U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Meeting and Q&A – Saturday, February 23, 2019, at 6 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time. Join us for an extensive 2-hour discussion! Watch it and view the agenda here:
The U.S. Transhumanist Party invites many of its Officers and Ambassadors to discuss recent activities and plans for 2019, including the upcoming Presidential nomination process. The meeting will include a question-and-answer portion where inquiries from members and the general public will be addressed.
Agenda
- Gennady Stolyarov II: Overview of 2019 Transhumanist Presidential Nomination/Debate/Primary Process
- Gennady Stolyarov II: Integration with the Transhuman Party / Dissolution of the TNC
- ambassadors – palak madan, pam keefe, denisa rensen: discussions on transhumanist sentiment / attitudinal environment in india, hong kong, and japan.
- Denisa Rensen: Report on TransVision 2018 in Madrid
- Bobby Ridge: Report on Video Creation and Transhumanist Public Events.
- Dinorah Delfin: Discussion of Forthcoming Article in The Transhumanism Handbook: “An Artist’s Creative Process: A Model of Conscious Evolution”
- Arin Vahanian: Report on Premiere of “Immortality or Bust” Documentary.
- Sean Singh: Insights on Project Management with Volunteers: What can be done to maximize participation and creative output of our members (especially since money is not a motivator here)?
Researchers have developed a next-generation bionic hand that allows amputees to regain their proprioception. The results of the study, which have been published in Science Robotics, are the culmination of ten years of robotics research.
The next-generation bionic hand, developed by researchers from EPFL, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and the A. Gemelli University Polyclinic in Rome, enables amputees to regain a very subtle, close-to-natural sense of touch. The scientists managed to reproduce the feeling of proprioception, which is our brain’s capacity to instantly and accurately sense the position of our limbs during and after movement – even in the dark or with our eyes closed.
The new device allows patients to reach out for an object on a table and to ascertain an item’s consistency, shape, position and size without having to look at it. The prosthesis has been successfully tested on several patients and works by stimulating the nerves in the amputee’s stump. The nerves can then provide sensory feedback to the patients in real time – almost like they do in a natural hand.
This is Part 1 of a 5-part series by USTP’s Foreign Ambassador in Nigeria, Chogwu Abdul, as he explores the thought-provoking intricacies of James Hughes’ “Problems of Transhumanism.”
Become a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party for free, no matter where you reside: https://transhumanist-party.org/membership/
Ojochogwu Abdul
Introduction
In 2010, James Hughes, Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), having then just stepped down from the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association (presently known as Humanity+), took up an interesting challenge during the Spring of that year to reflect on the current state of transhumanist thought and determine what the questions were that the transhumanist movement needed to answer in order to move forward. Introducing a series of articles with which he hoped to navigate through a number of heady ideas and issues concerning transhumanism, Hughes opens by posing: “What are the current unresolved issues in transhumanist thought? Which of these issues are peculiar to transhumanist philosophy and the transhumanist movement, and which are more actually general problems of Enlightenment thought?” Further, he queried, “Which of these are simply inevitable differences of opinion among the more or less like-minded, and which need a decisive resolution to avoid tragic errors of the past?”
Talking about fairytales, this article embodies a fairytale of its own — the fairytale that we have to accept human nature as a given. That kind of fatalism will lead society to disaster in the decades ahead. Instead, we can, and must, do better, to secure a “Humanity+ future” ~ David Wood.
The idea that new technologies can liberate us from the human condition is a fantasy. In reality, the 21st-century will be all too human.
Project fear? Should we pay attention to American Jesuits?
But the fundamental ambition of transhumanism is more problematic. Its architects champion a use of technology to accelerate the evolution of humanity so radically that at the end of the process humanity as such would disappear. A superior posthuman being would emerge. According to Wikipedia, “Transhumanism is the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available knowledge to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.” From its inception, the abolition of human death and aging has been one of the goals of transhumanism as it engineers a new being freed from the biological constraints of the current human condition.
From its inception, the abolition of human death and aging has been one of the goals of transhumanism.
Two of the movement’s philosophers, Max More and David Pearce, have developed eloquent apologies for the transhumanist creed. But they also indicate the movement’s more ominous philosophical themes.
Very excited to have interviewed Dr. Michael Lustgarten in my role as longevity / aging ambassador for the ideaXme Show — Mike has been at the forefront of studying the 100 trillion organisms present in the human microbiome, their effect on human health and wellness, as well as a major proponent of metabolomics and biologic age tracking — A true future thinker in the area of extending human lifespan and healthspan
