Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: government – Page 199

How will we send humans to the moon, Mars and other destinations in space? The chances are good that electric propulsion will play a role, and a company called MSNW is at the cutting edge of that technology.

The director of propulsion research for Redmond, Wash.-based MSNW, Anthony Pancotti, will take a share of Capitol Hill’s spotlight on Thursday during a hearing organized by the House Subcommittee on Space. And he expects to learn as much from his encounter with lawmakers as they’ll learn from him.

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The government’s mission to put the UK at the forefront of commercial spaceflight has been given a big boost after plans were announced to build the world’s first private space research centre in Bedfordshire. The £120 million Blue Abyss facility will be constructed at RAF Henlow, providing domestic and international companies with access to the world’s biggest 50 metre deep pool, a 120 room hotel, an astronaut training centre and a “human performance centre” that will help divers, astronauts and athletes train at the very top level.

The base, which is set to fully close in 2020, already houses some of the facilities that paid-for astronauts need to acclimatise to the rigours of space. Its centrifuge base, for example, will expose space-goers to extreme G forces as part of their commercial astronaut training programme. The idea is to provide the necessary services needed by private spaceflight providers to get their passengers launch ready.

The pool, which will be three times deeper than NASA’s 12 metre Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), won’t just be used for space projects. Offshore oil, gas and renewable companies will be invited to test their equipment in Blue Abyss’ waters. Submersibles will also be welcome, allowing companies to test underwater vehicles in “extreme environments.”

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Another LEAF interview from the International Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid with Didier Coeurnelle of Heales.

LEAF director Elena Milova was recently at the International Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid. During the conference she caught up with life extension advocate Didier Coeurnelle.

In this interview Didier discusses his projects and shares advice to the community regarding what kind of activities can help foster progress in the development of rejuvenation biotechnology.

Didier is one of the most active members of the European life extension community, co-president of HEALES (Healthy Life Extension Society), vice-president of French Transhumanist Association Technoprog, and a founding member of the International Longevity Alliance. He is also a long-term member of the local ecology movement. Didier is currently a lawyer in a Belgian federal government agency for social security. Didier is the main organizer of the biennial scientific conference Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing, held in Brussels, Belgium.

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France launched a technology visa on Thursday which aims to attract international talent, with newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron talking about the need to strip out regulation to become a “country of unicorns”.

Speaking at the Viva Tech conference in Paris, France, Macron outlined how his government would slash complex regulation, make it easier for foreign talent to work, and support start-ups with money, in order to create world-leading companies.

The visa is open to start-up founders, employees and investors and is a fast-track procedure to obtain a residence permit in France known as the “Talent Passport”. It’s valid for four years and extended to immediate family members.

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Lifeboat Foundation readers are aware that the world has become progressively more chaotic. Part of the danger comes from centralized points of failure. While large institutions can bear great stress, they also cause more harm when they fail. Because there are so few pillars, if one collapses, the whole system is destroyed.

For instance, prior to the federal reserve system, bank runs we extremely common. However, since the financial system consisted of small, competing institutions, failure was confined to deficient banks. So while failure was frequent, it was less impactful and systemic. In contrast, after the establishment of the federal reserve, banks became fewer and larger. Failures, while more infrequent, were large scale catastrophes when they occurred. They affected the whole economy and had longer impact.

This is even more important in political systems, which are the foundation of how a society operates. In order to have a more robust, antifragile social order, systems must be decentralized. Rather than a monopolistic, static political order, there must be a series of decentralized experiments. While failures are inevitable, it can be localized to these small experiments rather than the whole structure.

We call these small, experimental governments “startup societies”. Examples include smart cities, seasteading, eco-villages, special economic zones, intentional communities, microstates, private cities, Ect. The Startup Societies Foundation studies these experiments, promotes them to the public, and hold conferences.

The Startup Societies Foundation is partnering with D10e to host our biggest conference yet. The Startup Societies Summit is a trade show that unites 300–500 engineers, policy experts, technologists, urban planners, economists, entrepreneurs, and investors interested in building new societies. Attendees with startups related to new societies can engage with investors to push their ideas to fruition. By networking together and sharing valuable information, our guests will be at the forefront starting new societies. The Summit will take place in City College San Francisco on August 11th-12th. If you are interested in buying tickets or becoming a sponsor, here is a link to our crowdfunding campaign.

Like a startup, a startup society begins small and scales when it produces a better service through technology. 65% of the earth’s population will live in cities by 2040. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for entrepreneurs. They can become innovators of the greatest wealth creation tool: cities. Join us and gain an edge in the growing, exciting field of innovative governance.

One of the missions of Lifeboat Foundation has always been to contemplate the protection of our fragile Spaceship-Earth and to contemplate a day when we may need to migrate from this tiny stage. Yesterday, that day may have been moved a lot closer. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday, I had a fantasy. One that I passionately hoped would become reality. Minutes before Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, I began to daydream…

  • I dreamt that Trump might listen to his top science advisors and his daughter
  • I dreamt that he might not gamble our existence on his minority opinion that humans cannot help rescue the environment.
  • I dreamt that he would recognize that clean energy jobs trump legacy coal mining
  • I dreamt that he would avoid export tariffs for failing to respect international norms
  • I dreamt that he would stop pandering to Yahoos and stand for something worthy and undeniable

No such luck! The USA has lost its Mojo—at least while it is led by a man with no grasp of science, history, morals or a global perspective. As Trump begun to speak, I was sucked into a cruel nightmare. But this nightmare is reality. It’s the reality of a buffoon representing you and me in our nation’s highest office.

Question: Time for a thought experiment. Can you guess the answer?…

What do Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elon Musk, The Pope, Richard Branson and French president, Emmanuel Macron, have in common?

Answer: They are all saddened that the US is surrendering its inspiration, leadership and common sense. Clean energy creates jobs, saves our planet, and aids the political and military stability of nations. Trump doesn’t sense any of this. He is validated by his base and his Yes men. He is a climate denier, and he doesn’t even read. He only watches what others say about him on television. [continue below video]

I cannot add perspective nor amplify President Macron’s urgent message to Americans. The clip is trending on Facebook with the caption: “French president destroys Trump in 5 words”. This suggest that he is taking a jab at Trump; mocking his poor grasp on science and the environment. But, politics plays no role in this message. It is about global impact and opportunity…

The French president hasn’t made a fool of Trump. Trump has brought shame onto his office and made a fool of our system of government, all on his own. His defiance of science and complete lack of understanding history risks irreparable harm to our planet. Trump feels that American jobs come before environmental policy. Yet, he is turning his back on the biggest jobs market since the steam engine. [continue below video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZnVuw__lo

Perhaps more critically, his withdrawal from the global accord will bring about tariffs against US cars, steel, airplanes, timber and electronics. After all, by pulling out of the Paris accords, we ducking environmental safeties in an effort to make America great — or more accurately, in our effort to bury our heads in the sands and let the rest of the world take the lead on clean energy, efficiency, reducing pollution and averting global warming.

Response to US withdrawal…

Philip Raymond co-chairs Crypsa & Bitcoin Event, columnist & board member at Lifeboat, editor
at WildDuck and will deliver the keynote address at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.

Living systems on every scale have governance — methods of self-regulation to manage the coherence and continuity of the system. Also, for steering toward goals or away from dangers.

This governance is not the same as a government. Government as we know it is a blunt instrument designed to enforce the will of the many over the few (although at this point it enforces the will of few on the many) It is a monolithic bureaucracy. And frankly, it isn’t very good at governance, at least not as defined in the first paragraph.

Notice that governance includes both conserving continuity and making progress. All living systems have this tension between being conservative and progressive.

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A write-up on about neural lace and the future economy: https://altleft.host/zoltan-istvan-the-economy-of-the-future…ural-lace/ #transhumanism

Zoltan Istvan, a leading Transhuman, shows us that the economic system of Technocracy needs Transhuman citizens to make it work. This is not surprising because Transhumanism and Technocracy are two sides of the same coin. ⁃ TN Editor.

The battle for the “soul” of the global economy is underway. The next few decades will likely decide whether capitalism survives or is replaced with a techno-fuelled quasi-socialism where robots do most of the jobs while humans live off government support, likely a designated guaranteed or basic income.

Many experts believe wide-scale automation is inevitable. Even the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, recently announced it’s building an AI to replace its managers, many of whom are highly educated and previously thought invulnerable to automation. Robots, it seems, will manage everything. Or will they?

A next-generation technology, likely to arrive in five to 10 years, is being credited as the saviour of capitalism. Known today as neural prosthetics, or neural lace, it’s essentially tech that reads your brainwaves. This tech promises to connect our brains to the cloud and AI to link us with machines using thought alone.

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