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You might think we’re not in Texas anymore but in some strange episode of Black Mirror, the Netflix series, says Nikos Acuna who is moderating this SXSW panel on transhumanism.

In fact you’d be forgiven if you did as there is talk about cryo-preserving the body after being declared dead, in the hopes you can be resurrected when the science is here to safely defrost your body and cure you of your ailments. There is also talk on mind uploading, and replacing parts of our brains with neural prosthetics. This all sounds like science-fiction but these days the stuff of science fiction has become fact.

Transhumanist technologies are about overcoming the limitations of human biology and Dr Max More and Dr Randal Koene are at the forefront of these technologies.

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The Singularity is Near.


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For fifteen years, I’ve assumed that the Matrix Sequels were irredeemable failures. But looking back on them with fresh eyes reveals a pair of films that are exhilarating, interesting, and sometimes hilarious. In this video I try to make sense of these two movies, and what they have to say about free will and the systems that control society.

BY HANK PELLISSIER


Hank Pellissier

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party features this proposal by our member Hank Pellissier for a new website called Paradise2040, which will focus on the abolition of involuntary suffering and incremental ways of getting there within the next 21 years. This is an endeavor supported by Article IV of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, Version 3.0. It is also a current within transhumanist thinking that, as Mr. Pellissier points out, could bring additional support to the movement. Different transhumanists will have different views as to what the most important aims of transhumanism should be. As an organization that embraces pluralism and diversity of thought, the U.S. Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party would encourage any of our members who agree with the direction Mr. Pellissier proposes to collaborate with him on the creation of the Paradise2040 website.

~ Gennady Stolyarov II, Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party, March 25, 2019

A survey I conducted in 2010 of 818 transhumanists identified “brain enhancement” as the #1 priority, with “maximizing” health and life extension as #2 and #3. The top three “values” of the U.S. Transhumanist Party (the Core Ideals) are #1) Life Extension, #2) “a cultural, societal, and political atmosphere informed and animated by reason, science, and secular values”, and #3) “to reduce and eliminate existential risks.”

Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun — sometimes called the ‘godfathers of AI’ — have been recognized with the $1 million annual prize for their work developing the AI subfield of deep learning. The techniques the trio developed in the 1990s and 2000s enabled huge breakthroughs in tasks like computer vision and speech recognition. Their work underpins the current proliferation of AI technologies, from self-driving cars to automated medical diagnoses.

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A new graphene-based brain implant could help provide information about the onset and progression of epileptic seizures and pave the way for next generation brain-computer interfaces.

The new implant, which records electrical activity in the brain over large areas and at frequencies below 0.1Hz, is said to overcome the limitations of electrode arrays that have only been able to detect activity over a certain frequency threshold.

The technology was developed by Graphene Flagship partners at the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute (IMB-CNM, CSIC), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), and ICFO.

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Terrestrial organisms stuck on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) have survived 533 days in the vacuum, intense ultraviolet radiation, and extreme temperature variations of space.

You know what that means? It’s not impossible for life to survive on Mars.

Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mars seems like the most likely candidate to host life. But it’s extremely inhospitable — dusty, arid, lower in gravity and oxygen, subject to harsh radiation due to its thinner atmosphere, cold and wracked by dust storms that can plunge the planet into darkness.

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