Category Archives: Transhumanist

EU leaders insist that addressing ethical questions that surround AI will lead to a more competitive market for AI goods and services, increase adoption of AI, and help the region compete alongside China and the United States. Regulators hope high-risk labels encourage more professional and responsible business practices.

Business respondents say the draft legislation goes too far, with costs and rules that will stifle innovation. Meanwhile, many human rights groups, AI ethics, and antidiscrimination groups argue the AI Act doesnt go far enough, leaving people vulnerable to powerful businesses and governments with the resources to deploy advanced AI systems. (The bill notably does not cover uses of AI by the military.)

(Mostly) Strictly Business

While some public comments on the AI Act came from individual EU citizens, responses primarily came from professional groups for radiologists and oncologists, trade unions for Irish and German educators, and major European businesses like Nokia, Philips, Siemens, and the BMW Group.

American companies are also well represented, with commentary from Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, OpenAI, Twilio, and Workday. In fact, according to data collected by European Commission staff, the United States ranked fourth as the source for most of the comments, after Belgium, France, and Germany.

Many companies expressed concern about the costs of new regulation and questioned how their own AI systems would be labeled. Facebook wanted the European Commission to be more explicit about whether the AI Acts mandate to ban subliminal techniques that manipulate people extends to targeted advertising. Equifax and MasterCard each argued against a blanket high-risk designation for any AI that judges a persons creditworthiness, claiming it would increase costs and decrease the accuracy of credit assessments. However, numerous studies have found instances of discrimination involving algorithms, financial services, and loans.

NEC, the Japanese facial recognition company, argued that the AI Act places an undue amount of responsibility on the provider of AI systems instead of the users and that the drafts proposal to label all remote biometric identification systems as high risk would carry high compliance costs.

One major dispute companies have with the draft legislation is how it treats general-purpose or pretrained models that are capable of accomplishing a range of tasks, like OpenAIs GPT-3 or Googles experimental multimodal model MUM. Some of these models are open source, and others are proprietary creations sold to customers by cloud services companies that possess the AI talent, data, and computing resources necessary to train such systems. In a 13-page response to the AI Act, Google argued that it would be difficult or impossible for the creators of general-purpose AI systems to comply with the rules.

Other companies working on the development of general-purpose systems or artificial general intelligence like Googles DeepMind, IBM, and Microsoft also suggested changes to account for AI that can carry out multiple tasks. OpenAI urged the European Commission to avoid the ban of general-purpose systems in the future, even if some use cases may fall into a high-risk category.

Businesses also want to see the creators of the AI Act change definitions of critical terminology. Companies like Facebook argued that the bill uses overbroad terminology to define high-risk systems, resulting in overregulation. Others suggested more technical changes. Google, for example, wants a new definition added to the draft bill that distinguishes between deployers of an AI system and the providers, distributors, or importers of AI systems. Doing so, the company argues, can place liability for modifications made to an AI system on the business or entity that makes the change rather than the company that created the original. Microsoft made a similar recommendation.

The Costs of High-Risk AI

Then theres the matter of how much a high-risk label will cost businesses.

A study by European Commission staff puts compliance costs for a single AI project under the AI Act at around 10,000 euros and finds that companies can expect initial overall costs of about 30,000 euros. As companies develop professional approaches and become considered business as usual, it expects costs to fall closer to 20,000 euros. The study used a model created by the Federal Statistical Office in Germany and acknowledges that costs can vary depending on a projects size and complexity. Since developers acquire and customize AI models, then embed them in their own products, the study concludes that a complex ecosystem would potentially involve a complex sharing of liabilities.

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The Fight to Define When AI Is High Risk - WIRED

At a glance.

Wired traces the influences shaping the EUs proposed Artificial Intelligence Act, which is expected to impact policy internationally, as has the GDPR. The legislation would categorize AI applications by risk level and more closely control high risk systems.

Critiques of the bill fall along predictable lines. Some human rights groups want stricter controls and worry about law enforcement, education, health care, public surveillance, border security, social scoring, insurance, transhumanism, and subliminal manipulation applications. They point to the power disparity between those wielding the tools and those on the receiving end, and highlight existing abuses.

Some industry groups describe the law as overbroad, fearing it will impose unmanageable costs, interfere with basic business functions, squash innovation, and drive away talent. Competing studies put total compliance costs between 1.6 and 10 billion yearly.

The EU hopes the bill will level the playing field and spur growth while promoting principled business decisions. Meanwhile, the US is developing its own guidelines and regulations, including a National Institute of Standards and Technology tool and an Algorithmic Accountability Act. In the background, as always, looms Chinese innovation, and what strategic advantages authoritarian rivals will achieve while the West puzzles out competing interests and ethical dilemmasexercising a soft advantage of its own.

Breaking Defense reiterates concerns that the vulnerability disclosure component of Beijings Data Security Law (DSL) will help the CCP stockpile zero days for use against state and private sector targets. As weve seen, the legislation directs researchers, companies, and foreign firms with local offices to disclose to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology within forty-eight hours uncovered zero days, and restricts their further distribution. Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, both of which contract with the US Defense Department, are covered by the regulation.

Heritage Foundation China scholar Dean Cheng sees the move as an instance of lawfare, or legal warfare, and says Beijing is 100 percent likely to weaponize the disclosed vulnerabilities. Georgetown University security researcher Dakota Cary observed that theyve effectively co-opted a pipeline of research, which costs a great deal of money to do, in order to increase their own offensive and defensive hacking capabilities.

The DSL, Fortune notes, also prohibits unapproved cross-border data transfers. The law took effect yesterday.

SWI reports that Switzerland is working to establish a rapid reaction cyber defense command center staffed by roughly six-hundred military personnel with new capacities to protect private sector and critical infrastructure assets. The center will deliver informational, logistical, and technical capabilities.

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Groping toward appropriate regulation of AI. Data regulation and its offensive potential. - The CyberWire

Is there anything more natural than birth? The birth of our planet. The birth of a human being. The cycle of birth, life, death forms the foundation of our being.

You might even say that God gave us a soul because the gift of immortality would be seen as overindulgence. Now science and technology are changing all that.

Throughout history, there has been a fascination to make a better human. To eliminate the fundamental flaw in the human lifecycleto overcome ageing, the cruel deterioration of ones faculties and, ultimately, death.

The ideal of replicating ourselves as something smarter, stronger, and impervious to the ravages of time is perhaps humanitys greatest unfinished ambition. To elevate ourselves from mere mortals to God status.

From a science and technology perspective, this kind of pseudo-immortality is called transhumanism: the biotechnological enhancement of humans that virtually eliminates the terminal frailties of human biology.

Transhumanists envision that we will soon haveimplants to augment our senses and enhance our cognitive processes by bonding ourselves to brain interface memory chips and other human-enhancement technologies.

In short: the merging of man and machine is becoming a reality, perhaps within the next one or two decades.

The endgame is that science and technology will create humans with hugely enhanced intelligence, superhuman strength, speed and stamina, and significantly extended lifespans.

An odd endeavour when globally, the principal driver of environmental degradation, greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change is exponential population growth.

A far cry from Paul and Anne Ehrlichs inciteful warning in their bookThe Population Bomb(1968). In which they predicted a deteriorating natural environment, social upheaval, and mass starvation as a consequence of overpopulation hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.

Of course, this hasnt happened yet, although our planet shows signs of severe wear and tear, and starvation and malnutrition regularly occur on varying scales.

Conversely, the global fertility rate has halved since 1950 and continues to fall. Predictions suggest that the global population willpeak at 10.9 billion by 2100and go into reverse. By that time, however, things could have gone seriously awry.

Nonetheless, the quest for immortality is unwavering as it is timeless. Author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) set the cat among the pigeons with one of literatures classic allegories,Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus(1831).

Not only did Victor Frankenstein create artificial life that was void of a soula sacrilege of sorts in a time dominated by the Church but one that would not experience death.

A dramatic leap from the wooden legs, false teeth, and average life expectancy of around 35 years in seventeenth-century England.

ShelleysFrankensteinwas originally published anonymously in 1818 following the French Revolution in 1789 and the end of the Enlightenment (1685-1815).

The famed German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his essayWhat Is Enlightenment?(1784), captured the zeitgeist of the period with the maxim Dare to know! Have courage to use your own reason.

In accord with this maxim, both Mary Shelleys parents were Enlightenment philosophers, and both influenced her writing.

The tenets of the Enlightenment centred on egalitarianism a social doctrine that emphasises equality among all societys members which inspired Mary Shelleys mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1787), to writeVindication of the Rights of Women(1792), in which she argued that women were not naturally inferior to men.

Mary Wollstonecraft passed away soon after Mary Shelleys birth. However, the spirit of her fight for equality is reflected inFrankenstein, which is, in essence, a metaphorical retort to the philosophical and political values that beset societys progress and equality at the time.

Mary Shelleys father, William Godwin (17561836), was a political philosopher and writer. He is celebrated for his workEnquiry Concerning Political Justice(1793).

Godwin argued that government was a corrupting force in society that propagated dependency and ignorance but would gradually be rendered powerless once people became educated and human understanding expanded.

The substance of her fathers thesis parallels Mary Shellys own novel. Victor Frankensteins Monster was rejected by society and solely dependent on its creator, who likewise rejects him.

Governments foster dependency similarly by providing sustenance with one hand while oppressing with the other.

Shelley uses the themes of isolation and loneliness, rejection and oppression to mirror her societys fears and bigotry. But which also reflect modern society: the hegemonic constructs of the privileged class define the constitution of humanity and reject self-determination by individuals. Indigenous communities and other minority groups can attest to this.

Shelley moreover instils her mothers innate influence, gender inequality one of societys enduring prejudices when Frankenstein reneges on his promise to create a female companion for the Monster, denying her the right to life. Even though he had mastered the science to do so.

Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of starting a technological civilization (sic) a niche we filled because we got there first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.

Nick Bostromis a theoretical physicist and philosopher at Oxford University. He believes sentient beings, the sort created via genetic engineering, molecular nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, posea greater threat to humanity than climate change.

But like everything else, Bostroms endeavour to mitigate anthropocentric stupidity is drowned out by our overwhelming obsession with technology. I mean, we cannot seem to divert our attention from it, literally!

And we all have an opinion about Artificial Intelligence (AI): succinctly defined as the systematic separation of information and knowledge from the human body-brain to some other non-human form of embodiment.

And if knowledge is power, and we can assume that it is, it need only be instantiated in some other medium to exist, thereby excluding the need for a human presence.

And a human presence is destined for redundancy. As the final phase in AIs evolution is to replicate, or displace, the consciousness of modern humans. An enterprise that will contribute nothing to the enlightenment of humanity.

One must therefore ask the question: what price are we willing to pay for perfection? Is this question significantly more complex than we can imagine? Bearing in mind that increased efficiencies in this sense is an infinite proposition, not unlike pi.

And in the context of capitalism, all humans are imperfect because of the cost of their labour and the maintenance of their physical and mental health.

ShelleysFrankensteinremains an indictment on modern society and its inability, or undesirability, to escape the ugliness of privilege and prejudice and survives as a counter to the Enlightenment philosophers who believed that scientific endeavour and economic progress would continually improve the human condition.

Enlightenment philosophers held that once the barriers to knowledge were eliminated, the conditions for perpetual peace and prosperity will have been established.

In short: they embraced the ideal that advancements in science and technology comprised the principal elements for the evolution of a better society.

Much the same as transhumanists. AsBostrom writes: Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold (sic) in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution.

However, like the Enlightenment philosophers, transhumanists fail to acknowledge the double-edged sword of knowledge as both a promise of prosperity and an insidious threat.

That is, 400 years of history tells us that traditional religious beliefs and medieval philosophy might have failed, but the promise of science to solve the problem of human morality has also failed.

Shelley embodies this with Victors bloody-minded pursuit to create a monster that eventually transforms into the destroyer of his own life.

We can place this in todays context by referencing a 2017 journal article in Bioscience titledFrankenstein and the Horrors of Competitive Exclusionby evolutionary biologistsNathaniel J. Dominy and Justin D. Yeakel.

Dominy and Yeakel conclude that Frankensteins reasoning for denying a female mate for his male monster can be justified empirically. They show that if such a union was successful, it would have led to the extinction of our own species through competitive exclusion two species cannot coexist indefinitely if they compete for the exact same resources.

Even a slight advantage of one over the other will lead to the extinction of the inferior. Today, wealth might constitute that advantage. A human with enhanced intelligence, strength, stamina and an extended lifespan would constitute another.

More pointedly, with only the single-minded quest of science in mind, and disregard for its possible ruinous consequences, prioritising societal advancement engenders a less moral and equal world.

An imbalance occurs that favours the privileged who are insulated from the threats posed by technological and scientific progress but can use them to their utmost advantage.

To paraphraseJoshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, from their 2019 bookInnovation + Equality: the world today is more unequal than ever and more technologically advanced than ever. While the top one per cent increases its share of wealth, those with few skills and few assets languish at the bottom. For them, it can seem like the worst of times.

We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.

The influential German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was not blindly anti-tech. His concern was societys failure to recognise its danger as a means to an end, like creating an enhanced human with no expiry date.

The essence of which poses a moral question: what is perfection? And if the quest for longevity, or perhaps immortality, is achieved, who decides how long the human lifespan will be? And what will that do to an already overpopulated planet?

We might thus deem perfection as immoral. For instance, we can view Frankensteins Monster as a human chimera of sorts, although fashioned from a compilation of human body parts. Sure its perceived as a monster, but only from a human perspective.

Shelley uses the word chimera in her book, defining it as the elixir of life as opposed to chemistry which promised much but delivered little.

And its this hodgepodge creation of a simulated human being a chimera that constitutes the elixir of life. Thus, if its immortality that we desire, the Monster embodies that kind of perfection, however immoral.

With this in mind, in April of this year,scientists injected embryos from a macaque with human stem cellsto study how the two cells developed together. Macaques are Old World monkeys that share a common ancestor with humans from about 25 million years ago.

For reasons of immorality, the cells were allowed to grow for 20 days before being terminated. But there is this unwavering desire to see what we can create by modifying the current human condition in the name of scientific progress.

Arguably, however, the human machine in the context of science and technology, whether artificial, robotic, or transhuman, was not meant to be perfect.

The backaches and absentmindedness are part of the bargain of reaching old age, relatively unscathed and with some semblance of our faculties in place, and finally exiting the field of life.

Whats more, our finite planet could not cope with humans of a limitless capacity. Its under immense pressure as it is.

Despite knowing this, we are still unable to separate the ecological from the technological. We seem oblivious to their inseparability, which has led to the relentless degradation of the former.

Recognising this inseparability would enable us to reconcile our existence with the natural world and put aside our techno-centric fixations, even momentarily, and see humankinds future possibilities, with all its imperfections, in a whole new light.

Dr Stephen Dark has a PhD in Climate Change Policy and Science. He has lectured at Bond University in the Faculty of Society & Design, teaching Sustainable Development and Sustainability Economics. He is a member of the Urban Development Institute of Australia and the author of the bookContemplating Climate Change: Mental Models and Human Reasoning.

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In search of perfection: a new kind of Frankensteins Monster - The Fifth Estate

Another Direct Line with Vladimir Putin has come and gone, with one questioner wondering why governors are not required to make use of such a convenient way to connect with the people. Putin liked the idea: why not take up a grass-roots suggestion and organize not only federal, but also regional direct lines?

Picture it: Every governor will field calls from individual citizens, who will wave their golden tickets and rattle off complaints about their particular leaky roofs or problems with the gas. Then officials (and photographers) will materialize on site, the roofs will be fixed and gas will flow. Citizens living in Russias regions may also enjoy learning some fun facts about their leadership.

For example, their thoughts on geopolitics, what kind of music they like, and where they get their shirts pressed. Of course, only if such license is not considered an infringement on the presidential prerogative. Ramzan Kadyrov was quick to point out that an analogous direct line has long existed in Chechnya.

I have written before about how Direct Line, where the president engages with the people, is becoming the only political institution in the country. In Russia, where courts are unreliable, the ruling party does not risk leaving elections to chance, the president is not subject to opposition criticism when appearing before parliament and news organizations are tossed from the Kremlin pool for reporting on protests, Direct Line is a space where authorities and citizens air their feelings toward one another. If ordinary democratic institutions for effective governance, legitimacy and feedback cannot be had, a homegrown Russian invention has sprung up in its place.

There are no intermediaries between the president and the people nothing but Direct Line and the scorched earth of Russian politics.

In 2021, this model will naturally be reproduced on the regional level: We are ready to become the first country in the world where public politics and governance are carried out via daytime TV.

On Direct Line, the president had time to express his thoughts on many topics: no, sinking a British destroyer off the coast of Crimea would not lead to a third world war; yes, there are problems with subsidized mortgages, but the advantages are greater; increased costs for holiday-makers within Russia can be traced back to fears of traveling abroad; we braved the worst of the pandemic better than many countries, for which the Duma deserves some credit; climate change may turn the earth into Venus, where temperatures reach 500 degrees Celsius; the problem of waste management in the Russian Federation is a serious concern.

But the most challenging of all issues raised on Direct Line concerned the sharpest controversy of recent weeks: the social conflict around voluntary (and compulsory) vaccination. After months of speculation as to which formulation he received, the president confirmed that he was vaccinated with Russias Sputnik V and recommended that others follow his example. At the same time, he expressed his opposition to compulsory vaccination and maintained that a worker cannot be fired for refusing the jab. This hedged stance leaves vaccine skeptics room to speculate and fails to provide a concrete answer as to how Russia plans to beat back the pandemics third wave and its record deaths.

As in 2020, responsibility for introducing new restrictions has been delegated to the regions. Accordingly, it is governors who will bear the brunt of any criticism that follows.

Not all questions were topical. The traditional questions were asked about the presidents plans: will there be a successor, and what will Putin do after his retirement?

In Russias current political reality, such questions belong to the genre of science fiction, dedicated as they are to the distant future possibly the era of transhumanism. With Putins constitutional term limit reset to zero, he can delay the search for a successor for decades more. The president even appeared to hint at this in his ironic response: the time will come and a successor will be named, and then the Russian people will decide whether to accept him or not.

As for retirement plans, well, maybe hell do nothing at all, just sit by the fire, as Putin himself said towards the end of the broadcast.

Direct Line 2021 has thus outlined the new contours of Russian political life. The president now has neither public opponents nor partners for debate, not counting the metaphysical construct of the Russian public, summoned into existence by a television show to become one with its national leader. Beyond that, Putin offers neither promises nor plans. To him, it seems, we already live in the best of all possible worlds.

A Russian version of this article was first published by Novaya Gazeta.

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How Vladimir Putin Runs Russia Without Intermediaries or Institutes - The Moscow Times

FICTIONShould We Stay or Should We GoLionel ShriverBorough Books, $29.99

Is life, no matter its quality, sacrosanct? In 2018, Aurelia Brouwers, a 29-year-old girl, caused controversy by ending her life legally in the Netherlands. Her case was anomalous: she did not suffer from a terminal illness, rather struggled with a history of mental illnesses, suicide attempts, self-harm and psychosis.

Assisted-dying remains a fiercely contested area in global euthanasia laws, belonging to the interdisciplinary branch of ethical discourse known as bioethics, which debates the value of human life. With the advances in modern medical knowledge, the global average life expectancy has increased to 72.6 years, up from 65.3 in 1990, as estimated by the United Nations.

Lionel Shriver confronts the issue of assisted-dying in her latest novel.Credit:Edwina Pickles

And the transhuman movement, which advocates the research and development of human-enhancement technologies, theorises that near-future breakthroughs will extend human lifespans indefinitely.

In Should We Stay or Should We Go, Lionel Shriver, best known for We Need to Talk about Kevin, confronts the issue of assisted-dying and euthanasia when her protagonists Kay and Cyril Wilkinson propose that we get to 80 and then commit suicide. They are not suffering unbearably when they make the decision; in fact, theyre in their mid-50s, and in excellent health. Their reasoning is simple: humans were never meant to live beyond 80, and they ought to die on their own terms, before they succumb to the entropy of their biological clocks on borrowed time.

Credit:

The novels departure point is March 29, 2020 the day of Kays 80th birthday. After the giddy, mind-racing rush to capitalise on time remaining, the world has unexpectedly changed. Brexit reignited Cyrils fierce anti-leave sentiment, and coronavirus turned Britain into a ghost land. As a result, Kay and Cyril appraise the lethal pills before them and begin to soliloquise about death in a corollary of Hamlets to be, or not to be. Problem is that as octogenarians, they remain in good health, not the mindless or stupefied walking corpses they feared they would become.

From here, Shriver disrupts the narrative with multiple scenarios that imagine what Kay and Cyril do next. Using this non-linear structure, Shriver creates a novelistic thought experiment, a network of possibilities, with each chapter reverting in time to choose a different path.

Kay goes ahead, Cyril backs out, and soon has a stroke that imprisons him inside his own body. Advances in medicine produce a magic pill that reverses ageing and allows people to live at optimal youth indefinitely. Their children, aghast that their parents planned suicide, and had squandered their inheritance, subject them to a cruel assisted-living home. Kay succumbs to dementia, and her family grieves as if shes already dead.

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A matter of life and death, again and again - Sydney Morning Herald

Trans-humanism is not merely some geeky tech subculture, nor a futuristic daydream, but a pervasive phenomenon that is already impacting our humanness itself. Were talking about the merging of human beings with technology, and not just at the physical level, but possibly a merging that encroaches upon the most intimate dimensions of the soul.

And energy is the currency of the soul. Without it, stressors can overwhelm you, leaving self-doubt and anxiety in control. But by raising your field of energy, you live an elevated life: one of true transformation, high achievement, and success.

Stefanie Bruns, the founder of Business Flow Academy, believes that states of high energy are paramount in finding fulfillment in life. A psychologist and business mentor for 16 years, Bruns has dedicated herself to helping successful people break through their self-limitations and soar to new heights in business.

People buy into your level of energy. Its not only about your marketing strategy or your gift, she begins. Sometimes, people want to stay in the aura of an expert. If you raise your energy, you elevate your life.

Stefanie Bruns, Founder of Business Flow Academy

However, with transhumanism comes potential risks to our mental health, and therefore a potential dampening of our vibrational frequency. We have already seen this with the unintended negative impacts of screen-time, social media, and more advancements have on our lives. This is where positive technology comes in.

Although many scientific efforts have been devoted to acknowledging the risks of digital technologies, the question of how computers could be used to improve people's well-being has been much less explored.

This was the main motivation for the development of a novel research areaPositive Technologywhich aims at investigating how ICT-based applications and services can be used to foster positive growth of individuals, groups and institutions.

Positive technology or technology designed to improve the quality of our lives has boomed over the last few years. Now we have everything from happiness apps to physiological sensors that detect stress to digital objects that remind you to practice gratitude.

Through a discussion with Bruns, it became clear that while technology, particularly artificial intelligence, is often used to benefit mental health or business success separately, by combining the two use cases.

Reaching Your True Transformation

People rely on their past experiences to dictate their future actions and give unlimited gravity to the words of others. There are chains of the past. And when you get free from the past, you can create a better future, Bruns explains. Everybody tells themselves a story, and its our duty to find out whether the story is useful or dysfunctional.

Whether we hold on deeply to what we were told as a child or allow negative thoughts to sow seeds in our lives, this behavior can be highly damaging to our mental state. In letting past behaviors and actions define us, we rob ourselves of the energy needed to grow. But regression and victimhood will work against you in manifesting the life of abundance you envision. If you see yourself in these patterns of negativity, its time to create a new story.

Up until now, we have been on our own to deal with these emotions. But there are promising indications that AI can help.

Emotion regulationa person's ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experienceis a key aspect of psycho-social functioning and well-being. How could digital tools be used to support this process?

A study titled, New Technologies for the Understanding, Assessment, and Intervention of Emotion Regulation addresses this discusses the potential of integrating technologies such as AI-enabled virtual reality, wearable biosensors, smartphones, and biofeedback for improving understanding, assessment, and intervention of emotion regulation.

Every thought, and every action, has a special electromagnetic energy. If you tell yourself or others who you are every day, you will become that person, Bruns says. She believes that people in any stage of life can fall victim to this. Despite a successful career and an abundance of wealth, a lack of guidance can be all that stands between you and greater states beyond high achievement.

Whether youre a business owner, a coach, a doctor, or otherwise, AI has shown promising in developing a new perspective to overcome your doubt and elevate your life.

This all being said, a human touch will always be needed. True spirituality is and has always been the exploration of the wider field of reality; true spirituality cannot be other than true humanness.

Everything starts with you. If you have guidance on this path, you can reach your goals easily. Even with years of expertise, we all have blind spots where we fail to self-reflect. You need a mirror to explore your blind spots and find areas to grow and improve. A mentor can be that mirror for you, Bruns explains.

The Path of Joy

Bruns believes that overcoming doubt has everything to do with your personal identity: a crucial detail that many disregard when building or expanding their business. People may create a website, produce a product, and find the right price point, but in stepping into the vast field of marketing, they begin to get lost. On the surface, many people appear to have everything they need to build a successful business. But when we dig deep, step in and find their weakest point, we often discover that there are limitations in their personal life that manifest in their business, Bruns says. If your electromagnetic field is in a bad place, you wont be ready to work when you wake up - even if you slept for eight hours or more.

This is why it is crucial for all business leaders to implement a positive integration of human and technological support. For example, Rocky.ai is combining the strengths of a virtual assistant and a leadership coach and brings this together in a soft-skill training application, which is available at all times.

In another example, clinical research psychologist Dr. Alison Darcy created Woebot, a Facebook-integrated computer program that aims to replicate conversations a patient might have with his or her therapist. Woebot is a chatbot that resembles an instant messaging service. The digital health technology asks about your mood and thoughts, listens to how you are feeling, learns about you and offers evidence-based cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) tools.

If psychology pertains to the connection between our emotions, psychiatry explains their involvement in our biochemical processes. Our microbiome has a significant involvement in the biomagnetic field of our body, and every cell needs a special voltage. Without the right level of energy, our cells dont have that voltage and fail to operate at their maximum potential. The consequences manifest in all areas of our life, from our emotional regulation and wellbeing to the manner in which we make decisions. Bruns believes in the importance of seeing our mind, brain, and energy field as one, but many are unconsciously able to do so.

There are definite signs that machine learning, algorithms, and data can be utilized to effectively align these aspects of being in a way that was previously left for us to do on our own. In other words, AI can speed up the process of energy and life enhancement.

AI in psychiatry is a general term that implies the use of computerized techniques and algorithms for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental illnesses, and could be applied similarly to enhance our lives. For example, current approaches for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders largely rely on physician-patient questionnaires that are most of the time inaccurate and ineffective in providing a reliable assessment of symptoms.

These limitations can, however, be overcome by applying artificial intelligence (AI) to electronic medical database and health records. This indicates that we can aggregate data from our everyday lives to eventually eradicate negative thought patterns.

Bruns explains, People are still making unhealthy divisions in their life. Often, people repeat and reinforce negative outlooks and behaviors and justify them by saying, Its only a thought. But however intrusive or untrue it may be, our thoughts still have electromagnetic voltage, Bruns explains. Every emotion has a special vibration. If you feel guilt and shame, your vibrational energy is very low. If you feel unconditional love, its much higher. But you cant access these higher planes of emotional vibration if your body is not in good condition. You cant use antidepressants or wait idly for the problem to go away on its own. You have to step deeper and heal from within to raise your field of energy. Then, and only then, will you follow the path of your joy and serve your cosmic mission.

Stefanie Bruns, Founder of Business Flow Academy

Music is an excellent example of not only the physical manifestations of vibrations, but also evidence of how AI can impact our vibrational levels in the future. Studies now repeatedly show that music engages the brain at almost every level. The term for these studies is now referred to as Musical Neuroscience or Cognitive Musicology, It is this awareness, amongst others, that this article seeks to uncover, including music's healing qualities.

In one study, researches used an artificial intelligence system to study the catalog of melodies produced by a wide variety of different proteins. They had the AI system introduce slight changes in the musical sequence or create completely new sequences, and then translated the sounds back into proteins that correspond to the modified or newly designed versions.

Elevated Business Success

Now that we have uncovered the evolving potential of AIs ability to impact our body and minds energy vibrations positively, how can these be applied to create physical manifestations such as business success?

The path of your joy is unique to you and you only. But in reaching the destination, many have certain prerequisites in common: fulfillment in ones relationship, an abundance of free time, and a thriving autonomous business. Its a fact: your professional success and your energy levels are intrinsically correlated.

Bruns remarks of the phenomenon, It makes a huge difference to your market if you write copy in a higher zone of your energy. If your level of energy is high, its infectious, and people will want to be a part of it. They will choose you because it feels right. However, if you post because you feel you have an obligation to do so, it will come from a place of low energy. Your audience will feel that, too, she explains.

The HeartMath Institute proved this concept conclusively: people can feel other people. That would mean when you speak, release a video, or write copy, youre putting out your unique electromagnetic impulses into the universe. Ensure that your authenticity, level of expertise, and enthusiasm for what you do remain congruent in all marketing materials. If you do, youll reach a state of self-alignment. And youll never have to guess what your audience wants to hear next.

How does/would HeartMath Institute use AI to capture, and analyze data related to 1) impact of their services and 2) the energy/thoughts/electromagnetic impulses of clients.

Alignment with ones self is something that many people neglect. But in the pursuit of an elevated life, consider how you nourish your body in all forms: emotionally, mentally, and nutritionally. These small details eventually amount to a much greater picture. Bruns discusses these concepts in her free training program, Crushing Your Energy Identity Code, which delves into both the importance of Hawkins Scale of Emotion and how it influences your life in lower stages of vibrancy.

Your Energetic Impact

As Bruns explains, after persistent burnout and frustration over a lack of progress, many people ask themselves whether theyre even in the right field. They wonder whether their true calling is in something else and consider making a complete pivot. However, when faced with energetic incongruence, changing your career path is merely an escape, not a solution. Bruns shares that everything starts with a connection to your real purpose - your cosmic mission.

If there were no limit to what Artificial Intelligence could know about you, it could not only supply you with reading materials, but with foods, medical suggestions, social events, interesting ideas, friends, and lovers. It could also begin to help you make decisions in your life much the same way as Google maps now sets the fastest route for travel, avoiding traffic congestion. Perhaps one day there will be an app called Google Life, which will know you better than you know yourself, or at least claim to, and guide you through life decisions.

What will be increasingly missing is human self-awareness, the inner life as the domain of aspiration, wisdom, conscience, and what will increasingly disappear are the possibilities of true individuality, creativity, moral striving, selfless sacrifice, and transcendent awareness.

Instead our focus will be adding more information to the glut of information, posting more self-conscious images of ourselves, authoring more self-preoccupied narratives of our lives, repeating formulaic opinions, floating on the surface of a never-ending river of external data.

The cosmic mission is a vision bigger than yourself. When I ask people what their biggest vision is, I often hear responses alluding to luxury: a bigger house, a nicer car, or life in a warmer country. But I ask them once again - whats your biggest vision? Then, they understand. Their eyes light up. Your biggest vision, and your ultimate driver, is what you can do for others. We are all on this earth to help in any way we can. To help with something or somebody, she explains. Bruns believes that if you are connected with your cosmic mission in a way that enriches lives, youll jump out of bed every morning without wishing the day away. The power of a purpose-filled life allows you to overcome trauma, heighten your energy, live a joyful life, and enrich the world.

We are energetic beings. Ancient cultures have held this truth far longer than any modern civilization. And as energetic beings of light, each and every cell has an electromagnetic field to keep in alignment. As Bruns observes, This is not new knowledge; this is old knowledge. But we have new evidence. Experts have explored the effects of meditation on our human brain, and there are remarkable differences in our synaptic activity before and after reaching heart congruence.

Quantum computers are predicted to be capable of accomplishing things ordinary computers cannot, which reminds us of how our brains can achieve things that are still beyond artificial intelligence.

After embracing what it means to be an energetic being, were better equipped to thrive in business from our highest zone of genius: an area of complete fulfillment and true transformation. This means that were able to send our ideal messaging into the market, leverage our unique selling point, and succeed in business in a way that stays congruent with our energy signature.

In doing so, we attract our ideal clientele. We earn what we deserve to earn. And most of all, we reclaim our time.

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Positive Technology And The Cosmic Mission: How AI Is Helping Humans Achieve States Of High Energy And Success - Forbes

Throughout most of the seventeenth century, residents of London could buy, from street hawkers who fought one another for sales territory, a peculiar sort of newspaper. It cost a penny, sold about five or six thousand copies a week, and consisted of a single page. On one side, readers would learn how many of their neighbors had died the previous week, in each parish. On the other, readers would learn what was believed to have killed them.

Jaundice was common, as was Apoplex, an old word for a stroke, and Dropsie, which meant swelling. Other entries seemed to answer the question How did he die? with descriptionsDead in the Streets or Stilborn or Suddenlyinstead of actual causes. The deaths were usually assessed and recorded by pairs of older women, who were employed by parishes to go to the local church whenever its bell tolled a death. During one February week in 1664, these searchers, as they were known, recorded three hundred and ninety-three burials across the city. Death causes and counts ranged from Aged (thirty-two victims) and Consumption (sixty-five) to Scalded in a Brewers Mash (one).

For the same reasons that todays newspapers report coronavirus case numbers on their front pages, the London papers, known as Bills of Mortality, became particularly popular when disease swept through the city. During the 1665 plague, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary about feeling saddened or cheered by the latest numbers from the Bills, while a contemporary named John Bell noted that the Bills allowed people to know the places which are therewith infected, to the end such places may be shunned and avoided. But most of the time, according to the London merchant John Graunt, the Bills were little more than matters of curiosity, especially if there were deaths that were rare, and extraordinary in the week current. He didnt consider this to be odd or unseemly. Death, after all, was the most basic fact of life.

Eventually, though, Graunt began to wonder if the Bills could be put to other, and greater uses. He painstakingly collected and organized decades of the death records, creating long tables of numbers. These first known tabulations of population-level health data are now widely recognized as the birth of epidemiology. Graunt pored over them. What types of death were most common? Which groups did they afflict? Why did some causes spike at certain times, while others stayed fairly constant? And, most of all, what could a lot of separate, individual deaths, taken together, tell him about the society in which they occurred? Although Graunt wanted, as he put it in a treatise, to understand the fitness of the Country for long Life, he believed that it was in its deaths that he would find answers.

In Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer (Riverhead), Steven Johnson credits John Graunt with creating historys first life tableusing death data to predict how many years of remaining life a given person could expect. (One Dutch contemporary, a proto-actuary, took Graunts tables a bit too literally, writing confidently to his brother, You will live to until about the age of 56 and a half. And I until 55.) In fact, Graunts estimates were more of a guess than a calculation: when he wrote his treatise, in the sixteen-sixties, the Bills of Mortality didnt record peoples age at death, and they wouldnt for another half century. Yet his guesses about survival rates for different age groups turned out to be remarkably accurate in describing not just London at the time but humanity as a whole. For most of our long history as a species, our average life expectancy was capped at about thirty-five years.

Johnson calls this phenomenon the long ceiling. Analysis of ancient burial sites, of modern people living in hunter-gatherer societies, and of pre-industrial city dwellers all tell a similar story, Johnson writes: Human beings had spent ten thousand years inventing agriculture, gunpowder, double-entry accounting, perspective in painting, but these undeniable advances in collective human knowledge had failed to move the needle in one critical area.

That began to change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In what the economist Angus Deaton has named the great escape, average life expectancies broke the ceiling: what had been a very long, flat line finally rose, at first gradually and then dramatically. Between the Spanish flu of 1918 and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, global life expectancy doubled. These developments, Johnson argues, should be printed in newspaper headlines and hawked on street corners like the old Bills of Mortality. Extra, extra: The average human has received thousands and thousands of extra days in which to live.

Johnson tries to account for those days. Which scientific or civilizational advancements should we thank for them? He groups innovations by those which have saved millions of lives (this list begins with the AIDS cocktail, anesthesia, and angioplasty), hundreds of millions of lives (here the roster goes from antibiotics to pasteurization), and, finally, billions of lives, a small but illustrious pantheon of three: artificial fertilizer, hygienic plumbing, and vaccines.

Johnson gives a hasty tour of the stories behind a few of these life-giving innovations. He explains how centuries-old practices in China, India, and the Middle East eventually inspired a vogue for smallpox variolation among the British aristocracy in the eighteenth centuryeven then, you needed an influencer to start a trend. And he returns to the same well, or, rather, pump handle, that featured in his 2006 book, The Ghost Map, about the disease detectives who investigated a cholera outbreak in the early days of germ theory. Yet he cautions that its shortsighted to think of these advancements in terms of a few brilliant geniuses having eureka moments.

Instead, the innovations that have saved the most lives are the product of piecemeal improvements, built on networks of support and inspiration, and spread by social movements. Most were not blockbuster therapies or expensive medicines but unsexy, low-tech ideas, like water chlorination or better techniques for treating dehydration. Almost none, he points out, came from profit-seeking companies. And many were just advancements in basic bureaucracythe creation of public institutions that could systematically track health data, require that drugs be tested and regulated, or enforce simple safety measures.

The most effective changes have to do with saving the lives of children. When Graunt analyzed London deaths, he estimated that, for every hundred children conceived, about 36 of them die before they be six years old. Twenty-four more died before reaching the age of sixteen, fifteen more before turning twenty-six, and so on, the rate of attrition falling slightly with each decade until perhaps but one surviveth 76. For much of human history, our early years were so stalked by disease and infection and diarrhea that between a third and a half of us never escaped our own perilous childhoods. Especially in the long years before smallpox was eradicated, Johnson writes, being a child was to forever be on the brink of death.

And the peril was universal. Before the advent of proper hygiene and effective medicine, the children of the lite died just as often and just as early as those of the poor. The rich may even have died more often, since they could pay for the treatments of the time, which generally did them more harm than good. (Readers are given grim descriptions of the illnesses of George III and his foe George Washington, both of whom were made sicker by the medical care they received, and reminded that George III became king only because the Stuart line had ended with Queen Anne, a half century earlier. Despite her wealth and power, and despite eighteen pregnancies, only one of her children survived past the age of twoand he died at age eleven.) Extra life was one thing money could not buy.

But that equality of loss would soon change. Deaton showed that the great escape was accompanied by another trend, which is now known as the great divide. In the past couple of centuries, as changing conditions increased life expectancies within wealthy nations, average life expectancies in poorer onesthe ones bearing the brunt of imperialism, resource extraction, and disease imposed by the wealthygot shorter. Eventually, average lives lengthened around the world, narrowing the gap, but they still lengthened substantially more for some people, in some places, than for others. Of all the forms of inequality, Martin Luther King, Jr., said in 1966, by which time the divide was entrenched, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman. Even in modern American cities, people born into poor neighborhoods can expect to live as many as thirty years fewer than people who are born in affluent ones across town. And that was before the covid-19 pandemic further widened our existing gaps.

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We've Had Great Success Extending Life. What About Ending It? - The New Yorker

Back in February, the VR horror shooter Into The Darkness was first announced. Since then, eager fans have been waiting patiently for further updates. In the first of several videos to come out, the developers are releasing overview videos to share the progress with Into The Darkness.

The video series will showcase various aspects of the game to come. These can range from experimenting with the physics mechanics, combat demonstrations, and the dark corners of the world.

The first video presents the powerful double-barrel shotgun. Apparently a frequent request from hungry fans, the video displays the weapon in all of its glorious usefulness. It can be utilized as a blunt weapon to knock robotic foes down, blast deadly shots from a certain critical distance, and be held as a defensive item to fend off against aggressive adversaries. The anticipation elevates for the double-barrel shotty with the rockin music to back up the action scenes.

Into The Darkness blasts the player into the near future. Humanity is attempting immortality; in other words, recent science experiments permit the process of transferring human consciousness onto machines. As Agent Frank, youre on a mission to investigate a facility that specializes in the said process, dubbed transhumanism. As fate would have it, trouble begins to stir beyond the shadows.

With a physics-based system, Into The Darkness allows the player to mess around with the games sandbox. For one thing, you can climb and hold onto a railing with one hand while the other hand can gun down an enemy. Another example is simply breaking the glass to traverse from one window to another.

Some of its VR horror shooter gameplay is similar to Stress Level Zeros experimental VR experience, BONEWORKS. Into The Darkness seems to be more fast-paced and chaotic than the previously mentioned title (think BONEWORKS with a dash, slash, and DOOM Eternal greatest action moments). Be sure to keep a lookout for the other videos to eventually release by going to the publishers (GameBoom VR) YouTube channel here.

Are you looking forward to the next overview videos from the developers? Be sure to leave a comment down below on what special items you would like to see from future videos on Into The Darkness.

C. Anthony Rivera is a content writer from the city of Chicago. His articles and reviews have been published on Gamemite, GamingBolt, and now on The Nerd Stash. And yes, deep dish pizza is the best.

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Step 'Into The Darkness' with the Double-Barrel Shotgun Overview - The Nerd Stash

Scientism is steadily replacing traditional religion as the basis for understanding the world and our place in it. A recent essay by Noelle Garnier at The National Pulse entitled A New American Divinity argues persuasively that the global pandemic catalyzed a mass conversion to that secular faith.

Over a single year, millions came to believe the Science without question. Garnier writes: The COVID-19 outbreak raised the authority of medical scientists to quasi-religious dimensions.She concludes with three critical questions: Who is doing the science? What are their aims for the future of mankind? And what expression will scientism find when COVID-19 recedes into the past?

A ready answer is found in the work of Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of the 2017 best-seller Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future. He certainly has the ear of Silicon Valley and the Davos crowd, if that has any bearing on civilizations direction.

As Harari explores various possible worlds in which cybernetic humans use tech to elevate themselves to godhood given our current trajectory, he theorizes that a tiny technocratic elite will dominate the primitive masses. Furthermore, if artificial intelligence produces superior algorithms, computers will come to know people better than they can know themselves.

If scientism is the new religion of science and technology, and transhumanism is the path to apotheosis, then Hararis Dataism is the sect that worships Big Data as the highest earthly power. Whether wielded by human owners or self-aware computers, this mystical information will be used to control the world.

In line with Garniers concept of a mass conversion, the 2020 global lockdown appears to be Dataisms Great Awakening. Across the planet, governments, corporations, and universities forced their citizens and employees to move their lives online. Aside from the smartphones invention, no event in history has generated more useful data than the pandemic response.

According to Hararis mythos, the various entities holding that data from Google to the Chinese Communist Party are poised to become an overt global priesthood.

The scenarios Homo Deus predicts provide crucial insight into what Harari calls the global agenda. This volume picks up the evolutionary thread where Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind left off.

At many points, Hararis tone is triumphant. To be sure, science and technology enabled humans to largely overcome the perennial ills of famine, disease, and large-scale warfare. Technology also makes us smarter and more effective.

As Harari gazes into the future, however, the imagery turns bleak, as humans create machines that look back at us. We hold tools in our hands capable of using us more than we use them. What happens when these gadgets, or the people who control them, get the better of us?

The ideas in both books are somewhat incoherent. Still, Hararis core message is both a serious warning and a solid primer for those inclined to ignore the rapid changes happening all around us. His predictions hinge on a few basic principles: The power of technology will determine the worldly order; humans tend to worship power; and most people are fairly unintelligent.

In the brief VPRO documentary Humans, Gods, and Technology, Harari gives a concise assessment of transhumanism, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and the future of spirituality:

In the 21st century, we will have a new Dataist religion, or a new algorithmic religion, which will tell people the source of authority is Big Data algorithms. In essence, Dataism is the idea that if you have enough data on a person, especially biometric data, and if you have enough computing power, you can understand that person better than the person understands himself or herself. And then you can control this person, manipulate them, and make decisions for them. And we are getting very close to the point when Facebook and Google and the Chinese government know people far better than these people know themselves.

For those who have been specifically targeted for surveillance and manipulation, this is probably already a reality.

The key, however, is the decision-making process. Whenever humans face critical choices whether it be regarding education, career, marriage, or religion we take in the best available information and go with our gut to make the right choice. But what happens if AI algorithms have a deeper knowledge of our minds than our colleagues, friends, family, or even ourselves?

If technocrats are given total access to our detailed data imprints, just imagine the power that targeted messaging could exert on a person, or an entire population. They dont call it the Google God for nothing.

Yet throughout his writing, the topic of human choice has Harari tying himself in knots. On the one hand, he embraces the neuroscientific theory that free will is an illusion, arguing genetic predisposition, subconscious cognition, and other bio-cultural phenomena converge to make our decisions before we ever have the experience of selecting a choice.

Even so, Hararis predictions still present us clear choices. Do we put our faith in superintelligent machines (or their owners)? Will we simply submit to their power? Do we merge our bodies and minds with machines in order to appropriate that power? Or do we attempt to avoid these paths altogether?

Hararis predictions in Humans, Gods, and Technology delivered with a sly, down-turned grin are intentionally provocative:

The new powers that we are gaining noware really going to transform us into gods. Humans are acquiring divine abilities. Especially the ability to create and to design life I doubt whether Homo sapiens will still be around in two hundred years. Either we destroy ourselves, or we will upgrade and change ourselves into something very different from Homo sapiens Different bodies, different brains, different minds.

This divine power wont be evenly distributed, though. Once human labor has been replaced by automation and artificial intelligence including doctors, research scientists, computer programmers, computer repairmen, and writers the techno-enhanced elites will have to figure out what to do with the new useless class.

Hararis proposal? Provide everyone with food, health care, and a universal income then let them play with themselves:

The big question is meaning. What will they do all day? They will spend more and more time playing virtual reality games. It will give them much more excitement and emotional engagement than anything in the real world outside You could say that for thousands of years already, millions of people have found meaning in playing virtual reality games. We just call these games religions.

The theory is that human desires can be satisfied by artificial environments where correct behavior takes you to higher levels whether in schools, churches, sports fields, or virtual reality. Therefore, interactive video screens will mediate the religious experience of the useless class. Anyone whos strapped on a new pair of VR goggles knows this isnt as crazy as it sounded a few years ago.

This view of progress tends to evoke ridicule or horror. Humans have a deep need for companionship and a higher purpose that, ultimately, artificial adventures fail to meet. No matter how convincing a digital simulation may be, no matter how potent the pharmaceutical, neither could truly fulfill our need for meaning.

Harari touches on these doubts. Despite his morally ambivalent tone when discussing humankinds replacement, he exhibits serious empathy for sentient beings. Even as he coldly compares the 10,000-year-old practice of castrating bulls to the archaic role of eunuchs and to modern sex-change procedures, his writing betrays a soft spot for non-human mammals and helpless people.

In Sapiens, Harari explicitly describes the disconnect between a wild calfs instinct to be near her mother or just to roam free and the hellscape found in a factory farm. This is juxtaposed to the famous 1950s psychology experiment in which an orphaned monkey was kept in a cage with two artificial mamas.

One mother was made of metal wires, but held a bottle of milk. The other was covered in fur. The baby monkey instinctively preferred contact with the furry mother, even as he stretched himself to drink from the others bottle.

Harari notes that such monkeys, deprived of real emotional bonds in artificial environments, grow up to be highly aggressive and incapable of socializing when released into a normal population.

The implication for humans navigating urban mazes, utterly dependent on digital devices, should be obvious. We were not made to be satisfied by machines. Then again, due to advances in genetic engineering and brain implants, Harari argues that scientists will be able to modify instincts any way they choose earthly gods will decide what humans will want in the first place. Regardless of whether success is even possible, the attempt is well underway.

Yet ultimately, something in our human nature rages against the machine. The question is whether we have the intelligence and the will to confront that reality, or if well meekly surrender to the highest earthly power.

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After The Lockdowns, The Religion Of Science Only Gets Darker - The Federalist

Mr. Nice Guy: Bud Stevenson

I have been a fairly reliable customer of Amazon, but now Im having second thoughts.

They recently delisted When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. The book is certainly timely since there has been endless commentary in print and on TV and radio on the subject of transgenderism.

As Roger Kimball, publisher of Encounter Books points out in an essay in The Wall Street Journal, Amazon has no problem offering Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf, one of the most vicious anti-Semitic books ever written. Mein Kampf is considered by many to be the blueprint for the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. A competitor of Amazon, Bookshop.org offers the equally troubling works of Louis Farrakhan, who proudly bills himself as the one who exposes the crimes of the Jews over the centuries.

Another author I admire is Heather Mac Donald (note that Mac and Donald are printed separately, not together as MacDonald). She recently wrote The War on Cops, a very timely discussion of how the political left has made police officers the enemy. In the opinion of the censors at Bookshop, portraying the police as vital defenders of the American way of life was too much for their customers.

Bookshop.com explained that it removed When Harry Became Sally because they had multiple complaints and concerns from customers, affiliates and employees about the title. So Hitlers book that advocates the murder of all the Jews in Germany is OK for Bookshop, but a discussion of transgenderism is not.

Let me quote Kimballs opinion of the new censorship: The move to squash Mr. Andersons book (When Harry Became Sally) is the vanguard of a larger effort to silence debate and impose ideological conformity on any contentious issue is which the commissars of woke culture have made an investment. It has nothing to do with principle and everything to do with power.

Kimball goes on to say that Amazon and Bookshop have sided firmly with the bullies.

One wonders how the ultra-sensitive left in this country feel about Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congresswoman from Detroit. Tlaib called for the abolition of the police. In a recent comment, she said American policing is inherently and intentionally racist. You might be interested to know that Congresswoman Tlaib is much in demand as a public speaker. Apparently her description last year of President Donald Trump as a mother only added to her popularity.

As I write this I hear that Thursday was Jackie Robinson Day. I believe I was in the eighth grade at Mamaroneck Junior High School when we had an assembly at which Robinson was the guest speaker. It was definitely the most memorable event of my junior high school years.

Robinson had the most mellifluous voice I ever remember hearing, and from that day on I abandoned my allegiance to the New York Yankees and became a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Robinson, of course, was the first player to break the color barrier, and his spectacular play proved to Major League Baseball owners and managers that they were missing out by ignoring Black players ever since the founding of professional baseball.

For a few years, I had a collection of autographed baseballs I remember Stan Musial but, instead of saving them I batted them around in my neighborhood. I wonder what they would be worth today?

Bud Stevenson, a retired stockbroker, lives in Fairfield. Reach him at[emailprotected].

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Mr. Nice Guy: Booksellers give in to 'bullies,' cease sales of some titles - Fairfield Daily Republic