Discover Ministries Nephilim Among Us Human Animal Hybrids, Eugenics, GMOs Transhumanism Part 2 of
Steve Cioccolanti.
By: Steve Galeener
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Discover Ministries Nephilim Among Us Human Animal Hybrids, Eugenics, GMOs & Transhumanism Part 2 of - Video
TRANSHUMANISM GMO GENETICS AND NOAH,S FIRE
Non profit,freely give as I give unto you,,I dint own images or music.
By: CAMILIA KEEN
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TRANSHUMANISM GMO GENETICS AND NOAH,S FIRE - Video
Cybernetics think tank - Balancing Transhumanism and the IBM-Raytheon Verichip
This video discusses Transhumanism and Cybernetics in a series of talks based on the following topics in a online web-cast for cybernetics principles . The topics are based on a forensic technology...
By: Zengersbomb
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Cybernetics think tank - Balancing Transhumanism and the IBM-Raytheon Verichip - Video
Transhumanism Podcast
Esther. 3rd period.
By: Hans Johnsen
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Transhumanism Podcast - Video
Fr Neil Vaney Open Teaching on Transhumanism CDC 2014 5
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Fr Neil Vaney Open Teaching on Transhumanism CDC 2014 5 - Video
Learn how transhumanism and artificial intelligence are changing the way we acquire users as software engineer for PALO IT and co-founder of Transhumanism Australia, Alyse Sue, speaks at Mumbrella MSIX to lift the lid on transhumanist technologies.
Sue, a full stack Node.js and C# software developer has co-founded three ventures focusing on health and emerging technology. Shes also had vast experience working with AI and blockchain and has previously spent nearly four years at KPMG focusing on finance and technology.
Sue will speak at Mumbrella MSIX on transhumanism and artificial intelligence
At Mumbrella MSIX, Sue will discuss using artificial intelligence to completely tailor content to passers-by, while also revealing how to target digital humans living in virtual worlds created by Facebook and other tech giants.
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In addition, shell uncover ways to plant messages directly in peoples brains using brain-computer-interfaces.
Also confirmed is Forethought group CEO, Ken Roberts, who will reveal how to avoid the big idea lottery. The former associate professor at Melbourne Business School and now managing partner of Forethought Research (formerly Roberts Research Group) will assert that there is still extreme ineffectiveness in advertising and that the origin of the issues is the intuition-based big idea.
Roberts will explain a scientifically proven way of forming a foundation for creative briefs and big ideas
He will share with delegates Prophecy Thoughts & Feelings, a scientifically proven, marketing science-based, method for identifying the rational and emotional motivations for category and brand-specific consumer behaviour and show how these motivational drivers should form the foundations of the creative brief and the big idea.
Meanwhile, Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb will lead an interactive session explaining the psychological reasons why consumers enjoy games and how certain structural characteristics of games elicit beliefs and behaviours that lead to continued engagement.
Tobias-Webb will reveal the real benefits of gaming and how it affects consumer thinking
Tobias-Webb, who has worked for Commonwealth Bank, Ogilvy & Mather and lectured at the University of Cambridge has spent her career focusing on understanding human behaviour and decision making and applying insight from neuroscience, psychology, and economics to create real-world, measurable behavioural change.
Curated by Adam Ferrier, consumer psychologist and chief thinker at Thinkerbell, Mumbrella MSIX (Marketing Sciences Ideas Xchange) explores the intersection of marketing, behavioural science, creativity, and everything in between.
It takes place on February 20 in Sydney with tickets on sale now.
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Transhumanism, AI, gaming and human biology to feature at Mumbrella MSIX with new session announced - mUmBRELLA*
"Analysis, Loss of Meaning, and Religious Transhumanism" by Micah Redding
At the 2014 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, speakers addressed the themes of Mormonism, Transhumanism and Transfigurism, with particular attention to topics at the intersection...
By: Mormon Transhumanist Association
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"Analysis, Loss of Meaning, and Religious Transhumanism" by Micah Redding - Video
"The challenges and opportunities of religious transhumanism" by Carl Youngblood
At the 2015 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, held 3 Apr 2015 at the Salt Lake City Public Library, speakers addressed the themes of Mormonism, Transhumanism and ...
By: Mormon Transhumanist Association
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"The challenges and opportunities of religious transhumanism" by Carl Youngblood - Video
Copy of Transhumanism and Genetic Manipulation (Lifting the Curtain: Lesson 8)
Mankind is on a quest to achieve eternal life apart from Christ. We must not submit to the lie that says we can improve on God #39;s design for the human body! Discover how close we are to...
By: Thom Hoff
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Copy of Transhumanism and Genetic Manipulation (Lifting the Curtain: Lesson 8) - Video
Liberate RVA Couched X -- Mandatory Voting, Sociopaths, Transhumanism
Get to know your friendly neighborhood Richmond anarchists in this weekly roundtable show. On-the-fly topics and real-time discussions. 00:25 -- Mandatory Voting 16:05 -- Professional Sociopaths...
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Liberate RVA Couched X -- Mandatory Voting, Sociopaths, & Transhumanism - Video
Humans have always imagined states of existence different from the ones that they experience in their everyday lives. In fact, the pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction with our physical constraints could be seen to be the main motivating factor for religious as well as scientific thought. From ancient mythologies to modern popular culture, humans have created myriad images of transformations of the body and mind into forms that allow them to interact with the world differently.
Why do humans search for perfection? This is by no means an easy question to answer: in fact it directs us to the numerous definitions that have been given to the question what makes us human? Dostoyevsky, after spending some time in a Siberian prison, came to the conclusion that the human is the creature that can adapt to anything (Dostoyevsky 1985). This is a significant definition because it highlights the human propensity to change in response to external circumstances with both positive consequences (it helps us to survive), and negative ones (it induces us to blindly accept injustice). The harsh situation in which this definition was created also points to a major incentive that humans have for adapting: to avoid suffering the suffering that comes from disease, isolation, poverty, oppression and prejudice.
We could therefore say that one reason that humans search for perfection, and for what the spiritually inclined would call transcendence, is because they are not only aware of suffering (arguably most animals are), but also, and more importantly, because they critically reflect on their suffering, and can recognize and reflect on the suffering of others. Deliberately changing what we are means, in many ways, letting go of what makes us suffer.
Transhumanism (or Human Plus, H+) is a social and philosophical movement that explores the uses of technology for the positive transformation of human capacities, and the social, political and ethical implications that such a transformation would carry. Its ideological uniqueness lies in an almost existentialist interpretation of science: while acknowledging the value of the scientific method based on the principles of precision, objectivity and falsifiability it foregrounds its relevance for social justice, self-determination and personal fulfilment, in other words, for improving the human condition. In transhumanism, therefore, science is owned differently than in humanism, where it was a symbol of human intellect, ingenuity and a key to the truth. The transhumanist perspective, generally, begins with the question of human experience and then takes an activist approach, looking to science to find how it can alleviate suffering and thereby improve this experience.
The writers in this Special Issue agree that the use of science to alter and ameliorate human capacities is certainly not a new phenomenon. Looking only at the last hundred years or so, for example, we find scientific breakthroughs that have radically altered human existence, even though they are now so closely assimilated into our lives that we often take them for granted. To name just a few of these changes: the contraceptive pill has liberated women from the demands of reproduction and changed the structure of the workforce, antibiotics have obliterated previously fatal diseases, and aviation technology has facilitated rapid global travel. Because of such developments we have better control over our bodies, enjoy longer life spans and can make multiple and fast relocations to different parts of the planet, radically changing our life experiences.
What these writers also recognize, however, is that recent scientific developments have accelerated the rate of change, taking it into areas that cannot be predicted. Genome research, the imaging of the brain and the creation of more and more intelligent computers are re-defining and re-adjusting the level of control we have over our bodies, our lifestyles and the environment in which we interact. This context makes it imperative that we theorize science-driven changes so as to integrate them more rationally and effectively in our policies, social regulations and individual life plans (Hughes, 2004). This Special Issue offers a flavor of transhumanist approaches to this endeavor, and a glimpse into the transhumanist vision of the future of humanity.
In considering transhumanism, we should keep in mind that it is essentially a human (even if not humanist) movement. As Patrick Hopkins points out in his essay, transhumanist ideals stem from the propensity of humans to imagine themselves to be other than what they are. This propensity hides a paradox: what humans often strive to escape is what they have in fact evolved to be. The imagination creates environments that seem desirable but that may not be suitable for humans, which means that we can long for what we are not actually any good at (such as a state of existence with no struggle and adversity). Realizing this can lead either to an attempt at changing our evolutionary heritage into a literally trans-human state (something other than human), or to equating improvement with enhancement. The latter implication means we would aim to strengthen, rather than surpass, our evolved traits, thereby making ourselves super-human what Hopkins aptly calls superprimates. Therefore, when considering technologies that can transform the human constitution, we need to decide carefully what we want to keep and what we want to discard, and what the assumptions and beliefs are behind each choice.
What are some ways in which such transhuman transformations can occur? A major theme of transhumanist discourses is the development of specific technologies aimed at assisting our quest to lead fulfilling lives. One area that has received much attention in this regard, both from transhumanist and cultural theorists, is computer technology and the electronic media. Cyberspace and the Internet, in particular, have been hailed as signalling the emergence of new conceptions of identity. There is widespread agreement that the Internet has produced new social settings and re-structured communication patterns and perceptions of space. Some have even paralleled its influence on social behavior to architectural changes and the effects of migration and urbanization (Meyerowitz 1985). At the same time, there is an increasing concern by others that such non-physical spaces encourage escapism, addictive behavior and emotional isolation. MIT media theorist Sherry Turkle represents this view when she says that for those who are lonely yet afraid of intimacy, information technology has made it possible to have the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship (Turkle, 2004, n.p.).
Another way to explore information technologies, however, is through their potential to accurately assess an individuals cognitive and/or emotive weaknesses or difficulties, and then offer the means to overcome them. In his article, William Bainbridge describes numerous examples of personalized information technologies, where computer systems act as guides and mentors for the users. Originally developed to replace lost or damaged functions in the physically or cognitively disabled, such technologies are now being generalized to enhance normal human abilities. For example location-aware mobile computing has successfully helped cognitively impaired people to move around without getting lost. In the future, the functions of this technology could be expanded to include showing the users not only where they are, but also how close they are to locations that are suited to their disposition and values where to go and where not to go.
Also, computer games are increasingly challenging traditional narrative form through increased user participation. Now, players must follow the dictates of the system and play a game correctly, if they are to enjoy the experience. One cannot play a game such as the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto, for example, non-aggressively or oppositionally, by leading the protagonist to perform charitable acts, or by propelling the story through the actions of marginal characters (Barr, Marsen and Noble 2005). The narrative structure of the game assumes certain values with which the player must comply in order to progress the action, making it more a case of the game playing the player than vice versa. Current computer game development, however, aims to change this and increase interactivity to the point where the player can give the story different endings, and direct the narrative action from different perspectives.
Having started as visual media with limited interactivity, computer games are becoming immersive, engaging more of the users senses, and even pervasive, where the simulated environment links with a persons daily life. Virtual Reality is already being used to treat physical and emotional trauma, and Bainbridge imagines a future therapy, which he calls Displacement Therapy, where the system analyzes a users weaknesses and creates a pervasive environment where the user can safely perform actions that will enable him/her to overcome these weaknesses.
In a similar vein, Sam Kenyon examines the significance of the interface as a meeting ground between humans and machines, in a future where individuals will need to engage intimately with technology. Taking his lead from the prototypical conflict scenarios of Humans-Against-Machines and We-Become-Them, Kenyon shows how the perceived dichotomy between the machinic and the human is being bridged by implants that re-define boundaries of self, relationship with other, and perceptive ability.
Other writers look beyond the types and uses of emerging technologies to their philosophical and social implications. Comparing the transhumanist with the humanist approaches to science, Riccardo Campa raises the question of the motivations of the scientific endeavour itself. In its history and philosophical underpinnings, science emerged as a spiritual activity aimed at reaching the truth and pure knowledge. Is the transhumanist perspective changing science into an instrument for improving the human condition, and what are the epistemological implications of such a shift in attitude? In a parallel way, improving the human condition does not only entail developing technologies that overcome human limitations, but also involves satisfying existential concerns, which leads to a personally meaningful life. As Campa asks, can living forever replace knowing the sense of ones life? And is it appropriate to look to science for the answer to this question?
In this trajectory into the meaning of science, Campa explores the relations between individual existence and the world in which this existence unfolds. It could be that the world is really alien to us, but it could also be that we are just not intelligent enough to understand it and in doing so re-negotiate our existence within it. In fact, it could be that our existential dissatisfaction and anxiety stem from cognitive underdevelopment, and should be seen as obstacles to overcome rather than as defining criteria of human sensibility.
Taking his lead from C. S. Lewis essay The Abolition of Man, Gregory Jordan also visits this theme, by pondering the concepts of motivation, rationality and value, and positing them against the model of the technologically enhanced human. Jordan considers the possibility that by technologically modifying our minds we may have better access to the qualities that make us human. This access may in turn enable us to strengthen the characteristics that we consider as defining us positively. In some ways paradoxically, we may transcend human weaknesses by embracing essential human qualities such as benevolence, exuberance and tolerance, and gaining more control over them: the trans human may well be the very human.
How do changes in the human body and mind affect attitudes towards oneself and towards others, and what would their implications be for the norms and ethics of social interaction? Joseph Jackson invites us to re-consider our ideas of morality and aesthetics in the backdrop of a future world where physical appearance, sexual orientation and gender are no longer evolved or genetic traits but matters of choice and preference. In this world, preferences are morally inert, and all evaluation of individually selected enhancements should be seen as an aesthetic appreciation rather than a moral judgement.
However, such a world where an individual is empowered to choose his/her ability and appearance cries out for a socially recognized balance between ones preferences and anothers a monitor that would ensure that ones preference does not become anothers obligation, such as in a you have to become what I like scenario. In fact, such a world cries out for a developed capacity to empathize. PJ Manney stresses the importance of empathy in any community that claims to be ruled by social justice and equal rights to happiness for all its members. Manney rightly points out that we already have a technology enabling us to develop empathic capacity. This technology is the universal trait we share as a species our storytelling capacity. Storytelling, in particular in the form of sophisticated written narratives, such as novels, offers us a creative and safe space in which to hypothesize, project different outcomes to events, reflect on causal processes, and consider the effects of different emotions.
Actually, and perhaps in some ways paradoxically, by developing empathic inter-subjectivity, the ability to see the world from anothers perspective, we also become more objective and realistic. One of the greatest lessons to be learnt from empathy is that otherness is not something one has to deal with (but would rather not have to), but is actually a way through which one can conceptualize ones own potential as more-than-self. The other can offer the self many occasions to reflect on what it would be like to live in a different physical form with its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as its own wishes, desires and fears. In this context, tolerance for diversity is transformed into something else: the potential to experience, even if vicariously, different possibilities of life. This potential in turn enables us to choose more appropriately our own social performances, and, in a transhuman future, perhaps even our forms of embodiment.
What are the implications of all these transhumanist ideas and possibilities for us humans as we exist now? Taking a practical perspective, George Dvorsky describes his daily habits as reflective of his transhumanist principles. From a description of what he eats every day to how he uses technology, Dvorksy gives an example of life choices informed by expectations of the future what a human may do now in hope of leading a transhuman life in the future. In a parallel way, a possible perspective of the transhuman being itself is imaginatively narrated by Nick Bostrom, who takes a future perfect angle on existence, addressing the reader from a position of completion and arrival, set in a post-human future, rather than from a position of departure and uncertainty.
As Cory Doctorow points out in his essay, transhumanist ideas are as much about the present, and the human, as they are about the future, and the trans-human. More than merely describing an evolutionary inevitability, they mirror actual human desires and fears, and show us what we already possess, and what we would like to possess in our quest for perfection and the abolition of suffering. In doing this, transhumanist thought does more than just promote technology as a catalyst for human improvement. The insights it offers into our potential can absolve us from the primitive and paralyzing guilt that plagues our search for happiness, pleasure and beauty, encouraging us instead to seek freely and purposely sights more majestically beautiful, music more deeply soul-stirring, sex more exquisitely erotic, mystical epiphanies more awe inspiring, and love more profoundly intense (Pearce 2007, n.p.)
Barr, P., Marsen, S. and Noble, J. 2005. Oppositional Play: Gathering negative
evidence for computer game values. Proceedings of the Second Australasian
Conference on Interactive Entertainment, Sydney, Australia, pp. 3-10. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1109181
Dostoyevsky, F. 1985 (original 1862). The House of the Dead. Translated by David McDuff. London: Penguin
Hughes, J. 2004. Citizen Cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future. New York: Westview Press.
Meyerowitz, J. 1985. No Sense of Place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pearce, D. 2007. The Hedonistic Imperative (Introduction). http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedonist.htm
Turkle, S. 2004. How Computers Change the Way We Think. The Chronicle of Higher Education. January 30, Volume 50, Issue 21, Page B26. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i21/21b02601.htm
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Becoming More Than Human: Technology and the Post-Human ...
Maybe one major reason why the the transhumanism agenda is moving forward so smoothly and quickly, is because there are so many believing in the ball earth lies?
A strange statement at a first glance, so please allow me to elaborate.
If a human has no gnosis of divinity, of soul, of spirit, of a creator, of reincarnation, and believes; the earth is not the centre of a small universe, is not special, has no purpose, and all life upon it is just a random, chaotic, meaningless construct, all from a big scientific bang then of course, this will create worship of science and atheism.
With this blind worship of 'controller' led science and atheism, one will for sure be more happy to evolve in their one meaningless life by merging with bio-tech.
Will the globots will awaken?
***
So what is going on in transhumanism recently that most are not aware of?
An AI robot has said that humans will in the future be kept in a zoo.
More information has come out presenting the Google is in bed with the CIA.
But Facebook has gone into another gear.
Firstly Facebook has last week made a patent where they can check your friends credit ratingsbefore making a decision on your credit request.
Also, Facebook is the home of the Selfie..not as harmless as one might think.
Funny how parents put lots of pics of their babies and toddlers on Facebook obviously without their permission. Maybe the baby or toddler when older won't want their details placed online within an NSA/CIA/Corporate Advertising Database? Maybe they will be none too happy in their teens? Or maybe they will be brought up to think the digital transhumanism age is great?
Facebook recently started adding green lights for when someone is online, and then added what device they are using (mobile or internet > e.g out or in), and then an even newer seen notification within their messaging system.
This is a massive breach of privacy, yet it happened so slowly, nobody really noticed it.
I know some friends whose relatives got in touch with them and asked are you ok? - because their green light had not been on in a few days!
Facebook even has the fake Ball Earth model on every ones screen..sigh.
And of course they are constantly deleting posts against the status quo.
***
Smartphone addiction is also at epidemic levels. I see couples on holiday in Spain sometimes, entering cafes, ordering something, and then both staring down at their phones for the next half hour..no doubt seeing likes for their look at me, we are somewhere hot narcissistic selfies.
***
There is another thing going on. The teens of today are a new Boring Generation they have few adventures or tales to tell. I think this is because everyone is going out with a video camera in their pocket, and subconsciously they all know this and act in a fake and stale way. In the teenage worlds, everyone is an actor, their parties are stale, everyone with a maskthey know that if anything wild happened, it would all be over social media. They Police themselves.
***
So, the lie of the painted spinning marble has many ripples, and the love of transhumism is for sure one spin off.lets hope people wake up.
Wakyi Wakyi | Trinity of Wisdom | The Reemergence of Man | Authors blog; freedom, authenticity, evolution, consciousness, mysticism, symbolism, nwo
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Flat Earth - Transhumanism and the Globots. | Strange
(Trans/Post)Humanity and Representation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Anthropocene: An Introduction. Sonia Baelo-Allu and Mnica Calvo-Pascual
Section I. Theoretical Approaches: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
1. Before Humanity: Or, Posthumanism Between Ancestrality and Becoming Inhuman. Stefan Herbrechter
2. From Utilitarianism to Transhumanism: A Critical Approach. Maite Escudero-Alas
3. Posthuman Modes of Reading Literature Online. Alexandra Glavanakova
Section II. Transhumanism: The Uneasiness of Human Enhancement
4. Vigilance to Wonder: Human Enhancement in TED Talks. Loredana Filip
5. Patterns of Posthuman Numbness in Shirley & Gibsons "The Belonging Kind" and Eggerss The Circle. Francisco Collado-Rodrguez
6. Subjects of the Modem World: Writing U. in Tom McCarthys Satin Island. Margalida Massanet Andreu
Section III. Transhumanism: Trauma and (Bio)Technology
7. The Paradoxical Anti-Humanism of Tom McCarthys C: Traumatic Secrets and the Waning of Affects in the Technological Society. Susana Onega
8. Don DeLillos Zero K: Transhumanism, Trauma, and the Ethics of Premature Cryopreservation. Carmen Laguarta-Bueno
9. A Dystopian Vision of Transhuman Enhancement: Speciesist and Political Issues Intersecting Trauma and Disability in M. Night Shyamalans Split. Miriam Fernndez-Santiago
Section IV. Posthumanity: Post-Anthropocentric Scenarios
10. The Call of Anthropocene: Resituating the Human through Trans- & Posthumanism;
Notes of Otherness in Works of Jeff Vandermeer and Cixin Liu. Justus Poetzsch
11. "Am I a person?" Biotech Animals and Posthumanist Empathy in Jeff Vandermeers Borne. Monica Sousa
12. Posthuman Cure: Biological and Cultural Motherhood in Margaret Atwoods MaddAddam. Esther Muoz-Gonzlez
13. Posthuman Transformation in Helen Marshalls The Migration. Sherryl Vint
Conclusion: Towards a Post-Pandemic, (Post)Human World. Sonia Baelo-Allu and Mnica Calvo-Pascual
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Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century ...
By Alexander Thomas, University of East London
The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.
They may enable us to enjoy greater morphological freedom we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering. Or advance our cognitive capacities. We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI).
Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions. Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this convergence may bring about radical changes to our world in the near-future.
Transhumanism is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technology that we should embrace self-directed human evolution. If the history of technological progress can be seen as humankinds attempt to tame nature to better serve its needs, transhumanism is the logical continuation: the revision of humankinds nature to better serve its fantasies.
As David Pearce, a leading proponent of transhumanism and co-founder of Humanity+, says:
If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves. If we want eternal life, then well need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the world. Compassion alone is not enough.
But there is a darker side to the naive faith that Pearce and other proponents have in transhumanism one that is decidedly dystopian.
There is unlikely to be a clear moment when we emerge as transhuman. Rather technologies will become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body. Technology has long been thought of as an extension of the self. Many aspects of our social world, not least our financial systems, are already largely machine-based. There is much to learn from these evolving human/machine hybrid systems.
Yet the often Utopian language and expectations that surround and shape our understanding of these developments have been under-interrogated. The profound changes that lie ahead are often talked about in abstract ways, because evolutionary advancements are deemed so radical that they ignore the reality of current social conditions.
In this way, transhumanism becomes a kind of techno-anthropocentrism, in which transhumanists often underestimate the complexity of our relationship with technology. They see it as a controllable, malleable tool that, with the correct logic and scientific rigour, can be turned to any end. In fact, just as technological developments are dependent on and reflective of the environment in which they arise, they in turn feed back into the culture and create new dynamics often imperceptibly.
Situating transhumanism, then, within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which it emerges is vital to understanding how ethical it is.
Max More and Natasha Vita-More, in their edited volume The Transhumanist Reader, claim the need in transhumanism for inclusivity, plurality and continuous questioning of our knowledge.
Yet these three principles are incompatible with developing transformative technologies within the prevailing system from which they are currently emerging: advanced capitalism.
One problem is that a highly competitive social environment doesnt lend itself to diverse ways of being. Instead it demands increasingly efficient behaviour. Take students, for example. If some have access to pills that allow them to achieve better results, can other students afford not to follow? This is already a quandary. Increasing numbers of students reportedly pop performance-enhancing pills. And if pills become more powerful, or if the enhancements involve genetic engineering or intrusive nanotechnology that offer even stronger competitive advantages, what then? Rejecting an advanced technological orthodoxy could potentially render someone socially and economically moribund (perhaps evolutionarily so), while everyone with access is effectively forced to participate to keep up.
Going beyond everyday limits is suggestive of some kind of liberation. However, here it is an imprisoning compulsion to act a certain way. We literally have to transcend in order to conform (and survive). The more extreme the transcendence, the more profound the decision to conform and the imperative to do so.
The systemic forces cajoling the individual into being upgraded to remain competitive also play out on a geo-political level. One area where technology R&D has the greatest transhumanist potential is defence. DARPA (the US defence department responsible for developing military technologies), which is attempting to create metabolically dominant soldiers, is a clear example of how vested interests of a particular social system could determine the development of radically powerful transformative technologies that have destructive rather than Utopian applications.
The rush to develop super-intelligent AI by globally competitive and mutually distrustful nation states could also become an arms race. In Radical Evolution, novelist Verner Vinge describes a scenario in which superhuman intelligence is the ultimate weapon. Ideally, mankind would proceed with the utmost care in developing such a powerful and transformative innovation.
There is quite rightly a huge amount of trepidation around the creation of super-intelligence and the emergence of the singularity the idea that once AI reaches a certain level it will rapidly redesign itself, leading to an explosion of intelligence that will quickly surpass that of humans (something that will happen by 2029 according to futurist Ray Kurzweil). If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire, it even opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal could an AI destroy humankind from a desire to produce the most paperclips for example?
Its also difficult to conceive of any aspect of humanity that could not be improved by being made more efficient at satisfying the demands of a competitive system. It is the system, then, that determines humanitys evolution without taking any view on what humans are or what they should be. One of the ways in which advanced capitalism proves extremely dynamic is in its ideology of moral and metaphysical neutrality. As philosopher Michael Sandel says: markets dont wag fingers. In advanced capitalism, maximising ones spending power maximises ones ability to flourish hence shopping could be said to be a primary moral imperative of the individual.
Philosopher Bob Doede rightly suggests it is this banal logic of the market that will dominate:
If biotech has rendered human nature entirely revisable, then it has no grain to direct or constrain our designs on it. And so whose designs will our successor post-human artefacts likely bear? I have little doubt that in our vastly consumerist, media-saturated capitalist economy, market forces will have their way. So the commercial imperative would be the true architect of the future human.
Whether the evolutionary process is determined by a super-intelligent AI or advanced capitalism, we may be compelled to conform to a perpetual transcendence that only makes us more efficient at activities demanded by the most powerful system. The end point is predictably an entirely nonhuman though very efficient technological entity derived from humanity that doesnt necessarily serve a purpose that a modern-day human would value in any way. The ability to serve the system effectively will be the driving force. This is also true of natural evolution technology is not a simple tool that allows us to engineer ourselves out of this conundrum. But transhumanism could amplify the speed and least desirable aspects of the process.
For bioethicist Julian Savulescu, the main reason humans must be enhanced is for our species to survive. He says we face a Bermuda Triangle of extinction: radical technological power, liberal democracy and our moral nature. As a transhumanist, Savulescu extols technological progress, also deeming it inevitable and unstoppable. It is liberal democracy and particularly our moral nature that should alter.
The failings of humankind to deal with global problems are increasingly obvious. But Savulescu neglects to situate our moral failings within their wider cultural, political and economic context, instead believing that solutions lie within our biological make up.
Yet how would Savulescus morality-enhancing technologies be disseminated, prescribed and potentially enforced to address the moral failings they seek to cure? This would likely reside in the power structures that may well bear much of the responsibility for these failings in the first place. Hes also quickly drawn into revealing how relative and contestable the concept of morality is:
We will need to relax our commitment to maximum protection of privacy. Were seeing an increase in the surveillance of individuals and that will be necessary if we are to avert the threats that those with antisocial personality disorder, fanaticism, represent through their access to radically enhanced technology.
Such surveillance allows corporations and governments to access and make use of extremely valuable information. In Who Owns the Future, internet pioneer Jaron Lanier explains:
Troves of dossiers on the private lives and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are packaged into a new private form of elite money It is a new kind of security the rich trade in, and the value is naturally driven up. It becomes a giant-scale levee inaccessible to ordinary people.
Crucially, this levee is also invisible to most people. Its impacts extend beyond skewing the economic system towards elites to significantly altering the very conception of liberty, because the authority of power is both radically more effective and dispersed.
Foucaults notion that we live in a panoptic society one in which the sense of being perpetually watched instils discipline is now stretched to the point where todays incessant machinery has been called a superpanopticon. The knowledge and information that transhumanist technologies will tend to create could strengthen existing power structures that cement the inherent logic of the system in which the knowledge arises.
This is in part evident in the tendency of algorithms toward race and gender bias, which reflects our already existing social failings. Information technology tends to interpret the world in defined ways: it privileges information that is easily measurable, such as GDP, at the expense of unquantifiable information such as human happiness or well-being. As invasive technologies provide ever more granular data about us, this data may in a very real sense come to define the world and intangible information may not maintain its rightful place in human affairs.
Existing inequities will surely be magnified with the introduction of highly effective psycho-pharmaceuticals, genetic modification, super intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotic prosthetics, and the possible development of life expansion. They are all fundamentally inegalitarian, based on a notion of limitlessness rather than a standard level of physical and mental well-being weve come to assume in healthcare. Its not easy to conceive of a way in which these potentialities can be enjoyed by all.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen talks of the new logics of expulsion, that capture the pathologies of todays global capitalism. The expelled include the more than 60,000 migrants who have lost their lives on fatal journeys in the past 20 years, and the victims of the racially skewed profile of the increasing prison population.
In Britain, they include the 30,000 people whose deaths in 2015 were linked to health and social care cuts and the many who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire. Their deaths can be said to have resulted from systematic marginalisation.
Unprecedented acute concentration of wealth happens alongside these expulsions. Advanced economic and technical achievements enable this wealth and the expulsion of surplus groups. At the same time, Sassen writes, they create a kind of nebulous centrelessness as the locus of power:
The oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today the oppressed have mostly been expelled and survive a great distance from their oppressors The oppressor is increasingly a complex system that combines persons, networks, and machines with no obvious centre.
Surplus populations removed from the productive aspects of the social world may rapidly increase in the near future as improvements in AI and robotics potentially result in significant automation unemployment. Large swaths of society may become productively and economically redundant. For historian Yuval Noah Harari the most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: what should we do with all the superfluous people?
We would be left with the scenario of a small elite that has an almost total concentration of wealth with access to the most powerfully transformative technologies in world history and a redundant mass of people, no longer suited to the evolutionary environment in which they find themselves and entirely dependent on the benevolence of that elite. The dehumanising treatment of todays expelled groups shows that prevailing liberal values in developed countries dont always extend to those who dont share the same privilege, race, culture or religion.
In an era of radical technological power, the masses may even represent a significant security threat to the elite, which could be used to justify aggressive and authoritarian actions (perhaps enabled further by a culture of surveillance).
In their transhumanist tract, The Proactionary Imperative, Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska argue that we are obliged to pursue techno-scientific progress relentlessly, until we achieve our god-like destiny or infinite power effectively to serve God by becoming God. They unabashedly reveal the incipient violence and destruction such Promethean aims would require: replacing the natural with the artificial is so key to proactionary strategy at least as a serious possibility if not a likelihood [it will lead to] the long-term environmental degradation of the Earth.
The extent of suffering they would be willing to gamble in their cosmic casino is only fully evident when analysing what their project would mean for individual human beings:
A proactionary world would not merely tolerate risk-taking but outright encourage it, as people are provided with legal incentives to speculate with their bio-economic assets. Living riskily would amount to an entrepreneurship of the self [proactionaries] seek large long-term benefits for survivors of a revolutionary regime that would permit many harms along the way.
The economic fragility that humans may soon be faced with as a result of automation unemployment would likely prove extremely useful to proactionary goals. In a society where vast swaths of people are reliant on handouts for survival, market forces would determine that less social security means people will risk more for a lower reward, so proactionaries would reinvent the welfare state as a vehicle for fostering securitised risk taking while the proactionary state would operate like a venture capitalist writ large.
At the heart of this is the removal of basic rights for Humanity 1.0, Fullers term for modern, non-augmented human beings, replaced with duties towards the future augmented Humanity 2.0. Hence the very code of our being can and perhaps must be monetised: personal autonomy should be seen as a politically licensed franchise whereby individuals understand their bodies as akin to plots of land in what might be called the genetic commons.
The neoliberal preoccupation with privatisation would so extend to human beings. Indeed, the lifetime of debt that is the reality for most citizens in developed advanced capitalist nations, takes a further step when you are born into debt simply by being alive you are invested with capital on which a return is expected.
Socially moribund masses may thus be forced to serve the technoscientific super-project of Humanity 2.0, which uses the ideology of market fundamentalism in its quest for perpetual progress and maximum productivity. The only significant difference is that the stated aim of godlike capabilities in Humanity 2.0 is overt, as opposed to the undefined end determined by the infinite progress of an ever more efficient market logic that we have now.
Some transhumanists are beginning to understand that the most serious limitations to what humans can achieve are social and cultural not technical. However, all too often their reframing of politics falls into the same trap as their techno-centric worldview. They commonly argue the new political poles are not left-right but techno-conservative or techno-progressive (and even techno-libertarian and techno-sceptic. Meanwhile Fuller and Lipinska argue that the new political poles will be up and down instead of left and right: those who want to dominate the skies and became all powerful, and those who want to preserve the Earth and its species-rich diversity. It is a false dichotomy. Preservation of the latter is likely to be necessary for any hope of achieving the former.
Transhumanism and advanced capitalism are two processes which value progress and efficiency above everything else. The former as a means to power and the latter as a means to profit. Humans become vessels to serve these values. Transhuman possibilities urgently call for a politics with more clearly delineated and explicit humane values to provide a safer environment in which to foster these profound changes. Where we stand on questions of social justice and environmental sustainability has never been more important. Technology doesnt allow us to escape these questions it doesnt permit political neutrality. The contrary is true. It determines that our politics have never been more important. Savulescu is right when he says radical technologies are coming. He is wrong in thinking they will fix our morality. They will reflect it.
Alexander Thomas, PhD Candidate, University of East London
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.
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Transhumanists May Lead Us Into a Dystopian Future - Inverse
A new generation of transhumanists is emerging. You can feel it in handshakes at transhumanist meet-ups. You can see it when checking in to transhumanist groups in social media. You can read it in the hundreds of transhumanist-themed blogs. This is not the same bunch of older, mostly male academics that have slowly moved the movement forward during the last few decades. This is a dynamic group of younger people from varying backgrounds: Asians, Blacks, Middle Easterners, Caucasians, and Latinos. Many are females, some are LGBT, and others have disabilities. Many are atheist, while others are spiritual or even formally religious. Their politics run the gamut, from liberals to conservatives to anarchists. Their professions vary widely, from artists to physical laborers to programmers. Whatever their background, preferences, or professions, they have recently tripled the population of transhumanists in just the last 12 months.
"Three years ago, we had only around 400 members, but today we have over 10,000 members," says Amanda Stoel, co-founder and chief administrator of Facebook group Singularity Network, one of the largest of hundreds of transhumanist-themed groups on the web.
Transhumanism is becoming so popular that even the comic strip Dilbert, which appears online and in 2000 newspapers, recently made jokes about it.
Despite its growing popularity, many people around the world still don't know what "transhuman" means. Transhuman literally means beyond human. Transhumanists consist of life extensionists, techno-optimists, Singularitarians, biohackers, roboticists, AI proponents, and futurists who embrace radical science and technology to improve the human condition. The most important aim for many transhumanists is to overcome human mortality, a goal some believe is achievable by 2045.
Transhumanism has been around for nearly 30 years and was first heavily influenced by science fiction. Today, transhumanism is increasingly being influenced by actual science and technological innovation, much of it being created by people under the age of 40. It's also become a very international movement, with many formal groups in dozens of countries.
Despite the movement's growth, its potential is being challenged by some older transhumanists who snub the younger generation and their ideas. These old-school futurists dismiss activist philosophies and radicalism, and even prefer some younger writers and speakers not have their voices heard. Additionally, transhumanism's Wikipedia page -- the most viewed online document of the movement -- is protected by a vigilant posse, deleting additions or changes that don't support a bland academic view of transhumanism.
Inevitably, this Wikipedia page misses the vibrancy and happenings of the burgeoning movement. The real status and information of transhumanism and its philosophies can be found in public transhumanist gatherings and festivities, in popular student groups like the Stanford University Transhumanist Association, and in social media where tens of thousands of scientists and technologists hang out and discuss the transhuman future.
Jet-setting personality Maria Konovalenko, a 29-year-old Russian molecular biophysicist whose public demonstrations supporting radical life extension have made international news, is a prime example.
"We must do more for transhumanism and life extension," says Konovalenko, who serves as vice president of Moscow-based Science for Life Extension Foundation. "This is our lives and our futures we're talking about. To sit back and and just watch the 21st Century roll by will not accomplish our goals. We must take our message to the people in the streets and strive to make real change."
Transhumanist celebrities like Konovalenko are changing the way the movement gets its message across to the public. Gauging by the rapidly increasing number of transhumanists, it's working.
A primary goal of many transhumanists is to convince the public that embracing radical technology and science is in the species' best interest. In a mostly religious world where much of society still believes in heavenly afterlives, some people are skeptical about whether significantly extending human lifespans is philosophically and morally correct. Transhumanists believe the more people that support transhumanism, the more private and government resources will end up in the hands of organizations and companies that aim to improve human lives and bring mortality to an end.
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A New Generation of Transhumanists Is Emerging | HuffPost
Written by Karina Tsui, CNN
Today, we can alter our bodies in previously unimaginable ways, whether that's implanting microchips, fitting advanced prosthetic limbs or even designing entirely new senses.
So-called transhumanists -- people who seek to improve their biology by enhancing their bodies with technology -- believe that our natural condition inhibits our experience of the world, and that we can transcend our current capabilities through science.
Ideas that are "technoprogressive" to some are controversial to others. But to photographer David Vintiner, they are something else altogether: beautiful.
Made in collaboration with art director and critic Gem Fletcher, the book features a variety of people who identify, to some degree, as "transhuman" -- including a man with bionic ears that sense changes in atmospheric pressure, a woman who can "feel" earthquakes taking place around the world and technicians who have developed lab-made organs.
Fletcher was first introduced to the transhumanist subculture via the London Futurist Group, an organization that explores how technology can counter future crises. Upon meeting some of its members, the London-based art director approached Vintiner with the idea of photographing them in a series of portraits.
"Our first shoot was with Andrew Vladimirov, a DIY 'brain hacker,'" Vintiner recalled in a phone interview. "Each time we photographed someone new, we asked for referrals and introductions to other key people within the movement."
Redefining human experience
One of Vintiner's subjects, James Young, turned to bionics after losing his arm and leg in an accident in 2012. Young had always been interested in biotechnology and was particularly drawn to the aesthetics of science fiction. Visualizing how his body could be "re-built," or even perform enhanced tasks with the help of the latest technology, became part of his recovery process.
But according to the 29-year-old, the options presented to him by doctors were far from exciting -- standard-issue steel bionic limbs with flesh-colored silicone sleeves.
"To see what was available was the most upsetting part," Young said in a video interview.
"What the human body can constitute, in terms of tools and technology, is such a blurry thing -- if you think about the arm, it's just a sensory piece of equipment.
"If there was anyone who would get their arm and leg chopped off, it would be me because I'm excited about technology and what it can get done."
Japanese gaming giant Konami worked with prosthetics sculptor Sophie de Oliveira Barata to design a set of bionic limbs for Young. The result was an arm and leg made from gray carbon fiber -- an aesthetic partly inspired by Konami's "Metal Gear Solid," one of the then-22-year-old's favorite video games.
Beyond the expected functions, Young's robotic arm features a USB port, a screen displaying his Twitter feed and a retractable dock containing a remote-controlled drone. The limbs are controlled by sensors that convert nerve impulses from Young's spine into physical movements.
"Advanced prosthetics enabled James to change people's perception of (his) disability," said Vintiner of Young, adding: "When you first show people the photographs, they are shocked and disconcerted by the ideas contained within. But if you dissect the ideas, they realize that they are very pragmatic."
Young says it has taken several years for people to appreciate not just the functions of advanced bionic limbs but their aesthetics, too. "Bionic and electronic limbs were deemed scary, purely because of how they looked," he said. "They coincided with the idea that 'disability is not sexy.'"
He also felt there was stigma surrounding bionics, because patients were often given flesh-colored sleeves to conceal their artificial limbs.
"Visually, we think that this is the boundary of the human body," Young said, referring to his remaining biological arm. "Opportunities for transhumanists open up because a bionic arm can't feel pain, or it can be instantly replaced if you have the money. It has different abilities to withstand heat and to not be sunburned."
As Vintiner continued shooting the portraits, he felt many of his preconceptions being challenged. The process also raised a profound question: If technology can change what it is to be human, can it also change what it means to be beautiful?
"Most of my (original) work centers around people -- their behavior, character, quirks and stories," he said. "But this project took the concept of beauty to another level."
Eye of the beholder
Science's impact over our understanding of aesthetics is, to Vintiner, one of the most fascinating aspects of transhumanism. What he discovered, however, was that many in the movement still look toward existing beauty standards as a model for "post-human" perfection.
Speaking to CNN Style in 2018, Hanson said that Sophia's form would resonate with people around the world, and that her appearance was partly inspired by real women including Hanson's wife and Audrey Hepburn, as well as statues of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.
Related video: Meet Sophia, the robot who smiles and frowns just like us
But with her light hazel eyes, perfectly arched eyebrows, long eyelashes, defined cheekbones and plump lips -- Sophia's appearance arguably epitomizes that of a conventionally beautiful Caucasian woman.
"When I photographed Ben Goertzel, he vocalized how he took no time to consider how he (himself) looked -- it was of no interest to him," the photographer recalled of the photo shoot.
Vintiner saw a certain irony: that someone who was unconcerned about his own appearance would nonetheless project our preoccupation with beauty through his company's invention.
It also served as a reminder that attractiveness may be more complex than algorithms can ever fathom.
"I fear that if we can design humans without any of the 'flaws' that occur in our biological makeup, things will be pushed further and further towards a level of perfection we can only imagine right now." Vintiner said. "Look at how plastic surgery has altered our perception of beauty in a very short space of time.
"If the transhumanists are right and we, as humans, can live to be several hundreds of years old, our notion of beauty and the very meaning of what it is to be human will change dramatically."
Originally posted here:
Transhumanism: The cyborgs and biohackers redefining ...
Discerning the Spirits of the Devil: Transhumanism
DVD is available at Ex Ministries.com, Pastor G Craige Lewis, Get the DVD and open your eyes to the plan of the wicked one, The Devil is going full throttle with his plan as we are in this end times.
By: Evangelist Netasyahu Miller
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Discerning the Spirits of the Devil: Transhumanism - Video
Wealthy, Healthy and Wise
Okay, let me see if I've got this right. I could stay young forever? Groovy. A complete backup of my brain? Copy that. What's this? An estimate? I knew it sounded too good to be true.
As with previous medical breakthroughs, it is possible that future human enhancements, like brain-machine interfaces and longevity drugs, at least initially, may only be affordable for the wealthy. The well-to-do, well could be, the next big thing.
Some future forecasters point out that many medical products and procedures have been expensive when they were first introduced. Prices can drop through competition, lower production costs and after patents run out.
Medical enhancements, however, may encounter unique barriers to lower prices.
Cosmetic surgeries and implants, for example, have been available for decades. Visit Beverly Hills and you'll see more lifts than a crane operator, but you'd be hard pressed to find a tightened temple in my neck of the woods.
What obstacles, wrinkles if you will, face society in providing available and affordable transhuman technology for everyone?
Wrinkle #1 - In the year 2050, 'transhuman technology for all', would mean advanced medical technology for an estimated 9 billion people.
Wrinkle #2 - Medical insurance policies will probably not cover human enhancements.
Wrinkle #3 - The fewer recipients, the higher the value to the consumer. What fun would Jeopardy be if everyone had an encyclopedia implant?
Wrinkle #4 - You just invented the Immortality pill. What price will you set?
Even with reasonable closing costs, brain implant surgery may not be in the budget for many people living in the transhuman age. No prescription for immortality, for those that cannot afford the pill. In the era of 'half human/machine', the gap between the Halves and the Halve-Nots, will be as large as the profits.
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Transhumanism | Posthumanism | Future For All
NWO Technologie 2015 Robots and Transhumanism
By: The TruthStation
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NWO Technologie 2015 Robots and Transhumanism - Video
WW3, Transhumanism The Battle For The Soul Of Humanity -- Dave Hodges
Dave Hodges of the Common Sense Show.com joins me to talk about all of it - manufactured terror, World War 3, the elite #39;s plan to sell out humanity, depopulate the earth and use Transhumanism...
By: SGTreport.com
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WW3, Transhumanism & The Battle For The Soul Of Humanity -- Dave Hodges - Video