The Rundown Live #365 Jamie Martin (Facebook,Brutalism,Transhumanism) – Video

Posted on by


The Rundown Live #365 Jamie Martin (Facebook,Brutalism,Transhumanism)
The Rundown Live #365 Jamie Martin (Facebook,Brutalism,Transhumanism) (10/29/14) On this Wednesday edition of The Rundown Live, Kristan and I go over the sponsors, and the site before we are.

By: bigpzone

Read more here:
The Rundown Live #365 Jamie Martin (Facebook,Brutalism,Transhumanism) - Video

Talking bilderbergs, elites, and the dark side of transhumanism with Daniel Estulin. singularity, – Video

Posted on by


Talking bilderbergs, elites, and the dark side of transhumanism with Daniel Estulin. singularity,
Daniel Estulin is an award winning investigative journalist and best selling author, he is one of the few shining the light into the public through the darkn...

By: GrimericaShow

Read the rest here:

Talking bilderbergs, elites, and the dark side of transhumanism with Daniel Estulin. singularity, - Video

The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch – The Conservative Woman

Posted on by

A snowy scene, Narnia

We must go as quietly as we can, said Mr Tumnus. The whole wood is full ofherspies. Even some of the trees are on her side.

Another snowy scene, a popular hillside in Somerset, January 2021

Its a Sunday and families living under lockdown are having fun near a remote car park, parents building snowmen with their children. Then a police car arrives and parks for a while. Similar scenes happen elsewhere in Britain. Why?

Since the end of the first lockdown in March 2020, this Somerset hillside has never been busier. It has become the go-to place to find some sort of normality.

The local hunt, for example, held a memorial gathering in one of the hills car parks before Christmas for a young lad killed in a car accident. They knew that such a gathering would not be allowed elsewhere.

Why are we all being forced to live like this? Why is the constabulary now becoming such a powerful presence throughout the land? (We couldnt summon any police when we needed them to stop an illegal rave on the same hillside years ago.)

Is it because there is a realisation that the public is losing respect for authority and more coercion will be needed to implement the global Build Back Better agenda?

Maybe the penny has begun to drop that there is insufficient support for fascism, even if it is re-labelled stakeholder capitalism?

Certainly in continental Europe there is growing resistance to Planet Lockdown, often of a violent nature. In Europe they have a better understanding of the nature of fascism, unlike in Britain where we lack historical experience of mass arrests, deportations and arbitrary shootings.

The parallels with the 1930s are, however, becoming obvious to the extent that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, used his contribution to the World Economic Forums annual Davos meeting last month to warn the world. In his view, the situation could develop in an unpredictable and uncontrolled manner and risks a fight of all against all.

Meanwhile, the WEF is trying to distance itself from any accusations that its Great Reset is a conspiracy that is masking some nefarious plan for world domination (?!)

But then its plans are hardly nefarious, given that the WEF is so blatant about its role in bringing together global leaders and mega-corporations to rebuild the world along sustainable lines.

Sadly for the WEF, its own benign belief in its motives is not shared universally. Of the 200,000-plus views of its latest YouTube video, it could muster only 1,500 likes compared with 19,000 dislikes and openly hostile messages in the comments below. Not exactly a good indicator of widespread support. The UK government would do well to take note.

While there might not be agreement about return to pre-Covid ways of living were it possible or whether change is necessary, neither is there any consensus on what form that change should take.

In particular, there is increasing cynicism about an elite group of globalists lecturing us on how to collectively improve life on the planet without destroying it. It does not sit well with the public that the same billionaires who form the WEF are those who have profiteered from their misery during the pandemic.

Mega-corporations and their supporters politicians, financiers, non-governmental organisations, etc also have zero credibility as eco-warriors.

They are more closely associated in the public mind with creating problems rather than solving them. Pollution and destructive business as usual have continued unabated under a cover story of environmentalism.

The examples of cobalt and lithium alone reveal the empty virtue-signalling in the pious rush for the windmills and solar panels that are the basis for the WEFs Build Back Better campaign.

Cobalt and lithium are widely used in electronics for energy storage, whether a solar panel or a mobile phone. Yet the way cobalt is mined (using child labour) is never discussed, nor is the damage to Chiles Atacama desert, where lithium extraction displaces the flamingos. The billionaires have failed so far to provide viable alternatives.

There is also nothing remotely sustainable about increasing our reliance on electricity. It would take only a coronal mass ejection a gigantic release of plasma and magnetic field from the sun to wipe out the National Grid, as Sir Oliver Letwin so eloquently pointed out in his March 2020 bookApocalypse How?It makes no sense that a British government continues to take us on the doomed path that WEF promotes.

History will not judge kindly a government that abandons its people in favour of the diktats of a foreign entity. Our government needs to learn the lesson of Brexit. The British people want their independence. It is the reason we as a nation have been willing to fight wars.

Now is the time for the Government to abandon Build Back Better, and focus instead on building back without the WEFs fake sustainability and its Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is synonymous only with yet more unemployment and misery.

A useful first step would be for the Government to restore hope, at the very least, to the lost generation. The traumatising of the young, and their consequent despair, is one of the most distressing aspects of the mishandling of the pandemic.

The lack of support for the most disadvantaged white working-class boys is nothing short of a scandal. The Government is sending a clear message that these children have no future in the technocratic world.

This attitude toward the disadvantaged speaks to C S Lewiss grim prophecies of the 1940s. In his novelThat Hideous Strength,he blames advances in technology for the reductions in industrial and agricultural workforces, with no mention of retraining.

Instead, a large, unintelligent population is now a deadweight. In his view the masses are therefore to disappear the human race is to become all technology.

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a review in theManchester Guardianof Lewiss novel. The title of the review was The Scientists Take Over.

He believed that Lewiss dystopian vision was realisable and that there could be a time when the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even become a god himself.In effect, he was predicting transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

At some point it will become obvious in the UK if the oppression we currently face is about keeping us safe from a virus, or about preparing us for life under the WEF reset.

The pandemic itself is likely to fade. Covid has now replaced seasonal flu in the official statistics, thus suggesting that it is no more deadly than a flu. Cases are on the decline. With Covid gone, what will be the excuse to bully us?

The narrative has already begun to change in the US. No sooner was it clear that Donald Trump would leave the White House, than theNew York Timesran an article suggesting that coronavirus will come to resemble the common cold and be no more than a minor annoyance,and the most draconian governors in California, New York and elsewhere began to lift restrictions.

It would seem that the pandemic had done its job: it left Trumps economy in ruins, and provided the perfect pretext for mail-in ballots and for keeping poll watchers at bay during the election count.

So, when can we expect a similar shift in the UK? Liberation cannot come quickly enough. We are fast turning into a nation of zombies. Nothing is working properly. People cant think straight. They demand vaccines in the hope of a return to normality, but fail to hear the Government telling them that nothing will change. The sunny uplands continue to recede.

We are now facing an unholy mess with a shrunken economy, no shiny new Fourth Industrial Revolution to fill the gap, and the potential for hordes of disaffected and disturbed masses to threaten us all.

Is this what is anticipated for us? We can only hope that there is no significance in the evidence coming from one part of Somerset, where an abandoned quarry is used for training police marksmen.

Locals tell me that the police have recently increased their use of the quarry and the barrage of shots can be heard more frequently over a wide distance. What hope is there?

Maybe, once it has sorted itself out, the US will once again help rescue us from fascism, as it did in the 1940s. My great-grandfather certainly believed in June 1940 that the US would rise to the occasion when he wrote to my grandmother from his hotel in Liverpool before setting sail for the States.

We were pleased to see the Americans when they did finally arrive. But more than 80 years later, perhaps such thoughts of rescue are more fiction than fact. Like Mr Tumnus, we may have to wait instead for The Last Battle for freedom to return, and who knows when that will be?

Read the original post:
The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch - The Conservative Woman

Sympathetic Sci-Fi – The New Yorker

Posted on by

In Sense8, the Wachowskis find another way out of the Matrix: empathy.CreditPhotograph by Murray Close / Netflix / Everett

The defining scene of Sense8, the new sci-fi drama on Netflix, comes about halfway through the first season. It starts in San Francisco, where Nomi, a hacktivist and transgender lesbian, is making out with her girlfriend, Amanita. At the same time, in Mexico City, Lito, a smoldering actor, is lifting weights with his boyfriend, Hernando. In Berlin, Wolfgang, a safecracker, is relaxing, naked, in a hot tub. And in Chicago, Will, a police officer, is working out at the gym. The premise of Sense8 is that Nomi, Lito, Wolfgang, and Willalong with four other sensates in Nairobi, Seoul, Mumbai, and Reykjavikare telepathically linked. They are able to feel each others emotions, appear in each others minds, and even control each others bodies. In this instance, because theyre all feeling sexy, the sensates find themselves having an impromptutelepathic orgy. Theyre a little freaked out until they realize that they can all enjoy Wolfgangs hot tubsimultaneously.

All sorts of crazy things happen in Sense8. Theres a big conspiracy that may explain how the sensates came to be linked. Theres sci-fi theorizing about human evolution and psychic phenomena. There are euphoric action sequences in which Sun Bak, the Korean sensate, deploys heracrobatic martial-arts skills. (Two of the shows three executive producers, Andy and Lana Wachowski, were responsible for The Matrix.) When a car chase ensues, the sensates can take turns driving the same car. One episode includes aBollywood dance number. Other scenes, in which the sensatescombine their skills and consciousnessesto solve insurmountable problems, have a ludic, dance-like energy: in one of the shows best moments, all eight main characters find themselvessinging Whats Up, by 4 Non Blondes. In another scene, they allflash back to their own birthswhile listening to Beethovens Emperor Piano Concerto No. 5. (The Wachowskis havesaidthat they filmed live births for the show, and, watching the scene, you believe it.)

In sci-fi speak, Sense8 is about transhumanismthe idea that in the future, as a species, we might become more than we are right now. Julian Huxley, the brother of Aldous, coined the term in a 1927 book called Religion Without Revelation, in which he wrote that transhumanism was man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. Huxley helped found the World Wildlife Fund and was the first director of UNESCO; he was also, for a time, the president of the British Eugenics Society. Like him,the transhumanist movementwhich now tends to focus on high-tech enhancementis both intriguing and scary.

Sense8, though, isnt really about the negative aspects of transhumanism. It makes emotionally expansive telepathic empathy seem like a great ideaits global, sexy, useful, and romantic. The sensates become friends and even fall in love with one another. (Will, the Chicago cop, gets together with Riley, an Icelandic d.j.) In one scene, set at the Diego Rivera Museum, in Mexico City, Nomi, the transgender hacker, helps Lito, who is closeted, come out. Sense8 is not subtlethis is sci-fi T.V.but their scene together issimple, direct, and moving: theres a lot of authentic emotion to go with all the artifice. (Slate has called Sense8 a queer masterpiece; Jamie Clayton, the actress who plays Nomi, is transgender, as is Lana Wachowski.) Some people dont like the sensatesan evil biotech corporation has it out for them, and some reviewers have found Sense8 to be cheesy, nonsensical, and slow. Fair enough, but if youre in the shows target audienceif you rooted for Neo and Trinitys romance in The Matrixyoull enjoy it. Despite its sci-fi premise, Sense8 is almost entirely about strong feelings. Its transhumanism for softies.

Sci-fi stories divide roughly into three categories. First, there are stories about regular people who just happen to live in the future, like Star Trek and Star Wars. Second, there are transhumanist stories, such asDuneandSense8, in which human nature is somehow altered. And third, there are robot stories, in which human nature is, for the most part, fixed, the better to be inherited by our technological replacementsthe Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, say, or Ava, the robot in Alex Garlands recent film, Ex Machina. Many great works of science fiction weave these mini-genres together. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL inherits our flawed human nature and goes mad. At the same time, the film is a transhumanist tale, in which the ships surviving astronaut ascends to a new plane of consciousness. Transhumanist stories and robot stories are mirror images of each other. Robot stories ask whether our spiritual flaws will trickle down to the new beings we create; transhumanist stories ask whether they will propagate up into the beings we become.

Recently, in awonderful essayin theNew York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn wrote about the ancient roots of the robot story. He pointed out that there are robots in theIliad, and that robot tales address theological questions about creators and their creations. Today, though, stories about robotsparticularly human-shaped oneshave come to feel a little quaint. Technology has made the classic robot obsolete. In Humans, a new show on AMC, robots that look and act like human beings are shown tending tomato plants on a farm. Its a striking image, but we all know that, in real-life, agricultural robots arelikely to be weird-looking. In Ex Machina, Ava, the robot played by Alicia Vikander, is a compelling femme fatale; even so, you cant help noticing that, unlike every other piece of technology in the modern world, she isnt networked, and can communicate with other robots only by speaking. Samantha, the artificial intelligence voiced by Scarlett Johansson in Her, seems more in sync with technological reality: shes a cloud-based software program capable of realizing herself at many physical locations simultaneously, the same way Google appears on many screens at once. (Genisys, the evil A.I. in the new Terminator movie, operates on a similar principle.) This doesnt make Her better than Ex Machina, but it does mean that, while Her seems to present a plausible vision of the future, Ex Machina feels more like a fable.

For a while now, robot stories have been shifting to the cloud. In the CBS showPerson of Interest,two cloud-based A.I.s are locked in a power struggle, manipulating stock exchanges, operating shell corporations, and giving orders to acolytes who regard them with quasi-religious reverence. In Ann Leckies novel Ancillary Justice, a single intelligence, housed in a spaceshipa giant robot, in a sensemakes its presence felt through people, called ancillaries, whose bodies it controls remotely; in effect, its turnedusinto robots. This is a big reversal. Traditional robot stories tend to be Promethean: theyre about people who seize the forbidden and god-like power of creation. By contrast, artificial-intelligence stories are about people who invent their own god-like overlords. They know that the new gods are just complicated programs, but they end up subjugated by them anyway.

Theres always been some crossover between robot and transhumanist stories, because people, if they are transformed enough, can become posthuman. That process, too, has changed over time. In the 1965 novel Dune, the hero used a psychedelic drug to upgrade his consciousness; by contrast, in last years Transcendence, Johnny Depp uploaded himself into a quantum computer. But most transhumanist stories stop far short of total transformation, instead exploring the discrete consequences of highly specific transhuman upgrades. In Starfish, Peter Watts imagines a power station, located at a deep-sea vent, where physical modifications (replaced lungs, enhanced eyes) allow the workers to swim among the tube worms; some divers go native, developing a new sensibility suited for the sea floor. Liking What You See: A Documentary, a short story by Ted Chiang, takes place at a hyper-progressive liberal-arts college where the students have modified their brains so that they cant distinguish between beautiful people and ugly people. (For decades peopleve been willing to talk about racism and sexism, but theyre still reluctant to talk about lookism, one student complains.) Some professors think this is a great idea, because the hierarchy of personal beauty is offensive; others wonder how the new, beauty-blind student body is supposed to produce any great painters or sculptors. Theres a gleeful, brutal curiosity to these stories. They envision a future when our economic and cultural niches shrink and we change ourselves to fit within them. Today, we have subcultures; in the future, well have subspecies.

Many transhumanist stories have a circular structure: theyre about the rediscovery (or nostalgic appreciation) of old human virtues. The most optimistic transhumanist novel that Ive read recently is Ramez Naams Nexus. Naam is a programmer by trade; in a previous life, he helped develop Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer. In his book, billions of people take a drugactually a soup of nano-machinesthat allows them to network their brains together, so that they can experience each others thoughts, sensations, and memories. Then, usingmeditation techniquesthat theyve learned from Buddhist monks in Thailand, they synchronize their minds, merging into a single, vast consciousness. In this form, the transhumans must confront the menace posed by a posthuman: an intelligent Chinese computer system, based upon the mind of a gifted scientist, that controls weapons and other gadgets all over the world. On one level, Nexus is a libertarian techno-fable about how bottom-up innovation will win out over top-down systems of control. But its also wistfully old-fashioneda paean to Buddhist meditators, who, when you think about it, probably came up with this whole transhumanism thing in the first place.

If you read a lot of science fiction in one go, you notice that it has two weaknesses. The first is the future, which tends to be complicated, depressing, and fatiguing to read about; the second is the aesthetic of futurism, which is grim and predictable. Everything is big, scary, and metallic (or else small, gross, and biotechnological). The implicit message of futurism is thathuman progress is inseparable from suffering; often, the only kind of beauty is terrible beauty. Futurism is what gives sci-fi itsfrisson. The supposedly horrific vision of the future in The Matrix, for example,is also undeniably cool; the robots may have won, but the survivors look great in their leather and shades. This paradox makes the movie great, but its also a kind of trapan aesthetic cynicism.

Sense8, though, is joyful, in part because it shows us transhumanism without futurism. Its not a superhero show, in which a random individual is elevated into something better; it hints, science-fictionally, at a fundamental change in human nature generally. At the same time, theres no technological explanationand, therefore, no futurist costfor that change.(In one episode, its suggested that, in the distant evolutionary past,allhuman beings were once telepathic, but no one seems to care very much about this hand-wavey idea.) On some level, the sensates telepathic empathy is a metaphor for the Internet, which seems, in some ways, to be making us more open to others experiences (especially queer experiences). The show also evokes the joys of creative collaboration: people who watch the Wakowskis work together often say that they have two bodies, one brain. Really, though, the point of Sense8 is to revel in the broadening of empathyto fantasize about how in-tune with each other we could be. In its own, low-key way, therefore, Sense8 is a critique of sci-fi. It asks whether, in tying our dreams about human transformation to fantasies of technological development, we might be making an error. The show suggests another path to transcendence: each other.

Read more:
Sympathetic Sci-Fi - The New Yorker

What is transhumanism? | carm

Posted on by

by Matt Slick

Transhumanism is the idea that human beings, as a whole, can be drastically improved in physical and mental areas with technologies, such as cloning, genetic modification, bionics, nano-technology, drugs, etc. The great majority of transhumanists believe that the "human species" has evolved and that science can provide a kind of artificial, directed evolution. Transhumanists look to the future and believe the human condition will see improvement in physical ability, lifespan, and mental acuity, and health. In addition, the world condition can also be improved by reducing starvation and poverty. Such technological advancements, some have said, would even redefine what it means to be human.

Some of the areas the trans-humanists propose can be assisted and or improved by technology are as follows:

Some trans-humanists have even proposed the idea of transferring human consciousness into the machine in order to vastly extend lifespans.

Philosophers and ethicists have been delving into the theological and moral issues related to the advancement of technology as a relates to altering human capabilities, mental states, duration of life, etc. Many questions have arisen that don't, as yet, have answers.

Original post:
What is transhumanism? | carm

Lecture IES 3 april – Engineering, energy and transhumanism by Laurens Wes – Video

Posted on by


Lecture IES 3 april - Engineering, energy and transhumanism by Laurens Wes
A speaker at our 3 april lecture, Laurens Wes talks about energy production in the future, 3d-printing and transhumanism. If you like our content, please subscribe! Subtitles will be available soon.

By: IEScience

Go here to read the rest:
Lecture IES 3 april - Engineering, energy and transhumanism by Laurens Wes - Video

Meet the Microchipped Transhumanist Cyborg Whos Running Against Trump in the 2020 GOP Primary – Mediaite

Posted on by

Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist journalist, is running for the U.S. presidency as a Republican in 2020, challenging President Donald Trump in the primary.

Istvan, who also ran for president in 2016 on a lesser scale, has written for The New York Times, Vice, and National Geographic, and describes himself as the founder of the Transhumanist Party, the original author of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, and a frequently interviewed expert on AI, genetic editing, tech policy, and futurism.

His campaign policies for 2020 range from the relatively normal to the quite absurd, from ending the drug war, beating China in the artificial intelligence race, restoring the environment, and providing universal basic income for all, to the development of artificial wombs, nearly open borders, stopping mass shootings and terrorism with drones, robots, AI scanners, and other technology, and licensing parents, or as Istvan explained, requiring prospective parents to pass a series of basic tests, similar to a DMV driving test, to quality and get the green light to get pregnant and raise children.

As a passionate transhumanist (or, as philosopher Max More explains, someone who supports the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology), reportedly with a microchip in his hand that allows him to open doors and use his phone, Istvan also wants the Republican Party to reclaim transhumanism from the far-left.

This week, Mediaite got the opportunity to talk with Istvan about his 2020 campaign and the policies within.

Your campaign policies are very interesting. Typical libertarian policies mixed with some quite out-there stuff like artificial wombs, nearly open borders, and stopping borders with drones. What was the inspiration behind such an odd variety of campaign focuses?

I was busted for dealing marijuana I guess maybe 26 years ago, where I was convicted of a felony conviction for distribution of narcotics, which also made me highly libertarian kind of from the start of my adult years. And then as I went through the National Geographic days I began to try to think about what would be better policy so we didnt get in these wars all the time and the government sort of left us alone. But at the same time, its not that I want to be left alone entirely. I think there should be some safety nets.

If you look through some of my 2020 plans youll see theres a lot of liberalism built into it, so it kind of tries to take the very best parts from all the different ideologies that are out there and put it in one. To be honest, I just dont understand why there cant be conservative people like myself who are totally socially liberal, and while thats classic libertarianism, the reality is that the Libertarian Party just doesnt have enough connections, money, and all these other things to run campaigns that can actually win office, which is ultimately why Im now with the Republicans trying to make a difference, trying to get people that might be fiscally conservative to have some sensibility when it comes to being more open-minded.

You say on your campaign website that youre trying to reclaim transhumanism from the far-left. What do you mean by that?

Thats probably my number one policy goal right now, and its because whats happened recently, at least in the last four or five years, is it seems like transhumanism has been growing dramatically. Im excited about that, but its also growing dramatically to the left, and if it continues to grow and grow in that direction it means that it will be almost this socialist dystopia, in my opinion, where everyone thinks they own everything and they can just do what they want.

Innovation, capitalism and Im saying this from an entrepreneur of twenty years it requires free markets in many ways to come up with these creative ideas in the first place. We all love going to Europe. We all love the quasi-socialism that they have there when were there. But Europe hasnt really created anything innovative in fifty years. I mean not much when you compare to, lets say, America. We want to be careful that in order for transhumanism to survive, it doesnt fall into the hands of the new breed of socialists that America is contending with. Silicon Valley is going that direction, Ive been watching that happen over the last ten years, and so I thought it was finally time somebody stood up and said, Wait a second, we need a better balance here. We need a balance of people who are willing to innovate in libertarian-minded economical ideals without bowing down to the far left.

So do you think transhumanism would die out if we did end up with a socialist society?

No. I dont think it would die out. I just think so you gotta understand the number one goal of transhumanism is really to try to overcome biological death by finding technology. And really, what happens when you put socialism into medicine and some of these other things, innovation dramatically stops. So somebody like myself whos 46-years-old, and of course all the other older people that have been involved in the movement forever, if innovation and science and all that other stuff stopped just even for ten or fifteen years, or doesnt go as fast as it is, a huge amount of extra people wont make it to this new generation where well have all these different techniques to keep people alive.

So theres actually a race going on. A race to keep transhumanism in kind of this capitalistic, libertarian somewhat framework so that innovation continues to move forward and that people like myself will have a chance in thirty years to actually benefit from these life extension medications and innovations that come out.

If we are able to overcome death with science by 2030 versus the year 2050, over one billion lives will be saved. So the meaning here is incredibly important, which is why Im very cautious about socialists being in charge.

Are you not worried that we could end up with a Fallout: New Vegas Mr. House situation, where you have a really really rich guy, or a bunch of rich people who are practically living forever, while no one else can get access to this technology?

That is one of my number one fears.

First of all, from a transhumanist perspective, if everyone lives forever, were going to have overpopulation problems, and I already believe we have overpopulation problems. You can see the climate changing and things like that.

But I think the other one is, whats to keep the Mark Zuckerbergs and the other people of the world from taking this radical technology, using it on themselves, and leaving the rest of us behind? This is where I lose a little bit of my libertarianism, and all the libertarians get mad at me. I actually think under these circumstances there should be some government mandate when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to different types of rights to life extension. That we should all have some type of a universal right to life extension and some of these medicines, even it requires government grants and things like that, because the very last thing that I want to do is create a world where only the one percent has access to these technologies, or even beyond the one percent, and the rest of the people get left behind in some kind of dystopia.

So, this is where I kind of break down and say a little bit of big government is fine, especially if its going to protect and make sure everyone has benefits to this new future that were talking about: the Transhumanist Age.

Do you think there are already some minor life extension schemes going on in the one percent?

I dont believe that theres a conspiracy going on with the one percent, because if it is, I havent heard about it. There are companies like Human Longevity. They cater only to the very wealthy But its not that they dont cater to the super poor, its just that their prices are expensive and theyre not covered by insurance, so only the very wealthy use them.

I would be very surprised if even someone like Peter Thiel has a very strict regiment of kind of undercover, secretive longevity people. I think were all working on this together. We realize the humanitarian aspects of making us all live longer. The person who could come up with the magic pill, or 3D-printing organs, however were going to keep ourselves alive longer, I think not only is it the most important capitalistic thing someones going to become a trillionaire off these kinds of innovations but I also think theres a very deep humanitarian aspect to share with your family, your friends. So I dont think people are hording this technology. I just dont think weve come up with the right technologies yet.

But if you look at the statistics, five years ago this was maybe a one or two billion dollar industry when you talk about longevity, and Bank of America recently said its going to be a 600 billion industry by 2025. I mean it is skyrocketing in terms of venture capital and investment. A lot of money is coming into it, so I hope by now in the next two to five years youre going to have a lot more innovation and announcement.

It seems like youre putting up more of a fight this primary to beat President Trump. Last election you put up a fight, but you werent listed on the ballots, whereas this time youre going to be listed on some the ballots, right?

Yeah, were going to be on basically all the ballots we can be until Super Tuesday, and were going to see how we do. Were spending a lot of our funding for ballot access right now, but thats okay. What happened is the first time around, I had some unique ideas. Of course, I had been a writer for a lot of major media, and so people listened and they liked those ideas, but for the Transhumanist Party as an independent, you really cant make any ground unless you have ballot access.

Were hoping that if we do well in New Hampshire, and were hoping that if we do well in Iowa, maybe get a few delegates here, then we could all of a sudden take it to the next level and make a real push to try to compete against Trump.

Id be lying to you if I said, Look, I think were going to win this thing. Thats not really what were trying to do. What were trying to do is get the attention of the Republican Party and say, Isnt it time there could be a new way of looking at things? Does it always have to be fiscally conservative and also conservative moral values? Why doesnt the Republican Party open itself up to socially liberal values? They would make a lot more room for people like myself who fit right there in the middle. Who dont want to necessarily give up all their money to the government, but also want to say to people, Hey you can do exactly what you want to do with your body. This is something that I dont think the Republican Party has had yet from any kind of public figure or anyone whos run a real viable campaign.

If you could address Republican voters right now with a short statement, what would you say?

The premise here with Trump is that we were promised greatness, and that sounded kind of neat in the beginning, and I was excited not to have an attorney at the top of the chain of command in America, but it turns out that Trump didnt really deliver that.

All we have are these squabbles in America. It seems like peoples views are just attacking each other. I really think its time not only just for a professional to be in the White House, but for somebody with really brand new ideas. And I dont mean empty the swamp. I mean lets fly above the swamp. Why do we even need to be in the swamp anymore? This is the kind of thing Im trying to bring.

Photo courtesy of Zoltan Istvan.

This interview has been edited and condensed for content and clarity.

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

More:
Meet the Microchipped Transhumanist Cyborg Whos Running Against Trump in the 2020 GOP Primary - Mediaite

The ’70s Horror Collection on Criterion Channel Proves They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To – Decider

Posted on by

I have an old friend, one of my oldest, with whom I grew up watching movies. Specifically, horror movies. It was our thing. From 1935s The Bride of Frankenstein (on 60s television), to new, groundbreaking and controversial movies like Night of the Living Dead at our local single-plex around 1970 (when we were both only eleven years old, and hardly intellectually or spiritually prepared to see those living dead chowing down on offal), we consumed as much as we could. We also regularly purchased the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. We were easily the most popular kids in our Dumont, New Jersey grade school as a result.

And we were both highly dispirited, as adults, in the ostensible horror revival that we saw (or maybe we should say witnessed) in the early aughts, particularly, yes, in the Saw franchise. My pal worked at a video store up to the very end of video stores being a thing and as the resident horror fan at his Tower Records outlet he was beset by younger customers enthusing about Saw and other pictures, and hed roll his eyes.

I liked horror movies, hed say. But I dont like these. While our own patch of cinematic heaven had room for both the old-school classics and the inheritors of Romero (which was certainly not the case for folks older than us, who would bemoan the terrible violence of the newer pictures), stuff like Saw was where we drew the line. Just as rock genre mavens would decry false metal, we thought this new stuff was Faux Grindhouse.

The grindhouse. That is, or rather was, a something-less-than-first-run movie theater that housed garish fare like Night of the Living Dead and the spate of films that followed. Not just an environmental location but a state of mind. An aesthetic, if you will. One cherished, as we know. by the likes of Rodriguez, Tarantino, Roth and others, but only rarely recaptured.

If you have access to the Criterion Channel you can now, through its 70s Horror collection, get a nice, hefty, often disquieting dose of genuine grindhouse horror.

Which despite the conventional wisdom that also calls it exploitation cinema, wasnt always made by Moloch-worshipping film creators pandering to the lowest common denominator. Directors such as David Cronenberg, Bill Gunn, Wes Craven, Larry Cohen and others, all represented in the Criterion Channels nicely curated 70s horror festival, took their low-budget prerogative to inquire into transgressive themes and make pointed, if at times camouflaged, statement about not just contemporary society but the human condition.

These filmmakers were not even the most grindy of the 70s grindhouse auteurs. Theres a whole guild of Italian directors, most prominently Lucio Fulci, who took sadistic cinema to new ultra-grisly extremes. Because the 70s were also noteworthy for lots of horror movies in which the word Cannibal was prominently featured in the title. (Dario Argento, another maestro of Italian horror, who made the first, untouchable Suspiria and other loopy greats, sits a little to the right of most of those characters.) These items are not part of the Criterion package. Which is not to say the pictures here lack for luridness, or griminess. As smart as, say, Cronenbergs films Rabid and Shivers are, they are fast-paced and packed with visceral thrills. They are very much down and dirty pictures.

Its in disreputability and obscurity that 70s horror films found their strongest footing, arguably. Tobe Hoopers 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was made cheaply, shot on 16mm film, as opposed to the larger gauge 35 that was used for Hollywood product, but it was also immaculately crafted. It brims with incredible shot compositions and camera movements, and is so confident as to ratchet up hysterical scares without getting anywhere nearly as gory as the movies title would suggest. (Which isnt to say theres not plenty of blood, eventually.)

But another component that gave Massacre a lot of its power was its come-out-of-nowhere obscurity. The cast was made up of unknown actors. Getting caught up in their story (despite the fact that these post-hippie kids looking for a pond were all kinds of not-very-likable), you became invested in their fate. And you had no prior attachments to, or associations with them to clue you in on just what would happen. In the 2003 remake of the movie, the lead actress was Jessica Biel. This made the TCMs original tagline, Who will survive and what will be left of them? kind of academic.

Looking at the various remakes of the films in this Criterion collection more than a half-dozen of the 23 pictures have gotten a rebooting or sequel of some sort its clear that even the better ones are afflicted by a self-consciousness that serves as a kind of creative wing-clipping.

2019s Rabid, written and directed by Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, a talented Canadian filmmaking team, often casts itself as an overt homage not just to Cronenbergs 1977 picture but to the man and his entire body of genre work. In an operating room, for instance, the doctors don striking bright red robes just as the gynecologist twins the Mantle brothers did in Cronenbergs 1988 Dead Ringers.

In the original Rabid, which cast the porn star Marilyn Chambers in the lead role (and does feature nudity from her, albeit at a register very different from what was the case in Behind the Green Door), the protagonist Rose is something of a cipher, albeit an attractive one. She acquires a variation of the title condition after reconstructive surgery following a disfiguring motorcycle crash.

Cronenbergs view of the character is one of almost clinical detachment. The Soska Sisters take a perspective of female affinity and empathy. Here, Rose is a shy fashion designer disdained and abused by colleagues, including boss Gunther, whose clothing line is called Schadenfreude. (Hes played by Mackenzie Gray, who seems to be channeling Tommy Wiseau, not the greatest idea in this context. But he also utters a line in which the filmmakers seem to be telling on themselves a bit: Why do we keep recreating new trends?)

But once Rose (here incarnated by Laura Vandervoort) is transformed, the Soskas avoid a revenge of the wallflower scenario in favor of a slightly elaborate inquiry into Cronenbergian ideas that have found footing in the real world, including the notion of transhumanism.

Its interesting and engaging up to a point, if a little too frequently on-the-nose in some particulars. (Naming the transhumanist surgeon William S. Burroughs is almost inexcusable, even if people have paid respect to the visionary writer by using the handle of his signature character, Dr. Benway, more times than one can count.) And while it even features a reprise of the originals notorious mall-Santa gag, theres nothing in the movie that provides anything like a jaw-drop.

And theres the rub. The skeeviness and recklessness of Cronenbergs early vision (and this applies, too, to Cronenbergs 1975s Shivers, whose outrageous premise is Night of the Living Dead, only what-if-horny-instead-of-cannibal) can still rattle you in ways this picture doesnt.

The 2019 Black Christmas, the third film of that title, following the 1974 Canadian slasher pic (which is in the Criterion fest, and is also NOT a Santa is the killer item you may be thinking, rather, of 1984s Silent Night, Deadly Night, or of that Joan Collins episode in the 1972 Tales from the Crypt) is also a showcase for female filmmaking talent. Its directed by Sophia Takal from a script she cowrote with the astute critic April Wolfe. The serial-killer-stalking a college campus template gets fitted to a feminist sensibility. The protagonists, led by Imogen Poots, are sorority sisters fighting sexual assault and super-patriarchal frat culture. Their domestic dialogue features lines like I cant find my diva cup.

But while Takals superb 2016 film Always Shine was a galvanic exploration of female friendship gone toxic, Black Christmas sticks to positive archetypes. Thats not in and of itself a bad thing, but when done as laboriously as it is here, but it yields a story line whose resolution is every bit as predictable as any corporate-driven product. While the filmmaking has a commendable sense of propulsion, the complete absence of ambiguity makes for a less than resonant experience. Although Cary Elwess Roddy MacDowell impersonation is kind of noteworthy.

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny.

Watch the '70s Horror Collection on the Criterion Channel

Read more here:
The '70s Horror Collection on Criterion Channel Proves They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To - Decider

The first men to conquer death will create a new social order a terrifying one – New Statesman

Posted on by

In a 2011 New Yorker profile, Peter Thiel, tech-philanthropist and billionaire, surmised that probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead. While he may not be technically wrong, Thiel and other eccentric, wealthy tech-celebrities, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, have taken the next step to counteract that inequality by embarking on a quest to live forever.

Thiel and many like him have been investing in research on life extension, part of transhumanism. Drawing on fields as diverse as neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and philosophy, transhumanists believe that the limitations of the human body and mortality can be transcended by machines and technology. The ultimate aim is immortality.Some believe thisis achievable by 2045.

Of course, humans have long harnessed technology, from vaccinations to smartphones, to improve and extend our lives. But that doesnt admit you into the transhumanist club. Wanting to live forever, and possessing vast sums of money and time to research, does.

The hows and whens of transhumanism are matters of debate. Some advocatethe "Singularity" a form of artificial super-intelligence which will encompass all of humanity's knowledge, that our brains will then be uploaded to.Others believe in anti-ageing methods like cryonics, freezing your body after death until such a time when you can be revived.

Transhumanism is no longer a fringe movement either. Darpa, the US governments research arm into advanced weaponry, created a functional prototype of a super soldier exoskeleton in 2014, which will be fully functional in 2018, and is researching the possibility of an artificial human brain.

"Transhumanism doesn't have much to say about social questions. To the extent that they see the world changing, it's nearly always in a business-as-usual way techno-capitalism continues to deliver its excellent bounties, and the people who benefit from the current social arrangement continue to benefit from it," says Mark O'Connell, the author of To be a Machine, who followed various transhumanists in Los Angeles."You basically can't separate transhumanism from capitalism. An idea that's soenthusiastically pursued by Musk and Peter Thiel, and by the founders of Google, is one that needs to be seen as a mutationof capitalism, not a cure for it."

Silicon Valley is characterised by ablind belief in technological progress,a disregard for social acceptability and an emphasis on individual success. It's no surprise, then, that it is here that the idea of living forever seems most desirable.

Musk has publicly declared that we have to merge withartificially intelligent machines that overtake humanityin order to survive. Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and futurist who pioneered the Singularity, is now an engineer at Google. O'Connell points out that "you'd have to be coming from a particularly rarefied privilege to look at the world today and make the assessment, as someone like Thiel does, that the biggest problem we face as a species is the fact that people die of old age".

On an even more basic level,a transhumanist society would undoubtedly be shaped by the ideals of those who created it and those who came before it. Zoltan Istvan, the transhumanist candidate for governor of California,toldTech Insiderthat a lot of the most important work in longevity is coming from a handful of the billionaires...around six or seven of them.

Immortality as defined by straight, white men could draw out cycles of oppression. Without old attitudes dying off and replaced by the impatience of youth, social change might become impossible. Artificial intelligence has already been shown to absorb the biases of itscreators. Uploading someones brain into a clone of themselves doesnt make them less likely to discriminate. Thiel andMusk, for example, identify as libertarians and have frequently suggested that taxes are obsolete and that governmental military spending needs to be curbed (and put into life-enhancing technologies).

Thiel himself is a Donald Trump supporter. A one-timeassociateMichael Anissimov, previousmedia officer at Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a Thiel-funded AI think tank, has published a white nationalist manifesto. In a 2013 interview, Anissimov said that there were already significant differences in intelligence between the races, and that a transhumanist society would inevitably lead to people lording it over others in a way that has never been seen before in history. It doesnt take much to guess who would be doing the "lording".

"The first enhanced humans will not be ordinary people;they'll be the people who have already made those ordinary people economically obsolete through automation. They'll be tech billionaires," says O'Connell.

If those who form society in the age of transhumanism aremen like Musk and Thiel, its probable that thissociety will have few social safety nets. There will be an uneven rate of technological progress globally; even a post-human society can replicate the unequal global wealth distribution which we see today. In some cities and countries, inhabitants maylive forever, while in others the residents die of malnutrition.If people dont die off, the environmental consequences from widespread natural resource devastation to unsustainable energy demands would be widespread.

It would be remiss to tar all transhumanists with one brush. In 2014, Istvan claimed inThe Huffington Postthat the membership of transhumanist societies and Facebook groups has started to expand in number and in diversity, drawing in young and old people of all political persuasions and nationalities.

There are some prominent transhumanists who dont fit into the Silicon Valley mould. Natasha Vita-More, the former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Humanity+ , the globaltranshumanist organisation, has spoken about the potential for a posthuman society to address issues of economic justice. Other academics and philosophers have even spoken about the need to explicitly ground diversity and tolerance within posthumanism, such as Nick Bostrom, the head of the Future of Humanity institute and one of the original modern transhumanist thinkers.

It remains the case, though, that the majority of the money invested inmaking transhumanism a reality comes from rich, white men. As the descendants of a species with a tendency to exploit thedowntrodden, any posthumans must guard against replicating thosesame biases in a new society. For some, potentially in the near future, death might become optional. For others, death will remain inevitable.

Read the original:
The first men to conquer death will create a new social order a terrifying one - New Statesman

Transhumanism Research Papers – Academia.edu

Posted on by

Filosofia MoraleGiovanni CogliandroA.A. 2017/18

Scopo del corso suscitare linteresse degli studenti per i temi del dibattito scientifico degli ultimi anni tra i diversi orientamenti della filosofia morale contemporanea. Si forniranno le informazioni indispensabili per comprendere le discussioni pi originali dei nostri giorni ed eventualmente poter sviluppare ricerche e percorsi personali di approfondimento. Saranno introdotti ed esposti in particolare i recenti sviluppi e i dibattiti che si sono sviluppati negli ultimi anni in tema di definizione della persona, etica normativa, metaetica, etica delle virt, deontologia, consequenzialismo, perfezionismo liberale, biopolitica, etica della cura, bioetica, disability studies, transumanesimo, moral enhancement e neuroetica. Nel corso si proporranno alla discussione alcuni casi che hanno diviso e ancora dividono le coscienze su diversi temi scottanti quali inizio e fine della vita, sperimentazione, ingegneria genetica.Nel corso delle lezioni verranno fornite indicazioni su articoli o saggi in italiano o inglese utili per lo studio personale e lapprofondimento di quanto esposto in aula.

Lesame verter su un testo a scelta tra: Angelo Campodonico, Michel Croce, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Etica delle virt. Un'introduzione, Carocci, Roma 2018 (capitoli scelti).Neil Levy, Neuroetica. Le basi neurologiche del senso morale, Apogeo Education 2009 (capitoli scelti).Michael J. Sandel, Contro la perfezione. L'etica nell'et dell'ingegneria genetica, Vita &Pensiero, Milano 2008 .

Read more here:
Transhumanism Research Papers - Academia.edu

Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas

Posted on by

The modern Victor Frankenstein holds a high political office, carries diplomatic immunity, and is most likely funded by the largest corporations worldwide. His method is ancient: alchemy. His fraternities are well known and their secrets are well kept, but his goal of times past and present is the same; he dares to become as god, genetically manipulating the seeds of the earth, the beasts on the fields, and to claim legal ownership over humanity by re-creating it in his own image. This is no fairy tale, science fiction, or conspiracy theory it simply is!

Transhumanism, a Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas by Dr.'s. Joseph P. Farrell and Scott D. de Hart lifts the veil from the macabre transhumanistic monster being assembled and exposes the hidden history and agenda that has set humanity on a collision course for the Apocalypse.

Joseph P. Farrell, PhD, is the author of the best-selling Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men: The Surviving Elites of the Cosmic War and Their Hidden Agenda.

See original here:
Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas