Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transhumanism

My new story for The Huffington Post on the virtue of reason and asking: Why?.

2016-04-15-1460696511-7718468-futureimage.jpg Image of the future — By Smart Gadget Technology

The human race is on the threshold of so much revolutionary change. It’s mostly due to the emerging field of transhumanism: a social movement that aims to use science and technology to radically modify the human body—and modify the human experience. I get asked all the time: What is the best way to handle such changes—like the merging of humans with machines to make cyborgs? Or spending more time in virtual reality then normal reality? Or biohacker brain implants that let us use telepathy with one another (which eventually will lead us all to be connected via a hive mind)?

I think it’s easiest to let Jethro Knights—protagonist of my philosophical, Libertarian novel The Transhumanist Wager—answer. Below is a modified and condensed version of a speech he gives to the world, near the end of the book:

There are two all-important ways to navigate a correct path in the new transhuman future: The first is to constantly use the utmost reasoning of which our brains are capable while negotiating our way through life; the second is to incessantly question everything.

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Nthing new; nice to see more folks waking up.

We’re moving beyond just prosthetics and wearable tech. Soon, we’ll all by cyborgs in one way or another.

From The Six Million Dollar Man to Inspector Gadget to Robocop, humans with bionic body parts have become commonplace in fiction. In the real world, we use technology to restore functionality to missing or defective body parts; in science fiction, such technology gives characters superhuman abilities. The future of cyborgs may hinge on that distinction.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to develop a brain implant that links human brains to computers. Under the Obama administration’s Brain Initiative, DARPA has developed eight programs designed to enhance human physical and cognitive capabilities. The Neural Engineering System Design program seeks to “bridge the bio-electronic divide” via a small implant that acts as a translator between the brain and the digital world, giving humans improved sight and hearing.

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The sky above Osaka Bay is saturated in light pollution teeming from the neon-soaked metropolis below. Military bi-copters circle in patterns between the antenna towers of Niihama City’s looming skyscrapers as they survey the scene of an ongoing domestic security operation. Kneeling from atop the edge of one of these towers is a figure; a mauve-haired saboteur of the state clad in a leotard, side holster, and leather jacket. Combat boots and leggings hiked just past her knees with her upper thighs left exposed. An external HD cable juts from a small input jack indented at the base of her neck.

Her pupils dilate, sifting through the visual noise of an embedded surveillance feed while combing the room below for suspicious movements. She detaches the cable at her subordinate’s signal, stands upright and removes her clothing. She leans over the edge of the building, a smirk streaking across her otherwise stoic expression. A rappel line heaves sharply, suspending her body directly adjacent to that of her target, who is now only a trigger pull from annihilation.

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Check out this PBS article on other 2016 presidential candidates (including Transhumanist Party). One of the main goals of my campaign is to try to help challenge the monopolistic 2-party system in America:

If you were asked who is running for president, you’d probably list the five candidates still running for the major political party nominations: Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. But there are lots of candidates running either from lesser-known parties or without any party affiliation. Here are 16 independent presidential candidates running in 2016:

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An extensive new 2-part interview with Breitbart on the future and transhumanism. Here’s part 1:

Zoltan Istvan is the most intriguing presidential candidate you’ve never heard of. While those at the forefront of the 2016 race talk about defeating ISIS, Istvan is taking on beating death itself. Recently, I had a chance to talk to him.

In approaching the interview, I was unsure of what to expect. Istvan is a dynamic personality, as polarizing as he is engaging. His enthusiasm for the future is contagious, and he’s not afraid to make seemingly outrageous statements to get people engaged in a conversation he believes is vital — not only to our country’s future, but humanity’s.

I’ve been following your articles on Motherboard, but I’d like to more formally introduce you to our readers. Even considering the current, shall we say “eclectic” roster of candidates, your campaign remains particularly unique.

Istvan: You know, when you’re a third-party, you do wacky things to try to get some attention and spread your message. I think one thing I’ve been a little bit more open about recently, is while I have aimed to make the political side of my things kind of centric, I think most people know me basically as someone who has sort of some Libertarian values, even if they’re a little bit left-leaning Libertarian values, but they’re ultimately that.

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My new article for The Hufffington Post on whether transhumanism will change racism in the near future:

2016-04-07-1460007795-625540-cyborg438398_960_720.jpg A future transhumanist? — CCO Public Domain

Despite decades of progress, racism and bigotry are still prevalent in the United States. Often, they even dominate the news in American media, like during the Baltimore riots or the Ferguson shooting. Movements like Black Lives Matter remind us that the society we live in still has many biases to be fought against, but that good work can be done to combat bigotry if people unite against it.

Despite this, the quest to find true equality in the world is about to get more complicated. It’s possible the ability to completely change skin color may arrive in the next 15–30 years. Like a chameleon, expect humans to literally change their skin color soon through coming technologies—most that will probably be based on genetic editing.

Already, humans have the technology to change the color of eyes and choose the sex of their offspring. But on the horizon are new techniques—based on CRISPR technology—that may permanently or temporarily alter the melanin in our skin (the pigment mostly responsible for its color). And like some characters in the X-Men film series, we may even be able to do this in real-time someday.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=9grWo5ZofmA

A lot of transhumanism friends have asked me to write about Bernie Sanders, so here are my thoughts:

The transhumanism movement has been dramatically growing in size—and most of that growth is from millennials and youth joining. Transhumanists want to use science and technology to radically improve the human race, and the onslaught of new gear and gadgets to do that—like virtual reality, robots, and chip implants —are giving them plenty of ammunition to do that.

But what has caught many people off guard—including myself who probably best fits into the category: left-leaning Libertarian—is the amount of support transhumanists are giving to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Historically, transhumanism (and its de facto home: Silicon Valley) has been Libertarian-minded —with a hands-off attitude towards the government, religion, and basically any authority trying to tell them what to do or how to innovate. But with the demographics of the transhumanism movement sharply changing from older academics and technologists to young people—especially those in college—the push towards more leftist and progressive-leaning ideas is strong. For many young transhumanists, they believe they have found an ideal in Sanders.

While I like the charisma of Sanders and his long standing devotion to the people—and that is enough for me to say he’d be a good president for change—the reality is capitalism is still a hallmark of the American way. For the next four and maybe even eight years, capitalism won’t be going anywhere. Afterward, though, within 10–25 years, when robots, software, and AI really start dismantling capitalism as we know it (see my latest TechCrunch article and thoughts on a Universal Basic Income), it will be a totally different story.

Like it or not, millennials and youth obsess over this type of economy stuff—especially machines taking jobs. They know future employment statistics better than many 30-year veteran business executives running publicly traded companies. The dangerous truth is many young people know they likely won’t have jobs in the future. And neither will most of the executives for that matter, since they too can (and will) be replaced by super intelligent machines programmed to make sound mathematical business decisions.

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