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Building a Better Future — Lessons from 3 Months of Lifeboat Foundation Expert Interviews

Posted by Dan Faggella in futurism, human trajectories, lifeboatTagged aubrey de grey interview, ben goertzel interview, collaborating for a better future, how might we build towards a better human future, how to create a better human future, improving the future, interviews with the lifeboat foundation, Lifeboat Foundation Interviews

Sep 1
2013

Just over three months ago I found an organization called “Lifeboat.” I’d been interviewing experts from a variety fields about the issues and opportunities of moving beyond our present human potential (technologically or otherwise), and decided to reach out to a community with many perspectives and different areas of expertise. When I emailed Eric Klein at Lifeboat, my message was something as simple as:

Daniel: “Might it be possible to connect with one of your experts for 15–20 over the course of the coming month? I didn’t want to email them without contacting your Foundation itself, first.”

Eric: “This is fine.”

Little did I know that a message would be cast out to the vast network of Lifeboat members, and the next three months would be a flurry of back-and-forth emails, fascinating conversations, and writing new articles.

For this I’m more than grateful, but more importantly, I’ve been able to glean something important from all these talks with Lifeboat members in so many fields. I decided that if I’m going to catch up with PhDs and future thinkers in dozen’s of fields, I need to keep at least one question the same for all of them, to glean and pool their interdisciplinary insights in a meaningful — if not interesting — way.

The question I settled on was this: “What can we do as scientists, businesspeople, leaders and thinkers to move the world forward in a beneficial way — together — despite so many differing opinions and approaches from other well-intended people working towards the same purpose?” Ultimately, I saw this question as not only the most fruitful way to encourage some of the collaboration and mutual understanding that I happen to deem vital, but also to poke and prod for new ideas on this subject from the varied corners of the intellectual and scientific universes.

So in this article I wanted to take a second and slow down from interviews, and for the first time write about the differing perspectives on this most important matter — all from “Lifeboat-ers” from around the world.

Building a Better Future — Ideas from Lifeboat’s Experts

First, I’ll explore some of the varied opinions and perspectives from individual Lifeboat members. Second, I’ll look at some of the few commonalities across my many interviews — and what we might glean from them. Third, I’ll give my own perspective on the matter of building a better future, and some insights from the journey of the last three months. Let it be known that I don’t dogmatically adhere to any of the opinions expressed, but I aim to be open-minded enough to consider and learn from each. My intention here is solely to share opinions in the kind of well-intended fashion that I hope will be productive for the purposes expressed.

Dr. Ben Goertzel — A Shift in the Nature of Philosophy and Science

One of my first Lifeboat interviews in June was with the one and only Dr. Ben Goertzel, head of the OpenCog Project and renown father of what is known as Artificial General Intelligence. When I posed the question about the “best path forward” at the end of my hour-long interview with Ben (http://sentientpotential.com/ben-goertzel-interview-humans-n…-the-pack/), he referred to our surpassing of present notions of Philosophy and Science. “Only a few hundred years ago, philosophy and science were one-and-the-same… with scientists referred to as ‘natural philosophers.’”

In the future, Goertzel predicts a complete surpassing of our present notions of science, the universe, cognition, and philosophy. Indeed, these are merely present constructs, and to Ben, the enhancement of intelligence and consciousness will shed new light on the material and metaphysical universe than our present human perspective is capable of shedding. In this way, what will make the future better might be an openness these these huge developments, and a willingness to escape any shell-like notions of our present human perspective and condition.

Dr. Soenke Ziesche — Don’t Leave Out the 3rd World

Dr. Ziesche is a humanitarian, working with the United Nations since 2000 on projects varying from earthquake relief to information management, with locations as diverse as New York City and Sudan. His PhD from the University of Hamburg focused on cognitive science and AI. His advice for keeping a true perspective of “world benefit” in mind is to “keep in mind the bigger picture… the situation of poor people in countries that are not as privileged as the people are in the places where this research (about artificial intelligence and emerging technology) happens.”

He is not alone in the belief that we may “leave behind” the poorer or large technologically isolated populations when technologies develop (though Kurzweil seems to argue against the likelihood of this scenario: http://www.singularity.com/qanda.html). Soenke believes that the possibility of neglect is real, and that factoring in the opportunity and wellbeing of the huge percentages of the human populations in 3rd world conditions would be a massive oversight of technological development if it aims towards “the good.”

Logan Stroendj — Someone’s Got to Try It

I ran into Logan through some of his articles, and a general interest in his “human speakable programming language” project. In our conversation about the future of humanity and the varied approaches to moving forward, he mentioned that it might make sense to have “voluntary communities” of individuals who are interested in a certain “mode” of living, or a certain dynamic of progress in the human condition. For example, there might be a geographic location where people interested in brain and cognitive research go to explore these matters in a more concentrated and concerted fashion, and another region where people interested in recycling and reusing materials can live to further apply and research in that world.

Logan’s potential vision would involve a kind of super-computer of a potential global state which aggregates the insights from these various research activities and makes it available to be used be any and all of the communities on or off of our planet. Logan goes so far as to say that there very well may be a segment of the population who would voluntarily create a community where pillaging and plundering are commonplace, and chaos rules — and that it may be best to not only allow these like-minded people to live that particular kind of life — but that like the rest of the “communities,” there is likely something to be learned and gleaned from what happens in this social experiment, as well.

Dr. Russell Blackford — Policy

Dr. Russell Blackford is an active writer, editor, philosopher, and more, and is presently writing a book called “50 Great Myths About Atheism.” His perspective on the matter of overall human progress was that there should be — at least in our present age — a policy and decision-making process based around the traditional liberal values of preventing harm, or bringing about a secular benefit. An example of policy that seems to go against these standards includes many laws that involve stem cells, which Dr. Blackford believes to give credence to embryos which exists within a religious notion rather than empirical evidence about the “live” or lack-there-of of an embryo. In his full interview he goes into significant detail on policy-making with a non-secular agenda.

Though he is wary of dogma, he sees these very values as keeping dogma at bay, and that there sanctity might help keep the conversations and progress of technology and humanity grounded in as much objectivity and rationality as possible.

Commonalities, Similar Themes from Experts Around the World

Though I was certainly able to drink in a good number of perspectives from my varied interviews, there were also enough common “themes” for me to take notice.

One of which is the idea of collaboration and an interdisciplinary approach to the pursuit of a “better” future. Few of the thinkers I spoke with happened to give an explicitly closed-minded conception of what “better” implies, or how we can go about attaining it. “The more perspectives, the better” seems to be a shared notion — and the recognition that the insights gleaned from one domain should be accessible and

Transparency is a second theme that appeared enough to mention here. One application of this idea is the easy transmission of knowledge across domains, countries, and languages. In another light, “transparency” implies knowing what the world is up to in order to make sure we’re keeping dangerous experiments and malicious intentions from causing serious harm. It sure is nice to know what the rest of the nanotech world is up to in terms of building off of their findings, but it’s also important to understand where the new dangers might have been found, or to stop a team of researchers working on something terribly destructive.

A final commonality with the thinkers I spoke with (Blackford and Goertzel mentioned here, amongst many others) was the idea of open-mindedness and remaining unfettered by particular ideologies. With so much change underway, not only is it likely to be harder than ever to function under an ideology (say the experts I spoke with), but a particular ideology tends to impose it’s views on the past and future, limiting growth and the potential for important change.

Conclusion, and a Word from the Author

All in all, my experience with Lifeboat interviews has been a rewarding one, and has certainly helped me to round out my own conceptions of what a “better” future might be, and how we might go about moving towards one.

Though I aim to be as ever-flexible with my notions (having never escaped Hume’s Fork), I am congenial with many of the common ideas that many of the thinkers I’ve interviewed have expressed. First, I have the utmost reverence for the idea of remaining open-minded in our transition forward, and in collaborating across language and geographic boundaries. I strongly believe that this kind of access and pooled effort is necessary for the heights of not just technological progress, but indeed “wisdom,” which seems equally as important in a future of greater technological power. Aubrey de Grey mentioned in our interview that science fiction books often sell because they relate to and reinforce the present more than they create reasonable new possibilities for the future. Let’s hope that we can avoid putting on the “future-blinders” as we make a transition forward in science, social policy, medicine, etc…

I would add, if I could, that maintaining a united kind of collaboration with shared positive intentions would appear to be the ideal. The shame would be any kind of conflict with it’s origin in differing approaches to a better future (especially in speaking to so many well-intended and hard-working people from around the world in various fields). If we are truly after the same “end” (though putting a definition to that “end” seems awfully dangerous) of an aggregately better future, my truest hope is that we would be open to learning from one another, and wary of “enemizing” others so long as there is no danger or malice in their approach. Escaping our tendency to fossilize certain ideological beliefs, or to take other approaches in an open-minded and not personal fashion would seem to be a greater challenge (at least in our present human condition) than many of the technological hurdles we’re trying to jump at present.

Indeed, would there be no greater shame than for this very enthusiasm for a “better future” (potentially wrought and tainted with the insidious forces of egotism, greed or glory) to be the force the prevents a “better future” from ever happening?

I’d like to thank all of the Lifeboat members who were kind enough to share their thoughts and catch up with me at Sentient Potential, including Aubrey de Grey, Ben Goertzel, Dr. Russell Blackford, amongst so many others.

With the best of intentions for a brilliant future,

Daniel Faggella

Daniel Faggella (Google + Profile) is a graduate of UPENN with a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology, a national martial arts champion, and author of “Explorations into the Philosophy of Transhumanism.” Attached to no specific school of thought, his pursuit at www.SentientPotential.com is to pool the insight of the world’s scientists and future thinkers in a grander global conversation about the collaborative progress of humanity.

RE.WORK Technology Summit

Posted by Eric Klien in events, futurism

Aug 26
2013

The Lifeboat Foundation is Media Partner of the RE.WORK Technology Summit which will be held September 19th in London. This summit is a one day event that brings together entrepreneurship, science, and technology to re-work the future and tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. Our Rachel Armstrong, Stuart Armstrong, Aubrey de Grey, and Randal Koene will be speaking. RE.WORK is led by our Nikita Johnson. Use the discount code lifeboat25 to receive 25% off standard passes or startup/student passes.

More info:

The RE.WORK Technology Summit is a one day event that brings together entrepreneurship, science, and technology to re-work the future and tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. The event will showcase the opportunities of breakthrough technologies and their potential for a positive impact on business and society. Emerging technology is providing an unprecedented era of opportunity for entrepreneurs and scientists to progress business and solve global challenges. By 2050 there will be around 9 billion people on the planet, so understanding, knowledge and collaboration is vital to help steer the way to a better world. RE.WORK is focused on generating innovative ideas and encouraging collaboration to solve big, global problems in areas such as increased urbanisation levels, efficient healthcare, sustainable energy solutions, and equal opportunities for all. Technology can have a revolutionary impact on these issues and some of the new products and advances explored at RE.WORK will include progress in the internet of things, sensors, 3D printing, wearable technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Moving Beyond Ubiquitous Sheepishness

Posted by Rick Smyre in futurism | 2 Comments on Moving Beyond Ubiquitous Sheepishness

Aug 25
2013

My last twenty-five years as a futurist have conditioned me to search for weak signals of what may be emerging in all areas of society that will impact our Communities of the Future work seeding transformational ideas and methods in local communities to help leaders and citizens prepare themselves for a future that will be increasingly fast paced, interdependent and complex. I always look for some gem of a new idea that is hidden in the context of an article, novel or web journal that causes me to go hmmm? and think about how this new idea connects with our COTF approach to community transformation.

Recently I have read Zoltan Istvan’s novel, The Transhumanist Wager, and found myself often stopping and going hmmm? Although an oversimplification (with apologies to Zoltan), the central theme of the novel is the coming existential crash of science and radical technologies and religion at some point after my life that now registers 71 years on the ageometer.

Although I could present my thoughts about whether humanity should attempt god-like actions to evolve life extending discoveries leading to downloading consciousness into machines to live forever, I would not be objective…feeling the increasing need of a long rest from overactivity during 71 years (-:

There are so many “access” points in Zoltan’s book for thought provoking ideas, that I found myself moving from thinking about the impact of emerging radical technologies on our society and communities to wondering how society was going to be able to develop the resiliency required to be able to adapt to whatever emerges.…whether the mysteries of religion and our existence become encased within a deeper understanding of quantum theory as time moves exponentially, or whether we reach the point of singularity and beyond and become transhuman.

Although many such ideas emerge from the pages of The Transhumanist Wager, there was a gem of a phrase two-thirds into the novel that jumped out at me because of our COTF work helping local areas prepare for a very different kind of future. It was the phrase “ubiquitous sheepishness” applied to leaders in all aspects of our society.

My own experience over the last thirty years changed the filter with which I now consider the phrase “ubiquitous sheepishness.” As I have had my own journey of thinking differently about the future, and connected it to observations of many local leaders with whom I have consulted who are stamped with the barriers of history and tradition, I have come to realize, in my opinion, that we live in a time that demands our ability to move beyond the natural inclinations of conservatism and being risk adverse as an asset.

Whatever the future holds, I have become convinced that we must connect at a deeper level of collaborative intellect, reconceptualize our institutions to be aligned with a time of constant change, and learn to risk ourselves for the good of our grandchildren so that they will have the right to make the decision whether to become transhumanists or live a life of other means conducive to the survival of our humanity, in whatever form our natural ecology and our imagination may lift us beyond the limits of perceived reality.

Whatever is in store for future generations, we are faced with challenges that defy understanding from a traditional perspective and understanding. Paraphrasing Einstein, “the problems of today cannot be resolved at the level of thinking at the time they were created.”

Zoltan brings many thought provoking questions to the surface of our thinking. In my opinion, none is more important than “moving beyond ubiquitous sheepishness” and finding the courage and spiritual commitment to connect with each other and utilize our diversity to confront emerging challenges head-on with keen intellect, deep collaboration, and the capacity to care for ourselves and others as if one was the same.…our interdependency is leading us to the threshold of a higher level of consciousness, requiring us to cast off our perceived truths, our ubiquitous sheepishness and jump into this new abyss together.

My future thoughts will be built around this need to move beyond being risk adverse and creating interlocking networks of diverse people and organizations to build “capacities for transformation” in today’s world that will allow our grandchildren the capacity to adapt to whatever reality emerges.

Meat grown in labs is the next logical step for food production

Posted by Roy in biotech/medical, futurism, sustainability

Aug 5
2013

By Avi Roy, University of Buckingham

In his essay “Fifty Years Hence”, Winston Churchill speculated, “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

At an event in London today, the first hamburger made entirely from meat grown through cell culture will be cooked and consumed before a live audience. In June at the TED Global conference in Edinburgh, Andras Forgacs took a step even beyond Churchill’s hopes. He unveiled the world’s first leather made from cells grown in the lab.

These are historic events. Ones that will change the discussion about lab-grown meat from blue-skies science to a potential consumer product which may soon be found on supermarket shelves and retail stores. And while some may perceive this development as a drastic shake-up in the world of agriculture, it really is part of the trajectory that agricultural technology is already following.

Creating abundance

While modern humans have been around for 160,000 years or so, agriculture only developed about 10,000 years ago, probably helping the human population to grow. A stable food source had tremendous impact on the development of our species and culture, as the time and effort once put towards foraging could now be put towards intellectual achievement and the development of our civilisation.

In recent history though, agricultural technology has developed with the goal of securing food supply. We have been using greenhouses to control the environment where crops grow. We use pesticides, fertilisers and genetic techniques to control and optimise output. We have created efficiencies in plant cultivation to produce more plants that yield more food than ever before.

These patterns in horticulture can be seen in animal husbandry too. From hunting to raising animals for slaughter and from factory farming to the use of antibiotics, hormones and genetic techniques, meat production today is so efficient that we grow more bigger animals faster than ever before. In 2012, the global herd has reached 60 billion land animals to feed 7 billion people.

The trouble with meat

Now, civilisation has come to a point where we are recognising that there are serious problems with the way we produce food. This mass produced food contributes towards our disease burden, challenges food safety, ravages the environment, and plays a major role in deforestation and loss of biodiversity. For meat production, in particular, manipulating animals has led to an epidemic of viruses, resistant bacteria and food-borne illness, apart from animal welfare issues.

But we may be seeing change brought by consumer demand. The public has started caring about the ethical, environmental and health impacts of food production. And beyond consumer demand for thoughtful products, ecological limits are forcing us to evaluate the way food is produced.

A damning report by the United Nations shows that today livestock raised for meat uses more than 80% of Earth’s agricultural land and 27% of Earth’s potable water supply. It produces 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions and the massive quantities of manure produced heavily pollute water. Deforestation and degradation of wildlife habitats happens largely in part to create feed crops, and factory farming conditions are breeding grounds for dangerous disease.

Making everyone on the planet take up vegetarianism is not an option. While there is much merit to reducing (and rejecting) meat consumption, sustainable dietary changes in the Western world will be more than compensated for by the meat intake of the growing middle class in developing countries like China and India.

The future is cultured

The logical step in the evolution of humanity’s food production capacity is to make meat from cells, rather than animals. After all, the meat we consume is simply a collection of tissues. So why should we grow the whole animals when we can only grow the part that we eat?

By doing this we avoid slaughter, animal welfare issues, disease development. This method, if commercialised, is also more sustainable. Animals do not have to be raised from birth, and no resources are shunted towards non-meat tissues. Compared to conventionally grown meat, cultured meat would require up to 99% less land, 96% less water, 45% less energy, and produce up to 96% less greenhouse gas emissions.

Also even without modern scientific tools, for hundreds of years we have been using bacterial cells, yeast and fungus for food purposes. With recent advances in tissue engineering, culturing mammalian cells for meat production seems like a sensible advancement.

Efficiency has been the primary driver of agricultural developments in the past. Now, it should be health, environment and ethics. We need for cultured meat to go beyond the proof of concept. We need it to be on supermarket shelves soon.

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.

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

The future in 100…1,000…10,000…etc. years

Posted by Daniel Berleant in futurism, lifeboat

Aug 2
2013

A full view of the future has to consider a huge range of time scales. Freeman Dyson pointed this out (as D. Hutchinson alerted me). I borrowed his idea in the following passage from my book, The Human Race to the Future, published by the Lifeboat Foundation.

—
Our journey into the future begins by asking what the next hundred years will be like. Call that century-long time frame the “first generation” of future history. After a baker’s dozen or so chapters we then move to the second generation — the next order of magnitude after a hundred — the next thousand years. The seventh generation then has a ten million year horizon, the very distant future. Beyond the seventh generation are time horizons above even ten million years. This “powers of ten” scaling of future history was used by well-known physicist Freeman Dyson in chapter 4 of his 1997 book, Imagined Worlds.
—

Technical update on the ebook edition: Many Kindle devices and reader software systems have a menu item for jumping to the table of contents, and another menu item for jumping to the “beginning” of a book, however that is defined. I found out how to build an ebook that defines these locations so that the menu items work. You can use basic html commands. To define the location of the table of contents, you can insert into the html code of the book, right where the table of contents begins, the following html command:

<a name="toc"></a>

And now the user can click on the device or reader software’s “table of contents” menu item and they go straight to the table of contents!

To define the “beginning” of the book where you, as the author, want users to go when they click the “beginning” menu item (title page? Chapter 1? You decide), just put the following html command at that location in the ebook’s html source:

<a name="start"></a>

…and now that works too!

Of course you can use MS Word, Dreamweaver, etc., instead of editing the raw html, but ultimately those editors do it by inserting the same html commands.

Quantum Entanglement in Future Communication Technologies

Posted by Tom Kerwick in engineering, futurism, information science, particle physics, space | 4 Comments on Quantum Entanglement in Future Communication Technologies

Jul 10
2013

The arXiv blog on MIT Technology Review recently reported a breakthrough ‘Physicists Discover the Secret of Quantum Remote Control’ [1] which led some to comment on whether this could be used as an FTL communication channel. In order to appreciate the significance of the paper on Quantum Teleportation of Dynamics [2], one should note that it has already been determined that transfer of information via a quantum tangled pair occurs *at least* 10,000 times faster than the speed of light [3]. The next big communications breakthrough?

Quantum Entanglement Visual

In what could turn out to be a major breakthrough for the advancement of long-distance communications in space exploration, several problems are resolved — where if a civilization is eventually established on a star system many light years away, for example, such as on one of the recently discovered Goldilocks Zone super-Earths in the Gliese 667C star system, then communications back to people on Earth may after all be… instantaneous.

However, implications do not just stop there either. As recently reported in The Register [5], researchers in Israel at the University of Jerusalem, have established that quantum tangling can be used to send data across both TIME AND SPACE [6]. Their recent paper entitled ‘Entanglement Between Photons that have Never Coexisted’ [7] describes how photon-to-photon entanglement can be used to connect with photons in their past/future, opening up an understanding into how one may be able to engineer technology to not just communicate instantaneously across space — but across space-time.

Whilst in the past many have questioned what benefits have been gained in quantum physics research and in particular large research projects such as the LHC, it would seem that the field of quantum entanglement may be one of the big pay-offs. Whist it has yet to be categorically proven that quantum entanglement can be used as a communication channel, and the majority opinion dismisses it, one can expect much activity in quantum entanglement over the next decade. It may yet spearhead the next technological revolution.

[1] www.technologyreview.com/view/516636/physicists-discover-the…te-control
[2] Quantum Teleportation of Dynamics http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0319
[3] Bounding the speed of ‘spooky action at a distance’ http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0614
[4] http://www.universetoday.com/103131/three-potentially-habita…iese-667c/
[5] The Register — Biting the hand that feeds IT — http://www.theregister.co.uk/
[6] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/03/quantum_boffins_get_spooky_with_time/
[7] Entanglement Between Photons that have Never Coexisted http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.4191

The Post-Human World

Posted by Cadell Last in biological, complex systems, evolution, futurism, robotics/AI, singularityTagged evolution, future, global brain, technological singularity

Jul 8
2013

Originally posted via The Advanced Apes

Through my writings I have tried to communicate ideas related to how unique our intelligence is and how it is continuing to evolve. Intelligence is the most bizarre of biological adaptations. It appears to be an adaptation of infinite reach. Whereas organisms can only be so fast and efficient when it comes to running, swimming, flying, or any other evolved skill; it appears as though the same finite limits are not applicable to intelligence.

What does this mean for our lives in the 21st century?

First, we must be prepared to accept that the 21st century will not be anything like the 20th. All too often I encounter people who extrapolate expected change for the 21st century that mirrors the pace of change humanity experienced in the 20th. This will simply not be the case. Just as cosmologists are well aware of the bizarre increased acceleration of the expansion of the universe; so evolutionary theorists are well aware of the increased pace of techno-cultural change. This acceleration shows no signs of slowing down; and few models that incorporate technological evolution predict that it will.

The result of this increased pace of change will likely not just be quantitative. The change will be qualitative as well. This means that communication and transportation capabilities will not just become faster. They will become meaningfully different in a way that would be difficult for contemporary humans to understand. And it is in the strange world of qualitative evolutionary change that I will focus on two major processes currently predicted to occur by most futurists.

Qualitative evolutionary change produces interesting differences in experience. Often times this change is referred to as a “metasystem transition”. A metasystem transition occurs when a group of subsystems coordinate their goals and intents in order to solve more problems than the constituent systems. There have been a few notable metasystem transitions in the history of biological evolution:

Transition from non-life to life
Transition from single-celled life to multi-celled life
Transition from decentralized nervous system to centralized brains
Transition from communication to complex language and self-awareness

All these transitions share the characteristics described of subsystems coordinating to form a larger system that solve more problems than they could do individually. All transitions increased the rate of change in the universe (i.e., reduction of entropy production). The qualitative nature of the change is important to understand, and may best be explored through a thought experiment.

Imagine you are a single-celled organism on the early Earth. You exist within a planetary network of single-celled life of considerable variety, all adapted to different primordial chemical niches. This has been the nature of the planet for well over 2 billion years. Then, some single-cells start to accumulate in denser and denser agglomerations. One of the cells comes up to you and says:

I think we are merging together. I think the remainder of our days will be spent in some larger system that we can’t really conceive. We will each become adapted for a different specific purpose to aid the new higher collective.

Surely that cell would be seen as deranged. Yet, as the agglomerations of single-cells became denser, formerly autonomous individual cells start to rely more and more on each other to exploit previously unattainable resources. As the process accelerates this integrated network forms something novel, and more complex than had previously ever existed: the first multicellular organisms.

The difference between living as an autonomous single-cell is not just quantitative (i.e., being able to exploit more resources) but also qualitative (i.e., shift from complete autonomy to being one small part of an integrated whole). Such a shift is difficult to conceive of before it actually becomes a new normative layer of complexity within the universe.

Another example of such a transition that may require less imagination is the transition to complex language and self-awareness. Language is certainly the most important phenomena that separates our species from the rest of the biosphere. It allows us to engage in a new evolution, technocultural evolution, which is essentially a new normative layer of complexity in the universe as well. For this transition, the qualitative leap is also important to understand. If you were an australopithecine, your mode of communication would not necessarily be that much more efficient than that of any modern day great ape. Like all other organisms, your mind would be essentially isolated. Your deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions could not fully be expressed and understood by other minds within your species. Furthermore, an entire range of thought would be completely unimaginable to you. Anything abstract would not be communicable. You could communicate that you were hungry; but you could not communicate about what you thought of particular foods (for example). Language changed all that; it unleashed a new thought frontier. Not only was it now possible to exchange ideas at a faster rate, but the range of ideas that could be thought of, also increased.

And so after that digression we come to the main point: the metasystem transition of the 21st century. What will it be? There are two dominant, non-mutually exclusive, frameworks for imagining this transition: technological singularity and the global brain.

The technological singularity is essentially a point in time when the actual agent of techno-cultural change; itself changes. At the moment the modern human mind is the agent of change. But artificial intelligence is likely to emerge this century. And building a truly artificial intelligence may be the last machine we (i.e., biological humans) invent.

The second framework is the global brain. The global brain is the idea that a collective planetary intelligence is emerging from the Internet, created by increasingly dense information pathways. This would essentially give the Earth an actual sensing centralized nervous system, and its evolution would mirror, in a sense, the evolution of the brain in organisms, and the development of higher-level consciousness in modern humans.

In a sense, both processes could be seen as the phenomena that will continue to enable trends identified by global brain theorist Francis Heylighen:

The flows of matter, energy, and information that circulate across the globe become ever larger, faster and broader in reach, thanks to increasingly powerful technologies for transport and communication, which open up ever-larger markets and forums for the exchange of goods and services.

Some view the technological singularity and global brain as competing futurist hypotheses. However, I see them as deeply symbiotic phenomena. If the metaphor of a global brain is apt, at the moment the internet forms a type of primitive and passive intelligence. However, as the internet starts to form an ever greater role in human life, and as all human minds gravitate towards communicating and interacting in this medium, the internet should start to become an intelligent mediator of human interaction. Heylighen explains how this should be achieved:

the intelligent web draws on the experience and knowledge of its users collectively, as externalized in the “trace” of preferences that they leave on the paths they have traveled.

This is essentially how the brain organizes itself, by recognizing the shapes, emotions, and movements of individual neurons, and then connecting them to communicate a “global picture”, or an individual consciousness.

The technological singularity naturally fits within this evolution. The biological human brain can only connect so deeply with the Internet. We must externalize our experience with the Internet in (increasingly small) devices like laptops, smart phones, etc. However, artificial intelligence and biological intelligence enhanced with nanotechnology could form quite a deeper connection with the Internet. Such a development could, in theory, create an all-encompassing information processing system. Our minds (largely “artificial”) would form the neurons of the system, but a decentralized order would emerge from these dynamic interactions. This would be quite analogous to the way higher-level complexity has emerged in the past.

So what does this mean for you? Well many futurists debate the likely timing of this transition, but there is currently a median convergence prediction of between 2040–2050. As we approach this era we should suspect many fundamental things about our current institutions to change profoundly. There will also be several new ethical issues that arise, including issues of individual privacy, and government and corporate control. All issues that deserve a separate post.

Fundamentally this also means that your consciousness and your nature will change considerably throughout this century. The thought my sound bizarre and even frightening, but only if you believe that human intelligence and nature are static and unchanging. The reality is that human intelligence and nature are an ever evolving process. The only difference in this transition is that you will actually be conscious of the evolution itself.

Consciousness has never experienced a metasystem transition (since the last metasystem transition was towards higher-level consciousness!). So in a sense, a post-human world can still include your consciousness. It will just be a new and different consciousness. I think it is best to think about it as the emergence of something new and more complex, as opposed to the death or end of something. For the first time, evolution will have woken up.

KurzweilAI is promoting our book today!

Posted by Eric Klien in futurism, lifeboat | 1 Comment on KurzweilAI is promoting our book today!

Jul 8
2013

KurzweilAI is promoting our book today at
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-human-race-to-the-future-what-…load-today

Spread the word!

P.S. You can interact with the author of the book at https://www.facebook.com/groups/thehumanracetothefuture/

Human Destiny is to Eliminate Death — Essays, Rants & Arguments on Immortalism (Edited Volume)

Posted by Franco Cortese in biological, biotech/medical, education, ethics, fun, futurism, human trajectories, life extension, media & arts, neuroscience, philosophy, policy, rantsTagged anthology, biotech, book, CFT, Cortese Franco, debate, edited volume, essays, gerontology, Immortal Life, immortalism, immortality, ImmortalLife.info, indefinite lifespans, Life-extension, longevity, media & arts, medicine, science, superlongevity

Jul 3
2013

Immortal Life has complied an edited volume of essays, arguments, and debates about Immortalism titled Human Destiny is to Eliminate Death from many esteemed ImmortalLife.info Authors (a good number of whom are also Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Board members as well), such as Martine Rothblatt (Ph.D, MBA, J.D.), Marios Kyriazis (MD, MS.c, MI.Biol, C.Biol.), Maria Konovalenko (M.Sc.), Mike Perry (Ph.D), Dick Pelletier, Khannea Suntzu, David Kekich (Founder & CEO of MaxLife Foundation), Hank Pellissier (Founder of Immortal Life), Eric Schulke & Franco Cortese (the previous Managing Directors of Immortal Life), Gennady Stolyarov II, Jason Xu (Director of Longevity Party China and Longevity Party Taiwan), Teresa Belcher, Joern Pallensen and more. The anthology was edited by Immortal Life Founder & Senior Editor, Hank Pellissier.

This one-of-a-kind collection features ten debates that originated at ImmortalLife.info, plus 36 articles, essays and diatribes by many of IL’s contributors, on topics from nutrition to mind-filing, from teleomeres to “Deathism”, from libertarian life-extending suggestions to religion’s role in RLE to immortalism as a human rights issue.

The book is illustrated with famous paintings on the subject of aging and death, by artists such as Goya, Picasso, Cezanne, Dali, and numerous others.

The book was designed by Wendy Stolyarov; edited by Hank Pellissier; published by the Center for Transhumanity. This edited volume is the first in a series of quarterly anthologies planned by Immortal Life

Find it on Amazon HERE and on Smashwords HERE

This Immortal Life Anthology includes essays, articles, rants and debates by and between some of the leading voices in Immortalism, Radical Life-Extension, Superlongevity and Anti-Aging Medicine.

A (Partial) List of the Debaters & Essay Contributors:

Martine Rothblatt Ph.D, MBA, J.D. — inventor of satellite radio, founder of Sirius XM and founder of the Terasem Movement, which promotes technological immortality. Dr. Rothblatt is the author of books on gender freedom (Apartheid of Sex, 1995), genomics (Unzipped Genes, 1997) and xenotransplantation (Your Life or Mine, 2003).

Marios Kyriazis MD, MSc, MIBiol, CBiol. founded the British Longevity Society, was the first to address the free-radical theory of aging in a formal mainstream UK medical journal, has authored dozens of books on life-extension and has discussed indefinite longevity in 700 articles, lectures and media appearances globally.

Maria Konovalenko is a molecular biophysicist and the program coordinator for the Science for Life Extension Foundation. She earned her M.Sc. degree in Molecular Biological Physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. She is a co-founder of the International Longevity Alliance.

Jason Xu is the director of Longevity Party China and Longevity Party Taiwan, and he was an intern at SENS.

Mike Perry, PhD. has worked for Alcor since 1989 as Care Services Manager. He has authored or contributed to the automated cooldown and perfusion modeling programs. He is a regular contributor to Alcor newsletters. He has been a member of Alcor since 1984.

David A. Kekich, Founder, President & C.E.O Maximum Life Extension Foundation, works to raise funds for life-extension research. He serves as a Board Member of the American Aging Association, Life Extension Buyers’ Club and Alcor Life Extension Foundation Patient Care Trust Fund. He authored Smart, Strong and Sexy at 100?, a how-to book for extreme life extension.

Eric Schulke is the founder of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE). He was a Director, Teams Coordinator and ran Marketing & Outreach at the Immortality Institute, now known as Longecity, for 4 years. He is the Co-Managing Director of Immortal Life.

Hank Pellissier is the Founder & Senior Editor of ImmortaLife.info. Previously, he was the founder/director of Transhumanity.net. Before that, he was Managing Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology (ieet.org). He’s written over 120 futurist articles for IEET, Hplusmagazine.com, Transhumanity.net, ImmortalLife.info and the World Future Society.

Franco Cortese is on the Advisory Board for Lifeboat Foundation on their Scientific Advisory Board (Life-Extension Sub-Board) and their Futurism Board. He is the Co-Managing Director alongside of Immortal Life and a Staff Editor for Transhumanity. He has written over 40 futurist articles and essays for H+ Magazine, The Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, Immortal Life, Transhumanity and The Rational Argumentator.

Gennady Stolyarov II is a Staff Editor for Transhumanity, Contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre, Rebirth of Reason, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator.

Brandon King is Co-Director of the United States Longevity Party.

Khannea Suntzu is a transhumanist and virtual activist, and has been covered in articles in Le Monde, CGW and Forbes.

Teresa Belcher is an author, blogger, Buddhist, consultant for anti-aging, life extension, healthy life style and happiness, and owner of Anti-Aging Insights.

Dick Pelletier is a weekly columnist who writes about future science and technologies for numerous publications.

Joern Pallensen has written articles for Transhumanity and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Sexbots, Ethics, and Transhumans

Posted by Clyde DeSouza in ethics, evolution, futurism, media & arts, robotics/AITagged AI, Clyde DeSouza, Dirrogate, longevity, sexbot ethics, sexbots, transhumanism | 7 Comments on Sexbots, Ethics, and Transhumans

Jun 25
2013

“I zoomed in as she approached the steps of the bridge, taking voyeuristic pleasure in seeing her pixelated cleavage fill the screen.

What was it about those electronic dots that had the power to turn people on? There was nothing real in them, but that never stopped millions of people every day, male and female, from deriving sexual gratification by interacting with those points of light.

It must all be down to our perception of reality”. –Memories with Maya

We are transitional humans; Transhumans:

Transhumanism is about using technology to improve the human condition. Perhaps a nascent stigma attached to the transhumanist movement in some circles comes from the ethical implications and usage of high technology — bio-tech and nano-tech to name a few, on people. Yet, being transhuman does not necessarily have to be associated with bio-hacking the human body, or entail the donning of cyborg-like prosthetics. Although it is hard not to plainly see and recognize the benefits such human augmentation technology has, for persons in need.

Orgasms and Longevity:

Today, how many normal people, even staunch theists, can claim not to use sexual aids and visual stimulation in the form of video or interaction via video, to achieve sexual satisfaction? It’s hard to deny the therapeutic effect an orgasm has in improving the human condition. In brief, some benefits to health and longevity associated with regular sex and orgasms:

When we orgasm we release hormones, including oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin equals relaxation, and when released it can help us calm down and feel euphoric.
People having more sex add years to their lifespan. Dr. Oz touts a 200 orgasms a year guideline. [1]

Recommended reading: The Science of Orgasm [2]

While orgasms usually occur as a result of physical sexual activity, there is no conclusive study that proves beneficial orgasms are only produced when sexual activity involves two humans. Erotica in the form of literature and later, moving images, have been used to stimulate the mind into inducing an orgasm for a good many centuries in the absence of a human partner. As technology is the key enabler in stimulating the mind, what might the sexual choices (preferences?) of the human race — the Transhuman be, going forward?

Enter the Sexbot…

(Gray Scott speaking on Sexbots at 1:19 minutes into the video)

SexBots and Digital Surrogates [Dirrogates]

Sexbots, or sex robots can come in two forms. Fully digital incarnations with AI, viewed through Augmented Reality visors, or as physical robots — advanced enough to pass off as human surrogates. The porn industry has always been at the fore-front of video and interactive innovation, experimenting with means of immersing the audience into the “action”. Gonzo Porn [3] is one such technique that started off as a passive linear viewing experience, then progressed to multi-angle DVD interactivity and now to Virtual Reality first person point-of-view interactivity.

Augmented Reality and Digital Surrogates of porn stars performing with AI built in, will be the next logical step. How could this be accomplished?

Somewhere on hard-drives in Hollywood studios, there are full body digital models and “performance capture” files of actors and actresses. When these perf-cap files are assigned to any suitable 3D CGI model, an animator can bring to life the Digital Surrogate [Dirrogate] of the original actor. Coupled with realistic skin rendering using Separable Subsurface Scattering (SSSS) rendering techniques [4] for instance, and with AI “behaviour” libraries, these Dirrogates can populate the real world, enter living-rooms and change or uplift the mood of person — for the better.

(The above video is for illustration purposes of 3D model data-sets and perf-capture)

With 3D printing of human body parts now possible and blue prints coming online [5] with full mechanical assembly instructions, the other kind of sexbot is possible. It won’t be long before the 3D laser-scanned blueprint of a porn star sexbot will be available for licensing and home printing, at which point, the average person will willingly transition to transhuman status once the ‘buy now’ button has been clicked.

Programmable matter — Claytronics [6] will take this technology to even more sophisticated levels.

Sexbots and Ethics:

If we look at Digital Surrogate Sexbot technology, which is a progression of interactive porn, we can see the technology to create such Dirrogate sexbots exists today, and better iterations will come about in the next couple of years. Augmented Reality hardware when married to wearable technology such as ‘fundawear’ [7] and a photo-realistic Dirrogate driven by perf-captured libraries of porn stars under software (AI) control, can bring endless sessions of sexual pleasure to males and females.

Things get complicated as technology evolves, and to borrow a term from Kurzweil, exponentially. Recently the Kinect 2 was announced. This off the shelf hardware ‘game controller’ in the hands of capable hackers has shown what is possible. It can be used as a full body performance capture solution, a 3D laser scanner that can build a replica of a room in realtime and more…

Which means, during a dirrogate sexbot session where a human wears an Augmented Reality visor such as Meta-glass [8], it would be possible to connect via the internet to your partner, wife or husband and have their live perf-capture session captured by a Kinect 2 controller and drive the photo-realistic Dirrogate of your favorite pornstar.

Would this be the makings of Transhumanist adultry? Some other ethical issues to ponder:

Thou shalt not covet their neighbors wife — But there is no commandant about pirating her perf-capture file.
Will humans, both male or female, prefer sexbots versus human partners for sexual fulfillment? — Will oxytocin release make humans “feel” for their sexbots?
As AI algorithms get better…bordering on artificial sentience, will sexbots start asking for “Dirrogate Rights”?

These are only some of the points worth considering… and if these seem like plausible concerns, imagine what happens in the case of humanoid like physical Sex-bots. As Gray Scott mentions in his video above.

As we evolve into Transhumans, we will find ourselves asking that all important question “What is Real?”

“It will all be down to our perception of reality”. – Memories with Maya

Table of References:

[i] Human Augmentation: Be bionic arm - http://bebionic.com/the_hand/patient_stories/nigel_ackland

[1] http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4648/10-Reasons-to-Up-You…tient.html

[2] The Science of Orgasm- http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/080188490X?tag=lifeboatfound-…atfound-20

[3] Gonzo Pornography - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_pornography

[4] Separable subsurface scattering rendering - http://dirrogate.com/realtime-photorealistic-human-skin-rendering/

[5] 3D Printing of Body parts - http://inmoov.blogspot.fr/p/assembly-help.html

[6] Programmable Matter; Claytronics - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/claytronics/

[7] Fundawear: Wearable sex underwear - http://www.fundawearreviews.com/

[8] Meta-view: Digital see through Augmented Reality visor - http://www.meta-view.com/

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Category: futurism – Page 1,278