Regular exercise can extend life, but 90% of humanity would rather die than submit to a daily workout. Is there a technology that can change this attitude?
A report on a talk delivered by Dale Bredesen at the the Buck Advisory Council meeting at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. Dale Bresdesen is a specialist in neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s disease.
The global economic crisis has not spared the African continent. There are multiple risks, but growth prospects remain. Poverty must also be alleviated.
In the July 13 issue of the Washington Post, IEET Fellow Linda Glenn was featured in Vivek Wadha’s column entitled “Ethics in the age of acceleration.”
Imagine a bracelet or watch that changes into something else when you take it off. Perhaps it becomes a cell phone, or laptop computer. Although this scenario may seem like science fiction, this and much more will soon become reality with a ground-breaking new technology known as claytronics.
All parties, except maybe the most fanatic Islamists, are beginning to agree on one thing: there can be no winner in Afghanistan. A possible outcome is splitting the nation into two opposing sections.
IEET’s newest contributor - Steven M. Wise - is a leader in the animal rights movement. His first essay for us explains the importance of legal personhood. The goal of his organization, the - Nonhuman Rights Project - is to change, via legal jurisdictions, the current paradigm.
Dolphins are highly intelligent mammals, with an amazing ability to learn to understand our language. But as we gain more insights into their behaviour, we’re also coming to suspect that they might have their very own language — or at the very least a complex system for communicating with one another.
While I share dreams of interstellar travel, I find positive invocation of European colonialism profoundly problematic. If posthumans see themselves as Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, and John Smith when they set off for the stars, expect very bad things. Let’s decolonize our desires, folks.
Our hive culture has established a hierarchical pyramid where we, the greatest of the great apes, have crowned ourselves on top of a conceptual food chain that is confused / mixed with a superiority chain…
Africa is Rising! Technology, like cell phones, is aiding Africa’s fantastic leap forward. Are the poorest of the poor left behind? - IEET’s “FONE4U” project will assist them, with your help.
Nearly two thirds (65 percent) of Americans think that President Obama would be a better leader than Mitt Romney if an alien invasion were to happen. Hm, well, yes… and? So?
In the ongoing scandal about Barclays’ employees tampering with the “LIBOR,” or London interbank lending rate - which is to say, bank fraud - The Economist offers this brilliant cover. It’s not just the word “banksters,” or the fact that it shows bank executives dressed like the guys in Reservoir Dogs.
It was said that it takes at least a decade to figure out the effects of a major war. It probably takes a lot longer. It took a few decades to figure out that Britain had lost its empire by winning World War II and only now are we beginning to see that Germany was not defeated after all.
When I go shopping for transhumanist enhancements, these items will be on the top of my list. As more futuristic innovations arrive, I’ll add additional enhancements.
In general, I have affection for the goals of H+. However, when I compare my socio-political stances with transhumanism, I discover numerous points of contention. Here’s a brief list of platform issues and my positions that are occasionally in synch with H+ majority but often contrast sharply.
Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions and a common belief of pagan religions found in many tribal societies around the world. I don’t think there is a “spirit” or “soul” separate from the information encoded in our brain. But if there is, what can it be?
In 30 years, “enhanced” astronauts might not have lungs or stomachs, so they can survive without breathing or eating. Plus they’ll have nano-skin to resist radiation.
Here’s a list of enhancements I would appreciate having, and I expect they’ll all be available in my lifetime. I begin with my 10th choice, and conclude with the #1 upgrade that I desire the most. What super-enhancement would you like to have? Do you want what I want, or something even more incredible?
Last year a court in Southern Nigeria remanded in custody 4 persons for allegedly killing a hunchback woman, Mrs Ifeoma Angela Igwe for ritual purposes. According to the report, the hoodlums went to the woman’s house and kidnapped her. They took her to a nearby bush where they beheaded her, butchered her and removed the hunch. It is believed that the hunch contains ‘magical substance or mercury’ which can make people rich. I do not know how Nigerians came about this erroneous idea.
Naked mole rats basically live 9 times more than “they should.” At an age equivalent to a human age of 92 years, naked mole-rats show unchanged levels of activity and metabolic rate, as well as sustained muscle mass, fat mass, bone density, cardiac health, and neuron number.
What exactly is cultural identity? Is there something fundamentally absurd about claiming as your identity aspects of your self that are mere accidents of birth? Is defining cultural identity as group history irrational because it lacks recognition of the individual?
Caution: while your kids are having fun in the sun, their brains may be at risk. Learn seven summertime mind-melting hazards to avoid and get brain-boosting alternatives.
On June 23, cognitive scientists, tech enthusiasts, and gay activists came together to celebrate Alan Turing, the man who, in the 1950s, along with colleague John von Neumann, reanimated human consciousness and inspired a century of technological determinism. Turing, the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, the man whose mathematical genius gave birth to the “conscious” machine via the Turing Test, turned 100 this month.
An armed madman, James Holmes, walked into a movie theater armed with weapons that any Islamic terrorist would love to have and killed 12 people. The difference between this madman and an Islamic terrorist is simple: this madman lives in a country in which it is legal to own a gun, and in fact it is encouraged.
Does neo-eugenics represent a promethean form of enlightenment—a risk taken to avert imminent and irreversible disaster? Part One: Procreation, Afterlife and the Illusion of Choice
Will the future provide us with a genetically preprogrammed blissful paradise, or a global catastrophe? Will there be cessation of all suffering, or annihilation of all sentient life?
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