All the talks from the November 14, 2008 Global Catastrophic Risks: Building a Resilient Civilization seminar, co-sponsored by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and the Lifeboat Foundation, are now online, thanks to Jeriaska.
Bruce Damer, CEO, DigitalSpace & Director, Contact Consortium “Asteroids and Comets: Mitigating Impact Risks and Stepping Stones to a Sustainable Space Program”
Kattesh V. Katti PhD, Director, Cancer Nanotechnology Platform, Professor of Radiology, University of Missouri “Green Nanotechnology: An Economic And Scientific Initiative For the Future Of Human Civilization”
Jamais Cascio, IEET Fellow, and research affiliate, Institute for the Future “Strategies for Civilizational Resilience in the Face of Global Catastrophic Risks”
IEET Fellow Marshall Brain gave this speech on the inevitable structural unemployment that automation and artificial intelligence will create at the Singularity Summit 2008. The astonishing thing about Marshall’s talk was the amount of outrage from the libertopians in the audience who were all perfectly content to imagine that we would soon have super-robots doing things a gazillion times better than humans, and that that transition might wipe humans out or bring about a utopian society, but they couldn’t accept that such a transition might cause unemployment and require any redistribution of the wealth. History apparently shows that the market solves all structural unemployment, even after an historical discontinuity so radical that we make up a word for it - Singularity - which precisely means that we can’t predict anything after that point. Libertopians would be funny if they hadn’t just ruined the world economy.
Wireheaded pleasure. Brain damage causes religious selflessness. Powerful people are less compassionate. The US is become more unequal. Obama and the Congressional Democrats want to fund science, respect science and use science. Three rules for knowing when technology will - and won’t - fix a social problem. Jonathan Coulton salutes the worst President in US history. (MP3)
Dr. Anders Sandberg gave the opening keynote address at a conference on Global Catastrophic Risks on Nov 14, 2008 in Mtn View CA. The meeting was sponsored by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and the Lifeboat Foundation. Sandberg spoke on threats to the future of humanity, natural and man-made. (MP3)
It may seem premature to be discussing approaches to the effective elimination of human aging as a cause of death at a time when essentially...Alles » It may seem premature to be discussing approaches to the effective elimination of human aging as a cause of death at a time when essentially no progress has yet been made in even postponing it. However, two aspects of human aging combine to undermine this assessment. The first is that aging is happening to us throughout our lives but only results in appreciable functional decline after four or more decades of life: this shows that we can postpone the functional decline caused by aging arbitrarily well without knowing how to prevent aging completely but instead by increasingly thorough molecular and cellular repair. The second is that the typical rate of refinement of dramatic technological breakthroughs is rather reliable (so long as public enthusiasm for them is abundant) and is fast enough to change such technologies (be they in medicine, transport, or computing) almost beyond recognition within a natural human lifespan. In this talk I will explain, first, why (presuming adequate funding for the initial preclinical work) therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining lifespan of healthy 55-year-olds may arrive within the next few decades, and, second, why those who benefit from those therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age.
Interview with with Dr. Carl Marci who is the Director of Social Neuroscience for the Psychotherapy Research Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Marci is involved with some of the most advanced research that focuses on measuring and quantifying the human emotion of empathy.
J. Storrs Hall, author of Beyond AI, presents at a day-long seminar on threats to the future of humanity, natural and man-made, and the pro-active steps we can take to reduce these risks and build a more resilient civilization.
Mike Treder of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and J. Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies introduce the November 14 conference on Global Catastrophic Risks taking place in Mountain View, California. The event followed a meeting on the same subject, an immensely diverse collection of events could constitute global catastrophes, in July at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. The topic for the conference was “Building a Resilient Civilization.”
DR ANDY MIAH, from the University of the West of Scotland, believes that in this critical time of financial turmoil and concern about climate change there needs to be collaboration between the arts and the sciences. He argues that we no longer need specialist knowledge but ‘transdisciplinary’ creative solutions. Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty is edited by Andy Miah and published by Liverpool University Press.
Also, the Burj Tower in Dubai will be finished next year and at more than 700 metres high it will become the tallest building in the world. In contrast, the construction of skyscrapers in London planned in the recent period of growth now looks under threat as recession looms. DEYAN SUDJIC, Director of the Design Museum, predicts the future for British architecture and examines how it is a seismograph for economic change. Deyan will be chairing the debate Design Cities: Where Next? at the Design Museum, London at 7.15pm on 15 December.
What makes a perfect house? A feeling of contentment, well-proportioned rooms and a sense of grandeur? Television producer and director TIM KIRBY asserts that these notions of what makes a good home can be traced back 500 years to the Italian architect Andrea Palladio. The Perfect House: The Life and Work of Andrea Palladio is on BBC Four on 17 December at 9.00pm.
The grandeur of space has enthralled poets for centuries, but as we journey further into its depths, does it lose its mysticism? Astrophysicist DAME JOCELYN BELL BURNELL has co-edited an anthology which rekindled poets’ curiosity in space by twinning them with astrophysicists to inspire them with the latest advancements in astronomy. Dark Matter: Poems of Space, edited by Maurice Riordan and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, is published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Biologist Drew Endy debates researcher and historian Jim Thomas on the future of bioengineering at the Long Now Foundation. While Endy discusses the potential benefits of being able to “program” DNA, Thomas advocates caution, citing the dangers of untested technology. (MP3)
The Long Now Foundtion
San Francisco, CA
Nov 17th, 2008
http://www.longnow.org/
On September 19, 2008, Jeff McMahan, Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University spoke on cognitive enhancement at Stony Brook University. (rightclick to download podcast: 43:20 345 MB)
It seems there hasn’t been a lot of good news lately: Parliament is falling apart, the economy is belly up and environmental problems continue to mount. Just how much worse could it get? Well, actually, it could get a whole lot worse: the world could come to an end. So take your mind off of all that trivial bad news, as we show you exactly what real disasters are all about. From giant asteroids to alien invasions, from galactic collapse to mega-volcanos, we’ll tell you 10 Ways the World Could End.
Audiofile of Emily Singer’s piece in Technology Review (Dec 08, 2008) titled “Broad Use of Brain Boosters? Use of drugs to enhance memory and concentration should be permitted, experts say.” (MP3)
The IEET, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and the Lifeboat Foundation hosted a meeting on Global Catastrophic Risks on Friday, November 14 in Mountain View, California, one day prior to the Convergence 08 Unconference. The seminar’s theme was “Building a Resilient Civilization,” for which IEET executive director J. Hughes argued in favor of strengthening transnational governance to mitigate risks. Jeriaska recorded the conference, and is helping us in making the talks available. (MP3)
Abstract: Transhumanism – the proposition that human beings should use technology to transcend the limitations of the body and brain – is a product of the Enlightenment humanist tradition. As a consequence most avowed transhumanists are secular, and many religious are skeptical or hostile towards the transhumanist project. However there are also many religious transhumanists who find the project of human enhancement at least consistent with, and sometimes a fulfillment of, their metaphysics, soteriologies and eschatologies. Transhumanism appears to be especially compatible with religious traditions that emphasize human agency and evolution to a transcendent state, such as Buddhism, or that have incorporated Enlightenment values, such as liberal Christianity. But elements of the transhumanist worldview and enhancement technologies are compatible with one element or another of most world faiths, even the most fundamentalist. We can thus expect that human enhancement technologies will be adopted creatively into the theologies of groups within all the world’s faiths, producing many flavors of “trans-spirituality.”
When bio-cons ask how we could possibly want to spend several billion dollars on anti-aging research when X human need is still unmet I nearly pass out from the absurdity. One of the many answers is that we could fund anti-aging AND all unmet human needs if we built a truly multilateral security system, and stopped wasting trillions on criminal imperial overreach.
Doug did a Skype interview last week with some smart people from the UK who run a site called Right Where You are Sitting Now. Here’s their intro, and the link:
This week we talk to one of my all time favourite writers and thinkers Douglas Rushkoff. In this episode we discuss Obama’s potential to tap into bottom-up politics, what happens if we stop believing in the economy, Conspiracy Culture, hacking reality, what the next renaissance might look like, writing comics, why advertising doesn’t work and Magick. I really hope you enjoy this special 20th episode of the show. I’m a HUGE fan of Mr Rushkoff making this a very special episode for me!
Abstract: Transhumanism – the proposition that human beings should use technology to transcend the limitations of the body and brain – is a product of the Enlightenment humanist tradition. As a consequence most avowed transhumanists are secular, and many religious are skeptical or hostile towards the transhumanist project. However there are also many religious transhumanists who find the project of human enhancement at least consistent with, and sometimes a fulfillment of, their metaphysics, soteriologies and eschatologies. Transhumanism appears to be especially compatible with religious traditions that emphasize human agency and evolution to a transcendent state, such as Buddhism, or that have incorporated Enlightenment values, such as liberal Christianity. But elements of the transhumanist worldview and enhancement technologies are compatible with one element or another of most world faiths, even the most fundamentalist. We can thus expect that human enhancement technologies will be adopted creatively into the theologies of groups within all the world’s faiths, producing many flavors of “trans-spirituality.”
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