Cyborg Buddha Project
Cyborg Buddha Blog
This is the sixth episode of Interior Traces, a new radio play with accompanying video works and new musical score exploring how different ways of looking at the brain change how we think about the mind, madness, and responsibility. The project was funded by the Wellcome Trust, LCACE, and UCL.
Episode 6, 2030
Mike was identified with callous and unemotional traits in childhood, and put on a life-long course of drugs and behavioural therapies to prevent him from expressing the antisocial behaviour associated with psychopathy. On reaching adulthood, he must report to a clinic every six months, to have a brain scan and be cleared to return to society. Unhappy with these restrictions, Mike becomes involved with a campaigning group who are planning to mount a legal challenge against obligatory treatment. (MP3)
Interior Traces: Episode 6, 2030 from Interior Traces on Vimeo.
DOWNLOAD/LISTEN/VIEWAug 31, 2009
Enlightenment 2.0
Buddhist GeeksThis week we speak with Ben Goertzel, an artificial intelligence researcher and Zen-dabbling spiritual seeker. Ben shares with us his introduction to Zen and his on-going relationship to spiritual practice. He also explains what is meant by “strong artificial intelligence” and AGI (artificial general intelligence) and explains why he thinks a fully functioning AI may be as little as a decade away.
Finally, we explore the overlap between his work as an AI researcher and his experiences with Zen and other spiritual practices, through discussing a story he wrote entitled, “Enlightenment 2.0” about an enlightened AI being who determines that it is possible to construct a more enlightened mind, what Ben calls a “super mind”, but isn’t sure whether or not it is possible for us.
This is part 1 of a two-part series. Listen to part 2, Artificial Wisdom (airing next week).
Aug 21, 2009
In Praise of Bill Bainbridge’s “Religion for a Galactic Civilization 2.0”
by Giulio PriscoOne of my first impressions after reading Bill Bainbridge’s 1981 essay “Religions for a Galactic Civilization” was that it was dated (well, it was written 26 years ago). I wrote: “If Bill were to write the same article today, he would probably mention NBIC technologies (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive sciences) besides space travel and colonization. I hope he would give less space to Scientology, and I am sure he would discuss the works of transhumanist thinkers in great detail. I think the first sentence quoted below could be written, today, as “We need a new transhumanist social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society””. I asked Bill to write a revised and updated version of the paper, to be published (translated into Italian) in the print journal Divenire of the Italian Transhumanist Association and then discussed at the TransVision 2010 conference. A first draft of the revised and updated version has just been posted to the IEET blog.
Aug 20, 2009
Religion for a Galactic Civilization 2.0
by William Sims BainbridgeProgress in spaceflight technology has halted at a level that is insufficient for colonization of the solar system, let alone for voyages to the stars. That grim fact was not obvious to me when I wrote the original version of this essay thirty years ago (Bainbridge 1982), but it is apparent now.
Aug 20, 2009
Religious Education—and Other Oxymorons
by Mike TrederDoes religion have any proper role in education? Can faith-based teachings, whether conducted in school, at home, or in places of worship be of benefit to individuals and societies?
Aug 16, 2009
Computational Eudaemonics: Expert Happiness Systems
by Marcelo RinesiThis is an interview with Marko A. Rodriguez, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Besides doing basic research on applied mathematics and computer science, he is doing work on computational eudaemonics — the use of computer algorithms to increase happiness by helping us make better decisions, even suggesting new options.
Aug 7, 2009
True Blood and Personhood
by Ben Scarlato[Contains spoilers.] How far does personhood and the rights associated with it reach across species? True Blood gives us an intelligent exploration of some aspects of this issue, specifically when that other species is perceived as dangerous, cruel, unnatural, and unholy. Unfortunately though, too often even those who support vampire rights refer to them as not being persons, instead emphasizing that they are essentially human or that vampires are a second species deserving of rights. A much more adaptable framework of rights could be built based on emphasizing the characteristics of personhood, such as intelligence and capacity to feel.
Jul 26, 2009
Planetary Praxis
Changesurfer RadioDan Novak teaches about The Sixties, philosophy and futurism at the University of Rhode Island. A veteran of the spiritual counterculture and the political Left, Dan talks with Dr. J. about globalization, spirituality, the Marxist writer Ernst Bloch, and the concept of a “planetary praxis,” uniting personal spiritual growth with global social change. (MP3)
Jun 23, 2009
Transhumanism and the ‘Intelligence Principle’
by George Dvorsky“In sorting priorities, I adopt what I term the central principle of cultural evolution, which I refer to as the Intelligence Principle: the maintenance, improvement and perpetuation of knowledge and intelligence is the central driving force of cultural evolution, and that to the extent intelligence can be improved, it will be improved.”—Stephen J. Dick
Jun 20, 2009
Markets Love Selfish People
Life Inc.For all the ability of genes and even memes to battle for survival against one another, human beings are just as likely to share and cooperate as they are to cheat and compete. But the ascendance of market rhetoric in America and Britain was accompanied by the assertion of some decidedly antiromantic science. University anthropologists seemed determined to correct the hopeful impressions that so many still clung to of peaceful, vegetarian gorillas enjoying one another’s company in the jungle. Like stories of supposedly peaceful aboriginal tribes as yet untainted by corrupt Western civilization, such visions—according to the new social Darwinists—were pure fantasy.
Life Inc. Dispatch 05: Markets Love Selfish People from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.
IEET Blog