Lifeboat Foundation

Is the future going to be so bad that longer, healthier lives will be undesirable? No, probably not.

The future looks grim? That’s quite an interesting claim, and I wonder whether there is any evidence to support it. In fact, I think there’s plenty of evidence to believe the opposite, i.e. that the future will be bright indeed. However, I can’t promise the future will certainly be bright. I am no madame clearvoyant, but neither are doomsday prophets. We can all only speculate, no matter how ‘sure’ pessimists may say they are about the horrible dystopian future that allegedly awaits us. I’m soon going to present the evidence of the bright future I believe in, but before I do, I would like to point out a few problems in the reasoning of the professional catastrophists who say that life won’t be worth living and there’s thus no point in extending it anyway.

First, we need to take into account that the quality of human life has been improving, not worsening, throughout history. Granted, there still are things that are not optimal, but there used to be many more. Sure, it sucks that your pet-peeve politician has been appointed president of your country (any reference to recent historical events is entirely coincidental), and it sucks that poverty and famine haven’t yet been entirely eradicated, but none of these implies that things will get worse. There’s a limit to how long a president can be such, and poverty and famine are disappearing all over the world. It takes time for changes to take place, and the fact the world isn’t perfect yet doesn’t mean it will never be. Especially people who are still chronologically young should appreciate the fact that by the time they’re 80 or 90, a long time will have passed, and the world will certainly have changed in the meanwhile.

Continue reading “The future looks too grim to wish for a longer life” »

We will be launching a crowd funding campaign in the next few weeks to enable us to get our first units into the hands of developers. If you are interested in this campaign or the product in the future please sign up to our email mailing list.

The lamp unit will be delivered with a SDK in Unity and an animated chess game. To run you will need a HDMI output and a USB port.

Scientists have developed a retinal implant that can restore lost vision in rats, and are planning to trial the procedure in humans later this year.

The implant, which converts light into an electrical signal that stimulates retinal neurons, could give hope to millions who experience retinal degeneration – including retinitis pigmentosa – in which photoreceptor cells in the eye begin to break down, leading to blindness.

The retina is located at the back of the eye, and is made up of millions of these light-sensitive photoreceptors. But mutations in any one of the 240 identified genes can lead to retinal degeneration, where these photoreceptor cells die off, even while the retinal neurons around them are unaffected.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Created an Artificial Retina Implant That Could Restore Vision to Millions” »

Scientists have taken a major step forward in developing complex artificial life, by successfully synthesising six out of 16 yeast chromosomes – the molecular structures that carry genes.

This means they’re more than one-third of the way to being able to build their own custom-made yeast genomes from scratch, which would be a huge moment in the field of developing lab-made lifeforms.

The research is being carried out by the hundreds of scientists who make up the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project, and they estimate that the artificial yeast genome could be completed within the next year.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Took a Big Step Towards Creating Artificial Life” »

This year at SXSW, Sony opened up what it calls the “Wow Factory” in a converted warehouse on Trinity Street in Austin, where members of its Future Lab program have set up some of the coolest and weirdest hardware concepts out there. The Future Lab program is a research and development initiative that urges Sony employees to think more about human interaction and creativity, and not just bigger screens and faster processors.

First Army Division East Trainers of the 157th Infantry Brigade utilized some of the simulations capabilities at Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center for weapons familiarization and squad level exercises.

Don’t forget to subscribe us on Facebook or Twitter.
https://www.facebook.com/DailyExplosiveVideos
https://twitter.com/ExplosiveVideos

Continue reading “US Soldiers Training With Revolutionary Virtual Weapons — Dismounted Soldier Training System” »

Quantum entanglement is one of the more bizarre theories to come out of the study of quantum mechanics – so strange, in fact, that Albert Einstein famously referred to it as “spooky action at a distance.”

Essentially, entanglement involves two particles, each occupying multiple states at once – a condition referred to as superposition. For example, both particles may simultaneously spin clockwise and counterclockwise. But neither has a definite state until one is measured, causing the other particle to instantly assume a corresponding state.

The resulting correlations between the particles are preserved, even if they reside on opposite ends of the universe.

Continue reading “Scientist finds entanglement instantly gives rise to a wormhole” »

My new article for Psychology Today on my federal audit and the coming day of eliminating taxes because of technology.

With all that in mind—and the $7500 they say I owe them—they know I wouldn’t hire an accountant at $150 an hour to deal with the thousand-plus receipts, payments, and supposed car log entries I made last year—since the amount I’d spend on an accountant in the San Francisco Bay Area might easily end up more than $7500. They also surely know I won’t do it myself, since it’s definitely not worth my own time.

They have me in a pickle—even though it’s more than obvious my busy self probably has far more in write-offs than I even bothered to report in the first place. In fact—given how perturbed I feel at the IRS and its 82,000 full time employees this moment, if it was just economical, I’d re-file to get more of my earnings back. But in the twisted game they created in their 74,000+ page tax code, it’s not worth it.

Continue reading “A Libertarian Transhumanist’s Take on the Future of Taxes” »