Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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I believe Google is making a huge mistake in completely banning facial recognition systems for its Glass product. In my opinion, such a system could be used to help save thousands of lives. But then, we’re too damn caught up on absolute privacy that we’re willing to sacrifice actual, physical lives to ensure our privacy remains untainted. Such individualist dogma is deadly.

According to the Amber Alert webpage, “A child goes missing in the United States every 40 seconds,” and that “More than 700,000 children go missing annually.” That is an absolutely frightening statistic! Much more frightening than the prospect that some Glass user may know my name.

How far are we willing to go to ensure absolute privacy isn’t diminished whatsoever? When does the right of privacy begin interfering with the right of safety? Can the two come together in harmony, or are they destined to be in conflict until society finally reaches a decision over one or the other?

I understand the desire for privacy, but as I’ve argued in the past, as we as a society become more public and technologically open-source, the idea of privacy slowly fades away. That isn’t to say that some forms of privacy can’t be maintained. Surely we should have the right to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ over whether or not our private data is to be shared publicly. That level of freedom and choice could easily maintain a sense of privacy to each individual.

But then, when it comes to missing children, or even missing adults, should we not then be willing to sacrifice a portion of our privacy to ensure the safety of those who’s gone missing? It doesn’t even have to be that large of a peek into each’s private lives — simply a facial recog. map, a name, and whether or not they’re reported missing, or even possibly wanted.

Picture this with me: It’s 2014 and only a few months have passed since the commercial launch of Google Glass. Hundreds of thousands of people already acquire their own device, scattered across the United States. A mandatory app was included with Glass, which was connected with Amber Alert systems. The app has Glass quietly scanning each face you cross paths with, but doesn’t reveal their names, nor does it alert you that it’s currently scanning. For all you know, it’s a normal day like any other.

Now, as you’re walking down a street, you walk past an adult male with a pre-teen female. You don’t even pay much attention to them. Just another group of people walking by, as far as you’re concerned. But then Glass, on the other hand, knows something you don’t — the little girl has been reported missing. As a result, without alerting you, the app then — albeit quietly — takes a snapshot of the girl and unknown male captor, contacts a 911 operator program, and delivers GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken and in which direction the girl was walking. The police show up, arrest the male captor, and contacts the parents of the missing child informing them that she’d been found and safe.

This was able to occur because each parent — or family member, guardian, etc. — had allowed the missing child’s name and facial recog. map to be archived in a Amber Alert system program, which connects via app on Glass. Was said child’s “privacy” diminished? Yes. But then she’s also alive because of it and a kidnapper is taken off the streets, not able to harm anyone else again.

Isn’t this very real prospect of technologically-enhanced safety worth sacrificing a bit of our own privacy? While I’m not a parent, if anyone of my family were to go missing, their privacy would be the last thing I’d be concerned about. And if I’d gone missing, I’d want everyone to do all they could to find me, even if it meant sacrificing my own privacy.

Google Glass is coming just next year. And with Google’s determination to ban facial recognition using Glass, we must ask ourselves: At what price?

The article above was originally published as a blog post on The Proactionary Transhumanist.

The GE90 is one of the world’s most powerful jet engines. GE plans to produce 100,000 3D-printed components for the next-generation GE9X and Leap models

General Electric (GE), on the hunt for ways to build more than 85,000 fuel nozzles for its new Leap jet engines, is making a big investment in 3D printing. Usually the nozzles are assembled from 20 different parts. Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing can create the units in one metal piece, through a successive layering of materials. The process is more efficient and can be used to create designs that can’t be made using traditional techniques, GE says. The finished product is stronger and lighter than those made on the assembly line and can withstand the extreme temperatures (up to 2,400F) inside an engine. There’s just one problem: Today’s industrial 3D printers don’t have enough capacity to handle GE’s production needs, which require faster, higher-quality output at a lower cost.

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A college student quickly made over $24,000 just by waving this sign on TV.

Here’s the deal: Yesterday on ESPN’s “College GameDay” (an ESPN college football show that’s filmed at a different college campus each week) some student held the above sign that has both the Bitcoin logo and a QR code.

A QR code is a visual representation of any kind of information (frequently a URL for a website). In this case, the code represented a Bitcoin wallet.

On Reddit, Bitcoin fans managed to enhance the QR code from the screen in order to identify his wallet, so that people could donate money to him.

In the next five years, the Internet retail giant expects to use small drones to deliver packages to customer doorsteps within 30 minutes of their order.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shows Charlie Rose prototypes of the delivery drones.

Amazon is testing a delivery service that uses drones to deliver packages within 30 minutes of an order being placed.

Dubbed Amazon PrimeAir, the service uses 8-propeller drones about the size of a remote-controlled airplane to transport shoe-box-size plastic bins from fulfillment centers to customers’ homes. The service, which still requires more testing and clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration, could take to the skies as soon as four to five years, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told Charlie Rose during an interview Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

The completely unmanned aerial vehicles rely on GPS to deliver their cargo, Bezos explained during the segment (see below), which included an Amazon film of the drones in action.

“I know this looks like science fiction — it’s not,” Bezos said.

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EXCERPT

To further underpin this statement, I will share Peter Drucker’s quote, “…The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic…” And also that of Dr. Stephen Covey, “…Again, yesterday holds tomorrow hostage .… Memory is past. It is finite. Vision is future. It is infinite. Vision is greater than history…” And that of Sir Francis Bacon, “… He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator …”

And that of London Business School Professor Gary Hamel, PhD., “…You cannot get to a new place with an old map…” And that of Alvin Toffler, “…The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order…”

View the entire presentation at http://lnkd.in/dP2PmCP

Supermanagement! by Mr. Andres Agostini (Excerpt)

DEEPEST

“…What distinguishes our age from every other is not the world-flattening impact of communications, not the economic ascendance of China and India, not the degradation of our climate, and not the resurgence of ancient religious animosities. Rather, it is a frantically accelerating pace of change…”

Read the entire piece at http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC

Whenever I talk about indefinite life extension, the science and tech behind its development, and the desire for individuals to have the ultimate choice of when and how long they wish to live and die, the radical left almost always resorts to the argument, “Yeah, that sounds great, but then the rich aren’t going to provide it for the 99%. They’ll only keep it for themselves and let us die off.” How is this not equivalent to the conspiracy theory that the 1% are withholding the cure for cancer to the general populace?

It’s a bullshit viewpoint, in my opinion. Yes, the 1% are greedy fucks who care more about profits than anything else, but then, I ask you, how do they expect to earn profits from an extinct species?

While you’re trying to figure out an answer for that, I also find the idea that nothing would result from this kind of oppression to be asinine. Why? Here’s a good example: Black Friday. Every year Black Friday customers gather in the hundreds and thousands in each city, literally rioting, fighting, and killing people, just so they can get their hands on consumer products that’ll be outdated by next year. So if the cure for aging is being withheld from the masses, what the fuck do you think the masses are going to do? Just go home and sob? Ha! There’d be warfare on the streets the next morning.

So do I believe that indefinite life extension will be withheld from the 99% by the 1%? No. Just like I don’t believe that the 1% are withholding the cure for cancer from the 99%.

The article above was originally published as a blog post on The Proactionary Transhumanist.

Each new technology revolutionizes how we approach life and what we do in it. Take my new Kindle Fire HD for example. Before, I simply picked up a book – whether it be hardback or paperback – and start reading. Usually if there was a busy day ahead of me, each time I picked up a book I’d simply read a chapter, bookmark it – a lot of the cases being “dog ears,” unfortunately – and place it to the side, ready for another chapter to be read for another time.

This was a relatively comfortable motion of life that I adhered to. I read a lot. Though of course there were the slight annoyances that could be made known, but were fortunately tolerable. For example, if you don’t have a real bookmark, you then have to ruin the pages by flapping down a top corner of the page you were last reading from. That was a slight nuisance. Another example being, given I had a busy day and thus in need of scheduling, the fact that I had no clue as to how long it would take me to read the chapter, then placed me in a unfortunate position of not knowing how my day will be handled. At times, though rare, I couldn’t even finish a chapter because it was taking too long and I had to get things done.

So back to my Kindle Fire, these slight annoyances as an avid reader have been completely expropriated! Most MOBI-formatted books are well organized and easily readable. So when I’m reading, the Kindle Fire allows me to simply tap the top right corner and instantly bookmarks the page I’m reading. No “dog ears,” no unnecessary pieces of paper needing to be bought to be used as one. If I’m curious as to how long the chapter I’m reading will take, I simply tap the bottom left corner and it not only gives me the # of minutes left in reading the chapter, but the number of hours it’ll take for me to read the entire book. It detects my reading pattern via its sensors and calculates an estimation of how long each page is read, each chapter, the entire book. I also quite enjoy the fact that it provides a % of how much the book I’ve read so far.

This changes a lot for me as a reader. And really, while I’ve labeled them as slight annoyances, thinking back, I’m not sure how I could’ve tolerated such things. Then again, my love for reading always dominated my desire for perfection. But before the Kindle, there were still such a thing as digital books, which were formatted as PDFs (Portable Document Format). I’ve got a LOT of PDFs on my laptop! But then PDFs are incapable of creating bookmarks, and they weren’t exactly mobile-oriented like a normal hardback/paperback book was. That was an even greater nuisance to reading than normal books provided.

Kindle, however, destroyed those annoyances. Completely. It’s really easy to carry around. It doesn’t take up much space at all. It carries thousands of books, and much more when accessing its cloud server. Its battery life is top notch. It detects and learns your reading pattern. It connects to your online accounts. It integrates itself into your life in mere minutes!

When it comes to a reader, it changes everything. And that is revolutionary!

The article above was originally published as a blog post on The Proactionary Transhumanist.

Procreative sexual activity has been at the heart of the evolutionary process for millions of years. Until recently, the situation was simple: a male and a female had sexual intercourse in order to produce offspring and thus ensure survival. But, in humans, there are certain signs that something profound may be happening, signs which may be pointing to the beginning of Radical Life Extension. I argue that reproduction is a tactic used by natural evolution in order to increase complexity and thus, survival. Reproduction equals aging. But, as we now may have the capability to increase complexity through technology, the reproduction stratagem may be downgraded and thus aging will also decrease.

Here, the term ‘Radical Life Extension’ specifically means the abolition of aging. Without the process of aging, however it is defined, people will not suffer age-related degenerative conditions, and they will not die of old age. Therefore, the terms ‘Radical Life Extension’,’ Indefinite Lifespans’, and ‘cure of age-related diseases’, all convey the same meaning: a life without aging. It is important to emphasize that I consider the process of aging to be directly related to that of reproduction. I argue that the process of reproduction is necessarily implicated in the process of aging (in other words, aging happens because we need to reproduce), as explained in my argument number 3 below.

In this context, I would also like to remark that by ‘reproduction’ I specifically refer to sexual (i.e. genetic) reproduction. Evolution may still continue to use (or begin to use) other forms of reproduction such as memetic reproduction and reproduction of noemes.

The main thrust of my discussion is that we are now beginning to witness the first tentative steps leading away from the significance of procreative sexual intercourse and towards the global emergence of other, sustained, non-procreative sexual preferences.

Let me explore a series of logical arguments which lead to an inescapable conclusion. Note that I do not imply a sentient deity in my discussion. I do not infer any entity that possesses any conscious awareness which transcend the laws of nature.

Argument 1
Nature, through evolution, tends to progress towards higher levels of complexity. To put it another way, within natural laws there are basins of attraction which necessarily tend to cause a transition from simple to complex, and therefore lead to the emergence of new characteristics. The Belgian Cyberneticist Francis Heylighen has listed these characteristics in increasing order of complexity, as follows:
* mobility
* sensation
* learning
* intelligence
* morality
* mimicry
* language
* culture
* technology.

He states that “The idea is that all life, wherever it occurs in the universe, will develop those traits of universal fitness, in roughly the same chronological order. It means that those traits are built into the laws of nature. They are statistically inevitable. It is as if nature ‘wants’ us to go in a certain direction. This is what gives biological evolution its clear directionality”.

The above list is not final, and there is no implication that technology is the end stage of human evolution. The point I am making here is a general one: that evolution tends to higher complexity, whatever this complexity might be, in order to ensure survival within a specified niche.

Argument 2
Based on this list, it is obvious that we are currently on the highest stage of natural evolution, that of technology. There will certainly be higher end-points in the future. In fact, I can think of at least two such stages which we have not yet achieved, but at this point I argue that this has profound implications on the issues of aging and radical life extension. If the general direction of evolution is towards increasing complexity and survival, why do we age and die? The answer is straightforward. Within a tendency to progress from simple to complex, evolution has selected reproduction (and thus aging – see argument 3) as a mechanism for maximising the use of thermodynamical resources, and so to ensure the survival of the species.

Argument 3
Until now, the clear role of reproduction was to maximise the chances of survival and thus progress to a higher stage in the list above. However, in order for reproduction to be successful, the genetic code (germ-line) must be maintained. An inequality of resources available for repair and maintenance between germ line and somatic cells means that, while the integrity of the germ-line is fully guaranteed, that of somatic cells is not. Therefore we (our bodies) must age and die through aging. Survival is thus assured, albeit it is the survival of the germ-line and that of the species, and not the survival of our own individual selves.

Argument 4
The main tendency in nature (i.e. the direction of evolution), through a relentless progress of increasing complexity, is to stay alive. Ultimately, what matters is to survive. The basins of attraction mentioned above exist because they ensure survival. Reproduction is just a means for assuring survival in the face of adverse thermodynamical resources. If there was a way to survive without reproduction, then the process of reproduction would be drastically downgraded. We may be now able to survive, i.e. live (dramatically) longer, through the use of technology and not necessarily through reproduction. There are three types of technology that is relevant here:
* Biomedical Technology
* General mechanical technology (includes AI)
* Digital Communications Technology

I have argued elsewhere that it is this last type of technology that is the most promising in achieving Radical Life Extension. In humans, technology is both the result of natural selection and the cause of the end of natural selection.

Argument 5
If there are any signs that reproduction is being downgraded then it means that the above arguments are likely to be correct, and that the process of long individual survival has begun. One such preliminary sign is the decline in procreative sexual practice and the relatively widespread emergence of other practices or preferences. If nature somehow ‘senses’ that survival is now being assured through technology, then the pressure for finding a mate of the opposite sex and reproduce would be eased, allowing the widespread emergence of other non-reproductive sexual practices such as homosexuality, non-procreative polyamory, hedonist polysexuality or pansexuality. It is likely therefore that we are now entering a period of human evolution which will not entirely depend on reproduction. Reduced reproduction means that more resources are available to be passed on to the soma (body) and thus radical longevity becomes more likely.

Discussion
How can the technological environment in which one finds themselves impact sexuality? There is a train of logical arguments which answer this question:
• If we accept that evolution generally tends to higher complexity and sophistication (including technological sophistication) in order to increase survival, and
• If we accept that a stage of significant technological achievement has now been reached (or is likely to be reached within 20 years), and
• If, as long as the human species survives, it is immaterial whether its survival is achieved through reproduction or through any other means, and
• If one of these other means is technology,

then, it is also logical to assume that genetic reproduction is now less important than before because high complexity/intelligence can be achieved through technology and through the prolonged survival of the individually- enhanced human, and not necessarily through a random process of natural selection (birth/procreation/death). If genetic reproduction is now not as important as before, any tendency to conventional procreative sexuality will diminish. Thus, other sexual preferences and practices will become more common place.

And just to push the discussion further into the realms of speculation, one should wonder if the progressive global reduction of sperm count, the increased incidence of undescended testicles, and the first signs that men are becoming less ‘macho’, have any relationship with my argument. It may be hypothesized that, as the reproductive practice is now being downgraded, the health of male sexual organs has begun to be affected, in preparation for a procreative shutdown, at least in some sections of humanity.

Finally, I have been asked: Can using computers make me gay? This is a captious statement which is both true and false, but it helps illustrate a point. Based on the arguments above, increased engagement with technology at a significant level, and by a significant number of people, will have an impact on natural selection and thus on procreation. It will diminish the hitherto immense pressure to find a mate and have offspring, and so other sexual preferences will emerge globally. The discussion does not refer to single isolated individuals but to humankind as a whole.

For more information on our research in these areas see www.elpisfil.org.

This article was originally published here:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2013/11/26/sexuality-evolution-and-…-of-aging/

(a) A very short Proof of the Telemach Theorem

Step 1: Photons’ temporal wavelength T is increased and time is proportionally slowed down – downstairs in gravity and at the bottom of a constantly accelerating long rocketship – without this change showing up locally (Einstein 1907).

Step 2: Every photon’s spatial wavelength L is proportionally increased downstairs. Hence the speed of light c = L/T is a global constant.

Step 3: Along with the reduced photon mass-energy (step 1), the rest mass M of all particles down there is reduced proportionally via quantum mechanics’ creation-annihilation. This fact confirms the global c via the Bohr-radius formula of quantum mechanics.

Step 4: Charge Ch is reduced in proportion to M because their ratio is locally conserved. This holds true for all particle classes.

Hence “ T and L go up and M and Ch go down by Einstein’s gravitational redshift factor ” (Telemach Theorem).

(b) A “friendly crisis” induced by Telemach

T-L-M-Ch implies that results of general relativity that contradict this four letters rule cease to be physically valid. The Einstein equation therefore needs to be “re-interpreted” so as to yield all four results directly (and not just the first). In particular, “black holes” possess radically new properties.

Young Telemach goes unchallenged in the literature for almost two years. Help from the general-relativistic community is cordially invited.