I attended the Humanity+ conference in London this last Saturday.
All in all it was a great day, and very useful.
The speakers were as follows:
*) Max More, on "Singularity Skepticism: Exposing Exponential Errors";
*) Anders Sandberg, on "Making humans smarter via cognitive enhancers";
*) Rachel Armstrong, on "The impact of living technology on the future of humanity";
*) Aubrey de Grey, on "Human regenerative engineering – theory and practice";
*) David Pearce, on "The Abolitionist Project: Can biotechnology abolish suffering throughout the living world?";
*) Amon Twyman, on "Augmented perception and Transhumanist Art";
*) Natasha Vita-More, on "DIY Enhancement";
*) David Orban, on "The Singularity University", and "The Internet of Things";
*) Nick Bostrom, on "Reducing Existential Risks".
Max More addressed what he perceives as some misperceptions regarding the nature of the Singularity. One such thing is the idea that the Singularity will occur all at once, rather than part by part. Assuming that technology will continue to come along piece by piece, there may be no single point beyond which we cannot see, upon which the world can be defined as thus changed, in the manner generally associated with the word when applied to the Transhumanist meme.
For my part, I'll take it as it comes, and accelerate as I may.
Anders Sandberg looked at the merits and methods of cognitive enhancement. I was very pleased to hear most of what I heard, and his thoughts are mostly in line with my own, which is good by my reckoning when he is generally considered amongst the foremost of his field. He addressed the poverty of current education methods, and the laughability of how this is considered so important as to be made mandatory, given how little direct cognitive enhancement comes out of such.
I would agree with this wholeheartedly. Ellen and I plan to homeschool our child, unless something bucks up somewhere in terms of educational standards.
Anders also spoke on nootropic drugs, from the arcane to the ubiquitous. Personally I'm good with a lot of these, such as caffeine, fish oils, etc. I also take small doses of modafinil primarily for its nootropic qualities.
I do disagree with the use of sugar; personally I consider its dangers to vastly outweigh its benefits.
Technological augmentations of the mind are certainly an excellent direction in which to head, Anders and I agree. Personally, my dream is to have an external technological brain, in a far away very safe place, with some manner of instantaneous / quasi-instantaneous connection to my biological brain, such that I can access it with a thought, to find information as needed, and perform complex computations as needed.
Rachel Armstrong spoke on how certain organic chemical processes can behave a lot like biological organisms. To clarify, this means non-living chemicals behaving like living cells.
This is remarkably cool, and the implications of this are as diverse as they are far-reaching.
From biotech utility fog to non-humanoid substrate for intelligence, this is pretty damned ground-breaking!
Many thanks to Rachel for this exposé.
Lunchtime, I spent chiefly in the pub with Aubrey de Grey and Shannon Vyff. We conversed socially, primarily exploring the various things the three of us had going on.
After lunch...
Aubrey de Grey spoke regarding the general work of SENS, in a manner that won't have been new to most listeners, but is still really important information to get out there. He went on to address how the popular media often focus on trivial things and old news, while missing out on latest relevancies.
This needs to be fixed! I'm open to suggestions of what I can do to help.
David Pearce spoke regarding the Hedonistic Imperative. While not being a Utilitarian myself (very far from it), I endorse fully David's plan to abolish suffering in the world, and I agree completely that biotechnology is an excellent tool with which to work towards accomplishing this.
Amon Twyman spoke regarding augmented perception and Transhumanist art; alas I missed this talk as I was attending a Immortality Institute Directors' meeting at the time. I'll be sure to check out his talk on YouTube, however!
The afternoon break saw me continuing this meeting, and thereafter discussing memory archiving and retrieval with various people whose attention were drawn to my life recorder glasses.
After the break...
Natasha Vita-More spoke regarding DIY Enhancement. This is some of the stuff of which I dreamed as a small child and never thought there would be someone else so crazy as to be working on actuating these things. Excelsior!
David Orban spoke on Singularity University, and also on the interconnectivity afforded by today's online world, and the way this has panned out, to extrapolate the likely continuation of this. Personally, I will not be satisfied until I have continuous HUD internet feed, EEG-reader tech as a HID, and super-fast mobile internet, such that I can, without carrying any external device with my, access anything, any time, anywhere. Add Skype-like tools to this, and social networking etc, and this becomes pretty brilliant technology, and you know what the killer is? Pretty much everything we need to do this is already here. It's just a matter of making the product and marketing it.
Nick Bostrom spoke regarding existential risks facing humanity. It is surprising (or perhaps not) that there have been more studies into the sex lives of dung beetles than there have into things that could easily wipe out the human race.
Personally I invest my energies into becoming as ineradicable as possible.
Skynet, bring it on. I'll be back.
There was, after the conference, dinner and drinks. For some of us, this extended into the early hours of the morning. Personally I made many excellent connections in this time, and felt fully enriched by those with whom I shared the evening.
Not to mention the excellent food. Good choice of restaurant!
Here's to life. I love life!
Monday, 26 April 2010
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Report on Cryonics UK weekend!
The weekend kicked off with our AGM, at which our committee was re-elected. The only change to the Committee has been that Mark Willis has been elected Secretary, in place of Mark Walker.
A new Constitution was proposed, but to implement it at this meeting would give the membership insufficient notice and be unconstitutional, so notice will be given by our Secretary more than two weeks before the next meeting, such that it can be implemented at that time. At the last meeting, we created a large to-do list. At this meeting, we addressed whether these things had been done. Most of them had been done. The only thing not addressed as yet has been the ambulance's cosmetic make-over, which has been delayed due to inclement weather, and the reluctance of vehicle painting companies to take on such a one-off fiddly job. We expect to have this done before the next meeting, however.
Training was conducted over the course of both Saturday and Sunday, and included training regarding medications, the portable ice bath, the ambulance, the perfusion circuit, and the dry ice shipper.
Social meals out were enjoyed after training both days; Saturday this was at La Scala, and Sunday this was at Piccolino. Both are Italian restaurants in Sheffield.
If you missed out on this weekend, we look forward to seeing you at the next!
Details of such can be found by clicking the "Events" tab at www.cryonics-uk.com
A new Constitution was proposed, but to implement it at this meeting would give the membership insufficient notice and be unconstitutional, so notice will be given by our Secretary more than two weeks before the next meeting, such that it can be implemented at that time. At the last meeting, we created a large to-do list. At this meeting, we addressed whether these things had been done. Most of them had been done. The only thing not addressed as yet has been the ambulance's cosmetic make-over, which has been delayed due to inclement weather, and the reluctance of vehicle painting companies to take on such a one-off fiddly job. We expect to have this done before the next meeting, however.
Training was conducted over the course of both Saturday and Sunday, and included training regarding medications, the portable ice bath, the ambulance, the perfusion circuit, and the dry ice shipper.
Social meals out were enjoyed after training both days; Saturday this was at La Scala, and Sunday this was at Piccolino. Both are Italian restaurants in Sheffield.
If you missed out on this weekend, we look forward to seeing you at the next!
Details of such can be found by clicking the "Events" tab at www.cryonics-uk.com
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Life-journalling the easy way - video glasses!
Many engage in life-journalling for the purposes of assisting with cryonics or other related technologies, with the thought that their memory may benefit from a jog regarding the experiences that shape (and for that matter demonstrate) their personality.
http://www.photojojo.com/store/awesomeness...n-video-glasses
I was recently introduced to the availability of this by Danila Medvedev.
These glasses (lenses interchangeable to be sunglasses; looks much less geeky that way) will surreptitiously record what you see and hear while they are activated. They can record around 5 hours, then they will need to download / change card.
I do not plan to use mine to record everything, but representational samples of my life as I go along, as well as functional things that I may wish to have recorded for more immediate practical purposes.
I will assume that I will not want to re-watch huge portions of my life 24/7 in any case, as that would make it take a year to watch a year's worth of experience, which is unlikely to be practical. Snippets thus seem more efficient. More like a documentary film of my life than an unwieldily large all-encompassing indiscriminate record.
There is obviously also the issue of future compatibility, but in this information age, I do not foresee humanity losing the ability to read a .avi video file. Also, data corruption is a possibility, but then data stored in any means can be damaged.
We (I say somewhat magnanimously as this is no specialty of mine) are getting pretty good at reconstructing damaged data from computer files, so this is not too bad a threat.
If absolutely nothing else, it's a fun project that takes up almost no extra time ;)
http://www.photojojo.com/store/awesomeness...n-video-glasses
I was recently introduced to the availability of this by Danila Medvedev.
These glasses (lenses interchangeable to be sunglasses; looks much less geeky that way) will surreptitiously record what you see and hear while they are activated. They can record around 5 hours, then they will need to download / change card.
I do not plan to use mine to record everything, but representational samples of my life as I go along, as well as functional things that I may wish to have recorded for more immediate practical purposes.
I will assume that I will not want to re-watch huge portions of my life 24/7 in any case, as that would make it take a year to watch a year's worth of experience, which is unlikely to be practical. Snippets thus seem more efficient. More like a documentary film of my life than an unwieldily large all-encompassing indiscriminate record.
There is obviously also the issue of future compatibility, but in this information age, I do not foresee humanity losing the ability to read a .avi video file. Also, data corruption is a possibility, but then data stored in any means can be damaged.
We (I say somewhat magnanimously as this is no specialty of mine) are getting pretty good at reconstructing damaged data from computer files, so this is not too bad a threat.
If absolutely nothing else, it's a fun project that takes up almost no extra time ;)
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
LEF-sponsored Cryonics Conference in Florida
What an event!
I went with the hope of making maybe a couple of useful new connections, and instead found a whole stack of incredibly valuable people with whom to coordinate efforts.
I was able to find very quickly and easily a strong connection with others present, in many cases mostly forgetting that I'd only just met them, and that was even before the "HT Meetings" - for those not present for these, each evening after the final events of the day there would be a large number of us congregating in and around the hot-tub by the pool, with many topics of discussion ranging from the banal to the profound, with many practical topics also being addressed in great depth (great conceptual depth, that is, being as it was just a hot-tub, not the ocean).
It is said: "No man is an island, except in the bathtub".
This humour (silly enough for me to like it, anyway) brings me to a more serious topic as well; it strikes me that one thing that has long held back our general field is periodic bouts of petty in-fighting between individuals and organisations.
Together we stand, divided we fall. "Let's stand together" was a great underlying feeling to the weekend, and it was truly brilliant to have so many people from so many backgrounds coming together for such an event, with a view to further solidifying things and working together towards our common goals.
As far as I am concerned the benefit of this conference has been immeasurable on a number of levels. My hat goes off to Cairn Idun for having the idea, and to Bill Faloon for having the foresight to fund it.
I greatly enjoyed the tour of SA, which was very useful to me, given my capacity of standby organiser in the UK. I salute the dedicated team there, especially Catherine' Baldwin's management.
Incidentally, any of you who are Immortality Institute members, or who would like to become such, can vote for me in the Directoral Election here, if you would like to further promote the efficacy of our endeavours.:
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=37048
I went with the hope of making maybe a couple of useful new connections, and instead found a whole stack of incredibly valuable people with whom to coordinate efforts.
I was able to find very quickly and easily a strong connection with others present, in many cases mostly forgetting that I'd only just met them, and that was even before the "HT Meetings" - for those not present for these, each evening after the final events of the day there would be a large number of us congregating in and around the hot-tub by the pool, with many topics of discussion ranging from the banal to the profound, with many practical topics also being addressed in great depth (great conceptual depth, that is, being as it was just a hot-tub, not the ocean).
It is said: "No man is an island, except in the bathtub".
This humour (silly enough for me to like it, anyway) brings me to a more serious topic as well; it strikes me that one thing that has long held back our general field is periodic bouts of petty in-fighting between individuals and organisations.
Together we stand, divided we fall. "Let's stand together" was a great underlying feeling to the weekend, and it was truly brilliant to have so many people from so many backgrounds coming together for such an event, with a view to further solidifying things and working together towards our common goals.
As far as I am concerned the benefit of this conference has been immeasurable on a number of levels. My hat goes off to Cairn Idun for having the idea, and to Bill Faloon for having the foresight to fund it.
I greatly enjoyed the tour of SA, which was very useful to me, given my capacity of standby organiser in the UK. I salute the dedicated team there, especially Catherine' Baldwin's management.
Incidentally, any of you who are Immortality Institute members, or who would like to become such, can vote for me in the Directoral Election here, if you would like to further promote the efficacy of our endeavours.:
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=37048
Thursday, 7 January 2010
The Brain Drain Fallacy
I’ve been noticing a fair bit in the news lately about the “problem” of “Brain Drain”, that is to say the purported emigration of intelligence from a given country.
For example, there is the recent talk of the three Japanese scientists who were awarded Nobel Prizes for research conducted in US universities.
Today on the plane I noticed an English newspaper bemoaning the terrible problem of Brain Drain, with approximately 1/3 of the country’s academics saying that they will emigrate.
I daresay that other countries are complaining in a similar vein. Ignoring the obvious possibility that a country will receive as much expertise from abroad as it will send out into the wider world, I say this is still faulty reasoning to consider it a bad thing overall.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the age of the Global Village. We do not live in the time of Feudal arrangements, city states, or the like. Frankly, these days we can even relatively comfortably do business with a country with which we are at war.
The European Union is constantly shifting slowly yet inexorably towards being a “Superstate”, and many countries in the vicinity, some not even technically in Europe, are clambering to join it.
As I type this, I’m on a plane from Manchester to Philadelphia (where I will change and head for Florida) to attend an international conference geared towards - amongst other things - further improving the connections between cryonicists who might not already be in touch. I do not have a copy of the full attendance list yet, but I know of people coming from at least the US, the UK, Russia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Poland. I expect there to be a lot of other countries represented too, but these are the ones I’m aware of already just by word of mouth.
While many present will not be scientists, technical experts, or even actively involved already in the general furtherance of the field of cryonics, very many will be, and part of the purpose is to make more headway into sharing that information as freely and widely as possible throughout all those involved. This is effectively an “open source” approach to information, and it’s for the good of all involved, no matter whether one is more of a debtor or creditor when it comes to information sharing. The point is that the more people in general know about the field, the more the field will tend to advance for all of us, because people aren’t having to double up on research.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the real world, not Sid Meyer’s “Civilization”, wherein different nations must fight for intellectual supremacy over the others. It does not matter that research is conducted in one country or another; what matters is that it is conducted! Therefore people should feel entirely free to shift about geographically to wherever is best suited for this.
I find it bizarre that in this time of unprecedented Information and Communication Technology, many supposedly intelligent people still need to get out of the Dark Ages.
The world is getting smaller by the minute (don’t worry, no global warming jokes); why confine (and thus stifle) research and development?
For example, there is the recent talk of the three Japanese scientists who were awarded Nobel Prizes for research conducted in US universities.
Today on the plane I noticed an English newspaper bemoaning the terrible problem of Brain Drain, with approximately 1/3 of the country’s academics saying that they will emigrate.
I daresay that other countries are complaining in a similar vein. Ignoring the obvious possibility that a country will receive as much expertise from abroad as it will send out into the wider world, I say this is still faulty reasoning to consider it a bad thing overall.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the age of the Global Village. We do not live in the time of Feudal arrangements, city states, or the like. Frankly, these days we can even relatively comfortably do business with a country with which we are at war.
The European Union is constantly shifting slowly yet inexorably towards being a “Superstate”, and many countries in the vicinity, some not even technically in Europe, are clambering to join it.
As I type this, I’m on a plane from Manchester to Philadelphia (where I will change and head for Florida) to attend an international conference geared towards - amongst other things - further improving the connections between cryonicists who might not already be in touch. I do not have a copy of the full attendance list yet, but I know of people coming from at least the US, the UK, Russia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Poland. I expect there to be a lot of other countries represented too, but these are the ones I’m aware of already just by word of mouth.
While many present will not be scientists, technical experts, or even actively involved already in the general furtherance of the field of cryonics, very many will be, and part of the purpose is to make more headway into sharing that information as freely and widely as possible throughout all those involved. This is effectively an “open source” approach to information, and it’s for the good of all involved, no matter whether one is more of a debtor or creditor when it comes to information sharing. The point is that the more people in general know about the field, the more the field will tend to advance for all of us, because people aren’t having to double up on research.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the real world, not Sid Meyer’s “Civilization”, wherein different nations must fight for intellectual supremacy over the others. It does not matter that research is conducted in one country or another; what matters is that it is conducted! Therefore people should feel entirely free to shift about geographically to wherever is best suited for this.
I find it bizarre that in this time of unprecedented Information and Communication Technology, many supposedly intelligent people still need to get out of the Dark Ages.
The world is getting smaller by the minute (don’t worry, no global warming jokes); why confine (and thus stifle) research and development?
Monday, 4 January 2010
Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.
I am not a man easily moved, yet the end of this movie moves me.
Oscar Schindler has been effectively buying Jews from concentration camps, to work in his factory. This started off as a business move, and then gradually shifts to being a humanitarian effort to save the lives of as many people as possible (at great personal risk). Thus he ploughs all his own money, and anything the "business" makes, into buying more workers, anything to keep them from the death camps. He runs out of money, and does his best to continue the illusion of a functional business and still save more lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHvLtitxug
In the above clip, Schindler has done all the above, and must now flee, because the Allies have arrived to "liberate" the Jews who have, as far as the outside world is aware, been evily subjugated by Schindler to work in his factories for next to nothing. He faces arrest and trial as a war criminal, as that is the public guise he has been wearing in order to save many lives.
And yet he breaks down, as he realises with great regret that he could have done more.
I share this sentiment; one more life saved is precious. I hate death; it is my mortal enemy.
If a life can be saved of someone who does not wish to die, then I will do what I can to facilitate that. For this reason I feel compelled to do what I can to advance Immortalist ideas and technologies. For this reason I consider knowingly neglecting to take action a kind of passive murder, a terrible loss. And I really, really, hate missed opportunities.
For this reason, I do a lot.
But I must always do more.
Oscar Schindler has been effectively buying Jews from concentration camps, to work in his factory. This started off as a business move, and then gradually shifts to being a humanitarian effort to save the lives of as many people as possible (at great personal risk). Thus he ploughs all his own money, and anything the "business" makes, into buying more workers, anything to keep them from the death camps. He runs out of money, and does his best to continue the illusion of a functional business and still save more lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHvLtitxug
In the above clip, Schindler has done all the above, and must now flee, because the Allies have arrived to "liberate" the Jews who have, as far as the outside world is aware, been evily subjugated by Schindler to work in his factories for next to nothing. He faces arrest and trial as a war criminal, as that is the public guise he has been wearing in order to save many lives.
And yet he breaks down, as he realises with great regret that he could have done more.
I share this sentiment; one more life saved is precious. I hate death; it is my mortal enemy.
If a life can be saved of someone who does not wish to die, then I will do what I can to facilitate that. For this reason I feel compelled to do what I can to advance Immortalist ideas and technologies. For this reason I consider knowingly neglecting to take action a kind of passive murder, a terrible loss. And I really, really, hate missed opportunities.
For this reason, I do a lot.
But I must always do more.
Nominated for ImmInst Directoral Election.
I'm honoured to have been nominated for consideration in the Immortality Institute's 2010 Directoral Elections.
From the 9th of January to the 8th of February will then ensue a voting process open to the whole membership to decide which of the nominees will take a place on the Board of Directors.
I'm pleased to have been nominated, because I'd really like to work more for this most worthy organisation that does so much for the cause to which I devote my life.
The existing Director, who nominated me, is a like-minded fellow who seems to have the commitment, enthusiasm, and never-say-die attitude that this sort of endeavour really needs. I'd love to be a part of such a team.
If I should not be elected, I will of course continue doing what I'm doing in every area of Transhumanism in general (and Immortalism in particular) that I can.
"I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Immortalism
In our global present land"
If I am able to join the team on this occasion, I look forward to hastening the above!
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