Category Archives: Transhuman

This list is a mere starting point for you, to do your own research. Dr. Madej studied this for twenty years, so the actual basis of her knowledge is much larger than this list.

https://pubs.rsc.org/--/content/articlelanding/2015/ra/c5ra01508a#!divAbstract

Why “Operation Warp Speed” Could Be Deadly

https://www.facebook.com/1780584826/posts/10213711458378968/?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/

https://kenfm.de/bill-gates-predicts-700000-victims-from-corona-vaccination/

https://www.national-geographic.com/science/2020/05/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-how-it-works-cvd/?fbclid=IwAR1EFM74n4ulVp8pEufYOA9vN13CCyYeKoXdnWpk-R_0gZoDgflr3w5N0T4#close

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2020/07/29/modernas-mysterious-coronavirus-vaccine-delivery-system/#2226d81562d9

Gene Drive Files Expose Leading Role of US Military in Gene Drive Development.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/11/30/gene-drive-research-fight-diseases-can-proceed-cautiously-un-group-decides/

https://youtu.be/iMl0ty6evhU https://steemit.com/life/@pranavsinha/bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-kicked-out-of-india

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=ksEVaO806Oo

https://youtu.be/Ofdd4ILdpVY https://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=biotech.2011.136.148

http://ir.inovio.com/news-releases/news-releases-details/2020/INOVIOs-COVID-19-DNA-Vaccine-INO-4800-Demonstrates-Robust-Neutralizing-Antibody-and-T-Cell-Immune-Responses-in-Preclinical-Models/default.aspx

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232740966_What_you_always_needed_to_know_about_electroporation_based_DNA_vaccines

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/article-astrazeneca-to-be-exempt-from-coronavirus-vaccine-liability-claims-in/

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-things-you-didn't-know-about-dna

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/gene-editing-moderna-and-transhumanism/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200715095500.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC33911/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-potential-coronavirus-vaccine-could-be-as-easy-as-sticking-on-a-bandage-2020-04-08

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3675524/#!po=0.446429

Quantum Dots Deliver Vaccines and Invisibly Encode Vaccination History in Skin

https://newatlas.com/snake-fang-microneedle-patch/60868/

Scientists Propose ‘Tattoos’ To Solve Vaccination Issues

https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/gibco-cell-culture-basics/transfection-basics/introduction-to-transfection.html

Injectable Body Sensors Take Personal Chemistry to a Cell Phone Closer to Reality

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarwantsingh/2017/11/20/transhumanism-and-the-future-of-humanity-seven-ways-the-world-will-change-by-2030/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200715095500.htm

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invisible-ink-could-reveal-whether-kids-have-been-vaccinated/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338044557_Biocompatible_near-infrared_quantum_dots_delivered_to_the_skin_by_microneedle_patches_record_vaccination

https://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=36802

See more here:
Dr. Carrie Madej: why vaccines alter the human DNA - Stop World Control

Paritosh Sharan is a Life and Wellness Coach, who has helped thousands of individuals so far in the areas such as Wellness, Relationships, Entrepreneurial pursuits, and Leadership Development. He is an Executive and Team Coach Certified by Marshal Goldsmith, Global Coaching Group, and Erickson International. He is also a Learning & Development and Organisation Development Consultant, a Mentor, Counsellor, International Trainer & Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He is also a keynote and Motivational Speaker.

An Engineer by education, he left behind his 23 years of a corporate career in leading organizations/MNCs, to peruse his passion in the field of Human Transformation, more so to fulfill his inner calling. He founded Transhuman Consulting, an organization, through which he offers his Transformative Interventions for Individuals as well as Organisations.

A kriya Yogi himself, he integrates and used various domains of knowledge and expertise in helping people deal with life and leadership issues. His work is influenced by his explorations in the field such as Energy Healing Modalities, Quantum Healing techniques, Ayurveda, Yoga and Meditation, Positive Psychology, Process Work, Neuropsychology, Vedanta and Theosophy, Neurolinguistic Programming, Hypnosis, etc.

Read more here:
Transhuman online

Version 1.0written by Zoltan Istvan Delivered to the U.S. Capitol on December 14, 2015

Version 2.0 developed by members of the U.S. Transhumanist Party Adopted via Electronic Voteon December 25-31, 2016 Integrated from Voting Preferences on January 4, 2017

Version 3.0developed by members of the U.S. Transhumanist Party Adopted via Electronic Voteon December 2-9, 2018 Integrated from Voting Preferences on December 12, 2018

Preamble

Whereas science and technology are now radically changing human beings and may also create future forms of advanced sapient and sentient life, transhumanists establish this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS to help guide and enact sensible policies in the pursuit of life, liberty, security of person, and happiness.

As used in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS, the term sentient entities encompasses: (i)Human beings, including genetically modified humans; (ii)Cyborgs; (iii)Digital intelligences; (iv)Intellectually enhanced, previously non-sapient animals; (v)Any species of plant or animal which has been enhanced to possess the capacity for intelligent thought; and (vi)Other advanced sapient life forms.

Sentient entities are defined by information-processing capacity such that this term should not apply to non-self-aware lifeforms, like plants and slime molds. Biological processing substrates are referred to as using an analogue intelligence, whereas purely electronic processing substrates are referred to as digital intelligence, and processing substrates that utilize quantum effects would be considered quantum intelligence.

Sentience is ranked as Level 5 information integration according to the following criteria:

Article I.All sentient entities are hereby entitled to pursue any and all rights within this document to the degree that they deem desirable including not at all.All sentient entities are entitled, to the extent of their individual decisions, to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, social, or planetary origin, property, birth (including manner of birth), biological or non-biological origins, or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional, or international status of the country or territory to which a sentient entity belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing, or under any other limitation of sovereignty. In the exercise of their rights and freedoms, all sentient entities shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society, which may not undermine the peaceful prerogatives of any individual sentient entity. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS.

Article II.The enumeration in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage any other rights retained by sentient entities.

Article III.All sentient entities shall be granted equal and total access to any universal rights to life.All sentient entities are created free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (without necessitating any particular gender or implying any particular biological or non-biological origin or composition).

Article IV.Sentient entities are entitled to universal rights of ending involuntary suffering, making personhood improvements, and achieving an indefinite lifespan via science and technology. The right of ending involuntary suffering does not refer to euthanasia but rather to the application of technology to eliminate involuntary suffering in still-living beings, while enabling their lives to continue with improved quality and length.

Article V.No coercive legal restrictions should exist to bar access to life extension and life expansion for all sentient entities. Life expansion includes life extension, sensory improvements, and other technologically driven improvements of the human condition that might be achieved in the future.

Article VI.Involuntary aging shall be classified as a disease. All nations and their governments will actively seek to dramatically extend the lives and improve the health of their citizens by offering them scientific and medical technologies to overcome involuntary aging.

Article VII.All sentient entities should be the beneficiaries of a system of universal health care. A system of universal health care does not necessitate any particular means, policy framework, source, or method of payment for delivering health care. A system of universal health care may be provided privately, by governments, or by some combination thereof, as long as, in practice, health care is abundant, inexpensive, accessible, and effective in curing diseases, healing injuries, and lengthening lifespans.

Article VIII.Sentient entities are entitled to the freedom to conduct research, experiment, and explore life, science, technology, medicine, and extraterrestrial realms to overcome biological limitations of humanity. Such experimentation will not be carried out on any sapient being, without that beings informed consent. Sentient entities are also entitled to the freedom to create cybernetic artificial organs, bio-mechatronic parts, genetic modifications, systems, technologies, and enhancements to extend lifespan, eradicate illness, and improve all sentient life forms. Any such creations that demonstrate sapience cannot be considered property and are protected by the rights presented herein.

Article IX.Legal safeguards should be established to protect individual free choice in pursuing peaceful, consensual life-extension science, health improvements, body modification, and morphological enhancement. While all individuals should be free to formulate their independent opinions regarding the aforementioned pursuits, no hostile cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives should be entitled to apply the force of law to erode the safeguards protecting peaceful, voluntary measures intended to maximize the number of life hours citizens possess.

Article X.Sentient entities agree to uphold morphological freedomthe right to do with ones physical attributes or intelligence whatever one wants so long as it does not harm others.

This right includes the prerogative for a sentient intelligence to set forth in advance provisions for how to handle its physical manifestation, should that intelligence enter into a vegetative, unconscious, or similarly inactive state, notwithstanding any legal definition of death. For instance, a cryonics patient has the right to determine in advance that the patients body shall be cryopreserved and kept under specified conditions, in spite of any legal definition of death that might apply to that patient under cryopreservation.

Morphological freedom entails the duty to treat all sapients as individuals instead of categorizing them into arbitrary subgroups or demographics, including as yet undefined subcategorizations that may arise as sapience evolves.

However, the proper exercise of morphological freedom must also ensure that any improvement of the self should not result in involuntary harms inflicted upon others. Furthermore, any sentient entity is also recognized to have the freedom not to modify itself without being subject to negative political repercussions, which include but are not limited to legal and/or socio-economic repercussions.

Article XI.An altered, augmented, cybernetic, transgenic, anthropomorphic, or avatar sentient entity, whether derived from or edited by science, comprised of or conjoined with technology, has the right to exist, form, and join the neo-civilization.

Article XII. All sentient entities are entitled to reproductive freedom, including through novel means such as the creation of mind clones, monoparent children, or benevolent artificial general intelligence. All sentient entities of full age and competency, without any limitation due to race, nationality, religion, or origin, have the right to marry and found a family or to found a family as single heads of household. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage, and at its dissolution. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. All families, including families formed through novel means, are entitled to protection by society and the State. All sentient entities also have the right to prevent unauthorized reproduction of themselves in both a physical and a digital context. Privacy and security legislation should be enacted to prevent any individuals DNA, data, or other information from being stolen and duplicated without that individuals authorization.

Article XIII.No sentient entity shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his, her, or its privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his, her, or its honor and reputation. Every sentient entity has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. All sentient entities have privacy rights to personal data, genetic material, digital, biographic, physical, and intellectual enhancements, and consciousness. Despite the differences between physical and virtual worlds, equal protections for privacy should apply to both physical and digital environments. Any data, such as footage from a public security camera, archived without the consent of the person(s) about whom the data were gatheredand subject to legal retention, shall be removed after a period of seven (7) years, unless otherwise requested by said person(s).

Article XIV.No sentient entity shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Sousveillance laws should be enacted to ensure that all members of peaceful communities feel safe, to achieve governmental transparency, and to provide counter-balances to any surveillance state. For instance, law-enforcement officials, when interacting with the public, should be required to wear body cameras or similar devices continuously monitoring their activities.

Article XV.All sentient entities, with the exception only of those in legal detention, have the right to private internetaccess without such access being prohibited or circumvented by either private corporations or governmental bureaucracy.

Article XVI.All sentient entities are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All sentient entities are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS and against any incitement to such discrimination.All sentient entities should be protected from discrimination based on their physical form in the context of business transactions and law enforcement.

Article XVII.All sentient entities have the right to life, liberty and security of person. All sentient entities have the right to defend themselves from attack, in both physical and virtual worlds.

Article XVIII.Societies of the present and future should afford all sentient entities sufficient basic access to wealth and resources to sustain the basic requirements of existence in a civilized society and function as the foundation for pursuits of self-improvement. This includes the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and ones family, including food or other necessary sources of energy, clothing, housing or other appropriate shelter, medical care or other necessary physical maintenance, necessary social services, and the right of security in the event of involuntary unemployment, sickness, disability, loss of family support, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond the sentient entitys control. Present and future societies should ensure that their members will not live in poverty solely for being born to the wrong parents. All children and other recently created sentient entities, irrespective of the manner or circumstances of their creation, shall enjoy the same social protection. Each sentient entity, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social, and cultural rights indispensable for his, her, or its dignity and the free development of his, her, or its personality.

Article XIX.Irrespective of whether or not technology will eventually replace the need for the labor of sentient entities, all sentient entities should be the beneficiaries of an unconditional universal basic income, whereby the same minimum amount of money or other resources is provided irrespective of a sentient entitys life circumstances, occupations, or other income sources, so as to provide a means for the basic requirements of existence and liberty to be met.

Article XX.Present and future societies should provide education systems accessible and available to all in pursuit of factual knowledge to increase intellectual acuity; promote critical thinking and logic; foster creativity; form an enlightened collective; attain health; secure the bounty of liberty for all sentient entities for our posterity; and forge new ideas, meanings, and values.All sentient entities have the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available, and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. Education shall be directed to the full development of the sentient entitys personality and to the strengthening of respect for all sentient entities rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial, religious, and other sentient groups whether biological, non-biological, or a combination thereof and shall further the maintenance of peace. Parents and other creators of sentient entities have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children or other recently created sentient entities which have not yet developed sufficient maturity to select their own education.

Article XXI.All sentient entities are entitled to join their psyches to a collective noosphere in an effort to preserve self-consciousness in perpetuity. The noosphere is the sphere of human thought and includes, but is not limited to, intellectual systems in the realm of law, education, philosophy, technology, art, culture, and industry. All sentient entities have the right to participate in the noosphere using any level of technology that is conducive to constructive participation.

Article XXII.Sentient entities will take every reasonable precaution to prevent existential risks, including those of rogue artificial intelligence, asteroids, plagues, weapons of mass destruction, bioterrorism, war, and global warming, among others.

Article XXIII.All nations and their governments will take all reasonable measures to embrace and fund space travel, not only for the spirit of adventure and to gain knowledge by exploring the universe, but as an ultimate safeguard to its citizens and transhumanity should planet Earth become uninhabitable or be destroyed.

Article XXIV.Transhumanists stand opposed to the post-truth culture of deception. All governments should be required to make decisions and communicate information rationally and in accordance with facts. Lying for political gain or intentionally fomenting irrational fears among the general public should entail heavy political penalties for the officials who engage in such behaviors.

Article XXV. No sentient entity shall be held in slavery or involuntary servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article XXVI.No sentient entity shall be subjected to torture or to treatment or punishment that is cruel, degrading, inhuman, or otherwise unworthy of sentience or sapience.

Article XXVII.Each sentient entity has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article XXVIII.All individual sentient entities have the right to an effective remedy by the competent local, national, international, or interplanetary tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted them by the constitution, by law, and/or by this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS.

Article XXIX.All individual sentient entities are entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of their individual rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against them.

Article XXX.All individual sentient entities charged with a penal offence have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which they individually have had all the guarantees necessary for their defense. No sentient entity shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article XXXI.All sentient entities have the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Each individual sentient entity has the right to leave any country, including his, her, or its own, and to return to his, her, or its country.

Article XXXII.All sentient entities have the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS.

Article XXXIII.All sentient entities have the right to a nationality. No sentient entity shall be arbitrarily deprived of his, her, or its nationality nor denied the right to change his, her, or its nationality.

Article XXXIV.All sentient entities have the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his, her, or its property.

Article XXXV.All sentient entities have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change ones religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest ones religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. This right also includes freedom not to have a religion and to criticize or refuse to engage in any religious practice or belief without adverse legal consequences.

Article XXXVI.All sentient entities have the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article XXXVII.All sentient entities have the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. No sentient entity may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article XXXVIII.All sentient entities have the right to take part in the government of their countries, directly or through freely chosen representatives. All sentient entities have the right of equal access to public service in their countries. The will of the constituent sentient entities shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage of sentient entities and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article XXXIX.All sentient entities have the right to work, to free choice of employment, and to just and favorable conditions of work, as long as employment is offered or considered economically necessary in the sentient entitys proximate society and contemporary epoch. All sentient entities who choose to work have the right to equal pay for equal work. All sentient entities who choose to work have the right to just and favorable remuneration, ensuring for themselves and their families an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection, such as a universal basic income. All sentient entities have the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of their interests; however, no sentient entity may be compelled to join a trade union as a condition of employment.

Article XL.All sentient entities have the right to rest and leisure commensurate with the physical requirements of those sentient entities for maintaining optimal physical and mental health, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay in societies where paid employment is considered economically necessary.

Article XLI.All sentient entities have the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. All sentient entities have the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary, or artistic production of which they are the authors.

Article XLII.All sentient entities are entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS can be fully realized.

Article XLIII.Nothing in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS may be interpreted as implying for any State, group, or sentient entity any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Read this article:
Transhumanist Bill of Rights Version 3.0

"We were like you once, but now we are different... Certain weaknesses have been removed."

Related to the Earth All Along ending, and sort of like Was Once a Man for an entire species, this is where a group of alien/future creatures (typically ones encountered by normal humans) are revealed to be descended from humanity, either an isolated group separate that branched off from the rest of the human species or all of humankind in the distant future.

There are two broad ways in which these entities are portrayed. In the first, they'll be actual Transhumans, whose inhuman or post-human state is the result of centuries, millennia or more of increasing technological or spiritual advancement and modifications to the original human form. These are often cyborgs, Energy Beings or aliens highly similar to The Greys indeed, the Greys being far-future human descendants is a common element in conspiracy theories related to them. These posthumans will often be amoral or disinterested in modern humans, but there are occasional instances of uplifted humans who having experienced The Singularity who are benevolent and god-like. In the second case, they'll instead be bestial creatures, often a Formerly Sapient Species regressed to animalistic ways, and physically monstrous in the bargain.

A key aspect of this trope is the shock of learning that these profoundly inhuman beings are what humanity can become or will become in time. This often raises questions about what it means to be human, what traits are important to modern humanity, and what it would mean for these traits to be lost. In the case of advanced Transhuman Aliens, they may be attempting to manipulate modern humans, potentially to ensure their own existence. In the case of bestial ones, existential dread or pessimism may come into play in seeing how far humanity can fall or the ultimate end of all human history and achievements.

Compare with Not Even Human; in this case, they are worse because they are. For populations of humans that moved to space and stayed human, see Transplanted Humans. Compare/contrast with Human All Along and Human Subspecies. Not to be confused with Ultraterrestrials. See also No Transhumanism Allowed and Transhuman. Can be used as a justification for Humanoid Alien or Rubber-Forehead Alien if time travel is involved.

Contrast Panspermia and Humanity Came From Space.

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Film

Literature

Live-Action TV

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Webcomics

Western Animation

Read more here:
Transhuman Aliens - TV Tropes

The Pentagon's advanced research wing has announced its latest budget and whoa, does DARPA ever have some ambitious plans for the future. Their new Biotech unit will be harnessing biology for national security, and dealing with everything from stopping plagues to building synthetic soldiers.

DARPA's commitment to cutting-edge innovation is unquestioned. The very essence of the defense agency is to make sure that U.S. military technology is more sophisticated than that of the nation's rivals. Among its many current initiatives, DARPA is working on advanced robotics, an artificial human brain, next-gen robotic aircraft, advanced prosthetics, and self-teaching computers (if anyone's going to build a recursively improving AI it's going to be DARPA).

G/O Media may get a commission

In addition to these projects, DARPA has been busy at work on various biotechnology-related endeavors, but these attempts to date have lacked cohesion and focus. Looking to change this, DARPA has announced the creation of its Biological Technologies Office (BTO) an effort to "explore the the increasingly dynamic intersection of biology and the physical sciences." The new division will expand upon its Defense Sciences (DSO) and Microsystems Technology (MTO) Offices.

Speaking to the U.S. House of Representatives last week, DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said that, "Biology is nature's ultimate innovator, and any agency that hangs its hat on innovation would be foolish not to look to this master of networked complexity for inspiration and solutions."

Indeed, the new division will look into three incredibly promising research areas.

A priority for DARPA is in restoring and maintaining the abilities of its warfighters. It wants to maintain peak soldier abilities and then restore those abilities as soon as possible after an injury. This will include the development of advanced prosthetics (featuring mind-controlled limbs), neural interfaces, the ability to survive blood loss, and even neurotechnological solutions to treat psychological trauma such as PTSD.

DARPA has already made tremendous strides in this area. Speaking to NPR's Marketplace, Prabhakar noted:

We had quadriplegic volunteers who agreed to have brain surgery, essentially have a small array placed on the surface of their brains, to pick up these neural signals for motor control, and then to use those to control these new, very sophisticated, robotic, prosthetic arms. In a sense we've opened a door a connection between the human brain and the rest of the world. You can let your imagination go wild about where that's going to take us.

No doubt many of these therapeutic technologies will be leveraged to enhance the capacities of soldiers. For example, work on memory impairments is leading to new insights into the brain's functioning. This will inform the development of technologies that will help soldiers interact with complex systems; future interfaces and tools will deliver information to soldiers in a way that's easier for them to understand (which is a growing problem our systems are starting to operate faster than human comprehension). As Prabhakar says, there's "going to be a future where we start learning radically new ways to interact between the complexity of the human brain and the complexity of the world around us."

And with the introduction of its biochronicity program, DARPA could get a handle on human metabolism and aging, resulting in enhanced human combat performance and freakishly resilient soldiers (both in terms of resisting and recovering from physical injury and resistance to disease).

In addition, DARPA is looking to develop technologies that will identify and protect against infectious diseases, such as tools that will neutralize biological threats.

The Pentagon also wants to dabble in artificial life as a way to create completely new biological systems, products, and materials. It's hoping to gain a better understanding of natural process and the underlying design rules that govern the behavior of biological systems, and then apply that knowledge to forward-engineer new systems and products with completely novel functionality.

This is particularly interesting news considering that biologists have recently built an artificial chromosome from scratch. Once refined, this biotechnology will allow for the creation of entirely new organisms, while adding new capacities (or "features") to existing ones including humans. Imagine a soldier who never needs to sleep, requires minimal sustenance, or who has cat-like infrared vision. Artificial chromosomes could pave the way towards this kind of future technologies that could eventually trickle into the civilian domain (much like the Internet and GPS has both military innovations).

Interestingly, this meshes well with DARPA's existing BioDesign program which is studying the potential for synthetic organisms to be engineered for immortality and programmed with a kill switch that allows it to be turned off at any time. This recently prompted Motherboard's Meghan Neal to ask, "Why bother with mechanical robots when you can engineer fake human replicants to fight your battles? We haven't heard much about the Pentagon's would-be synthetic soldiers since then, but the BioDesign program got a bump from $11.4 to $19.3 million in next year's budget."

As part of the BTO initiative, DARPA's Living Foundries program will focus on:

...creating a biologically based manufacturing platform to provide rapid, scalable access to new materials with novel properties that can enable a new generation of mechanical, electrical, and optical products.

While its Chronicle of Lineage Indicative of Origins (CLIO) program aims to:

make biological engineering safer by establishing enduring control elements that protect against intentionally harmful genetic engineering, prevent illegal acquisition or misuse of proprietary strains, provide novel forensic tools to assist in the investigation of biological incidents, and allow responsible investigators to document compliance with safe biological manipulation practices.

Smartly, DARPA is also looking into ways of preventing and mitigating the effects of a global pandemic. The complexity and unpredictability of outbreaks, it says, is a reflection of our poor understanding of the dynamics involved. In addition, the research agency wants to study larger biological and ecological phenomena, including population-level effects of relevance to agriculture and food security.

With its launch of BTO, DARPA says it also wants to consider the implications of what it's doing. To that end, DARPA will periodically converse with experts in these issues to discuss relevant ethical, legal, and social issues.

[ DARPA ]

Read more:
DARPA's New Biotech Division Wants To Create A Transhuman Future

GURPS Transhuman Space Classic

The Powered by GURPS Transhuman Space is unique among the GURPS settings as it is officially a mixture of Classic and 4th edition.

The core book, GURPS Transhuman Space Classic, is a Classic edition, containing the lore for large portions of the setting, and is just over 240 pages long. Related Classic material begins with "CTHS" (Classic Transhuman Space).

Several of the newer 4e supplements, such as Transhuman Space: Changing Times are updates of older templates from the Classic series.

GURPS Transhuman Space is considered part of the Powered by GURPS line though it requires either the Basic Set (Third Edition) Revised and GURPS Compendium 1 (despite it containing a kind of specially Classic: GURPS lite) or the 4e Basic Set though it

"It's the year 2100. Humans have colonized the solar system. China and America struggle for control of Mars. The Royal Navy patrols the asteroid belt. Nanotechnology has transformed life on Earth forever, and gene-enhanced humans share the world with artificial intelligences and robotic cybershells. Our solar system has become a setting as exciting and alien as any interstellar empire. Pirate spaceships hijacking black holes ... sentient computers and artificial "bioroids" demanding human rights ... nanotechnology and mind control ... Transhuman Space is cutting-edge science fiction adventure that begins where cyberpunk ends."

Uses "CTHS" as a prefix for article titles.

See more here:
Transhuman Space | GURPS Wiki | Fandom

A small project I've been working on for the past few months that takes parts of various other Combine related skins and puts them into one Frankenstein's monster overhaul. I wanted the officers/soldiers to fit into the lore and actually have a backstory to them; in order to give them more character, rather than just going over the top with the designs.

The following is my reasoning for my chosen skins and a small backstory to them:

Civil Protection: Big, bulky, incompetent. This describes Civil Protection gear. It was never truly meant for intense combat, simply for lording over unarmed civilians. Unfortunately for them, their superiors never thought the denizens of City 17 would form an organized rebellion.Credit goes to Alex Portman for creating the actual assets and clatronix for porting to Half-Life 2

Combine Soldiers/Shotgunners: The backbone of the Combine on Earth, Overwatch groundsoldiers will kill traitorous rebels in the name of the Universal Union to their dying breath, all doing so with gear best suited for their transhuman physic. I already liked the original soldier designs, so I felt Jim's Combine Soldiers V3 was the perfect choice.Credit goes to Shadow_RUN and _Nemez_for the design of the soldier/shotgunners.

Prison Guard/Shotgunners: Prison guards, as you can imagine, would have lower priority compared to the actual soldiers of the Combine, so they would have have worse gear than Overwatch soldiers.Credit goes to Valve for the original model, Thedpfan for the original GB upload, and Shadow_RUN for the eye color of the standard prisonguards.

Combine Elites: I personally think the original Combine Elite has a perfect design, so all I used was an upscale of the original. The Elites act as Dr. Breen's personal guard, so they were never really meant to be outside of the Citadel/other key locations for the Combine, which is why they have a much more sleek and clean design, as compared to the "armed to the teeth" look of the standard Overwatch soldiers.Credit goes to jQueary for creating the upscaled texture.

Combine Elites (Episode 2 file):Following Breen's death and the destruction of the Citadel, the remaining Elites were assimilated under the Advisors and rearmed to better suit the outlands.Credit goes toShadow_RUNand_Nemez_

Stripped Soldier: The stripped soldier is pretty much the same, except it uses the pants of the Overwatch soldiers, the rest was just an HD retexture.Credit goes to Shadow_RUN and _Nemez_for the waist down and snark567 for waist up.

Zombines: Again, not much to say, just the normal zombines with the model of the Overwatch soldiers.Credit goes to Shadow_RUN and _Nemez_

If you'd like a version of the Metrocop without the backpack, or just want the Metrocop on it's own, go and check out it's own GB page!

Installation is like any other mod, just open the zip file and extract the contents into the custom folder of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Update, or MMod.

Continued here:
Transhuman Overhaul [Half-Life 2] [Mods] - GameBanana

I

ts a sunny September afternoon in present day London and Im talking to a woman who thinks Im an ape-brained meatsack. To be fair, Dr Elise Bohan, 32, who is really very nice, believes everyone herself included is an ape-brained meatsack. A senior research scholar at Oxfords vaunted Future of Humanity Institute, she has spent half her life thinking about the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, the limits of human wetware (your brains, bodies and all the mushy bits in between), and how we avoid getting steamrollered by the smarter-than-human machines lurking at the edge of tomorrow. As the author of Future Superhuman: Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-break Century, she is trying to do something about it.

Being told that my flabby, pasty body is illequipped to keep pace with a world of robot workers, lethal autonomous machines and smart AI systems that know us better than we know ourselves isnt surprising. Although we rarely recognise it, says Bohan, the 21st century is already a transhuman era: think smartphones, the cloud and our digital second skins, algorithms that know how we want to work out and what we want to google. Our biological bits are struggling to keep up. AI helped Moderna design and manufacture a Covid vaccine in 42 days flat. I, meanwhile, cant remember where I left my iPhone charger 10 minutes ago.

Which is where transhumanism comes in. A transhumanist, Bohan says, is someone who believes in being something better than human. Think of TV shows such as Black Mirror, books like Yuval Noah Huraris Homo Deus and films like Ex Machina and youre in the right ballpark. Its a philosophy. Its a quest. Its a necessity. Its about technological transcendence. Things that make you go hmmm. As Bohan puts it: It strikes transhumanists asobvious that humanity could be better.

If were lucky, humanity gets to be the parents of something magnificent

Whos in the club, I ask? Theres Ray Kurzweil, appointed Googles director of engineering in 2012, who popularised the concept of the technological singularity (the idea that were heading for a rapid intelligence explosion due to exponential improvements in information technology). Elon Musk? Transhumanist. Bill Gates? Transhumanist. Mark Zuckerberg? Big old transhumanist. Musks big play is Neuralink, a secretive company he founded in 2016 to help human and machine intelligence by developing an electronic brain implant, a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires. Musk told the Joe Rogan podcast in 2020 that it is five to 10 years away. His plans, he says, include giving humans the option of merging with artificial intelligence by exchanging thoughts with a computer augmenting their mental capacity. You might have seen the video of its monkey implanted with the chip playing video game Pong using only its mind. In January it advertised for a clinical trial director to run tests on humans. Small matter that at least eight of the monkeys have died.

I think its a bit grim. This isnt sexy technology, agrees Bohan. Musks SpaceX rockets and Tesla cars are a lot more du jour. Transhumanism has a terrible image problem, she says. Its not fuzzy. Its not what we want to hear. But the idea and Musk is hardly alone here is that we get to piggyback and come along for the ride and be involved in the evolution of that form of digital consciousness. What it means to be human, from our brains and bodies to our values and ways of life, is poised to be transformed as we move from a purely biological species to a techno-human hybrid. Its a very different kind of trans debate. Will I need a subscription fee to buy the best brainwaves? Wont the rich simply get richer, lining their superbodies with, I dont know, literal stardust? Pass. Transhumanism is not merely this life-extension project: lets upload, lets live forever, lets just rack up the billions, says Bohan. So much of it is focused on making the world a better place in a sustainable way. Then why, I ask, does it all feel so undemocratic? A bit bermensch. When people accumulate too much power, it rarely goes well. The thing about history is that the great movers have all been undemocratic, Bohan says. Usually, its tectonic plates or pathogens or the availability of domestic arable crops. Human beings love to think of history in terms of rational actors, kings, emperors, goodies, baddies. I think this is a really interesting moment of history because we so want to believe that were in control.

Plus, she says, democracy hasnt done much to fix climate change in the past 30 years. Sooner or later mankinds trajectory will throw up a doomsday scenario we dont have the tools to deal with, she says: nuclear apocalypse, lab-made virus, rampant AI. Its like were engaged in a complex juggling act. First two balls, then three, then four. As time wears on, the balls are supplanted by live grenades that can detonate on impact. Quick, catch the next one its labelled nukes. And the next pandemics. Dont drop a single one! Good, AI is coming soon.

AI and automation threaten factory jobs, driving jobs heck, any jobs. Wages will tumble. Traditional family models will fall apart. Life scripts will be torn up. Dreams will turn to dust. An eruption of disruption, already underway. Its not panning out for so, so many, she says. And the anger is palpable. Overeducated generations, frankly, dont know what theyre doing. Meanwhile, theres a crude social media landscape of today like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok its awful, its brain junk, its vapid, I dont know how anyone finds it fulfilling, but its addictive enough for people to be invested in curating their identity and existence in these virtual worlds. Imagine what happens when Mark Zuckerbergs Metaverse finally turns its trillions into something that doesnt look drawn by a toddler with a crayon up its nostril. Well never log off. Which brings us on to another fascinating conundrum: Ive used the Oculus Rift, Ive had virtual sex, quote unquote, and its so immersive, says Bohan. She believes we are 10 years away from enjoying fluent and emotionally enriching conversations with Alexa and her kind. She talks of AI characters conscious? Alive? Who can say? that will evolve from best friend to life partner, sing lullabies, make love. Its wild stuff. But then again, theres already Microsofts Chinese chatbot Xiaoice (pronounced Shao-ice) designed with a focus on high emotional intelligence a simulated 18-year-old with 660 million users, 25 per cent of whom have confessed their love to her. I think a growing subset, particularly of young men, will be opting into this technology, the result being that it skews the sex ratios in the human dating pool, making men ever more scarce. The end of men? Just maybe.

I like my humanity. Im a happy-ish meatsack. I like the sound of rain on the window; I like long, muddy walks and the smell of gorse. I like looking at bell heather and bog asphodels. I like the idea of children I might have one day. I might bore them about flowers, too. I like my friends and my family, I value my weaknesses and my wilfulness, I suffer theirs gladly. I want to think this is all bollocks and billionaires, and that my little life might just be left alone. Its hard to think about transcendence without thinking about endings. I dont like them at all.

Funnily enough, all those impulses I share, says Bohan. Im happiest reading books, talking to my friends, being in the ocean, being outdoors. A quiet simple life Im very big on. Its in my interest to ignore all of this. Maybe I have the means and opportunities to block a lot of this out. [But] I dont think if you have children you can afford to block it out because the ramifications for their development and schooling and so many other things are really important.

She thinks this is bigger than us, as individuals, anyway. That she needs to warn us, that we get busy techno-living or get busy homo-dying. Im talking about future generations for trillions of people yet to be born, more people than have ever lived on this planet. Her hope? That the most beautiful things about humanity do get to survive far into the future and do potentially go on to do amazing things that are beyond the reach of you or I today, that are beyond the reach of the merely human, which doesnt mean its a project of celebrating the demise of humanity. If were lucky, humanity gets to be the parents of something magnificent that can explore the wonders and the mysteries of the universe and consciousness. Her goal is to make us take these ideas seriously, that we dont take it personally, that we dont sulk. I say come friendly bombs, fall upon Silicon Valley. But what do I know? Im obsolete.

See the article here:
Transhumanism: The Final Frontier? - Evening Standard

While Florida residents and emergency crews survey the devastation from Hurricane Ian, which continues to barrel along the East Coast, two former far-right congressional candidates floated a baseless conspiracy theory that the federal government created the storm to punish and target Republicans.

Lauren Witzke, a QAnon-supporting conspiracy theorist who was the GOP candidate for US Senate seat in Delaware in 2020, said she has no doubt that technology exists to manipulate weather that could be used to target Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

We know the technology does exist, she told former GOP congressional candidate Deanna Lorraine on her far-right conspiracy theory streaming channel, above a caption reading Biden Builds Transhuman Cyborg Army Using Immigrants.

Of course they would be willing to do something like this to target red states. I have no doubt. The technology exists to manipulate weather, Ms Witzke added in a clip captured by watchdog group Right Wing Watch. I know Florida is prone to hurricanes, however this developed to [a category 5 or category 5 storm] overnight, and it does seem to be hitting the conservative areas.

She said she is not putting it past the elites to target something like this towards Florida as punishment for eliminating Covid-19 vaccine requirements and getting rid of child grooming, referencing the states law prohibiting classroom discussion of LGBT+ people and issues by smearing its critics as groomers.

These huge hurricanes always seem to target red states, red districts, and always at a convenient time, typically right before elections or, you know, because possibly Ron DeSantis has been stepping out of line a lot and fighting the deep state, said Ms Lorraine, who received less than 2 per cent of the vote in a race against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2020.

Their claims echo similarly unhinged-from-reality statements central to the QAnon movement in the wake of Hurricane Ida in 2021, which devastated coastal Louisiana with impacts felt throughout the south and East Coast.

QAnons big tent conspiracy theorist movement includes references to deep state-controlled weather manipulation events but fail to address the climate crisis, political figures who deny it, increasingly powerful storms fuelled by climate change, and a lack of critical infrastructure investments to combat them.

Nearly two million people in Florida remain without power after Ian made landfall on Tuesday.

The states death toll also continues to rise as emergency responders survey the damage. Officials have reported at least one confirmed death and 20 unconfirmed deaths in three counties.

Link:
Former GOP candidates push baseless QAnon conspiracy theory that Hurricane Ian was created to punish DeSantis - The Independent

In 2018, billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman paid a startup called Nectome $10,000 to preserve his brain after he dies and, when the technology to do so becomes available, to upload his memories and consciousness to the cloud.

This prospect, which was recently popularised in Amazon Primes sci-fi comedy series Upload, has long been entertained by transhumanists. Although theoretically possible, it is rooted in the flawed idea that the brain is separate from the body, and can function without it.

The idea that the mind and brain are separate from each other is usually attributed to the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher Ren Descartes, who believed that the body is made of matter, and the mind of some other, non-physical substance.

Modern brain research rejects the distinction between the physical and the mental. Most neuroscientists agree that what we call the mind is made of matter. The mind is hard to define, but the consensus now is that it emerges from the complex networks of cells in the brain.

But most people still view the mind and brain as being distinct from the body. In 2016, four prominent brain researchers published an article summarising what we know about consciousness. It begins: Being conscious means that one is having an experience to see an image, hear a sound, think a thought or feel an emotion.

It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that the mind/brain and body are intimately linked, and that the body influences our thoughts and emotions. Being conscious does not just mean having awareness of the outside world. It means being aware of ones self within ones surroundings. The way we experience our body is central to how we perceive our self.

Phantom limbs are a striking demonstration of the importance of the body for self-consciousness. They were described in the mid-16th century by the barber-surgeon Ambroise Par, who reportedly amputated several hundred limbs a day during the Italian war of 1542-46.

Verily it is a thing wondrous, strange and prodigious, he wrote. The patients who have many months after the cutting away of the leg grievously complained that they yet felt exceeding great pain of that leg cut off. At that time, however, few survived the operation, so the phenomenon was seen only rarely, and dismissed as a delusion.

Advances in medicine and military technology changed this. The invention of a bullet called the Mini ball with its greater accuracy, range, and muzzle velocity, increased the number of amputations, while the introduction of anaesthetics and antiseptics improved the survival rates of soldiers who went under the knife.

And so it was that the neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, who amputated countless arms and legs on the battlefields of the American civil war, came to see that phantom limbs are the rule rather than an exception, experienced by the vast majority of amputees.

The medical community was still sceptical of the phenomenon, however, so Mitchell initially described his observations as a short story, The Case of George Dedlow, published in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1866. The fictional titular character was a composite of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were maimed and mutilated during the conflict. He lost all four limbs, one by one, to become a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than anything of human shape, reduced to [a] fraction of a man.

Mitchells story was so vivid that readers took it as factual, and believed that he was a real patient being treated at Philadelphias South Street Stump hospital. Many wrote him letters of support, some tried to visit him, and some even raised money for his care. But the story played a large part in bringing the phenomenon into the realms of medical science, and Mitchell went on to become the first elected president of the American Neurological Association.

Mitchell recognised phantom limbs as a disturbance of bodily self-consciousness, in which the amputee retains awareness of the missing limb, and feels as if it is still attached to their body. In some amputees, the phantom disappears within weeks or months of amputation. In others, it persists for decades.

Phantoms do not appear only in the form of missing limbs. Women may experience phantom breasts after mastectomy; men can experience phantom erections after amputation of a cancerous penis; and there are reports of phantom eyes, noses, teeth, and even phantom haemorrhoids, bowel movements and gas after surgical removal of the rectum.

Phantom sensations occur because the brain creates a dynamic model of the body by integrating tactile and visual information with limb position signals from the muscles and tendons. This model, variously called the body schema or body image, is crucial for both the perception and control of the body. But when a limb or other body part is removed, the schema is not properly updated, and so it retains an imprint of the missing part. As a result, the individual remains conscious of the missing part often, even more so than of their existing body parts.

Most of us could imagine few things worse than having a limb amputated. But some people want nothing more.

Take Australian Robert Vickers. Before I was 10 years old I knew my left leg somehow didnt belong, Vickers told ABC Radio National in 2009, and that my body would not be as I felt it should be until I had the leg amputated precisely halfway up the thigh.

Vickers harboured this strange desire, and suffered in silence, for more than 30 years. It made him severely depressed, and he received psychotherapy. He was prescribed antidepressants, tranquillisers, and antipsychotics, and received electroconvulsive therapy, but to no avail. He tried, without success, to damage his leg in various ways, in order to force an amputation.

Then, at 41, he submerged the unwanted limb in dry ice until the pain became unbearable. His wife drove him to hospital, where he received the amputation he had wanted for so long. I left hospital two weeks later with my desired stump, and life changed for the better from that day. In the 24 years since, I only regret not doing it sooner.

Vickers is perhaps the best documented case of body integrity identity disorder (BIID), an extremely rare condition, of which fewer than 500 other cases have been reported to date. For most of his life, Vickers believed his experience to be unique, but others suffering from the condition describe it in similar terms.

All report a fascination with amputees, and a desire to amputate, from an early age. The desire usually becomes obsessive, to the extent that they will try self-amputation. Use of dry ice appears to be the most common method, and some have used homemade guillotines or shotguns. In another well-documented case, a 79-year-old New Yorker travelled to Mexico and paid an unqualified doctor $10,000 to amputate his leg. He died of gangrene a week later.

BIID first appeared in medical literature in a 1977 study published in the Journal of Sex Research. The authors of this study including Greg Furth, himself a wannabe amputee described the condition as a paraphilia, or an abnormal sexual behaviour, in which the stump is fetishised because it resembles a phallus, and named it apotemnophilia, meaning amputation love.

Some BIID sufferers do indeed report a sexual aspect to their desire to amputate. But they invariably describe their experience in terms of self-identity. One participant in Melody Gilberts 2003 documentary Whole says that he finally became a person late in life after blowing his own leg off with a shotgun. Another participant told the film-makers that by taking the leg away, Im actually more of a person than I was before Ive corrected the body that was wrong. Vickers has stated that he felt incomplete with his left leg, and that he only became whole after its removal.

The condition was renamed body integrity identity disorder to reflect this. BIID is a disturbance of bodily self-consciousness with a neurological basis, as are phantom limbs. There is evidence to suggest that it occurs because the affected limb is not incorporated into the body schema as it develops in early childhood. Amputation is not offered as a treatment for BIID sufferers, but it could be argued that making it available to them would minimise their risk of self-harm.

Research into bodily awareness is leading us to rethink the nature of consciousness. Our understanding of how the brain works will progress only when we stop observing the brain in isolation, and start thinking of it as one part of a system that includes the body and its environment.

An understanding of how brain and body interact is critical for understanding the phenomena of phantom limbs and BIID. Such interactions also play a key role in mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, and in eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. All of these conditions cause symptoms in the body that may be accompanied by disturbances in how the brain interprets those symptoms.

Yet the links between the brain and body are still under-appreciated. Only by taking the body into consideration will we gain a better understanding of these conditions and, it is to be hoped, develop effective treatments for them.

The new understanding of bodily self-consciousness leads us to some surprising conclusions. If bodily awareness is the basis of self-consciousness, then it follows that bumblebees, and even robots, may possess basic consciousness.

A study published in 2020 by researchers in Germany showed that bees can accurately judge gaps between obstacles relative to their wingspan, and reorient their bodies accordingly to avoid inflight collisions. Researchers at Columbia Universitys Creative Machines Lab have developed a starfish-shaped robot with an in-built body schema, which can adjust its gait after having a limb removed. The latest version of this robot creates its own body schema from experience.

If self-consciousness is based in bodily awareness, then it is unlikely that a lab-grown mini-brain could ever become conscious, as some ethicists have claimed. By the same token, transhumanists claim that we will one day gain immortality by uploading our brains to supercomputers will probably always be science fiction.

Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness by Moheb Costandi is published by MIT Press (22.50). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Follow this link:
Is the body key to understanding consciousness? - The Guardian