Lifeboat Foundation

Most of the threats to human survival come down to one factor – the vulnerability of the human biological body.

If a tiny faction of the sums being spent on researching or countering these threats was to be used to address the question of a non-biological alternative, a good team could research and develop a working prototype in a matter of years.

The fundamental question does not lie in the perhaps inappropriately named “Singularity”, (of the AI kind), but rather in by what means are neural impulses translated into sensory experience – sounds, colors, tastes, odours, tactile sensations.

By what means is the TRANSLATION effected?

Continue reading “The Basic Problem” »

There are as many ways to help another human being as there are people in need of help. For some, the urgent need is as basic as food and water. For others, it is an opportunity to develop a talent, realize an idea, and reach one’s full potential. Helping people get what they need most in life is at the heart of successful philanthropy.

However, you can’t simply give money away without thinking deeply about how and where the money will go and why you’re doing the giving. You need to approach philanthropy in a strategic and systematic way—just as an entrepreneur approaches a new venture. That’s the only way to make a self-sustaining difference in the world. That being said, here are five key ways to achieve sustainable success with your philanthropic efforts.

1. Open a Door
Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person’s life. A new skill, an introduction, an education—these gifts open doors that would otherwise remain closed. A promising beneficiary will walk through that door and create opportunities for others.

2. Define Your Passion
To have enduring impact, your philanthropic efforts should reflect the causes you are most passionate about. For me, one of those things is education: A good education is the most valuable thing you can give another person. My own philanthropic efforts have always included an educational element, whether it’s expanding opportunities to educate a promising mind or extending the brain’s ability to learn. If you follow your own passions, you’ll increase exponentially your chances of sustainable success.

Continue reading “Naveen Jain — Rethinking Sustainable Philanthropy” »

Otto E. Rossler, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, F.R.G.

Resumé

There are new developments in gravitation theory beginning in 2005. They have changed the previously accepted scientific picture of black holes. On the basis of these results, a currently running experiment, designed to produce artificial black holes of very low velocity, has ceased to be innocuous. The experimentally hoped-for “mini black holes,” (1) become more likely to arise, (2) do not evaporate, (3) are undetectable by the machine, (4) will in part get stuck inside earth and (5) will grow there exponentially so as to shrink the earth to 2 cm in perhaps 5 years’ time. Hence a re-appraisal of the experiment is necessary before it can be allowed to go on. Please, rule so, dear Council.

(July 30, 2011)

Continue reading “Black Holes Are Different – A Report Made to the UN Security Council” »

carboncopies.org

Concerns arose recently about the concept of so-called “catchment areas”, evolutionary developments that result in a very tight interdependence between requirements for survival and behavioral drives. In particular, the concern has been raised that such catchment might render any significant modification of the human mind, such as through brain enhancement, impossible (Suzanne Gildert, “Pavlov’s AI: What do superintelligences REALLY want?”, Humanity+@Caltech, 2010).

The concept of a catchment area assumes that beneath the veneer of goal-oriented rational planning, learned behavior and skill lies a basic set of drives and reward mechanisms. The only purpose of those drives and reward mechanisms is genetic survival, a necessary result of eons of natural selection. It follows that all of our perceived goals, our desires and interests, the pursuit of wealth, social acceptance or fame, love, scientific understanding, all of it is merely a means to an end. All of it points back to the set of drives and reward mechanisms that best enable us as individuals, us as a tribe and us as a species to survive in our given environment.

Why does that describe a catchment area, a type of prison of behavior? It is assumed that the distribution of behaviors that have enabled long-term survival is a narrow one with little real variance. Stray too far from the norm and your behaviors become counter-productive to survival. Worst of all, if you recognize your enslavement to those single-purpose drives and reward mechanisms, if you realize that they have no meaning beyond a survival that itself links to no universal purpose, then you risk embarking upon a nihilistic course that would likely end in your extermination or self-termination.

Continue reading “The Darwin Escape” »

… but am I allowed to offer to the highest board of the planet to answer to its questions?

… if he singlehandedly breaks the world-wide press curfew surrounding the fact that CERN continues with a potentially earth-jeopardizing experiment despite the official request by a court last January to first allow for a scientific safety conference.

The story of “Our Last Hour” (Sir Martin Rees) has a latest twist. Since CERN cannot muster a single scientific argument or a single renowned scientist to defend its use of force against scientific evidence, it recruited a gang of anonymous science kids to defend its cause by pretending to ask a scientific question which, if taken seriously, would have destroyed the scientific reputation of their only planet-widely visible adversary.

The Telemach theorem, which pits Einstein against CERN, was to be discredited, not by scientific argument but by luring its proponent into taking a pseudoscientific question disguised as a genuine concern seriously: If the size ratio between two fingers says something about the ratio between two little guys, what is the ratio between one finger and one guy?

The media cannot understand, of course, but every citizen on the planet will. Science has lost its credit by visibly misleading the planet – unless CERN apologizes immediately for its onslaught on everyone’s life. The two fingers become a world-wide symbol.

Stuart Kauffman and Giuseppe Longo

July 7, 2011

At least since Isaac Newton, an enduring belief among physicists and many other scientists has been that there is a fundamental set of laws, presumably concerning particle physics, that will deductively entail the entire evolution of the universe and all in it, including all of earthly life, the evolution of the biosphere, econosphere and even history. If so, nothing truly novel, ie un-entailed, can arise.

In this piece we provide strong grounds to say that the long held belief that there is a theory entailing all that happens in the universe is false. No Law entails the evolution of life. If so, reductionism is false, and we must think anew. Our world is not what we have thought.

Continue reading “No Law Entails The Evolution Of The Biosphere” »

From: Otto E. Rossler
To: “[email protected]“
Cc: “[email protected]” ; “[email protected]“
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 2:52 PM
Subject: shortest-term survival

Dear Mr. Secretary, dear UN Security Council:

Did you pay attention to this public appeal made to you?

https://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/07/public-appeal-to-the-execu…esterwelle

Continue reading “PUBLIC LETTER” »