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Archive for the ‘ethics’ category: Page 51

Aug 3, 2016

Would it be immoral to send out a generation starship?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, education, ethics, food, health, neuroscience, security, space travel

If human beings are ever to colonise other planets – which might become necessary for the survival of the species, given how far we have degraded this one – they will almost certainly have to use generation ships: spaceships that will support not just those who set out on them, but also their descendants. The vast distances between Earth and the nearest habitable planets, combined with the fact that we are unlikely ever to invent a way of travelling that exceeds the speed of light, ensures that many generations will be born, raised and die on board such a ship before it arrives at its destination.

A generation ship would have to be a whole society in microcosm, with hospitals and schools, living quarters and perhaps entertainment districts, a security force, maybe even a judiciary. It would need to be able to provide food for its crew, and that might require agriculture or aquaculture, perhaps even domestic animals (which might also be needed for the colonisation effort). Its design therefore presents a major challenge: not just to engineers but also to social scientists. How should the crew be selected and the environment structured to minimise interpersonal conflict? What size of population is optimal for it to remain committed to the single overarching project of colonising a new planet without too much of a risk of self-destructive boredom or excessive narrowing of the gene pool? Does mental health require that a quasi-natural environment be recreated within the ship (with trees, grass and perhaps undomesticated birds and small animals)?

As well as the technological and social challenges confronting the designers of such ships, there are fascinating philosophical and ethical issues that arise. The issue I want to focus on concerns the ethics of a project that locks the next generation into a form of living, the inauguration of which they had no say over, and that ensures their options are extremely limited.

Continue reading “Would it be immoral to send out a generation starship?” »

Jul 28, 2016

Diving into the Fountain of Youth with Aubrey de Grey

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, life extension

A new Aubrey de Grey podcast about the work SENS RF is conducting to cure age related diseases.


On today’s episode of Bulletproof Radio Dave and aging expert Aubrey de Grey talk about the 7 aging causes, morbidity & the ethics of immortality. Enjoy!

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Jul 28, 2016

U.S. wary on biotech advances; gene editing, CRISPR ‘raising urgency’

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, ethics

Hmmm.


We can rebuild him; we have the technology—but Americans question if we should in a new survey designed to assess attitudes to modern biotechnology advances.

A new report, based on a survey of 4,700 U.S. adults coming out of the Pew Research Center, looked at a range of views on certain advances in biology, with opinions split on the ethics and long-term problems associated with enhancing human capacity.

Continue reading “U.S. wary on biotech advances; gene editing, CRISPR ‘raising urgency’” »

Jul 27, 2016

How eco-friendly communes could change the future of housing — By Autumn Spanne | The Guardian

Posted by in categories: business, complex systems, economics, energy, engineering, environmental, ethics, food, government, habitats

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“An increasing number of US landowners want to build commune-style villages that are completely self-sufficient and have a low carbon footprint”

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Jul 18, 2016

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Intelligence Agencies

Posted by in categories: ethics, health, robotics/AI

The defense community has already begun a healthy dialogue about the ethics of AI in combat systems.

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Jul 16, 2016

Beware the Rise of Gerontocracy: Some Hard Lessons for Transhumanism, Not Least from Brexit

Posted by in categories: aging, biological, ethics, futurism, governance, government, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, neuroscience, policy, strategy, thought controlled, transhumanism

Transhumanists will know that the science fiction author Zoltan Istvan has unilaterally leveraged the movement into a political party contesting the 2016 US presidential election. To be sure, many transhumanists have contested Istvan’s own legitimacy, but there is no denying that he has generated enormous publicity for many key transhumanist ideas. Interestingly, his lead idea is that the state should do everything possible to uphold people’s right to live forever. Of course, he means to live forever in a healthy state, fit of mind and body. Istvan cleverly couches this policy as simply an extension of what voters already expect from medical research and welfare provision. And while he may be correct, the policy is fraught with hazards – especially if, as many transhumanists believe, we are on the verge of revealing the secrets to biological immortality.

In June, Istvan and I debated this matter at Brain Bar Budapest. Let me say, for the record, that I think that we are sufficiently close to this prospect that it is not too early to discuss its political and economic implications.

Two months before my encounter with Istvan, I was on a panel at the Edinburgh Science Festival with the great theorist of radical life extension Aubrey de Grey, where he declared that people who live indefinitely will seem like renovated vintage cars. Whatever else, he is suggesting that they would be frozen in time. He may actually be right about this. But is such a state desirable, given that throughout history radical change has been facilitated generational change? Specifically, two simple facts make the young open to doing things differently: The young have no memory of past practices working to anyone else’s benefit, and they have not had the time to invest in those practices to reap their benefits. Whatever good is to be found in the past is hearsay, as far as the young are concerned, which they are being asked to trust as they enter a world that they know is bound to change.

Questions have been already raised about whether tomorrow’s Methuselahs will wish to procreate at all, given the time available to them to realize dreams that in the past would have been transferred to their offspring. After all, as human life expectancy has increased 50% over the past century, the birth rate has correspondingly dropped. One can only imagine what will happen once ageing can be arrested, if not outright reversed!

Continue reading “Beware the Rise of Gerontocracy: Some Hard Lessons for Transhumanism, Not Least from Brexit” »

Jul 5, 2016

When Humanity Meets A.I. | a16z Podcast

Posted by in categories: disruptive technology, education, ethics, machine learning, robotics/AI

Podcast with “Andreessen Horowitz Distinguished Visiting Professor of Computer Science … Fei-Fei Li [who publishes under Li Fei-Fei], associate professor at Stanford University.”

Jun 30, 2016

CNN Courageous studio putting on a special conference on human augmentation some transhumanists are part of

Posted by in categories: ethics, transhumanism

This is very new way of media outreach and news. I’m happy to be a part of it. Featuring Deus Ex too.


This summer, CNN’s brand studio Courageous is partnering with Square Enix®, publisher of SQUARE ENIX interactive entertainment products in the Americas, to host a first-of-its-kind conference on human augmentation. Human by Design will be held at the Paley Center for Media in New York City on August 3, 2016, and explore the intersection of technology and humanity with the objective of bringing together top minds to debate, question, and challenge what it means to be human.

Continue reading “CNN Courageous studio putting on a special conference on human augmentation some transhumanists are part of” »

Jun 29, 2016

Do you have a right to view an ISIS Kill List?

Posted by in categories: counterterrorism, ethics, geopolitics, rants, terrorism, transparency

According to The Clarion Project, a political information bureau that warns westerners of the growing threat from radical Islam, ISIS has published a ‘kill list’ that includes the names, addresses and emails of 15,000 Americans.

Clarion_300So far, this is interesting news, but it is not really new. I found ISIS, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida kill lists going back at least 8 years. This 2012 bulletin complains that NBC would not release the names contained on a kill list.

A kill list is newsworthy, and the Clarion article is interesting—but the article has more “facts” with which the publisher wishes to generate mob frenzy…

  • It explains that 4,000 of the names on the Kill List have been leaked by hackers
  • It echos a report by Circa News that the FBI has decided to not inform citizens that they are on the ISIS kill list.

In a clear effort to whip up and direct audience indignation, it asks readers to take a one-question poll. Which answer would you choose?

Continue reading “Do you have a right to view an ISIS Kill List?” »

Jun 28, 2016

How VR Gaming will Wake Us Up to our Fake Worlds

Posted by in categories: architecture, augmented reality, economics, entertainment, ethics, futurism, holograms, homo sapiens, internet, journalism, philosophy, posthumanism, virtual reality

Human civilization has always been a virtual reality. At the onset of culture, which was propagated through the proto-media of cave painting, the talking drum, music, fetish art making, oral tradition and the like, Homo sapiens began a march into cultural virtual realities, a march that would span the entirety of the human enterprise. We don’t often think of cultures as virtual realities, but there is no more apt descriptor for our widely diverse sociological organizations and interpretations than the metaphor of the “virtual reality.” Indeed, the virtual reality metaphor encompasses the complete human project.

Figure 2

Virtual Reality researchers, Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson, write in their book Infinite Reality; “[Cave art] is likely the first animation technology”, where it provided an early means of what they refer to as “virtual travel”. You are in the cave, but the media in that cave, the dynamic-drawn, fire-illuminated art, represents the plains and animals outside—a completely different environment, one facing entirely the opposite direction, beyond the mouth of the cave. When surrounded by cave art, alive with movement from flickering torches, you are at once inside the cave itself whilst the media experience surrounding you encourages you to indulge in fantasy, and to mentally simulate an entirely different environment. Blascovich and Bailenson suggest that in terms of the evolution of media technology, this was the very first immersive VR. Both the room and helmet-sized VRs used in the present day are but a sophistication of this original form of media VR tech.

Read entire essay here

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