posthuman

X-Men First Class: Transhumanism for the Masses or Aren’t We All Mutants?

by Socrates
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Have you ever felt lonely, struggled to fit in and be normal or been rejected just because you’re different? Have you ever sought to find out who you really are? Have you ever wondered if there are others who feel like you? If you have, then, you will probably like the new X-Men: First Class. The fifth and, in my opinion, best installment of the series, is not a movie about being a comic superhero endowed with amazing powers. It is a movie about being human and facing all the accompanying eternal questions of the human condition. A movie about feeling different and trying to find your place. About striving to fit in, be accepted and normal. (Whatever that may mean?!) About finding out who you really are and embracing it all – the amazing as well as the imperfect [...]

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Question Everything: Max More on Singularity 1 on 1

by Socrates
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Today my guest on Singularity 1 on 1 is transhumanist strategic philosopher Max More. (As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full.) As the CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation Dr. More has a full schedule. Never-the-less he generously managed to squeeze in two 30 min interview sessions in his busy day. During our conversation we discuss issues such as: Max’s early life and childhood heroes; his interest in economics, political science and philosophy; transhumanism and extropy; the proactinary and precautionary principles; cryonics and the Alcor Foundation; his Paleo diet and exercise regimen; why it is important to question everything (and especially yourself). To find more about Max More visit his web site here. My favorite quote from Max More: “No more gods, no more [...]

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The Charlie Sheen Guide to Predicting Our Transhuman Future

by Matt Swayne
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As technology follows its Moore’s Law speedway toward exponentially increasing power and ubiquity, futurists are just as rapidly falling into two schools of thought on how humans will handle this new-found power. Nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, immersive virtual reality, and dozens of other tools and technologies are poised to transform life in fundamental ways. Repetitive tasks and duties that most people think are odious could disappear. Robots will cook, clean, cut the grass, and perform dozens of other jobs that we — or at least, I — try to avoid. Virtual reality will become better than the real thing. For those who have accepted this technocentric future, the real question is how humans will deal with this transformation. Not everyone thinks transhumanity is going to be better. In fact, some believe that the future will lead to lazy, over-indulged, shallow-thinking slugs [...]

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Can you TRANSCEND biology and live long enough to live forever?

by Socrates
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In 2004, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, MD, published Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. Their groundbreaking book marshaled thousands of scientific studies to make the case that new developments in medicine and technology will allow us to radically extend our life expectancies and slow down the aging process. In 2009, Ray and Terry published Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever where they present what they believe to be a practical and enjoyable program which readers can follow in order to live long enough (and remain healthy long enough) to take full advantage of the biotech and nanotech advances that have already begun and will be occurring at an accelerating pace during the years ahead. The program aims to help us TRANSCEND biology and live long enough to live forever. In 2010, Ray and Terry give us [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 5)

by Socrates

Part 5: The Future of (Military) AI — Singularity While being certainly dangerous for humans, especially the ones that are specifically targeted by the kill-bots, arming machines is not on its own a process that can threaten the reign of homo sapiens in general. What can though is the fact that it is occurring within the larger confluent revolutions in Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics (GNR). Combined with exponential growth trends such as Moore’s law we arguably get the right conditions for what is referred to as the Technological Singularity. In 1945 Alan Turing famously predicted that computers would one day play better chess than people. Fifty years later, a computer called Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion Gary Kasparov. Today, whether it is a mouse with a blue-tooth brain implant that directs the movements of the mouse via laptop, [...]

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Do you want to live forever?

by Socrates
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Humanity has achieved huge progress in life-extending and anti-aging technologies. Just weeks ago the BBC reported that today half of the babies born in the advanced world are likely to live to 100. A quick comparative review shows us the following life expectancy change in years: Cro-Magnon Era: 18 years Ancient Egypt: 25 years 1400 Europe: 30 years 1800 Europe and USA: 37 years 1900 USA: 48 years 2002 United States: 78 years The trend is hard to miss: since our Cro-Magnon times we have managed to increase our longevity fivefold and in the last 100 years we have managed to double it. Both of those trends are important to note for they reveal that we are not only living longer but this change is happening at an accelerating pace. For example, it took tens of thousands of years to [...]

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