that look at extension study how diets like calorie restriction affect human health or the health impacts of molecules like resveratrol derived from red wine. Other research tries to understand the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of certain diets and foods with hopes of synthesising drugs that do the same. The tacit understanding in the field of gerontology seems to be that, if we can keep a person healthy longer, we may be able to modestly improve lifespan.

Living long and having good health are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, you cannot have a long life without good health. Currently most ageing research is concentrated on improving “health”, not lifespan. If we are going to live substantially longer, we need to engineer our way out of the current 120-year-barrier.

Avi Roy does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Read the original article.

The following article was originally published by Immortal Life

When asked what the biggest bottleneck for Radical or Indefinite Longevity is, most thinkers say funding. Some say the biggest bottleneck is breakthroughs and others say it’s our way of approaching the problem (i.e. that we’re seeking healthy life extension whereas we should be seeking more comprehensive methods of indefinite life-extension), but the majority seem to feel that what is really needed is adequate funding to plug away at developing and experimentally-verifying the various, sometimes mutually-exclusive technologies and methodologies that have already been proposed. I claim that Radical Longevity’s biggest bottleneck is not funding, but advocacy.

This is because the final objective of increased funding for Radical Longevity and Life Extension research can be more effectively and efficiently achieved through public advocacy for Radical Life Extension than it can by direct funding or direct research, per unit of time or effort. Research and development obviously still need to be done, but an increase in researchers needs an increase in funding, and an increase in funding needs an increase in the public perception of RLE’s feasibility and desirability.

There is no definitive timespan that it will take to achieve indefinitely-extended life. How long it takes to achieve Radical Longevity is determined by how hard we work at it and how much effort we put into it. More effort means that it will be achieved sooner. And by and large, an increase in effort can be best achieved by an increase in funding, and an increase in funding can be best achieved by an increase in public advocacy. You will likely accelerate the development of Indefinitely-Extended Life, per unit of time or effort, by advocating the desirability, ethicacy and technical feasibility of longer life than you will by doing direct research, or by working towards the objective of directly contributing funds to RLE projects and research initiatives. Continue reading “Longevity’s Bottleneck May Be Funding, But Funding’s Bottleneck is Advocacy & Activism” | >

By Avi Roy, University of Buckingham

I want to live longer and help others do the same. I assumed the most effective way to do that is by understanding the science of aging and then engineering solutions to extend human lifespan. That is why I became a biomedical researcher and over the past several years I have pursued this goal almost single-mindedly.

When a 2004 study showed that reducing the calorie intake in mice extended their life by 42%, I enthusiastically embraced the results and even put myself on a calorie restricted diet. But, subsequently, a 2012 study showed that long-term calorie restriction may not have the promised benefits. On the contrary, fewer calories without the required nutrients might actually cause harm.

Calorie restriction is not the first such “promising” route that eventually did not live up to the promise, and it will not be the last. Antioxidants showed promise in holding back diseases caused by aging, but now we know that antioxidant supplements are more likely to shorten your life.

Earlier in May, researchers showed that reducing a protein called NF-kB in mouse brains modestly improved their lifespan. I am not holding out for this result either. Before too long, I’m sure there will be reports of severe side effects of manipulating levels of NF-kB.

Take it easy

Looking at the data I have come to the conclusion that “doing nothing” may be the best option in most cases. This may not be as pessimistic as it sounds and it is definitely not to say that research in fighting aging must not be carried out.

When I say “do nothing”, I am assuming that you do not smoke or drink too much alcohol, and have access to medical care in case of injury. Such measures are bound to increase your lifespan.

But currently, not intervening in the aging process is more likely to help you live longer than trying any of the methods I’ve mentioned, not by a few months but by many years. Trying any of those interventions may actually cause harm, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Lesson from the past

The chart below shows the survival rates – the percentage of the population that lives to a certain age – for men in England and Wales from 1860 to 2010.

In the 1860s, more than 20% of children died at birth or soon after. On average, men’s health started to decline around the age of 30, and only about 20% of the population survived for more than 70 years.

By 1910, child mortality decreased, thanks to improvements in hygiene and better medical care. This meant more men lived past the age of 50. Circle A shows this reduction in childhood mortality between 1860 and 2010. But, as can be seen from Circle D, the gain towards the end was not significant. This is because only 30% of males passed the age of 70.

Fifty years later, after the discovery of penicillin and invention of more vaccines, 90% of English and Welsh men lived until 50, and more than half survived to 70. Arrow B marks this trend.

Today almost 80% of men live to the age of 70. Four times as many men reach 70 now than in 1860.

What accounts for the change? Between 1860 and 1960, the significant increase in survival rate was due to medical intervention. Since 1960, the survival curve has improved mainly due to reduction in smoking.

This trend is similar in many rich countries, including the US. Druin Burch, a physician and writer, says in his book Taking the Medicine, that eliminating smoking would provide more benefits than being able to cure people of every possible type of cancer.

Age gracefully

Many experts believe that human lifespan might actually have an upper limit of 125 years. The average may not increase much beyond 90. If we are to agree with them, this leaves little room for improvement.

But we have never concentrated on maximising human lifespan before. Most people believe human lifespan is finite, so all drugs being manufactured today are targeted towards certain age-related diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. They are not designed to extend human lifespan.

If this bleak outlook is indeed true, we should not practise naive interventionism because it is unlikely to help. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes in his book Antifragile, naive interventionism occurs when we try to fix a single thing, but end up disturbing a complex system.

In case of extending human lifespan, those naive interventions would include calorie restriction, antioxidant supplements or manipulating the protein NF-kB, as mentioned earlier. They also include the current obsession with replacing fat in foods with sugar, the health benefits of drinking red wine, or the use ofsurgery or supplements to “fight” aging. This latter industry has grown in the past decade from being non-existent to an estimated worth of $88 billion today.

If intervening in the aging process with current biomedical science has any positive effect at all, it will be far too small to worry about. It’s far more likely to harm us.

That is why I have decided to do nothing and follow a simple rule: unless I meet with an accident, or suffer from a terminal disease, I will not add anything to my life with the explicit purpose of extending it. To do anything else would most likely do more harm than good.

Avi Roy does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

The Conversation

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

It is often said that empiricism is one of the most useful concepts in epistemology. Empiricism emphasises the role of experience acquired through one’s own senses and perceptions, and is contrary to, say, idealism where concepts are not derived from experience, but based on ideals.

In the case of radical life extension, there is a tendency to an ‘idealistic trance’ where people blindly expect practical biotechnological developments to be available and applied to the public at large within a few years. More importantly, idealists expect these treatments or therapies to actually be effective and to have a direct and measurable effect upon radical life extension. Here, by ‘radical life extension’ I refer not to healthy longevity (a healthy life until the age of 100–120 years) but to an indefinite lifespan where the rate of age-related mortality is trivial.

Let me mention two empirical examples based on experience and facts:

1. When a technological development depends on technology alone, its progress is often dramatic and exponential.

2. When a technological development also depends on biology, its progress is embarrassingly negligible.

Developments based solely on mechanical, digital or electronic concepts are proliferating freely and vigorously. Just 20 years ago, almost nobody had a mobile telephone or knew about the internet. Now we have instant global communication accessible by any member of the general public.

Contrast this with the advancement of biotechnology with regards to, say, the treatment of the common cold. There has not been a significantly effective treatment for the public at large for, I will not say a million, but certainly for several thousand years. The accepted current medical treatment for the common cold is with bed rest, fluids, and antipyretics which is the same as that suggested by Hippocrates. Formal guidelines for the modern treatment of cardiac arrest include chest compressions and mouth- to- mouth resuscitation (essentially the same as the technique used by the prophet Elisha in the Old Testament) as well as intra-cardiac (!) atropine, lignocaine and other drugs used by physicians during the 1930’s. In my medical museum in Cyprus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriazis_Medical_Museum) I have examples of Medieval treatments for urinary retention (it was via a metal urinary catheter then, whereas now the catheter is plastic), treatment of asthma (with belladonna then, ipratropium now – a direct derivative), and treatment of pain (with opium then, with opium-like derivatives now).

About a hundred years ago, my grandfather (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoklis_Kyriazis) wrote a book on hygiene, longevity and healthy life for the public, which included advice such as fresh air, exercise, consumption of fruit and vegetables, avoidance of excessive alcohol or cigarette smoke. These are of course preventative treatments advised by modern anti-ageing practitioners, hardly any progress in a century. In fact, these are the only proven treatments. Even the modern notion of ‘antioxidants’ can be encountered as standard health advice in medical books from the 1800’s. With the trivial exception of a handful of other examples, there has hardly been any progress in healthy longevity at all that can be applied to the common man in the street. Resveratrol? Was a standard health advice in ancient Greek medicine (red wine). Carnosine? Discovered and used 100 years ago. Cycloastragenol? Used in Chinese medicine 1000 years ago.

My question is: how do we expect to influence the process of ageing when we cannot even develop bio-technological cures for simple and common diseases? Are we really serious when we talk about biotechnological treatments that can lead to radical life extension, being developed within the next few years? And if we are really serious, is this belief based on empiricism or idealism? The manipulation of human biology has been particularly tricky, with no significant progress of effective breakthroughs developed during the past several decades. Here I, of course, acknowledge the value of some modern drugs and isolated bio-technological achievements, but my point is that these developments are based on relatively minor refinements of existing therapies, and not on new breakthroughs that can modify the human body in any positive or practical degree. Importantly, even if some isolated examples of effective biotechnology do exist, these are not yet suitable for use by the general public at large.

If we were to compare the progress of general technology with that of life extension biotechnology, we could see that:

A. The progress of technology over the past 100 years has been logarithmic to exponential, whereas that of life extension biotechnology has been virtually static.

B. The progress of technology over the past 20 years has been exponential, whereas that of life extension biotechnology has barely been logarithmic.

It is one thing to talk about future biotechnology developments as a discussion point, and to post these in blogs, for general curiosity. But it is a different thing altogether if we actually want to devise and deliver an effective, practical therapy that truly affords significant life extension.

A different approach is needed, one that does not depend exclusively on biotechnology. It would be naïve to say that I am arguing for the total abandonment of life extension biotechnology, but it is equally naïve to believe that this biotechnology is likely to be effective on its own. A possible way forward could be the attempt to modify human biology not via biotechnology alone, but also by making use of natural, already existing evolutionary mechanisms. One such example could be the use of ‘information-that-requires-action’ in order to force a reallocation of resources from germ-line to somatic cells. This is an approach we currently aiming to describe in detail. My final remark with regards to achieving indefinite lifespan is this: we must engage with technology without depending on biotechnology.

For some general background information on how to engage with technology see:

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/12/06/the-longevity-of-real-human-avatars/

http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/03/04/indefinite-lifespans-a-n…bal-brain/

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/kyriazis20121031

lifebFreedom fironically found in flesh, not knowing whe’er I’m foul or fowl… tickly bound neath trickly form twisting and more unfresh as dawn upon dawn dies in menstrual skyfire like blood made light — a mocking microcosm of my own transubstantiation from rotting viscera to lightstorm infinity?

Just what sick joke is this? To wake and ache and dream and be and become! – and then to die..? To culminate the very universe itself!.. and then to simply die?! For what I ask you! What! Death… what audacious greed! What reckless squander and heedless extravagance!

Guttural red fringed black a bulbous muck death bastphelgmy! We cannot comprehend the sheer stature of death and so hurriedly cover the unknown with a word to hold it in hand and at a distance, to doubt no doubt.

O pallid heavens! O incessant sun undaunted by my barrenaked finitude! O fetid sanctity wet and redragged as the sickly bloom of jagged flesh! O putrid night sky serene despite my spat fury; as I ebb and ember a’roil withinside my sadness unbelieving and hysteric animal heat that vile sun and auster night jaunt their jeer and mock the rude squall of my panicstrewn death nonetheless.

We must not believe them when they tell us with sad care that we will one day die.

We must not believe them when they tell us that we will escape death by any means but our own daring.

We must bleed our eschaton passion upforth and afroth upon that void hated with awefull grandeur for its monster honesty. We must take self in hand and be/hold the possible futures still fetal inside. We must rage our righteous revolt with pride bright as that unsickened sun, not afraid to boast that we fear death but instead eager to thrust our fervent urgency upon the others still bound to opiate incredulity.

We are Man, and we shall NOT go quietly into that dog night!

This soliloquy was originally published on Transhumanity.net

NOT.GRANDMAS.ROBOT.NO.IS
Japanese People are Getting Old — Fast. So… Robots!
Japan is one of those great examples of how, when a society reaches a certain stage of development, population can stabilize itself based simply on quality of life (economic well-being, healthcare, community, Golden Rule morality, etc.). There is a challenge, however: population decline. In arguably one of the world’s most advanced capitalist nations, where 70% of GDP is based on the services economy and nearly all national debt is public held, a big die-off is… big problematic. Sure, the population decline will be gradual — but it’s inexorable, and Japan has to prepare now.

Make Robots, Not Babies?
A (perhaps questionable) study from the Japan Family Planning Association found that 1/3 of Japanese youth have no desire to get their groove on. They just don’t wanna hump each other. And as many of us know, it’s not just an enjoyable hobby, it’s where babies come from! Realistically, a decent number of respondents were probably lying, though. Because in Japan being fake polite and feigning ignorance to the nastiness & porno of human life is… a way of life (that’s a compliment — fake polite is far better than honest rude).

But actually, whether a large segment of the youth truly don’t want to make sweet love, or do, it doesn’t change the fact that Japan’s going to be running out of people. Factor in a rising women’s liberation, the destigmatization of birth control, and perceived economic instability — who knows what the actual equation looks like, but the answer is a birthrate of 1.39. And in case it’s not obvious, a birthrate of at least 2 is a replacement set for the parents; a population at stasis. Ain’t happening.

So, at the end of the day, replacing the lost population with robots, thereby replacing a lost labor force and augmenting the consumer economy — well, seems like a decent enough course of action.

Three States of Robot Assimilation:
Hop on over to Akihabara News to have a look at the sharing, the wearing, and the caring: Dear Assistive Robot Industry, We Need You. Sincerely, Rapidly Aging Japan.

Lastly, you kinda have to wonder: in the macro, why don’t they want sex AND robots?
Japan, sometimes you so cray.

[YOUNG JAPANESE PEOPLE NOT INTERESTED IN GETTING IT ON — HUFF POST]

1. Thou shalt first guard the Earth and preserve humanity.

Impact deflection and survival colonies hold the moral high ground above all other calls on public funds.

2. Thou shalt go into space with heavy lift rockets with hydrogen upper stages and not go extinct.

The human race can only go in one of two directions; space or extinction- right now we are an endangered species.

3. Thou shalt use the power of the atom to live on other worlds.

Nuclear energy is to the space age as steam was to the industrial revolution; chemical propulsion is useless for interplanetary travel and there is no solar energy in the outer solar system.

4. Thou shalt use nuclear weapons to travel through space.

Physical matter can barely contain chemical reactions; the only way to effectively harness nuclear energy to propel spaceships is to avoid containment problems completely- with bombs.

5. Thou shalt gather ice on the Moon as a shield and travel outbound.

The Moon has water for the minimum 14 foot thick radiation shield and is a safe place to light off a bomb propulsion system; it is the starting gate.

6. Thou shalt spin thy spaceships and rings and hollow spheres to create gravity and thrive.

Humankind requires Earth gravity and radiation to travel for years through space; anything less is a guarantee of failure.

7. Thou shalt harvest the Sun on the Moon and use the energy to power the Earth and propel spaceships with mighty beams.

8. Thou shalt freeze without damage the old and sick and revive them when a cure is found; only an indefinite lifespan will allow humankind to combine and survive. Only with this reprieve can we sleep and reach the stars.

9. Thou shalt build solar power stations in space hundreds of miles in diameter and with this power manufacture small black holes for starship engines.

10. Thou shalt build artificial intellects and with these beings escape the death of the universe and resurrect all who have died, joining all minds on a new plane.

YANKEE.BRAIN.MAP
The Brain Games Begin
Europe’s billion-Euro science-neuro Human Brain Project, mentioned here amongst machine morality last week, is basically already funded and well underway. Now the colonies over in the new world are getting hip, and they too have in the works a project to map/simulate/make their very own copy of the universe’s greatest known computational artifact: the gelatinous wad of convoluted electrical pudding in your skull.

The (speculated but not yet public) Brain Activity Map of America
About 300 different news sources are reporting that a Brain Activity Map project is outlined in the current administration’s to-be-presented budget, and will be detailed sometime in March. Hoards of journalists are calling it “Obama’s Brain Project,” which is stoopid, and probably only because some guy at the New Yorker did and they all decided that’s what they had to do, too. Or somesuch lameness. Or laziness? Deference? SEO?

For reasons both economic and nationalistic, America could definitely use an inspirational, large-scale scientific project right about now. Because seriously, aside from going full-Pavlov over the next iPhone, what do we really have to look forward to these days? Now, if some technotards or bible pounders monkeywrench the deal, the U.S. is going to continue that slide toward scientific… lesserness. So, hippies, religious nuts, and all you little sociopathic babies in politics: zip it. Perhaps, however, we should gently poke and prod the hard of thinking toward a marginally heightened Europhobia — that way they’ll support the project. And it’s worth it. Just, you know, for science.

Going Big. Not Huge, But Big. But Could be Massive.
Both the Euro and American flavors are no Manhattan Project-scale undertaking, in the sense of urgency and motivational factors, but more like the Human Genome Project. Still, with clear directives and similar funding levels (€1 billion Euros & $1–3 billion US bucks, respectively), they’re quite ambitious and potentially far more world changing than a big bomb. Like, seriously, man. Because brains build bombs. But hopefully an artificial brain would not. Spaceships would be nice, though.

Practically, these projects are expected to expand our understanding of the actual physical loci of human behavioral patterns, get to the bottom of various brain pathologies, stimulate the creation of more advanced AI/non-biological intelligence — and, of course, the big enchilada: help us understand more about our own species’ consciousness.

On Consciousness: My Simulated Brain has an Attitude?
Yes, of course it’s wild speculation to guess at the feelings and worries and conundrums of a simulated brain — but dude, what if, what if one or both of these brain simulation map thingys is done well enough that it shows signs of spontaneous, autonomous reaction? What if it tries to like, you know, do something awesome like self-reorganize, or evolve or something?

Maybe it’s too early to talk personality, but you kinda have to wonder… would the Euro-Brain be smug, never stop claiming superior education yet voraciously consume American culture, and perhaps cultivate a mild racism? Would the ‘Merica-Brain have a nation-scale authority complex, unjustifiable confidence & optimism, still believe in childish romantic love, and overuse the words “dude” and “awesome?”

We shall see. We shall see.

Oh yeah, have to ask:
Anyone going to follow Ray Kurzweil’s recipe?

Project info:
[HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT - € - MAIN SITE]
[THE BRAIN ACTIVITY MAP - $ - HUFF-PO]

Kinda Pretty Much Related:
[BLUE BRAIN PROJECT]

This piece originally appeared at Anthrobotic.com on February 28, 2013.

KILL.THE.ROBOTS
The Golden Rule is Not for Toasters
Simplistically nutshelled, talking about machine morality is picking apart whether or not we’ll someday have to be nice to machines or demand that they be nice to us.

Well, it’s always a good time to address human & machine morality vis-à-vis both the engineering and philosophical issues intrinsic to the qualification and validation of non-biological intelligence and/or consciousness that, if manifested, would wholly justify consideration thereof.

Uhh… yep!

But, whether at run-on sentence dorkville or any other tech forum, right from the jump one should know that a single voice rapping about machine morality is bound to get hung up in and blinded by its own perspective, e.g., splitting hairs to decide who or what deserves moral treatment (if a definition of that can even be nailed down), or perhaps yet another justification for the standard intellectual cul de sac:
“Why bother, it’s never going to happen.“
That’s tired and lame.

One voice, one study, or one robot fetishist with a digital bullhorn — one ain’t enough. So, presented and recommended here is a broad-based overview, a selection of the past year’s standout pieces on machine morality.The first, only a few days old, is actually an announcement of intent that could pave the way to forcing the actual question.
Let’s then have perspective:

Building a Brain — Being Humane — Feeling our Pain — Dude from the NYT
• February 3, 2013 — Human Brain Project: Simulate One
Serious Euro-Science to simulate a human brain. Will it behave? Will we?

• January 28, 2013 — NPR: No Mercy for Robots
A study of reciprocity and punitive reaction to non-human actors. Bad robot.

• April 25, 2012 — IEEE Spectrum: Attributing Moral Accountability to Robots
On the human expectation of machine morality. They should be nice to me.

• December 25, 2011 — NYT: The Future of Moral Machines
Engineering (at least functional) machine morality. Broad strokes NYT-style.

Expectations More Human than Human?
Now, of course you’re going to check out those pieces you just skimmed over, after you finish trudging through this anti-brevity technosnark©®™ hybrid, of course. When you do — you might notice the troubling rub of expectation dichotomy. Simply put, these studies and reports point to a potential showdown between how we treat our machines, how we might expect others to treat them, and how we might one day expect to be treated by them. For now morality is irrelevant, it is of no consideration nor consequence in our thoughts or intentions toward machines. But, at the same time we hold dear the expectation of reasonable treatment, if not moral, by any intelligent agent — even an only vaguely human robot.

Well what if, for example: 1. AI matures, and 2. machines really start to look like us?
(see: Leaping Across Mori’s Uncanny Valley: Androids Probably Won’t Creep Us Out)

Even now should someone attempt to smash your smartphone or laptop (or just touch it), you of course protect the machine. Extending beyond concerns over the mere destruction of property or loss of labor, could one morally abide harm done to one’s marginally convincing humanlike companion? Even if fully accepting of its artificiality, where would one draw the line between economic and emotional damage? Or, potentially, could the machine itself abide harm done to it? Even if imbued with a perfectly coded algorithmic moral code mandating “do no harm,” could a machine calculate its passive non-response to intentional damage as an immoral act against itself, and then react?

Yeah, these hypotheticals can go on forever, but it’s clear that blithely ignoring machine morality or overzealously attempting to engineer it might result in… immorality.

Probably Only a Temporary Non-Issue. Or Maybe. Maybe Not.
There’s an argument that actually needing to practically implement or codify machine morality is so remote that debate is, now and forever, only that — and oh wow, that opinion is superbly dumb. This author has addressed this staggeringly arrogant species-level macro-narcissism before (and it was awesome). See, outright dismissal isn’t a dumb argument because a self-aware machine or something close enough for us to regard as such is without doubt going to happen, it’s dumb because 1. absolutism is fascist, and 2. to the best of our knowledge, excluding the magic touch of Jesus & friends or aliens spiking our genetic punch or whatever, conscious and/or self-aware intelligence (which would require moral consideration) appears to be an emergent trait of massively powerful computation. And we’re getting really good at making machines do that.

Whatever the challenge, humans rarely avoid stabbing toward the supposedly impossible — and a lot of the time, we do land on the moon. The above mentioned Euro-project says it’ll need 10 years to crank out a human brain simulation. Okay, respectable. But, a working draft of the human genome, an initially 15-year international project, was completed 5 years ahead of schedule due largely to advances in brute force computational capability (in the not so digital 1990s). All that computery stuff like, you know, gets better a lot faster these days. Just sayin.

So, you know, might be a good idea to keep hashing out ideas on machine morality.
Because who knows what we might end up with…

“Oh sure, I understand, turn me off, erase me — time for a better model, I totally get it.“
- or -
“Hey, meatsack, don’t touch me or I’ll reformat your squishy face!”

Choose your own adventure!

[HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT]
[NO MERCY FOR ROBOTS — NPR]
[ATTRIBUTING MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY TO ROBOTS — IEEE]
[THE FUTURE OF MORAL MACHINES — NYT]

This piece originally appeared at Anthrobotic.com on February 7, 2013.