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Nov 11, 2018

Albert Camus and the Absurd — Life Extension and the Big Picture

Posted by in categories: existential risks, futurism, health, life extension, philosophy

This paper explores Albert Camus’s notions of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus and draws correlations with the movement for indefinite life extension and the big picture of existence.

Calorie vacuums playing in the mud, isn’t that what we are when it comes down to it? We guess our way through much of life, trying not to spend too much time thinking about how trivial it all may or may not be so as to see about keeping the levels of despair down, waiting for our turn on the chopping block… We try to make sense of this life but in the end, can never fully convince ourselves that we have because we never fully do. That challenge is a mountain whose top hasn’t been seen yet.

People are drawn to understand what the most sensible things to do with life are, or as Albert Camus writes “the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions”. It’s a ballpark question. People thirst to make sense of their being, to understand what’s going on, for meaning, to track down and engage the most profound implication. Is thirst proof that water exists, as Gaston Bachelard says? Even rocks mean profound things, and we are self-aware supercomputers in a space filled with variables and has no known walls. It is very improbable that there is not a fundamentally profound implication within such circumstances.

How might we ever make sense of our existence? Masses of people are desperate with this “hope of another life one must ‘deserve’” and often take an irrational “leap”, as Camus says, to “some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.” Many rest on the hope that they’ll land a job they really love and can shine in someday but don’t put serious effort into figuring out what that would specifically be let alone work to make it happen.

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Nov 11, 2018

Here’s a Close-Up Photo of the Swirling Clouds on Jupiter

Posted by in category: space

Whoa.


NASA just released this new close-up photo of the swirling clouds found on Jupiter. It was captured by the Juno spacecraft on October 29th, 2018, during its 16th close flyby of the gas giant.

The clouds in the photo were seen in Jupiter’s North-North Temperate Belt (NNTB), one of the distinct cloud bands.

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Nov 11, 2018

How Singles’ Day has helped Alibaba ascend on an AI-powered cloud in China

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

The technology and innovation that Alibaba has developed to serve the needs that arise from Singles’ Day have allowed Alibaba to expand into a variety of services, including Alibaba Cloud, logistics, and artificial intelligence.


Within minutes of the clock striking midnight on November 11 this year, consumers across China will be racking up billions in purchases on Alibaba’s e-commerce marketplaces. Alibaba engineers and employees watching the transaction numbers on big screens will whoop as the figure instantly crosses the hundred million yuan mark, then zooms into the billions.

As the orders start to roll in, the company’s proprietary cloud computing platform Alibaba Cloud will, at its peak, process hundreds of thousands in transactions and payments per second. Robots in the automated warehouses of Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao will begin sorting and packing the orders that come in, readying them for the battalion of trucks, scooters and millions of deliverymen that will send an estimated 1 billion packages to their rightful owners within days of November 11.

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Nov 10, 2018

Ray Kurzweil — Human Level AI is Just 12 Years Away

Posted by in categories: Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI

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Nov 10, 2018

Ray Kurzweil Interviewed By The IMF

Posted by in categories: futurism, Ray Kurzweil

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Nov 10, 2018

Broadcasting Network Uses Artificial Intelligence News Anchor

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

This lifelike ‘news anchor’ is actually just AI.

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Nov 10, 2018

Scientists to create ‘truly unhackable’ network based on quantum physics

Posted by in categories: computing, internet, quantum physics, security

Scientists are planning to create a network in the Chicago area tapping the principles of quantum physics. The idea is to prove that quantum physics could provide the basis for an unhackable internet.

This, they say, could have wide-ranging impact on communications, computing and national security.

The quantum network development, supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), will stretch between the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Acceleratory Laboratory, a connection that is said will be the longest in the world to send secure information using quantum physics.

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Nov 10, 2018

Scientists Now Believe That The Universe Itself Is Conscious

Posted by in categories: cosmology, neuroscience

I think aspects of our Universe are conscious. Dark matter or the æther perhaps. Stagnancy is death so change inherently means something is making decisions.


A new scientific concept has recently come to light, which scientists are calling “panpsychism.” Panpsychism says that the universe could be capable of consciousness, which could change everything.

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Nov 10, 2018

Dubai Police Receive First Delivery of Innovative Hoversurf Drone, Begin Training

Posted by in categories: drones, innovation

Hoversurf showed its rideable drone off in Dubai last October, and now, police are actively training to operate them for routine use.

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Nov 10, 2018

World’s Largest Neuromorphic Supercomputer Activated

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, supercomputing

SpiNNaker was built under the leadership of Professor Steve Furber at The University of Manchester, a principal designer of two products that earned the Queen’s Award for Technology —the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor, and the BBC Microcomputer.

“The ultimate objective for the project has always been a million cores in a single computer for real time brain modelling applications, and we have now achieved it, which is fantastic.” — Professor Steve Furber, The University of Manchester

Inspired by the human brain, the SpiNNaker is capable of sending billions of small amounts of information simultaneously. The SpiNNaker has a staggering 1 million processors that are able to perform over 200 million actions per second.

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