[MD] Transhumanism

[John Carl]

Krimel the baby-butt-wiper,

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:50 AM, Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com> wrote:

> Mary, Platt, John and Ian,
> I already talked a bit with Matt.
>
> [Mary]
> What I hope is that you just happened to not mention a parallel conference
> going on in the next room where presenters were discussing better systems
> of
> community.
>
> [Krimel]
> Why would you assume this topic was not on the agenda? Sustainability,
> vertical farming, social networking, bioethics, communities that transcend
> geography, elimination of suffering, enhancements of human life and
> lifestyle were both text and subtext of most of the presentations. As a
> concert example one presenter talked about his website that assists
> volunteers in adding subtitles to videos so that people for any language
> community can gain knowledge that is almost exclusive to the west at
> present. As I recall the title of his talk was something like the Tower of
> Babel Must Fall.
>
>

John:

Well I see that Biblical ignorance in scientific circles is at least as
ubiquitous as scientific understanding in religious circles - as a reader of
the bible, I'm sure you're aware that what his talk should have been called
is "rebuilding babel".  The translations of the babel event in the bible
describe man's efforts to encapsulate the human experience from before the
flood, in the very manner your presenter describes and it was God who
supposedly confounded the whole project by changing the rules of language.

That God!  What a joker!

But as an aside, I just picked up a pretty cool book at a yard sale ( a
couple of pretty cool books, actually) and it had an article by Howard Bloom
about a survey of newspaper editors across the country in 2000, which
revealed that half of them thought that humans coexisted with dinosaurs.
 Howard pointed out the appalling job science has done in the areas of
public relations, but no wonder when our chief pundits to the community
evidently got their scientific education from watching the Flintstones.

That Howard.  What a joker.


[Platt]
> Where are the seminars about the morality of these supposed
> "transformations?
>
> [Krimel]
> Again this was covered extensively. I suspect most of the participants and
> presenters were aware or practitioners of Eastern thinking. One dude talked
> exclusively about the damaging impact of a stressful materialistic
> lifestyle
> and advocated a kind of Human Operating System 2.0 that included
> meditation,
> relaxation, focusing on the pre-intellectual present and the therapeutic
> effects of aerobic exercise. Both he and another presenter invited the
> audience to participate in brief demonstrations of guided imagery. Other
> presenters looked at the political resistance to progress that arise of
> conservatism and fear.
>
>

John:

So now that you've seen a presentation on meditation at an actual scientific
seminar (woo hoo!) Krimel, you give examination of the navel a little more
cred?

Or are we gonna have to wait for it to be advocated by Nova?

The touch of divinity, no doubt.



> [Platt]
> Sounds to me like a bunch of science types looking for government handouts.
>
> [Krimel]
> It would only sound like that if you weren't listening or even glancing at
> the program schedule.
>
> Kurzweil is primarily an inventor who developed one of the first scanners,
> the first realistic sound music synthesizer and software for both text and
> speech recognition. In fact his interest in Moore's Law arose from his
> attempt to try to find a model for predicting the timing of development and
> acceptance of his inventions.
>
> Wolfram's interests and resources to pursue them grew out of his
> development
> of Mathmatica software. He is entirely self funded and his search engine
> Wolfram Alpha is another of his entrepreneurial projects.
>
> Neil Bushnell has founded something like nine successful companies
> beginning
> with Atari in the 1970's. He developed the first consult computer gaming
> system Pong and later founded Chuckie Cheese among other things.
>
> That is just three obvious examples but probably 70% of the presenters were
> founders and CEO of companies.



John:

The only thing smarter than an intellectual, is a RICH intellectual, eh
Krim?  And the only thing smarter than that is appearing on Nova.  The
ultimate social confering of Quality.

But I gotta grudgingly concede...  Chuck E. Cheese... That is brilliant.


One woman started a company that combines the
> idea of Zipcars and eBay. Instead of her company placing cars around urban
> areas she has car owners sign-up to allow others to borrow them for a fee.
> Her company then matches people who need cars for short periods with people
> who aren't using theirs. Another guy set up a technical design shop with
> machinery for laser die cutting, machining parts and other fabrication
> tools
> to enable prospective inventors to develop their own product ideas or art
> projects. It was all about citizens conducting their own research or
> assisting as volunteers in the research of others. There are many more
> examples but they are just too numerous to mention. Anyone who looked at
> the
> website for the conference should have noted that it's title was "The Rise
> of the Citizen Scientist."
>
>
Right.  CEOs of big companies are citizens too.  I guess we all are, when it
comes down to it.  What else is there?  Illegal immigrant scientists?



> [John]
> I don't believe a self-referential system can accurately predict where its
> going, however and I especially find the assertion of the conquering of the
> Turing test laughable.
>
> [Krimel]
> A self referential, reflective, iterative system is required to access past
> experience so that it can impact present behavior to  effect change in the
> future. But it also requires sufficient processing capability to reflect
> on,
> for example what one is saying. Not all humans can achieve this apparently.
> As for the Turing test, Kurzweil has a bet with Mitch Kapor, founder of
> Lotus that it will happen by 2039 so we will see who laughs last.
>
>

John:

It's happened already!  I gotta cousin who swears his magic 8 ball is a real
consciousness communicating with him, however when I ask it whether its
really thinking or not it just returns: Results are Doubtful.

Is that logically confirmation or disproval?

 Just keep up with the scientifically approved meditation Krimel, at least
until your grandchild is old enough to take to Chuck E. Cheese.  Then you'll
be ready for Human 2.0


John - finding his navel is deeper than he realized