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Category Archives: Transhumanist

Take years off your age: this Israeli expert says its all up to you – Haaretz

Posted: November 7, 2022 at 10:29 am

Take years off your age: this Israeli expert says its all up to you  Haaretz

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Transhumanism: advances in technology could already put evolution into …

Posted: October 30, 2022 at 12:28 pm

Biological evolution takes place over generations. But imagine if it could be expedited beyond the incremental change envisaged by Darwin to a matter of individual experience. Such things are dreamt of by so-called transhumanists. Transhumanism has come to connote different things to different people, from a belief system to a cultural movement, a field of study to a technological fantasy. You cant get a degree in transhumanism, but you can subscribe to it, invest in it, research its actors, and act on its tenets.

So what is it? The term transhumanism gained widespread currency in 1990, following its formal inauguration by Max More, the CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation. It refers to an optimistic belief in the enhancement of the human condition through technology in all its forms. Its advocates believe in fundamentally enhancing the human condition through applied reason and a corporeal embrace of new technologies.

It is rooted in the belief that humans can and will be enhanced by the genetic engineering and information technology of today, as well as anticipated advances, such as bioengineering, artificial intelligence, and molecular nanotechnology. The result is an iteration of Homo sapiens enhanced or augmented, but still fundamentally human.

The central premise of transhumanism, then, is that biological evolution will eventually be overtaken by advances in genetic, wearable and implantable technologies that artificially expedite the evolutionary process. This was the kernel of Mores founding definition in 1990. Article two of the periodically updated, multi-authored transhumanist declaration continues to assert the point: We favor morphological freedom the right to modify and enhance ones body, cognition and emotions.

To date, areas to improve on include natural ageing (including, for die-hards, the cessation of involuntary death) as well as physical, intellectual and psychological capacities. Some distinguished scientists, such as Hans Moravec and Raymond Kurzweil, even advocate a posthuman condition: the end of humanitys reliance on our congenital bodies by transforming our frail version 1.0 human bodies into their far more durable and capable version 2.0 counterparts.

The push back against such unchecked optimism is emphatic. Some find the rhetoric distasteful in its assumptions about the desire for a prosthetic future.

And potential ethical problems, in particular, are raised. Tattoos, piercings and cosmetic surgery remain a matter of individual choice, and amputations a matter of medical necessity. But if augmented sensory capacity, for instance, were to become normative in a particular field, it might coerce others to make similar changes to their bodies in order to compete. As Isaiah Berlin once put it: Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.

In order to really get to grips with the meaning of all this, though, an example is needed. Take the hypothetical augmentation of human hearing, something I am researching within a broader project on sound and materialism. Within discussions of transhumanism, ears are not typically among the sense organs figured for enhancement.

But human hearing is already being augmented. Algorithms for transposing auditory frequencies already exist (common to most speech processors in cochlear implants and hearing aids). Research into the regeneration of cilia hairs in the cochlear duct is also ongoing. Following this logic, augmenting unimpaired hearing need be no different, in principle, to correcting impaired hearing.

What next? Acoustic sound vibrations sit alongside the vast, inaudible electromagnetic spectrum, and various animals access different portions of this acoustic space, portions to which we as humans have no access. Could this change?

If it does, this may well alter the identity of sound itself. Speculations as to whether what is visible as light might under other circumstances be perceivable as sound have arisen at various points over the past two centuries. This raises heady questions about the very definition of sound. Must it be perceived by a human ear to constitute sound? By a sentient animal? Can a machine hear sufficiently to define sound beyond the human auditory range? What about aesthetics? Aesthetics itself as the (human) study of the beautiful may no longer even be applicable.

The technologies for broaching such questions are arguably already at hand. Examples of auditory sense augmentation (broadly conceived) include Norbert Wieners so-called hearing glove, which stimulated the finger of a deaf person with electromagnetic vibrations; an implanted colour sensor that for its colour-blind recipient, Neil Harbisson converts the colour spectrum into sounds, including ultraviolet and infrared signals; and a cochlear implant that streams sounds wirelessly from Apples mass market devices directly to the auditory nerve of its recipients.

The discussion is not entirely hypothetical, in other words. So what does all this mean?

There is a famous scene in the film The Matrix in which Morpheus asks Neo whether he wants to take the blue pill or the red pill. One returns him unawares to his life of total physical and mental enslavement within the simulation programme of the Matrix, the other gives him access to the real world with all its brutal challenges. But after experiencing this, he can never go back to life within the Matrix, and must survive outside it.

Advocates of transhumanism face a similar choice today. One option is to take advantage of the advances in nanotechnologies, genetic engineering and other medical sciences to enhance the biological and mental functioning of human beings (never to go back). The other is to legislate to prevent these artificial changes from becoming an entrenched part of humanity, with all the implied coercive bio-medicine that would entail for the species.

Of course, the reality of this debate is more complex. Holding our scepticism in abeyance, it still supersedes individual choice. Hence the question of agency remains: who should have the right to decide?

Editors note: this article was updated on March 29 to clarify that acoustic sound is not part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

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Bidens Executive Order Designed to Release Transhumanist Hell on …

Posted: at 12:28 pm

If anyone needed proof that the powers pushing the levers behind the mindless moron who sits in the Oval Office are fully on board with the World Economic Forum/United Nations agenda of biomedical tyranny and transhumanism, look no further than theexecutive order that Joe Biden signed on Monday, September 12.

This by Leo Hohmann on thegatewaypundit.com.

By quietly getting Bidens signature on this document, his handlers may have given us the most ominous sign yet that we stand on the threshold of a technocratic one-world beast system.

This documents Orwellian title,Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy, will assure that its significance will fly right over the heads of 99 percent of the media, even the conservative media. They will read it and yawn.

Because of the arcane scientific language in which this document is written, even most of those who take the time to read and study it (I assure you Biden did not) will not fully grasp what is being ordered by the White House.

Thats where we strive to help.

Karen Kingston, a former Pfizer employee and current analyst for the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries, helps us decipher whats going on in this executive order.

Kingston stated in a Twitter post:

Let me read between the lines for the America.

Bidens Sept. 12, 2022, executive order declares that Americans must surrender all human rights that stand in the way of transhumanism.

Clinical trial safety standards and informed consent will be eradicated as they stand in the way of universally unleashing gene-editing technologies needed to merge humans with A.I.

In order to achieve the societal goals of the New World Order, crimes against humanity are not only legal, but mandatory.

Patrick Wood, an economist and author of several books on technocracy, has been following the transhumanist and global technocracy movements for four decades. He told me that Kingston is not overstating the issue.

He said:

[T]his executive order is proof that the executive branch is now owned lock, stock and barrel by the biomedical/pharmaceutical industry. It will be Katy bar the door from here on out.

Wood stated:

The transhumanists within Big Pharma have completely taken over government policy and taxpayer funds to promote their own anti-human agenda of hacking the software of life.

It also clearly demonstrates who has the power, and who sets the policies in America.

The mRNA injections that have already gone into the bodies of at least 70 percent of adults in the U.S. mark the gateway to transhumanism. We have been told this by Kingston as well as by the late Dr. Zev Zelenko and Dr. Robert Malone, a co-inventor of the mRNA platform.

LeoHohmann.com was one of the first sites to blow the whistle on Modernas former chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, who told the world straight up in December 2017:

We have hacked the software of life, and this mRNA gene-editing biotechnology would be incorporated into vaccines to treat and prevent all manner of illnesses.

Weve seen how well they work, with millions getting sick and even dying after getting two or more doses of the Covid injections offered up by Moderna and Pfizer.

With the FDA and CDC now totally on board, this mRNA technology is being included in scores of other vaccines, including flu shots.

The September 12 executive order was no doubt put in place as back up for the continued experimentation on the human population, and I expect the vaccine industry will exploit it to the max.

Soon we will see the return of vax mandates, this time more ferociously policed and enforced than before.

This E.O. may also have been timed at least partly in anticipation of the new pandemic treaty that the Obiden Regime is hoping to get passed through the United Nations World Health Organization next year. This treaty will transfer sovereignty over matters of health emergencies from the national level to the WHO.

Wood said:

[T]he E.O.s intended consequences is to push the frontier of genetic modification of all living things and especially humans. He believes this will ultimately spark the biggest public backlash in modern history.

Wood wrote:

Biden pledges not only funding but an all-of-government transformation to support this anti-human scheme from top to bottom.

It also automatically blocks any agency or department from dissent.

Below are just a few of the highlights quoted directly from the document:

What this means is that human beings will be data mined for their most personal possession, their DNA and genomic properties, and the government will offer no protection.

It will actually be encouraged and seen as a green light for biomedical practitioners worldwide.

It is the goal of the technocratic proprietors of Agenda 2030 to catalogue, map out, and monitor every living thing on earth.

This was spelled out in the early 2000s by the late researcher Rosa Koire and put into book form in 2011 with Behind the Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21.

Koire was a [d]emocrat, but she understood that the takedown of America and indeed every nation of the formerly free world, would not be accomplished by the left or the right but by supranational globalists with an allegiance to no nation. In fact, these globalists detest the nation-state model that has dominated the world for thousands of years.

Their goal is a global governance, and they say it out loud in their own documents.

Now what, Def-Con News readers?

Well, we must not be intimidated and we must not be overcome with fear.

We must believe humanity will prevail against these anti-human eugenicist monsters.

The goal of Patriots currently working on humanitys behalf is to expose the sinister transhumanist agenda that these globalist predators did their best to keep hidden within a scientific vernacular that they know will wow and mystify the average person.

What they are doing has been decoded in this article from two of the best experts on the topic available in the world todayKaren Kingston and Patrick Wood.

Let us maintain our faith that We the People will overcome this current Regime from Hell and regain our Constitutional Republic.

God speed to Conservatism.

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Biden’s Executive Order Advances Biotech-Transhumanist Agenda …

Posted: October 23, 2022 at 1:18 pm

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September 12, 2022, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy

Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers, as well as genetic technologies to unlock the power of biological data using computing tools and artificial intelligence

This executive order establishes a fast-tracked pipeline of mRNA shots and other gene therapies that will further the transhumanist agenda to create augmented humans and bring us into a post-human world

Drug makers have clearly expected this free-for-all as they have loads of mRNA candidates in their pipelines. September 14, 2022, Pfizer initiated a Phase 3 study that will test a quadrivalent mRNA-based flu shot on 25,000 American adults

Moderna began its Phase 3 mRNA flu jab trial in early June 2022. Ultimately, Moderna wants to create an annual mRNA shot that covers all of the top 10 viruses that result in hospitalizations each year

*

September 12, 2022, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy.1

Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers, as well as genetic technologies to unlock the power of biological data using computing tools and artificial intelligence.

Additionally, obstacles for commercialization will be reduced so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster. What we have here is, in a nutshell, the creation of a fast-tracked mRNA pipeline.

When, in June 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quietly implemented a Future Framework scheme2 to deliver reformulated COVID boosters without additional testing, I predicted that this no testing required formula would spread beyond COVID shots. And, according to this executive order, thats exactly whats about to happen.

In early September 2022, the FDA also put out medically false and misleading COVID booster campaign messages that prove weve officially entered the era of transhumanism:

Its time to install that update! #UpdateYourAntibodies with a new #COVID19 booster.3Dont be shocked! You can now #RechargeYourImmunity with an updated #COVID19 booster.4

Over the past three years, Ive written several articles exploring the transhumanist agenda, which all these mRNA shots and genetic technologies are part and parcel of. Basically, the goal of the transhumanist movement is to transcend biology through technology, and to meld human biology with technology and artificial intelligence.

In September 2020, I posted a video with Dr. Carrie Madej (above), in which she suggested we were standing at the crossroads of transhumanism, thanks to the fast approaching release of mRNA COVID-19 shots.

One reason why its important to know whether synthetic RNA creates permanent changes in the genome is because synthetic genes are patented. If they cause permanent changes, humans will contain patented genes, and that brings up very serious questions, seeing how patents have owners, and owners have patent rights.

Since these shots are designed to manipulate your biology, they have the potential to also alter the biology of the entire human race. Nearly two years later, we still dont know the extent to which they might be doing that, yet more fast-tracked and untested gene therapies are on the way.

One reason why its important to know for certain whether synthetic RNA ends up creating permanent changes in the genome is because synthetic genes are patented. If they cause permanent changes, humans will contain patented genes, and that brings up very serious questions, seeing how patents have owners, and owners have patent rights.

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Elon Musks Neuralink allegedly subjected monkeys to extreme suffering

Posted: at 1:18 pm

Elon Musks brain-chip company Neuralink is facing a legal challenge from an animal rights group that has accused the company of subjecting monkeys to extreme suffering during years of gruesome experiments.

Neuralinks brain chips which Musk claims will one day make humans hyper-intelligent and let paralyzed people walk again were implanted in monkeys brains during a series of tests at the University of California, Davis from 2017 to 2020, according to a compliant from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed with the the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday.

In one example, a monkey was allegedly found missing some of its fingers and toes possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma. The monkey was later killed during a terminal procedure, the group said in a copy of the complaint shared with The Post.

In another case, a monkey had holes drilled in its skull and electrodes implanted into its brain, then allegedly developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized, according to the complaint.

In a third instance, a female macaque monkey had electrodes implanted into its brain, then was overcome with vomiting, retching and gasping. Days later, researchers wrote that the animal appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue and was subsequently euthanized. An autopsy then showed the monkey had suffered from a brain hemorrhage, according to the report.

The experiments involved 23 monkeys in all. At least 15 of them died or were euthanized by 2020, according to the group, which based the report on records released through Californias open records law.

Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects, Jeremy Beckham, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicines research advocacy director, told The Post. They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals.

The macabre report comes as Neuralink plans to begin its first human tests. Musk said in December that he wants to start human trials for the devices in 2022 and the company posted a job listing for a clinical trial director this January.

The group behind the report, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, advocates for veganism and alternatives to animal testing positions that have sometimes put the group at odds with the American Medical Association. It has also previously received funding from controversial animal rights group PETA, The Guardian reported.

The group doesnt currently have any relationship with PETA but sometimes works on overlapping issues, Beckham said.

The organization is accusing Neuralink and UC Davis of nine violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act a federal measure designed to reduce suffering during animal experiments.

Many, if not all, of the monkeys experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments, which were performed in pursuit of developing what Neuralink and Elon Musk have publicly described as a brain-machine interface, the group wrote in its complaint to the USDA.

These highly invasive implants and their associated hardware, which are inserted in the brain after drilling holes in the animals skulls, have produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research.

The group is also suing UC Davis in an attempt to make them release more photos, videos and information about the monkeys under Californias public records laws.

The alleged abuses come in stark contrast to publicly shared materials from Neuralink. In a video posted on YouTube last April, the company showed a healthy and happy-seeming monkey playing the video game Pong with its brain.

A UC Davis spokesperson told The Post that its work with Neuralink ended in 2020 and that the universitys Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee had thoroughly reviewed and approved its project with Neuralink.

We strive to provide the best possible care to animals in our charge, the spokesperson added. Animal research is strictly regulated, and UC Davis follows all applicable laws and regulations including those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Neuralink didnt immediately return a request for comment from The Post.

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Doomsday bunkers, Mars and ‘The Mindset’: the tech bros trying to outsmart the end of the world – The Conversation Indonesia

Posted: October 8, 2022 at 4:06 pm

Douglas Rushkoffs newest book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, grew out of a brilliant 2018 Medium article of the same name, which went viral and had people (aka his US editor) clamouring for a full-length treatment.

Review: Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires Douglas Rushkoff (Scribe Publications)

In both pieces, Rushkoff recounts being invited to speak about the future of technology, only to find himself at a luxury desert resort in an undisclosed location, speaking to a select audience of five unnamed hedge fund billionaires. Within minutes, the conversation takes on a distinctly prepper-ish tone. One of the CEOs tells Rushkoff about his newly completed underground shelter, then asks, How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?

Rushkoff is bemused, but also grimly amused by it all. Here they were, asking a Marxist media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers, he writes. Thats when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology.

Read more: With threats of nuclear war and climate disaster growing, America's 'bunker fantasy' is woefully inadequate

So far, so head-spinningly good. Unfortunately, however, Rushkoff moves away from the billionaires and their intriguingly delusional self-preservation tactics, into a realm of high ideas.

Over the next 12 and a half chapters, Rushkoff offers a Grand Unified Theory of tech billionaire ideology. Inspired by a 1995 article, The Californian Ideology, he chooses to call this The Mindset a frustratingly vague term that doesnt really clarify things.

At times, The Mindset is roughly synonymous with the ideology of libertarianism; at others, it is much more amorphous referring to everything from growth-based capitalism, to colonialism, to narcissism. And as Hugo Rifkind notes in The Times, while the Mindset is interesting, its not nearly as interesting as the bonkers escape plans to which it leads.

If youre after a primer on the various ills of late capitalism, then strap yourself in and enjoy this wide-ranging, freewheeling romp by one of the USs most entertaining digital culture raconteurs.

His subjects include but not are not limited to monopolies, financialisation, behavioural science, scientism (Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker et al.) and the sex crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. Theres the 1980s business savvy of General Electric CEO Jack Welch and the Western, linear drive towards progress. Our estrangement from nature. The persistence of Aristotelian plot structures. And even Western language systems, which tend to be more noun-based than many of their counterparts.

Rushkoff is an accessible, pithy writer, with no shortage of examples, analogies and anecdotes to string together. That said, his relentless synthesising and breathless proclamations also make the book feel a bit shambolic, a bit over-reachy. (For instance, The Mindset prefers straight lines, linear progress and infinite expansion over the ebbs and flows in the real world.)

This is especially so if youre searching for the what-it-says-on-the-label bits the tech bros and their bizarre survival plans.

Case in point: Rushkoff tells a quite-long story about arguing with Richard Dawkins about morality at a Manhattan dinner party in the 1990s. Great. He then claims that Stephen Pinker and Daniel Dennett believe the brain is mere hardware and humans are just robots running programs. Sure. Next, he points out that Dawkins, Pinker and Dennett were all photographed on Jeffrey Epsteins private jet on their way to a TED talk. Guilt by association fallacy, but okay. As a finale, Epstein is described as truly the model, self-sovereign, transhumanist billionaire prepper.

Heres the problem: while Jeffrey Epstein was a lot of terrible things, he wasnt a prepper, in the proper sense of that word. Theres no record of him saying he thought society was about to collapse, or that he was making any just-in-case plans. More generally, none of the aforementioned four are Silicon Valley titans, or billionaires theyre three scientists and one multimillionaire Wall Street financier/paedophile. And theyre only tangentially relevant to the matter at hand.

Read more: How to survive a tactical nuclear bomb? Defence experts explain

Also, given how much other ground is covered, it is a little surprising that Rushkoff doesnt name check that ur-text of cyber libertarianism, The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State (1997), by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg dream of a time when individuals will be freed from the shackles of government, fiat currency (government-issued paper money, not backed by a commodity such as gold) and law in general. (William Rees-Moggs son, UK politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for Brexit.)

In this thrilling new age, a cognitive elite will be able to rule or ignore the rest of the world, as they see fit. The Sovereign Individual is a hugely influential text in the start-up world; early Facebook backer, Paypal co-founder and conservative libertarian Peter Thiel, who is infamous in New Zealand for buying his citizenship and attempting to build luxury bunkers in the wilderness wrote the foreword to the 2020 reprint.

Survival of the Richest contains an excellent anecdote about Rushkoff being in a Zoom meeting with some tech developers on 6 January 2021, which is derailed by the breaking news of an attempted coup at the Capitol building (if you think thats bad, wait till you hear how the programmers react!).

Theres this jaw-dropping factoid:

Jeff Bezos has a yacht with a helipad that serves as a companion yacht to his main yacht, which has large sails that would get in the way of his helicopter during takeoff and landing.

There are some extremely sharp reflections on artificial intelligence:

Whether AI will develop human and superhuman abilities in the next decade, century, millennium, if ever, may matter less right now than AIs grip over the tech elite, and what this obsession tells us about The Mindset.

Regarding the prospect of artificial intelligence putting millions of people out of work in the near future, entrepreneurs such as Reid Hoffmann (LinkedIn CEO) and Mark Cuban (startup dude, billionaire) are worried that unemployed humans might coalesce into vengeful, billionaire-resenting mobs and attack them. Though theyre not worried about ruining all those peoples lives in the first place.

But and this is a little ironic theres precious little biographical detail about Mark Cuban, or Reid Hoffmann, or any of the other bros in the book. Their function is purely as symbols of rapacious greed: embodiments of The Mindset. They are not examined as deeply flawed, but nonetheless complex human beings.

Read more: What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?

In some ways, this is a question of method, and access. While Rushkoff mixes in some pretty wild company on his global speaking gigs, and has serendipitous encounters with some outlandish figures, hes not doing any journalistic or enthnographic legwork here.

In short: he hasnt interviewed any of tech billionaires he writes about. He doesnt really know what motivates them or at least, not all of it. When it comes to these wealthy, selfish peoples strategies to survive the event, Rushkoff is dismissive rather than curious. He is adamant that a billionaires prepper scheme any scheme just wont work.

In Chapter One, he contends that the probability of a fortified bunker actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim, because the closed ecosystems of underground facilities are preposterously brittle. If your underground hydroponic garden is overrun by mould or bacteria, theres no do-over; youll just die.

Similarly,

small islands are utterly dependent on air and sea deliveries for basic staples [] the billionaires who reside in such locales are more, not less, dependent on complex supply chains than those of us embedded in industrial civilization.

Seasteading the libertarian idea of building autonomous, floating mini-states, which operate outside of state control is mentioned, but not discussed in any detail. And the modest proposals of Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos et al. to commercialise space travel and colonise Mars are rejected with the observation only trillionaires will actually make it to space to terraform planets, anyway.

This might be true enough but its also the ostensible subject of the book, and as such, perhaps worth spending a bit more time on.

For Rushkoff, then, the billionaire bunker strategy is less a viable strategy for apocalypse than a metaphor for this disconnected way of life a canny insight, to be sure. But those bunkers arent only metaphorical; theyre also very real, and large, and expensive, and fascinating in their logistic intricacies and (im)possibilities.

If Survival of the Richest had told us more about this insane infrastructure, and about the people who dreamed it up, we might be able to better understand the unmistakably phallic spaceships as symbols, too.

Readers with specific interest in doomsday bunkers, and what they might represent in ideological terms, should seek out Bradley Garretts Bunker: Building for the End Times (2020). Mark OConnell writes insightfully about Peter Thiels New Zealand boltholes as a symptom of extreme libertarian misanthropy in Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back (2020).

Those wishing to learn more personal details about the computer nerds and venture captial bros who hold such outsized sway in contemporary life should read Max Chafkins 2021 biography The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valleys Pursuit of Power, or Ashlee Vances 2015 book Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Is Shaping Our Future, as well as David Runciman and John Lanchesters incisive essays about Thiel and Musk respectively in the London Review of Books.

Or, what the hell, rewatch The Social Network.

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Is the body key to understanding consciousness? –

Posted: at 4:06 pm

A new understanding of the fundamental connection between mind and body explains phenomena such as phantom limbs, and has surprising implications

By Mo Costandi / The Observer

In 2018, billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman paid a startup called Nectome US$10,000 to preserve his brain after he dies and, when the technology to do so becomes available, to upload his memories and consciousness to the cloud.

This prospect, which was recently popularized in Amazon Primes sci-fi comedy series Upload, has long been entertained by transhumanists. Although theoretically possible, it is rooted in the flawed idea that the brain is separate from the body, and can function without it.

The idea that the mind and brain are separate from each other is usually attributed to the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes, who believed that the body is made of matter, and the mind of some other, non-physical substance.

Modern brain research rejects the distinction between the physical and the mental. Most neuroscientists agree that what we call the mind is made of matter. The mind is hard to define, but the consensus now is that it emerges from the complex networks of cells in the brain.

But most people still view the mind and brain as being distinct from the body. In 2016, four prominent brain researchers published an article summarizing what we know about consciousness. It begins: Being conscious means that one is having an experience to see an image, hear a sound, think a thought or feel an emotion.

It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that the mind/brain and body are intimately linked, and that the body influences our thoughts and emotions. Being conscious does not just mean having awareness of the outside world. It means being aware of ones self within ones surroundings. The way we experience our body is central to how we perceive our self.

PHANTOM LIMBS

Phantom limbs are a striking demonstration of the importance of the body for self-consciousness. They were described in the mid-16th century by the barber-surgeon Ambroise Pare, who reportedly amputated several hundred limbs a day during the Italian war of 1542-46.

Verily it is a thing wondrous, strange and prodigious, he wrote. The patients who have many months after the cutting away of the leg grievously complained that they yet felt exceeding great pain of that leg cut off. At that time, however, few survived the operation, so the phenomenon was seen only rarely, and dismissed as a delusion.

Advances in medicine and military technology changed this. The invention of a bullet called the Minie ball with its greater accuracy, range and muzzle velocity, increased the number of amputations, while the introduction of anesthetics and antiseptics improved the survival rates of soldiers who went under the knife.

And so it was that the neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, who amputated countless arms and legs on the battlefields of the American civil war, came to see that phantom limbs are the rule rather than an exception, experienced by the vast majority of amputees.

The medical community was still skeptical of the phenomenon, however, so Mitchell initially described his observations as a short story, The Case of George Dedlow, published in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1866. The fictional titular character was a composite of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were maimed and mutilated during the conflict. He lost all four limbs, one by one, to become a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than anything of human shape, reduced to [a] fraction of a man.

Mitchells story was so vivid that readers took it as factual, and believed that he was a real patient being treated at Philadelphias South Street Stump hospital. Many wrote him letters of support, some tried to visit him and some even raised money for his care. But the story played a large part in bringing the phenomenon into the realms of medical science, and Mitchell went on to become the first elected president of the American Neurological Association.

Mitchell recognized phantom limbs as a disturbance of bodily self-consciousness, in which the amputee retains awareness of the missing limb, and feels as if it is still attached to their body. In some amputees, the phantom disappears within weeks or months of amputation. In others, it persists for decades.

Phantoms do not appear only in the form of missing limbs. Women may experience phantom breasts after mastectomy; men can experience phantom erections after amputation of a cancerous penis; and there are reports of phantom eyes, noses, teeth and even phantom haemorrhoids, bowel movements and gas after surgical removal of the rectum.

BODY INTEGRITY IDENTITY DISORDER

Phantom sensations occur because the brain creates a dynamic model of the body by integrating tactile and visual information with limb position signals from the muscles and tendons. This model, variously called the body schema or body image, is crucial for both the perception and control of the body. But when a limb or other body part is removed, the schema is not properly updated, and so it retains an imprint of the missing part. As a result, the individual remains conscious of the missing part often, even more so than of their existing body parts.

Most of us could imagine few things worse than having a limb amputated. But some people want nothing more.

Take Australian Robert Vickers. Before I was 10 years old I knew my left leg somehow didnt belong, Vickers told ABC Radio National in 2009, and that my body would not be as I felt it should be until I had the leg amputated precisely halfway up the thigh.

Vickers harbored this strange desire, and suffered in silence, for more than 30 years. It made him severely depressed, and he received psychotherapy. He was prescribed antidepressants, tranquillizers, and antipsychotics, and received electroconvulsive therapy, but to no avail. He tried, without success, to damage his leg in various ways, in order to force an amputation.

Then, at 41, he submerged the unwanted limb in dry ice until the pain became unbearable. His wife drove him to hospital, where he received the amputation he had wanted for so long.

I left hospital two weeks later with my desired stump, and life changed for the better from that day. In the 24 years since, I only regret not doing it sooner.

Vickers is perhaps the best documented case of body integrity identity disorder (BIID), an extremely rare condition, of which fewer than 500 other cases have been reported to date. For most of his life, Vickers believed his experience to be unique, but others suffering from the condition describe it in similar terms.

All report a fascination with amputees, and a desire to amputate, from an early age. The desire usually becomes obsessive, to the extent that they will try self-amputation. Use of dry ice appears to be the most common method, and some have used homemade guillotines or shotguns. In another well-documented case, a 79-year-old New Yorker traveled to Mexico and paid an unqualified doctor US$10,000 to amputate his leg. He died of gangrene a week later.

AMPUTATION LOVE

BIID first appeared in medical literature in a 1977 study published in the Journal of Sex Research. The authors of this study including Greg Furth, himself a wannabe amputee described the condition as a paraphilia, or an abnormal sexual behavior, in which the stump is fetishized because it resembles a phallus, and named it apotemnophilia, meaning amputation love.

Some BIID sufferers do indeed report a sexual aspect to their desire to amputate. But they invariably describe their experience in terms of self-identity. One participant in Melody Gilberts 2003 documentary Whole says that he finally became a person late in life after blowing his own leg off with a shotgun. Another participant told the film-makers that by taking the leg away, Im actually more of a person than I was before Ive corrected the body that was wrong.

Vickers has stated that he felt incomplete with his left leg, and that he only became whole after its removal.

The condition was renamed body integrity identity disorder to reflect this. BIID is a disturbance of bodily self-consciousness with a neurological basis, as are phantom limbs. There is evidence to suggest that it occurs because the affected limb is not incorporated into the body schema as it develops in early childhood. Amputation is not offered as a treatment for BIID sufferers, but it could be argued that making it available to them would minimize their risk of self-harm.

NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Research into bodily awareness is leading us to rethink the nature of consciousness. Our understanding of how the brain works will progress only when we stop observing the brain in isolation, and start thinking of it as one part of a system that includes the body and its environment.

An understanding of how brain and body interact is critical for understanding the phenomena of phantom limbs and BIID. Such interactions also play a key role in mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, and in eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. All of these conditions cause symptoms in the body that may be accompanied by disturbances in how the brain interprets those symptoms.

Yet the links between the brain and body are still under-appreciated. Only by taking the body into consideration will we gain a better understanding of these conditions and, it is to be hoped, develop effective treatments for them.

The new understanding of bodily self-consciousness leads us to some surprising conclusions. If bodily awareness is the basis of self-consciousness, then it follows that bumblebees, and even robots, may possess basic consciousness.

A study published in 2020 by researchers in Germany showed that bees can accurately judge gaps between obstacles relative to their wingspan, and reorient their bodies accordingly to avoid inflight collisions. Researchers at Columbia Universitys Creative Machines Lab have developed a starfish-shaped robot with an in-built body schema, which can adjust its gait after having a limb removed. The latest version of this robot creates its own body schema from experience.

If self-consciousness is based in bodily awareness, then it is unlikely that a lab-grown mini-brain could ever become conscious, as some ethicists have claimed. By the same token, transhumanists claim that we will one day gain immortality by uploading our brains to supercomputers will probably always be science fiction.

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Nvidia and the 3D Future of the Internet – TechNewsWorld

Posted: at 4:05 pm

There is a lot of work going into creating the next generation of the web. Most of it is focused on the concept that, rather than traditional web pages, well have a very different experience that is far more immersive. Lets call it Web 3D.

I had a chance to talk with Nvidias CEO Jensen Huang who shared his view of Web 3D. While it blends elements of the metaverse, its tied more to the AI implementation that will front-end the next generation of the web than it is to the emulation of reality increasingly fund on that new web.

Confused? You arent alone, let me try to untangle the concept.

Then well look at my product of the week, a very different Amazon Kindle called Scribe. It shows promise but needs a couple of tweaks to become a great product.

Interestingly, I think Microsofts Halo game series got this right to begin with because Cortana, Microsofts fictional AI universal interface, is closest to what Huang indicated was his vision of the future web.

In the game and TV series Halo, Cortana is what Master Chief interacts with to access the technology around him. Sadly, even though prototypes like the one in this YouTube video were built, Microsoft hasnt yet taken Cortana to where it could be.

Right now, Cortana lags behind both Siri, Apples digital assistant, and Google Assistant.

Huang envisions that an AI front end will become reality with the next generation of the web. Youll be able to design your AI interface or likely license an already created image and personality from different providers as they step up to this opportunity.

For instance, if you wanted the AI to look like your perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, you could initially describe what you want to an interface and the AI would design one based on what you trained that AI to look for.

Alternatively and this isnt mutually exclusive it could design it based on your known interests, pulling from the cookies and web posts youve made during your life. Or you could choose a character from a movie or an actor, which would come with a recurring charge, that would, in character, become that personal interface.

Imagine having Black Widow or Thor as your personal guide to the world of information. Theyd behave just as they do in the Avenger movies while getting you to the information youre looking for. Rather than seeing a web page, youd see your chosen digital assistant which would magically bring up metaverse elements to address your questions.

Search as we know it would change as well.

For instance, when looking for a new car, you might go to different manufacturers web sites and explore the options. But in the future, you might instead say what car should I now buy? and, based on what the AI knows about you, or how you answer questions about your lifestyle, it would then provide its recommendation and pull you into a metaverse experience where you virtually test drive the car that is based on the options the AI thinks youll want.

During this virtual drive, it will add other options that you might like, and youll be able to convey your interest, or lack thereof, to come to a final choice. Finally, it will recommend where you should buy your car, faving whatever outlook optimized to whether you valued things like low price or good service more. These options would include both new and used offerings depending again on what the AI knows about your preferences.

Time and effort spent on the project would be massively reduced while your satisfaction, assuming the information the AI has on you is accurate, is maximized. Over time, this Web 3D interface would become more of a companion and trusted friend than anything youve seen on the web so far.

Once it reaches critical mass, care will need to be taken to assure it isnt compromised to favor the interests of a political party, vendor, or bad actor.

This last is important. It may turn out that instead of being free like browsers are today, the interface ends up being a paid service to make sure no other entity can take advantage of your trust, because there is a substantial opportunity to use this new interface against you. Assuring that wont happen should be getting more focus than it is currently.

According to Huang, the future of this front end call it the next generation browser is an increasingly photorealistic avatar that is based on your personal preferences and interests; one that can behave in character when needed; and one that will provide more focused choices and a far more personalized web experience.

Perhaps we should be talking less about the next generation of the web in terms of its visual aspects, the 3D part, and more about its behavioral aspects, the Transhumanist Web. Something to noodle on this week.

Ive been using Kindles since they were first released. Mine had both a keyboard and a free cellular connection.

Theyve proven to be interesting products when traveling, have days-long battery life, and perform better in the sun than LCD-based tablets or smartphones. Some are water resistant, allowing you to use them during water recreation activities. For instance, when I float on the river near my home, Ill bring my water-resistant Kindle with me so that I can read during the boring parts (for me, the entire float is the boring part).

But they have always been limited to being able to read books and certain digital files (you could email .pdf files to Amazon to put on your Kindle). That just changed with the new Kindle Scribe. Its similar in size to the 10-inch Amazon Fire tablet and allows you to mark up the documents and books you are reading.

While the Kindle Scribe is still a reading-focused product, this latest version has optional pens that can be used to draw or annotate things you are reviewing and it will, as most similar products do, allow you to draw pictures if that is your interest.

Kindle Scribe (Image Credit: Amazon)

As with all Kindles, it leads with the e-paper display that works well in the sun, and the large size means that you can better adjust the font to address sight problems, potentially removing the need for reading glasses for folks who have only slight vision loss.

Shortcomings that limit the product are that it currently doesnt support magazine or newspaper subscriptions, it doesnt play music (probably better left to your smartphone anyway), and, as noted, the refresh rate on the technology is too low for video. It doesnt currently do email either.

It has a web browser, but that browser doesnt display web pages as intended. Instead, it lists the stories vertically like a small-screened smartphone might. In fact, using it, you get a lot of page load problems. For instance, I was not able to bring up Office 365 or Outlook web sites.

Finally, it doesnt support handwriting conversion to text, making it less useful for note taking than products that have this functionality, but I expect this will improve as the product matures.

The person that will most appreciate this product is someone who wants a bigger reader and occasionally needs to markup documents as part of an editing or review process. If you want a more capable tablet, the Amazon Fire tablet remains one of the best values in the market, but it wont work as well outside, nor does it have battery life anywhere near what the Kindle Scribe provides.

For the right person, the Kindle Scribe could be a godsend. But for most, the Amazon Fire tablet is likely the better overall choice. In any case, the new Kindle Scribe tablet is my product of the week. At $339, its a good value that I expect will get better over time.

Kindle Scribe will be released Nov. 30. You can pre-order it now at Amazon.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

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I have to ask: Did anything happen to you with the 0010110 social media mystery? Are you still with us? – Alan Cross – A Journal of Musical Things

Posted: August 30, 2022 at 10:51 pm

Were you red pilled on Saturday?

For months, some social media channels (Im looking at you, TikTok), were pushing the idea that 7% of us were going to exit the Matrix. Specifically, all would supposedly be revealed to those who saw the code 001011 in their social media feeds.

This was (allegedly) some kind of activation codea numerical Red Pillthat was distributed to people ready to go all trans-humanist, It all had something to do with digital immortality. The anointed were told to expect a man in a red coat who would scream words of truth at them, And then aliens were supposed to figure into everything. Sure, Perfect.

If youre reading this, its because you were not part of the chosen 7%. And for those who were digitally raptured, theyre probably too busy dealing with their new plane of existence to bother with those left behind in the simulation.

Once again, I must emphasize that everything I know about 0010110 story has come from TikTok, easily the most reliable source of information in the known universe.

If you can provide any further light on the mattersay, one of your friends has suddenly disappeared and become their own singularitylet us know in the comments section.

Its all quite the mystery. At the very least, itll give Matt Bellamy something more to write about for the next Muse album.

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If the US is Nineveh, Then Canada is Sodom – The Stream

Posted: at 10:51 pm

Some 14 years ago I published a satire, a funny piece meant to point up a deadly serious subject. A leader of the official ob-gyn organization in Canada had publicly denounced then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Why? Because she had said that she was glad she hadnt aborted her Down Syndrome child. And the Canadian doctor worried that she might influence Canadian parents to do the same. To welcome the child God had sent them, instead of killing it. She ought to be silent, this Canadian doctor demanded.

So I wrote a piece called Kill More Canadians. In it, I pretended that I wished to empty Canada of all its current inhabitants, so the U.S. could annex it and make it a theme park. And I praised the abortion-happy doctor for helping us get a start on culling the herd in the Great White North:

The process of gradually clearing out the blank space on the map which lies to our North Ive always called it The Annex should be accomplished in classic Canadian style: with deference, almost with diffidence. There is no call for broken windows or blood on the ice. As we gain for our overcrowded nation a measure of much-craved living space, we owe it to the brooding, bleating herds of lumbering Canucks to ensure that their last days are spent in peace and comfort.

I invite you to go read the piece.

Sadly, that piece has aged all too well. The culture of death in North America advances inexorably, a little more quickly in Canada than in America. Here as in other indicators of decline (think of the savage crackdown on the truckers protest) Canada is five years ahead of the United States, on the slippery Gadarene slope that leads down to the sea.

My old friend, the intrepid conservative journalist Richard Poe, called my attention to whats happening more quickly in Canada than here. The facts are appalling, if not exactly surprising. I beg you to go through the whole of this sobering Twitter thread which Richard posted:

Do you think the U.S. is immune to this brutal, utilitarian killing of the helpless and the innocent? Far from it. Leave abortion aside for the moment, and the crass vivisection of unborn babies for the production of untested, dangerous vaccines.

During COVID we witnessed in practice a mass euthanasia of patients in nursing homes. Too many even on the right still tell themselves the thousands of COVID deaths in such facilities were the result of Democrats incompetence or apathy or cluelessness.

I dont believe it. Not for a second. All that death was premeditated and intentional, as I argued here back in May. Ill repeat the salient points, which I believe justify us in speaking of the Blue State Nursing Home Genocide of 2020:

An old saying goes, When someone shows you what he really is by his actions, believe him. When vaccine fascists went on social media and wished mass death on the unvaccinated, they meant it. When public officials in once-free countries like Australia and New Zealand said there was no room in society for people who didnt comply, they meant it.

When Bill Gates says he wants a global population reduction in the billions, he means it, too. Likewise when transhumanist big brain Yuval Harari says: We just dont need the vast majority of the population, I believe hes stating his beliefs quite sincerely. Here he is giving a TED talk to his fellow elites, explaining the uselessness of everyone who doesnt get invited to go to TED talks.

When I say that were facing not people confused by bad ideas, but elites possessed by demons, I mean it too.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of God, Guns, & the Government.

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