Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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This is the prophesied follow-up to my fastpunch through humanism, covering some 20th century reactions to humanist thought. I hypothesize that we’re at something of a standoff between humanism and posthumanism, as our political and educational institutions are struggling to terms with changing technical contexts.

If you like the work there’s more at https://spoti.fi/3f0OIXD and / plasticpills.

Addendum: Sometimes posthumanism is confused with transhumanism, which I had planned to cover in this video but it was getting too long. Transhumanism is often humanistic in that it privileges the same capacities that humanism does–intellect, memory, progress, consciousness–and proposes that our bodies can be technologically or genetically augmented to improve these capacities in new stages of human develepment– uploading our consciousness into the cloud or staving off mortality. Posthumanists, by and large, tend to de-emphasize the supposed value of those ends in the first place, although there is some overlap.

Thanks for watching!

Continue reading “Posthumanism Explained — Nietzsche, Deleuze, Stiegler, Haraway” | >

Concept (the Dyson Scenario), proposed by Freeman Dyson in 1979, proposes a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe may escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity even though expending only a finite amount of energy.

Bremermann’s limit can be invoked to deduce that the amount of time to perform a computation on 1 bit is inversely proportional to the change in energy in the system. As a result, the amount of computations that can be performed grows over time. The increase in energy available slows logarithmically, but never stops. Therefore, for any specific computation rate that requires a specific amount of energy, there will come a time when that energy is available to be used.

The intelligent beings would begin by storing a finite amount of energy. They then use half (or any fraction) of this energy to power their thought. When the energy gradient created by unleashing this fraction of the stored fuel was exhausted, the beings would enter a state of zero-energy-consumption until the universe cooled. Once the universe had cooled sufficiently, half of the remaining half (one quarter of the original energy) of the intelligent beings’ fuel reserves would once again be released, powering a brief period of thought once more. This would continue, with smaller and smaller amounts of energy being released. As the universe cooled, the thoughts would be slower and slower, but there would still be an infinite number of them. In 1998 it was discovered that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating rather than decelerating due to a positive cosmological constant, implying that any two regions of the universe will eventually become permanently separated from one another. Dyson noted that \.

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At the very start Aubrey claims, so long as he has the funding, he can finish the RMR in 3 years and then things take off from there. He seems to hint that the LEV prediction of 12–15 years could be thrown out and come sooner.

In this in-depth conversation, Dr. Aubrey de Grey discusses his Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (RMR) studies at the LEV Foundation and why he believes we’re close to achieving the crucial RMR milestone within just three years — a breakthrough that could transform aging research forever.

You’ll also hear about:

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey — The BIG 2025 Interview” | >

In our creative writing tests—designed to measure how well these models craft engaging stories that actually make sense—Claude 3.7 delivered narratives with more human-like language and better overall structure than its competitors.

Think of these tests as measuring how useful these models might be for scriptwriters or novelists working through writer’s block.

While the gap between Grok-3, Claude 3.5, and Claude 3.7 isn’t massive, the difference proved enough to give Anthropic’s new model a subjective edge.

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Preclinical trial reveals how beta-glucan, a compound found in all fungi, can ‘reprogram’ immune cells to combat lung inflammation.

A recent study suggests that a common fungal component may help protect against flu-related lung damage.

Led by Professor Maziar Divangahi from McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, the research team found that beta-glucan, when given to mice before influenza exposure, reduced lung damage, improved lung function, and lowered the risk of severe illness and death.

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Researchers from three of Virginia’s premier universities, including the University of Virginia’s Homa Alemzadeh, aim to take the risk out of self-driving vehicles by overcoming inevitable computer failures with sound engineering.

Cutting-edge research from three top Virginia universities, led by the University of Virginia’s Homa Alemzadeh, is on a mission to revolutionize the safety of self-driving vehicles. With a substantial $926,737 grant from the National Science Foundation, this powerhouse team is dedicated to pinpointing and neutralizing potential computer failures in autonomous vehicle systems.

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By harnessing this insight, they aim to fortify the resilience of the entire system and proactively eliminate safety risks. Alemzadeh, a trailblazing associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, is joined by the esteemed William & Mary professor of computer science, Evgenia Smirni, and the visionary lead investigator and George Mason University assistant professor of computer science, Lishan Yang.

Continue reading “Self-driving vehicles can be imperfect” | >

Researchers studying a protein linked to a rare, severe disease have made a discovery that sheds light on how cells meet their energy needs during a severe metabolic crisis. The findings could lead to new treatments for the disease and open new avenues of research for other conditions involving impaired fat metabolism.

When scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona first identified a handful of protein-coding genes called TANGO in 2006, they had no idea that one of them, TANGO2, would eventually be linked to a life-threatening disorder in children. In 2016, the researchers found that mutations in TANGO2 cause a now officially recognized as TANGO2 Deficiency Disorder (TDD).

There are about 110 known patients with TDD worldwide, though there are thought to be an estimated six to nine thousand undiagnosed patients in total.

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Dear Colleagues.

In the context of an ageing world population, certain pathologies that are exacerbated in this process of ageing, such as osteoarthritis (OA), will become more prevalent in the coming years. Moreover, OA is one of the main causes of chronic pain and physical disability in the elderly. It is therefore of great relevance to gain a deep understanding on the pathophysiology of this disease, and also to identify potential prognostic and diagnostic tools along with novel promising therapeutic targets for OA.

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Beginning around 2.5 million years ago, Earth entered an era marked by successive ice ages and interglacial periods, emerging from the last glaciation around 11,700 years ago. A new analysis suggests the onset of the next ice age could be expected in 10,000 years’ time.

The findings are published in the journal Science.

An international team, including researchers from UC Santa Barbara, made their prediction based on a new interpretation of the small changes in Earth’s orbit of the sun, which lead to massive shifts in the planet’s climate over periods of thousands of years. The study tracks the natural cycles of the planet’s climate over a period of a million years. Their findings offer new insights into Earth’s dynamic climate system and represent a step-change in understanding the planet’s glacial cycles.

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