transhumanism

PBS Reports On Ray Kurzweil and The Singularity

by Socrates
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The technological singularity is indeed going mainstream. A few weeks ago it was the New York Times publishing an article called Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday. Today it is PBS. The first video is the full PBS report on some of the issues surrounding the singularity. The second video is part of Ray Kurweil‘s interview [...]

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Singularity Podcast: George Dvorsky on Transhumanism and the Singularity

by Socrates
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[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Right Click to Download In this edition of Singularity Podcast I had the pleasure of speaking with prominent Canadian transhumanist and animal rights advocate George Dvorsky. George is both a passionate and fascinating interlocutor and, even though I spend over 1h 15 min interviewing him, I feel that [...]

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James Harvey’s Singularity Podcast: We are Singularia

by Socrates
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This is my first singularity podcast. I intend to do many more interviews like that so that we can spark the discussion about the singularity with the help of some of the best and brightest people that I can get to do a podcast for the benefit of us all.  My guest today is Australian [...]

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Hamlet’s Transhumanist Dilemma: Will Technology Replace Biology?

by Socrates
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To be, or not to be: that was the question back when Machines did not challenge the reign of men. Will technology replace biology: that is the question now When computers get exponentially smarter: why shouldn’t we bow? Thus the dilemma facing the human race Is about hardware and coding: What type to embrace? Whether [...]

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Michael Anissimov: Transhumanism Has Already Won

by Socrates
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I just spent 10 minutes reading this excellent article on Michael Anissimov’s Accelerating Future blog and had to re-post it in full — it is that good! Enjoy: Transhumanism Has Already Won by Michael Anissimov It’s 2010, and transhumanism has already won. Billions of people around the world would love to upgrade their bodies, extend [...]

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Philosopher David Chalmers on the Singularity

by Socrates
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This is a great video of Australian philosopher David Chalmers presenting during the Singularity Summit 2009. Click the link if you want to read David Chalmers’ full paper called The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis.

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Synthetic Life Video Presentation

by Socrates
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This is a 20 min TEDMED video of Craig Venter who talks about his work on digitizing the genetic code, synthetic genomics and software making its own hardware — all with the goal of creating synthetic life. Craig Venter points out himself that things such as moving genetic software across the branches of life, and [...]

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Can you TRANSCEND biology and live long enough to live forever?

by Socrates
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In 2004, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, MD, published Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. Their groundbreaking book marshaled thousands of scientific studies to make the case that new developments in medicine and technology will allow us to radically extend our life expectancies and slow down the aging process. In 2009, Ray and [...]

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Do you want to live forever? (the full documentary)

by Socrates
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Here is the full documentary film directed by Christopher Sykes about the eccentric and radical gerontologist Dr. Aubrey de Grey and his quest for immortality: So, how about you? Do you want to live forever?

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Regenerative Medicine on TEDMED

by Socrates
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Dr. Anthony Atala from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in an amazing video demonstrating the promise of regenerative medicine in general and artificially grown organs, in particular. Here is the timeline description of the video as posted by Singularity Hub. 1:46 – Atala alerts the audience to the scope of the problems with [...]

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Top 10 Singularitarians of All Time

by Socrates
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The technological singularity is the event or sequence thereof likely to occur at or after the birth of AI, especially when Artificial Intelligence surpasses biological i.e. human intelligence. Since it is human intelligence which, in one way or another, is still the primary cause and ultimate mover behind AI, there are a number of people [...]

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Best of Singularity Blog

by Socrates

Even though it has been only a bit more than a month since the beginning of this blog I am happy to note that there is already a tight group of people who have subscribed to my feed and continue to come back and read my posts on a regular basis. I want to take [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 5)

by Socrates

Part 5: The Future of (Military) AI — Singularity While being certainly dangerous for humans, especially the ones that are specifically targeted by the kill-bots, arming machines is not on its own a process that can threaten the reign of homo sapiens in general. What can though is the fact that it is occurring within [...]

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Do you want to live forever?

by Socrates
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Humanity has achieved huge progress in life-extending and anti-aging technologies. Just weeks ago the BBC reported that today half of the babies born in the advanced world are likely to live to 100. A quick comparative review shows us the following life expectancy change in years: Cro-Magnon Era: 18 years Ancient Egypt: 25 years 1400 [...]

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