The Lifeboat Foundation is Media Partner of the RE.WORK Technology Summit which will be held September 19th in London. This summit is a one day event that brings together entrepreneurship, science, and technology to re-work the future and tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. Our Rachel Armstrong, Stuart Armstrong, Aubrey de Grey, and Randal Koene will be speaking. RE.WORK is led by our Nikita Johnson. Use the discount code lifeboat25 to receive 25% off standard passes or startup/student passes.
More info:
The RE.WORK Technology Summit is a one day event that brings together entrepreneurship, science, and technology to re-work the future and tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. The event will showcase the opportunities of breakthrough technologies and their potential for a positive impact on business and society. Emerging technology is providing an unprecedented era of opportunity for entrepreneurs and scientists to progress business and solve global challenges. By 2050 there will be around 9 billion people on the planet, so understanding, knowledge and collaboration is vital to help steer the way to a better world. RE.WORK is focused on generating innovative ideas and encouraging collaboration to solve big, global problems in areas such as increased urbanisation levels, efficient healthcare, sustainable energy solutions, and equal opportunities for all. Technology can have a revolutionary impact on these issues and some of the new products and advances explored at RE.WORK will include progress in the internet of things, sensors, 3D printing, wearable technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
“In short, apophenia is the human tendency to visualize what isn’t really there. Our pattern-obsessed minds–born from an evolutionary need to make predictions related to survival–see meaning in patterns, objects, sounds, and life events that aren’t tied together by anything more than chance.”
My last twenty-five years as a futurist have conditioned me to search for weak signals of what may be emerging in all areas of society that will impact our Communities of the Future work seeding transformational ideas and methods in local communities to help leaders and citizens prepare themselves for a future that will be increasingly fast paced, interdependent and complex. I always look for some gem of a new idea that is hidden in the context of an article, novel or web journal that causes me to go hmmm? and think about how this new idea connects with our COTF approach to community transformation.
Recently I have read Zoltan Istvan’s novel, The Transhumanist Wager, and found myself often stopping and going hmmm? Although an oversimplification (with apologies to Zoltan), the central theme of the novel is the coming existential crash of science and radical technologies and religion at some point after my life that now registers 71 years on the ageometer.
Although I could present my thoughts about whether humanity should attempt god-like actions to evolve life extending discoveries leading to downloading consciousness into machines to live forever, I would not be objective…feeling the increasing need of a long rest from overactivity during 71 years (-:
There are so many “access” points in Zoltan’s book for thought provoking ideas, that I found myself moving from thinking about the impact of emerging radical technologies on our society and communities to wondering how society was going to be able to develop the resiliency required to be able to adapt to whatever emerges.…whether the mysteries of religion and our existence become encased within a deeper understanding of quantum theory as time moves exponentially, or whether we reach the point of singularity and beyond and become transhuman.
Although many such ideas emerge from the pages of The Transhumanist Wager, there was a gem of a phrase two-thirds into the novel that jumped out at me because of our COTF work helping local areas prepare for a very different kind of future. It was the phrase “ubiquitous sheepishness” applied to leaders in all aspects of our society.
My own experience over the last thirty years changed the filter with which I now consider the phrase “ubiquitous sheepishness.” As I have had my own journey of thinking differently about the future, and connected it to observations of many local leaders with whom I have consulted who are stamped with the barriers of history and tradition, I have come to realize, in my opinion, that we live in a time that demands our ability to move beyond the natural inclinations of conservatism and being risk adverse as an asset.
Whatever the future holds, I have become convinced that we must connect at a deeper level of collaborative intellect, reconceptualize our institutions to be aligned with a time of constant change, and learn to risk ourselves for the good of our grandchildren so that they will have the right to make the decision whether to become transhumanists or live a life of other means conducive to the survival of our humanity, in whatever form our natural ecology and our imagination may lift us beyond the limits of perceived reality.
Whatever is in store for future generations, we are faced with challenges that defy understanding from a traditional perspective and understanding. Paraphrasing Einstein, “the problems of today cannot be resolved at the level of thinking at the time they were created.”
Zoltan brings many thought provoking questions to the surface of our thinking. In my opinion, none is more important than “moving beyond ubiquitous sheepishness” and finding the courage and spiritual commitment to connect with each other and utilize our diversity to confront emerging challenges head-on with keen intellect, deep collaboration, and the capacity to care for ourselves and others as if one was the same.…our interdependency is leading us to the threshold of a higher level of consciousness, requiring us to cast off our perceived truths, our ubiquitous sheepishness and jump into this new abyss together.
My future thoughts will be built around this need to move beyond being risk adverse and creating interlocking networks of diverse people and organizations to build “capacities for transformation” in today’s world that will allow our grandchildren the capacity to adapt to whatever reality emerges.
Is there an error in the following 6-point result?
When looking from the height of a GPS satellite down onto earth, you will notice six Einstein effects: E1: The clocks worn by the people down there tick slower by Einstein’s gravitational redshift factor E2: The photons arriving up here from down there have correspondingly less energy E3: These photons had their lower energy on departure already, despite appearing normal locally down there E4: All masses down there are reduced in their mass-energy content by the redshift factor, despite appearing normal locally down there E5: All charges down there are reduced in their charge by the redshift factor, despite appearing normal locally down there E6: All objects down there are linearly increased in their size by the reciprocal redshift factor, despite appearing normal locally down there
Background: Points E1, E2 are accepted since Einstein first proposed them in 1907. E3 was described by Julian Schwinger in his book “Einstein’s Legacy” of 1986 (on page 142). E4 follows from quantum-electrodynamics (“creation-annihilation operator”). E5 follows from the universal rest mass-to-charge ratio; it is in the literature since 2008 (see http://www.academicjournals.org/ajmcsr/PDF/pdf2012/Feb/9%20Feb/Rossler.pdf ). E6 follows from the “Bohr radius formula” of quantum mechanics; it was first mentioned in a PhD thesis submitted in 2005 (quoted in http://www.nonlinearscience.com/paper.php?pid=0000000148 ). So far, no specialist in general relativity agrees publicly to the three new Einstein effects E4,E5,E6, but no one objects publicly, either. One reason for the silence is that E4,E5,E6 have yet to be incorporated into general relativity (a mammoth task). The main reason, however, is that E5 and E6 affect the safety of the LHC experiment at CERN. This is why your help is vitally needed to either smash or confirm points E4-E6.
News this past week on Fukushima has not been exactly reassuring has it. Meanwhile the pro-Nuclear lobby keep counting bananas. Here I’ve gathered together some of the recent news articles on the unfolding crisis. Interested to hear some comments on this one.
Fukushima leak is ‘much worse than we were led to believe’ / Aug 22, 2013, BBC NEWS http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561 Serious: Japan hikes Fukushima radiation danger level / August 21, 2013 RT NEWS http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-level-three-762/ Japan’s nuclear crisis deepens, China expresses ‘shock’ / Aug 21, 2013/ reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-japan-fukushima-severity-idUSBRE97K02B20130821 Worse than Chernobyl: The inner threat of Fukushima crisis / Aug 20, 2013/ RT http://rt.com/op-edge/chernobyl-fukushima-crisis-catastrophe-715/ Japan nuclear agency upgrades Fukushima alert level / Aug 21, 2013 / BBC NEWS http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23776345 Fukushima apocalypse: Years of ‘duct tape fixes’ could result in ‘millions of deaths’ / Aug 18 2013 / RT http://rt.com/news/fukushima-apocalypse-fuel-removal-598/ Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know / National Geographic, Aug 2013 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/08/130807-fukushima-radioactive-water-leak/
As a member of the Ethics board, I wanted to cross-post here a blog that has been posted on the MindBody Medicine Network where I will be conducting a webinar on Sunday on the topic of integral ethics. The webinar is specifically focused on ethical dilemmas faced by healthcare professionals. However, the integral ethics model that I developed in conjunction with Dr. Tim Black from University of Victoria, and under supervision from Ken Wilber, founder of Integral Institute, is a general decision-making process that can be more broadly applied.
Any comments or questions could be sent directly to me at [email protected].
(The author, Durwin Foster, M.A. is a Canadian Certified Counselor, Researcher and Professional Presenter who has worked directly with Ken Wilber, a pioneer of integral theory)
In this article, I will provide a brief introduction to the practice of integral ethics for healthcare professionals.
One way to define the word “integral” is as “comprehensive.” Therefore, the benefit of taking an integral approach to the ethical dilemmas we may face as healthcare professionals is that an integral approach allows us to honor the complexity of the situations we face. When we make decisions that embrace and honor complexity, we are more likely to experience positive outcomes for both us and our clients.
The integral ethical-decision making model and process that Dr. Tim Black and I developed, with guidance from Ken Wilber, facilitates the wise embrace of complexity by parsing ethics into four key domains that correlate to the interior and exterior of reality, as well as its individual and collective aspects. Analyzing ethics in this way gives us ethics itself, as well as morals, behaviors and laws. The relationship between these four domains is perhaps best understood with the assistance of visuals, as follows:
The integral ethical-decision making process then guides you through the four domains using four different lenses in order to make an optimal decision in resolution of any ethical quandary you may be facing. Here are the lenses:
Here is an illustrative example:
I am at my workplace as an Employee Assistance Counsellor where the context requires me to keep in mind multiple clients, not only including my immediate client who is the person sitting in front of me, but also the client’s employer is a client of my employer. This creates a complex stakeholder arrangement which can lead to tricky ethical decision-making.
Then let us say I have a client who brings up a case of bullying by her manager. This client is regularly being “put down” in a way that she experiences as demeaning. She has become depressed and her health is suffering as she is eating less and sleeping more fitfully. She wants to speak up for herself in a straightforward way, but fears that doing so may jeopardize her job. The situation is serious enough that she has started looking for other work, but has not yet been successful in finding alternative employment.
Trained in social justice and advocacy work, my first desire — coming from the moral virtues view — is to do what is right. The client ought to be able to go to her Human Resources department, file a complaint, and something should be done by Human Resources to reprimand the manager. Right?
However, in looking through the systems-regulatory view that both she and I are members of, the reality becomes clear of how difficult this could be to enact without putting both of us at considerable risk. By working through all four lenses, I decide to focus on the power of relationship — the “relational-contextual view” — to assist this client. I surmise that by building a strong relationship of mutual trust, unconditional positive regard, and “mattering”, I can support her to maintain her self-esteem in this challenging situation. Also, I can support her by giving her specific behaviors — called the “video-camera view” because behavior is observable – to try out around assertiveness and non-violent communication that she can use to “test the waters” with her manager.
I trust the above overview of two of the main components of the integral ethical-decision making model, as well as an example of the model being applied, helps to wet your appetite for learning more about how this model can help you serve your clients and patients in the most ethical manner possible. You can participate in “the rest of the story” by registering for my Mind Body Medicine Network’s webinar on Sunday, August 25th from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.. on “Integral Ethics for Health and Helping Professionals.” The webinar will be interactive and participants are welcome to share any hypothetical ethics situations that can be processed through the integral ethics model. 1.5 Ethics CE’s will be awarded to Psychologists, Licensed Professional Counselors and Social Workers by either participating in the live webinar or watching the webinar recording and taking the post-test. For more information and to register for the webinar, please click on: http:///www.mindbodymedicinenetwork.com/Webinars.html. The cost is $30.
Science depends on lonely pebble-searching as Newton said and Einstein practiced. Close to a pebble found, there always lie equally shiny others according to Maxwell. I look forward to the reader kindly searching around one or the other of the 25
1) Cryodynamics – sister discipline to thermodynamics – exists, being valid for attractive inter-particle potentials
2) Concentric electron beams will cool hot spots in the ITER via cryodynamics (with A. Sanayei and I. Zelinka)
Recent discussions on the properties of micro-black-holes threw open sufficient question to reignite some interest in the subject (pardon to those exhausted of reading on the subject here at the Lifeboat Foundation). A claim made by physicists at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, that a new attractive force arises from black-body radiation [1] makes one speculate if a similar effect could result from hawking radiation theorized to be emitted from micro-black-holes. An unlikely scenario due to the very different nature supposed on hawking radiation and black-body radiation, but a curious thought none-the-less. If a light component of hawking radiation could replicate this net attractive force, accepted accretion and radiation rates could be revised to consider such new additional forces hypothesized.
Not so fast — Even if such a new force did take effect in these scenarios, one would expect such to have negligible impact on safety assurances. Official estimated accretion rates are many many orders of magnitude lower than estimated radiation rates — and are estimates which concur with observational evidence in the longevity of white-dwarf stars.
That is not to conclude such new forces are necessary to continue debate. Certain old disputed parameter ranges suggest different accretion rates relative to radiative rates which could bridge that vast breadth between such estimates, theorizing catastrophic outcomes [3] are not necessarily refuted by safety assurances — least on white-dwarf longevity.
Indeed a more pertinent point, that if equilibrium could manifest between radiation and accretion rates, micro-black-holes trapped in Earth’s gravitation could become persistent heat engines with considerable flux [2] to cause environmental concern in planetary heating.
Meanwhile, that stalwart safety assurance on micro-black-hole accretion risks, the longevity of white dwarf stars, finds new argument where the law of angular momentum conservation is considered as a significant factor in negating the G&M [4] calculated stopping distances of naturally occurring micro-black-holes on white dwarf stars due to it enforcing an immediate disengagement on striking quarks at such near-luminal speeds — this unlike LHC produced micro-black-holes, it is argued, which enjoy a 30,000 times longer interaction time [5].
One does not feel motivated to run for ‘end is nigh’ placards in such fringe discussions, but one can surmise that discussion on such topics of LHC safety assurance are far from the end of their rope in certain circles. Thank you to those involved for their continued discussions.
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[1] Attractive Optical Forces from Blackbody Radiation — Sonnleitner, Ritsche-Marte, Ritsch, 2013. ( http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i2/e023601 ) [2] Terrestrial Flux of Hypothetical Stable MBH Produced in Colliders relative to Natural CR Exposure — 2012. ( http://vixra.org/pdf/1203.0055v2.pdf ) [3] Potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders — R. Plaga, 2008/2009. ( http://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.1415v3.pdf ) [4] Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes — Giddings, Mangano — 2008 ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381 ) [5] Eintein’s Equivalence Principle, C-Global, and the Widely Ignored Factor 30,000 — O.E Rossler, 2013. ( http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/1577/1583 )
Paradise comes from the Greek paradeisos, “surrounded by walls”. In Madonna Laboris Mary labors in seclusion at the borders of Paradise, providing her scarf for souls to ascend behind its walls. “All day long I watch the gates of Paradise; I do not let anyone in, yet in the morning there are newcomers in Paradise,” Saint Peter complains to the Lord. The Lord and Peter make night rounds and see Mary with her scarf and the Lord bids Peter to “let (Mary) be”.
Attribution: Bonhams Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich (Russian, 1874–1947) Madonna Laboris signed with monogram and dated ‘1931’ (lower left) tempera on canvas 84 x 124cm (33 1/16 x 48 13/16in)
That paradise means surrounded by walls rather than walls being something that surround paradise is particular. Paradise as adjective instead of paradise as noun. You can go to a place that is paradise, but you cannot go to paradise.
Many things in today’s world are surrounded by walls and we would not call them paradise. But if we were good students of etymology we would.
What does it mean to be paradise? Each time we enclose space, are we making paradise? The Earth then is paradise contained in a permeable wall of satellites …
The walls of paradise in Madonna Laboris are permeable too, perhaps in only one direction, although according to Christian mythology we know at least two who got out. Well, three, the third making his own paradise elsewhere (seen at the bottom of Madonna Laboris).
The epidermis, enclosing the body — paradise. Each cell with its membrane, paradise. Time with its calendar, also paradise.
Indeed there is a permeable quality to the walls of paradise, certainly paradise contains, but its boundaries also allow a passage through.
It becomes hard not to find that everything everywhere is somehow enclosed and by virtue of its enclosure would therefore be paradise. Is this perhaps how an adjective became a noun? Paradise describes everything and in describing everything it must then be everywhere, and so, logically follows the notion of place.
For what purpose did humans develop language? We say for communication but to communicate about what? In the beginning it must have been to direct the self toward a form of knowing that was not exactly knowledge, but an intention to generate specific referents for what was known.
Remembering, not romantically, that in the past, approaches to language, space and context were in the main more nuanced and reflective of a cosmic appreciation of reality — certainly that is not too far fetched a generalization. Seeing the enclosures and enfolding in space and maybe time, did some philosopher or scientist or religious man (perhaps embodied all in one man) observe his world and the boundaries within it natural and otherwise that gave space contour and distinction and did he then name space by its boundaries since those boundaries defined and helped to give meaning to space itself? The boundaries acting as a form of knowing.
Is paradise the original meme for all space/time and is that why today we conflate adjective and noun — paradise as definer of place and also place itself.
When Peter says he guards the boundaries of paradise and yet nonetheless there is passage across them could it be because the boundaries are only the markers of space. Maybe that is what the Lord hints at when he tells Peter to let things be.
Linked to paradise is salvation. Borrowing from Christian mythos again, we know in the apocryphal literature Jesus said (paraphrase) there is no sin, only those who commit acts we call sinful. Like paradise, a boundary potentially pointing to expansive space, salvation referents a condition of already being saved. As walls define the details of the space-time paradise, salvation notes the barriers to what is already a sacred state.
Here on Earth surrounded in space by space technology, the medium is the message andthe message is the medium (Marshall McLuhan and Yoko Ono). To extend the analogy of media into all information: the materials and spaces through which we exist inform the condition of that existence while simultaneously that which exists and is conveyed becomes the vehicle of transmission itself.
The RE.WORK Technology Summit is a one day event that brings together entrepreneurship, science, and technology to re-work the future and tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. The event will showcase the opportunities of breakthrough technologies and their potential for a positive impact on business and society. Emerging technology is providing an unprecedented era of opportunity for entrepreneurs and scientists to progress business and solve global challenges. By 2050 there will be around 9 billion people on the planet, so understanding, knowledge and collaboration is vital to help steer the way to a better world. RE.WORK is focused on generating innovative ideas and encouraging collaboration to solve big, global problems in areas such as increased urbanisation levels, efficient healthcare, sustainable energy solutions, and equal opportunities for all. Technology can have a revolutionary impact on these issues and some of the new products and advances explored at RE.WORK will include progress in the internet of things, sensors, 3D printing, wearable technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
