Daily Archives: August 26, 2020

Image: Screen shot from That Hideous Strength: C.S. Lewis's Prophetic Warning against the Abuse of Science.

Editors note: Published on August 16, 1945,C. S. LewissThat Hideous Strengthis a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020, putting into a memorable fictional form ideas expressed in Lewiss non-fiction work, The Abolition of Man. To mark the former books three-quarter century anniversary,Evolution Newspresents a series of essays, reflections, and videos about its themes and legacy.

James A. Herrick is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College in Holland, MI. His books include The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition.

This post is adapted from Chapter 10 ofThe Magicians Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, edited by John G. West. See also,

Not surprisingly, contemporary Transhumanism has attracted a number of informed critics. I will briefly review two prominent voices in the opposition camp who reflect concerns at the heart of C. S. Lewiss own case. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, a skeptic as regards the Transhumanist vision, echoes one of the central arguments of The Abolition of Man biotechnology now threatens to exercise control of nature itself:

Due to genetic engineering, humans are now able not only to redesign themselves but also to redesign future generations, thereby affecting the evolutionary process itself. As a result, a new posthuman phase in the evolution of the human species will emerge, in which humans will live longer, will possess new physical and cognitive abilities, and will be liberated from suffering and pain due to aging and diseases. In the posthuman age, humans will no longer be controlled by nature; instead, they will be the controllers of nature.1

The question of altering human nature also remains at the center of the developing case against Transhumanism and related proposals. Famed historian Francis Fukuyama, for example, has argued that contemporary biotechnology raises the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a posthuman stage of history. This possibility poses a real danger to individual rights and threatens the foundation of democratic institutions:

This is important because human nature exists, is a meaningful concept, and has provided a stable continuity to our experience as a species. It is, conjointly with religion, what defines our most basic values. Human nature shapes and constrains the possible kinds of political regimes, so a technology powerful enough to reshape what we are will have possibly malign consequences for liberal democracy and the nature of politics itself.2

Though the deeper dangers of biotechnological alterations of humans have not yet manifested themselves, Fukuyama adds, one of the reasons I am not quite so sanguine is that biotechnology, in contrast to many other scientific advances, mixes obvious benefits with subtle harms in one seamless package.3 The essential correctness of Lewiss case is evident in the duration of major components in his rebuttal to Bernal, Stapledon, Haldane, Shaw and other enhancement proponents of his own day.

C. S. Lewis exhibited remarkable prescience in The Abolition of Man. Was there anything that he failed to see? Writing in the war years of the early 1940s, Lewiss perspective was understandably shaped by present circumstance and personal experience. As a result, he did not anticipate certain cultural and historical developments that have become critical to the rise of posthumanity thinking.

As noted, Lewis harbored a deep antipathy for faceless state institutions where atrocities are plotted out according to cost-benefit pragmatism and inhuman schemes are hatched in dingy meeting rooms. In such settings was the banality of evil expressed in war-torn Europe. Lewis does not appear to have anticipated the postwar power of the large corporation, the modern research university, and sophisticated mass media. Such shapers of 21st-century American culture, not the cumbersome state agencies of mid-century Europe, have taken the lead in developing the biotechnologies, educational techniques and persuasive prowess Lewis cautioned against. The user-friendly smile of the high-tech firm, not the icy stare of a government department, is the face of the new humanity. Moreover, justifications for enhancement research are not hammered out in centralized planning meetings, but tested on focus groups and winsomely presented in entertaining public lectures. Financial support for posthumanity comes not come from Big Brother bureaucracies but from Silicon Valley boardrooms.

The scope of research related to human enhancement is incomprehensibly vast and accelerating at an incalculable rate. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of university and corporate research facilities around the world are involved in developing artificial intelligence, regenerative medicine, life-extension strategies, and pharmaceutical enhancements of cognitive performance. An ever-increasing number of media products including movies, video games and novels promote Transhumanist and evolutionist themes. Each technological breakthrough is promoted as a matter of consumerist necessity despite the fact that personal electronic devices and the companies marketing them are increasingly intrusive and corrosive of personal freedoms. Innovative educational organizations such as Singularity University are forming around the Transhumanist ideal. Indeed, so immense, diverse and well-funded is the research network developing enhancement technologies that the collective financial and intellectual clout of all related projects is beyond calculating. Suffice it to say that the enhancement juggernaut is astonishingly large and powerful.

Tomorrow, Science and Scientism: The Prophetic Vision of C. S. Lewis.

Read more from the original source:
CS Lewis and Critical Reactions to Transhumanism - Discovery Institute

Editors note: Published on August 16, 1945,C. S. LewissThat Hideous Strengthis a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020, putting into a memorable fictional form ideas expressed in Lewiss non-fiction work, The Abolition of Man. To mark the former books three-quarter century anniversary,Evolution Newspresents a series of essays, reflections, and videos about its themes and legacy.

James A. Herrick is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College in Holland, MI. His books include The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition.

This post is adapted from Chapter 10 ofThe Magicians Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, edited by John G. West. See also,

C. S. Lewiss prophetic appraisal of certain scientific trends in The Abolition of Man finds confirmation in todays discourse of our biotechnological future. The vision of technologically enhanced posthumanity arises out of a synthesis of scientific cultures most robust mythologies progress, evolution, the superman, and the power of collective intellect. Technology will conquer death, space, and human nature, and deliver us into the future as highly evolved demigods. The Internet is humanitys first major step toward a unified web of consciousness Teilhard de Chardins noosphere that will first blanket the earth and then pervade the universe.1 The objections of bio-conservatives will be silenced through popular argument and public art, and the way opened to unlimited progress, miraculous technologies and visionary ethics. Then comes posthumanity and Bertrand Russells world of shining beauty and transcendent glory.2 Transhumanism affirms that the time has arrived to make good on such prophecies by crafting a technologically enhanced, globally connected and immortal race Stapledons splendid race.

Contemporary Transhumanism draws inspiration from Utopianism, Renaissance Humanism, Enlightenment Rationalism, nineteenth-century Russian Cosmism, New Age Gnosticism, science fiction, speculative techno-futurism, and apocalyptic themes in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Nick Bostrom, Oxford University philosopher and one of the founders of contemporary Transhumanism, captures the movements fundamental orientation:

Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means, we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.3

Evolving humanity, long a theme in popular scientific writing and science fiction, has now emerged as a major topic in bioethics, philosophy and religion.4 Ongoing evolution will eventually produce a unified cooperative organization of living processes that spans and manages the universe as a whole.5 Evolution is now a process in which human beings may actively participate by technological means. The present human being is not the crown of evolutions creative work as a step toward something grander the posthuman. But, even posthumanity is not the ultimate goal. Inexorable evolution is producing, by means of its human and posthuman surrogates, ever more advanced technologies as part of its plan to achieve omniscience and omnipotence. Ambitious evolution is merely using us and our descendents as its cats paw to snatch technological divinity from the cosmoss chaotic flames.

The specific characteristics of posthumanity are debated; what is crucial is the conviction that the posthumans are near, that they will represent a profound improvement over our present condition, and that we ought to work diligently for their arrival. One Transhumanist advocate affirms:

Trust in our posthuman potential is the essence of Transhumanism. We trust that we can become posthumans, extrapolating technological trends into futures consistent with contemporary science, and acting pragmatically to hasten opportunities and mitigate risks. We trust that we should become posthumans, embracing a radical humanism that dignifies the ancient and enduring work to overcome and extend our humanity.6

The posthuman future is not limited by biology but will involve human beings merging with machines, at first by simply mechanically augmenting the body but eventually by depositing human consciousness in mechanical devices. Thus will we achieve immortality, universal knowledge, and unified global consciousness.

The process of creating posthumanity is fundamentally evolutionary, but with an important difference when contrasted to the old Darwinian model. As Lewis speculated in The Abolition of Man, biotechnologies will permit us to be active participants in our own evolution.7 Transhumanist leader James Hughes writes that we must accommodate the posthumans that will be created by genetic and cybernetic technologies.8 This vision, in broad strokes, affirms Oxfords Bostrom, is to create the opportunity to live much longer and healthier lives, to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine our emotional experiences and increase our subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater degree of control over our own lives. According to Bostrom, the aggressive pursuit of biotechnology is a radical reaction against current convention, an alternative to customary injunctions against playing God, messing with nature, tampering with our human essence, or displaying punishable hubris.9 Efforts to coax the public to embrace the ideology of posthumanity, however, will surely provoke a contest. Thus, Hughes predicts that the human races use of genetic engineering to evolve beyond our current limitations would be a central political issue of the next century.10

More may be ahead than domestic political debate, however. According to some experts, the near future will usher in a global culture enabled by a massively more powerful Internet. Computer engineer Hugo de Garis takes as simple matters of fact that the exponential rate of technical progress will create within 40 years an Internet that is a trillion times faster than todays, a global media, a global education system, a global language, and a globally homogenized culture which will constitute the basis of a global democratic state. This new order of things, which de Garis calls Globa, will rid the world of war, the arms trade, ignorance, and poverty.11 The coming transformation of the human race and the world it inhabits is nothing short of an apocalypse the Kingdom arrives via the Internet.

What was previously sought through magic and mysticism, writes Hughes, will now be pursued technologically.12 Bostrom imagines a utopia in which posthumans enjoy aesthetic and contemplative pleasures whose blissfulness vastly exceeds what any human being has yet experienced. The new people will experience a much greater level of personal development and maturity than current human beings do, because they have the opportunity to live for hundreds or thousands of years with full bodily and psychic vigor. He continues:

We can conceive of beings that are much smarter than us, that can read books in seconds, that are much more brilliant philosophers than we are, that can create artworks, which, even if we could understand them only on the most superficial level, would strike us as wonderful masterpieces. We can imagine love that is stronger, purer, and more secure than any human being has yet harbored.13

Bostrom and Hughes strike a winsome note in their predictions of the posthuman future. However, at what cost does the New Era arrive? Will we forego individual rights, as Lewis feared, in the pursuit of a greater collective good? Science writer Ronald Bailey contends that democratic majorities often oppose avant-gardes minorities. If the transhuman future we are all hoping for is to be achieved, it may require efforts more aggressive than those suggested by Bostroms irenic reverie. Regrettably, democracy often has placed limits on cutting-edge scientific research. Bailey argues that in some benighted jurisdictions promising research agendas can be stopped in their tracks by majoritarian tyranny. Despite the apparent lessons of history regarding programs for improving humanity, Bailey looks hopefully toward the day when an emerging posthuman race will transform the world that is, if democracy doesnt get in the way.14 Perhaps Lewiss fears about religious devotion to inevitable processes were well founded.

Considerably more reassuring to wary audiences is the central figure in the contemporary human enhancement movement, inventor Ray Kurzweil, best known for his theory of exponential technological progress culminating in the Singularity. At a moment in time not more than a few decades away, a technological explosion will change everything permanently. Kurzweils vision of a transformative human future has recently captured public attention in books such as The Singularity Is Near and movies such as Transcendent Man.15 He confidently affirms that exponential progress in the biological sciences will soon allow us to reprogram the information processes underlying biology.16 While the idea here is vague and expressed for a lay audience, the planned reprogramming of foundational human biology is the specific goal of Lewiss Conditioners. For Kurzweil and other techno-futurists, the future will reveal unimaginable improvements to the human condition. Nature will yield to technology; the battle will have been won.

Kurzweil has become the public face of human enhancement, an affable front man with an accountants demeanor. The heavy theoretical lifting, however, is done by others. Philosopher John Harris, among the four or five leading apologists for human enhancement, argues that assisting evolution is a moral obligation. He writes, The progress of evolution is unlikely to be achieved accidentally or by letting nature take its course. Joining Savulescu in urging the necessity of enhanced evolution, Harris argues that if illness and poverty are indeed to become rare misfortunes, this is unlikely to occur by chance It may be that a nudge or two is needed: nudges that will start the process of replacing natural selection with deliberate selection, Darwinian evolution with enhancement evolution.17 While Harriss metaphor suggests a gentle technological push along coordinates of improvement already plotted out by nature, it would be wide of the mark to imagine that science has identified such an evolutionary trajectory for future humanity. It is more likely that educated guesses grounded in hopeful narratives about progress substitute for actual knowledge in this and similar scenarios.

An inevitable force with motives of its own, evolution is central to the techno-futurists vision of the posthuman future. Evolution produced us and through us, technology. It, not God and not the Tao, is also the source of the moral principles that have brought us to the point of transformation as a species, and that will ensure our continued evolution. Computer scientist Hugo de Garis affirms that because of our intelligence thats evolved over billions of years, we are now on the point of making a major transition away from biology to a new step. You could argue that maybe humanity, is just a stepping stone.18 Physicist Freeman Dyson agrees we will be transformed as many opportunities for experiments in the radical reconstruction of human beings present themselves.19 But there is more to our posthuman future than simply improving our lot here on earth: The new humanity, toward which the present human race represents a mere step along the way, will propagate itself throughout the cosmos. This was the cosmic vision of scientific planners and science fiction authors that prompted Lewiss skepticism about space exploration. Sounding a theme reminiscent of Wells, Dyson writes that when life and industrial activities are spread out over the solar system, there is no compelling reason for growth to stop.20 Technologically assisted evolutionism is becoming, as Lewis warned, a comprehensive narrative of an inevitable forces ultimate universal triumph.

Human enhancement advocates focus attention on four technologies nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science, or NBIC. But technology is not the whole story of the turn toward Transhumanism. The NBIC technologies, writes Hughes, will change how we work, how we travel, how we communicate, how we worship and how we cook.21 Whereas work, travel, and communication are perhaps expected in this list, and cooking seems trivial by comparison, how we worship is arresting. Traditional religion has been the bte noir of enhancement advocates, an anti-technological and anti-futurist force to be actively opposed. Hughess comment, however, hints at a new approach the re-imagining of religion along Transhumanist lines. For some in the movement posthumanity and advanced technologies are objects of worship, hope in the Singularity a religious faith. The new wine of Singularity religion will require the new wine skins of innovative religious expression; techno-futurism will discover transcendence in techno-religion.

Tomorrow, C.S. Lewis and Critical Reactions to Transhumanism.

View original post here:
CS Lewis and Contemporary Transhumanism - Discovery Institute

This Friday, at 3 p.m. Pacific Time, Elon Musk will unveil mind-blowing, game-changing results from Neuralink, his much-hyped and hugely secretive brain-implants startup.

If all goes according to plan, that is.

Then again, it could be like the time Musk claimed to have developed a super strong Tesla truck, and to demonstrate its strength got an engineer to throw a steel ball at it, which promptly smashed a window. Famously, he did it again, with the same result.

Musk and his acolytes have claimed that his Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology could help the disabled walk, those with paralysis control phones with their thoughts, and the addicted and depressed to recover mental wellness.

In an April 2017 interview with Wait but Why, Musk went as far as to say that the company was interested in treating brain disorders and, within the next decade, enabling telepathy through neural implants.

His supporters hope that the billions of dollars Musk is pouring into Neuralink may be a step on the path to enable humanity to one day fulfill one of the core goals of the larger transhumanist movement by allowing humans to attain mental and physical superpowers and transcend the imperfect operating system we were born withaka the body.

Musk, the tech showman extraordinaire, has certainly not sought to damp down the feverish excitement around Fridays Neuralink event, which, like anything he does, generates in some corners of the internet. Indeed, hes used his Twitter account to stoke the frenzy.

When one user asked if the implant could re-train part of the brain linked to depression and addiction, Musk retweeted the question and replied: For sure. This is both great & terrifying.

It will blow ur mind haha, he wrote in one post with another promising, Will show neurons firing in real-time on August 28th.

It has his base fired up, even if some Ph.D. students are not that impressed.

However, an intriguing new report from STAT News, which says it interviewed four former employees, says the Neuralink project, based in Fremont, California, has a chaotic internal culture and has been plagued by conflict, because Musks rushed timelines and move fast and break things attitude have clashed with the more patient and painstaking approach of career scientists.

The conflict between mechanical engineers and academic neuroscientists has created a pressure cooker atmosphere within the company, STAT News says, adding that many key figures have left the project. The company is reportedly now down to just two of its eight original founding scientists.

As further evidence of what it characterizes as Musks haste, STAT News reports Neuralink has even discussed the idea of potentially bypassing U.S. regulations by starting BMI human studies in China or Russia. The site quotes the testimony of two former employees, who are not named, as the sourcing on this ethically troubling idea.

Neuralinks demanding timelines have pushed employees to forgo the slow, incremental approaches typical in the field in favor of running experiments they arent yet ready for, STAT reports.

In 2017, the report states, the company pushed forward with an effort to implant 10,000 electrodes on an array into the brains of sheep in one surgical procedure, according to a former employee, instead of first trying steps such as implanting a smaller number of electrodes. The experiment failed.

The fate of the sheep is not disclosed.

Were it not for the fact that Musk has revolutionized space travel, invented an electric car brand that came from nothing to be valued at more than Toyota, and isthis month at leastthe fifth richest man in the world, it would be easy to dismiss his vision for Neuralink as just one more example of a tech bro with a god complex.

But Musk may yet pull something extraordinary out of the bag; for example, Neuralink has previously said that it aims to enable people who are paralyzed to operate smartphones and robotic limbs with their thoughts, before ultimately augmenting humans with artificial intelligence. Musk on Twitter mused on this prospect as: AI symbiosis while u wait.

Industry insiders suspect, however, that the biggest breakthrough that might realistically be announced Friday is that human testing is underway. This would mark a huge step forward for the Neuralink project.

Neuralink responded to STAT News, saying many of its claims were inaccurate and urging it to wait for the demonstration on the 28th before publishing its story or risk looking foolish.

The Daily Beast has contacted Neuralink for comment and is awaiting a reply.

Read this article:
Elon Musk's Neuralink Has Its Big Reveal Friday, but Insiders Say the Company Is Plagued by Internal Conflict - The Daily Beast

explainers,

One of the most important elections in our times happens in just over 10 weeks. It is, of course, the election to be the President of the United States plus elections for the two houses of Congress. The winner of the presidential election will invariably be called the most powerful man on earth - and man it will be this time as every time before. It will take place on November 3 (by law, it's the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, four years after the previous election). The presumptive Republican candidate is Donald Trump, the incumbent, and the presumptive Democratic Party candidate is Joe Biden. Presumptive because technically Mr Trump isn't the candidate until he is endorsed by this week's Republican Convention - but Messrs Trump and Biden will be the candidates. Plus more than 20 others from the Libertarian Party to the Legal Marijuana Now Party to the Transhumanist Party. And the rapper Kanye West who announced his campaign on Twitter on July 4. Many of these candidates are not running in all states. They're not going to be President of the United States of America. They might. If the race is very tight, votes taken from Biden or Trump may be crucial. In 2000, for example, the Democrat Al Gore lost Florida by 537 votes to George W Bush and that cost Gore the presidency. The perceived left-winger, Ralph Nader, received 97,421 votes there. Studies indicate that Nader's votes would have tended to have gone to Gore had Nader not been standing. No. The American system is based on an "Electoral College". Each state has a certain number of votes in the college and usually casts all those votes for one candidate, no matter what the split of the vote in that state. That can mean that the winner of the election is not the person for whom most Americans voted. In 2016, Donald Trump won 2.87 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton but he won in the Electoral College by 304 electoral votes to 227. There will also be elections for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and for 33 seats (a third) in the Senate. This matters immensely because many public appointments have to be ratified by the Senate. In particular, judges on the Supreme Court have to be approved. At the moment, the ideological balance among the nine Justices tilts to the Right, with five conservative judges against four "liberals". One of the liberals - Ruth Bader Ginsburg - is 87 and has survived several bouts of cancer. You might think courts are devoid of politics but that's not true of the US Supreme Court. Issues like access to abortion, access to government health care, the ease or difficulty of voting, particularly by black people, may all come before the court and be decided in a partisan way. It's hard to think of any other American election which has been so polarised. The Democrats say this election is for "the soul of the nation". Candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have both used the phrase. They and a few Republicans argue that Mr Trump has authoritarian tendencies which must be stopped. Mr Trump's supporters say it is still about "making America great again". Nobody doubts that the choice is stark. Issues such as access to health care, attitudes to Russia, attitudes to NATO, attitudes to alliances, including that with Australia will all turn on the outcome. There is no doubt that Mr Trump's record will figure, particularly his handling of the epidemic. While the stock market isn't doing that badly, unemployment is around 10 per cent of the workforce. Age may become an issue. Joe Biden turns 78 in November and Donald Trump is 74. Already Republicans are implying that Mr Biden is senile or going that way. Democrats mocked Mr Trump's uneasiness on his feet when he walked down a slope. A poll by Pew Research found that people likely to vote Democrat were more likely to mail in their votes. "Most registered voters who support Trump or lean toward supporting him would rather vote in person in the presidential election (80 per cent), either on Election Day (60 per cent) or earlier (20 per cent); only 17 per cent prefer to vote by mail. "By contrast, a majority of voters who support or lean toward supporting Biden say their preference is to vote by mail in the presidential election (58 per cent)." The USPS has told the state of Pennsylvania that some mail-in ballots might not be delivered to voters on time because "the state's deadlines are too tight." READ MORE: So funding for the USPS is now an issue. Democrats accuse President Trump of blocking money which would enable the service to make sure the votes arrive in time. Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders said: "What you are witnessing is a President of the United States who is doing everything he can to suppress the vote, make it harder for people to engage in mail-in balloting at a time when people will be putting their lives on the line by having to go out to a polling station and vote." If we knew that ... The atmosphere changes completely when an election gets into full swing. Small incidents get magnified. Nate Silver whose FiveThirtyEight polling organisation is widely respected said: "Joe Biden still has a comfortable lead over President Trump in our national polling average and is favoured to win the election in our forecast. "But remember, Trump still has a meaningful chance of winning - even though the polls are stable now, that doesn't mean they will stay that way."

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/96f936ce-2df5-4acd-beaf-24e9cd176d10.jpg/r0_74_800_526_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

EXPLAINER

August 24 2020 - 4:00AM

One of the most important elections in our times happens in just over 10 weeks.

It is, of course, the election to be the President of the United States plus elections for the two houses of Congress.

The winner of the presidential election will invariably be called the most powerful man on earth - and man it will be this time as every time before.

It will take place on November 3 (by law, it's the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, four years after the previous election).

The presumptive Republican candidate is Donald Trump, the incumbent, and the presumptive Democratic Party candidate is Joe Biden.

Presumptive because technically Mr Trump isn't the candidate until he is endorsed by this week's Republican Convention - but Messrs Trump and Biden will be the candidates.

Plus more than 20 others from the Libertarian Party to the Legal Marijuana Now Party to the Transhumanist Party.

And the rapper Kanye West who announced his campaign on Twitter on July 4.

Many of these candidates are not running in all states. They're not going to be President of the United States of America.

They might. If the race is very tight, votes taken from Biden or Trump may be crucial.

In 2000, for example, the Democrat Al Gore lost Florida by 537 votes to George W Bush and that cost Gore the presidency.

The perceived left-winger, Ralph Nader, received 97,421 votes there. Studies indicate that Nader's votes would have tended to have gone to Gore had Nader not been standing.

So whoever gets the most votes becomes President

No. The American system is based on an "Electoral College". Each state has a certain number of votes in the college and usually casts all those votes for one candidate, no matter what the split of the vote in that state.

That can mean that the winner of the election is not the person for whom most Americans voted.

In 2016, Donald Trump won 2.87 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton but he won in the Electoral College by 304 electoral votes to 227.

Anything else happening on November 3?

There will also be elections for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and for 33 seats (a third) in the Senate.

This matters immensely because many public appointments have to be ratified by the Senate.

In particular, judges on the Supreme Court have to be approved. At the moment, the ideological balance among the nine Justices tilts to the Right, with five conservative judges against four "liberals".

One of the liberals - Ruth Bader Ginsburg - is 87 and has survived several bouts of cancer.

You might think courts are devoid of politics but that's not true of the US Supreme Court.

Issues like access to abortion, access to government health care, the ease or difficulty of voting, particularly by black people, may all come before the court and be decided in a partisan way.

Why is this election special?

It's hard to think of any other American election which has been so polarised.

The Democrats say this election is for "the soul of the nation". Candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have both used the phrase.

They and a few Republicans argue that Mr Trump has authoritarian tendencies which must be stopped.

Mr Trump's supporters say it is still about "making America great again".

Nobody doubts that the choice is stark.

Issues such as access to health care, attitudes to Russia, attitudes to NATO, attitudes to alliances, including that with Australia will all turn on the outcome.

What may turn the election?

There is no doubt that Mr Trump's record will figure, particularly his handling of the epidemic.

While the stock market isn't doing that badly, unemployment is around 10 per cent of the workforce.

Age may become an issue. Joe Biden turns 78 in November and Donald Trump is 74. Already Republicans are implying that Mr Biden is senile or going that way. Democrats mocked Mr Trump's uneasiness on his feet when he walked down a slope.

Where does the US Postal Service fit in?

A poll by Pew Research found that people likely to vote Democrat were more likely to mail in their votes.

"Most registered voters who support Trump or lean toward supporting him would rather vote in person in the presidential election (80 per cent), either on Election Day (60 per cent) or earlier (20 per cent); only 17 per cent prefer to vote by mail.

"By contrast, a majority of voters who support or lean toward supporting Biden say their preference is to vote by mail in the presidential election (58 per cent)."

The USPS has told the state of Pennsylvania that some mail-in ballots might not be delivered to voters on time because "the state's deadlines are too tight."

So funding for the USPS is now an issue. Democrats accuse President Trump of blocking money which would enable the service to make sure the votes arrive in time.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders said: "What you are witnessing is a President of the United States who is doing everything he can to suppress the vote, make it harder for people to engage in mail-in balloting at a time when people will be putting their lives on the line by having to go out to a polling station and vote."

The atmosphere changes completely when an election gets into full swing. Small incidents get magnified.

Nate Silver whose FiveThirtyEight polling organisation is widely respected said: "Joe Biden still has a comfortable lead over President Trump in our national polling average and is favoured to win the election in our forecast.

"But remember, Trump still has a meaningful chance of winning - even though the polls are stable now, that doesn't mean they will stay that way."

Read the original post:
Why this US election could be the most important of our times - The Canberra Times

@nooniesNoonies

The Tech Industry's Greenest Awards. Public Nominations Are Open. Voting Starts Aug 13.

Among the 2,000+ deserving humans nominated across 5 categories for over 200 award titles, we discovered Sergey Baloyan from Russia, whos has been nominated for a 2020 #Noonie in the Future Heroes and Technology categories.

Without further ado, we present to you, our big techy world, from the perspective of Sergey.

I'm entrepreneur, I work with the most innovative companies in the crypto industry. I speak a lot at the conferences, and I host a podcast about future and technologies (on Russian, though there's one episode on English :))

I'm interested about how crypto can change the world after all hype. How governments is starting to use it. Also, I'm super interested in tech overall. And transhumanism, biohacking and things like that.

Not much really, but less travelling and less speaking at the conferences

Biotech / Genetic engineering

Oura Ring app, Brilliant, Kindle, Food delivery 🙂

Machine Learning course, VC funding course, Game Theory

Shane Parrish, Naval, Sam Harris, Daniel Bourke

For much the same reasons Hacker Noon decided not to put good ideas behind pop-ups or paywalls nor abuse your personal data to target you with creepy ads we also decided that you dont have to be a #thinkfluencer or have 50k followers on Twitter to earn the recognition that comes with a 2020 Noonie Nomination.

Make somebodys day and nominate them to be recognized in the internets most independent and community-driven awards: NOONIES.TECH.

Subscribe to get your daily round-up of top tech stories!

More:
"Good And Evil Are Two Sides of The Same Coin" - Sergey Baloyan, 2020 Noonie Nominee - hackernoon.com