Category Archives: Transhumanism

A place to contemplate loss and recovery.

This summer was framed by my mothers illness and death. The cancer diagnosis came in late June. By early August, she was a hospice patient in the Queens apartment she lived in and where Id grown up. Several weeks before she passed away, I took a break from my daily visits to spend a day and night visiting a friend with my wife and son in Sea Bright, near the northern end of the Jersey Shore. You can easily see Manhattan from the beach there, with Long Island stretching off toward the horizon.

The Jersey Shore is a place of loss and recovery. Our friends house is on stilts, renovated after the flooding of Hurricane Sandy. The Shores on the edge of my personal history; Ive visited it perhaps 15 to 20 times over several decades but never stayed long, a native New Yorker and then northern New Jersey resident who went to the Shore because other people had houses there or wanted to go. Two women friends I associate with Shore trips died before their time.

My friend Chris Tufaro is putting together a folk rock album called Monmouth, the title the name of the town just south of Sea Bright and also of the county. His acoustic ballads tell an intertwined story relating to the destruction Sandy wrought on his familys house on the Shore. His music is suffused with coming to grips with loss.

My mother had a longstanding interest in the paranormal. She left behind hundreds of books on the subject (for which Id be interested in finding a suitable collector) and expressed a desire to make contact from beyond. I plan to visit a paranormal bookstore/museum in Asbury Park that holds seances. I mentioned this place to my mother, so shed know I dont dismiss her wish, and in case that helps her find me.

On the beach at Sea Bright, I read an advance copy of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, by philosopher and cognitive scientist Susan Schneider. She offers a skeptical take on the type of immortality hoped for by some enthusiasts of high-tech transhumanism: ones mind being uploaded into a computer. She points out philosophical uncertainties as to whether such a transfer would be an extension of your life or the end of it. She advocates metaphysical humility, a recognition of how little we know about human consciousness and identity.

That sounds like a good approach to me. On the Jersey Shore, which has been battered by forces beyond human control and will be again, its good to remember we dont have a handle on everything.

Kenneth Silber is author ofIn DeWitts Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canaland is on Twitter:@kennethsilber

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The Solace of the Jersey Shore - Splice Today

"AMELIA 2.0 // TriCoast Entertainment"

Los Angeles, CA - August 8, 2017 - TriCoast Entertainment is excited to announce the VOD release of Adam Ortons newest sci-fi thriller, AMELIA 2.0 today on August 8, 2017. From executive producers MORE Productions and WeatherVane Productions, AMELIA 2.0 is the first film to tap into the genre of transhumanism.

Transhumanism (n) The belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its currently physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.

AMELIA 2.0 combines romance, sci-fi and futuristic suspense to illustrate societies need and constant desire for advancements within the technological world.

As Carter Summerland weeps next to his decaying wife in a hospital bed, he is approached by Wesley Enterprises, an experimental program specializing in elongating human life.

The grief in his heart collides with his devastated mind, when he allows Wesley Enterprises to take the risk of high advancements in technology, by allowing them to download his wifes consciousness into an android.

When Amelia awakes, she finds herself within an android that looks just like her human self but she doesnt feel human at all. She battles the internal question of what really makes someone human? while the city breaks out in a public debate over using this high-tech technology, and the extreme opposition and danger to such experiments.

AMELIA 2.0 turns science fiction into a controversial discussion by exploring the genre of transhumanism, or the theory that human life can be extended through advancements in technology and science. Many scientists and other professionals argue about the rights and wrongs of extending human life.

Thats the thing about science fiction it doesnt leave viewers with the thought of aliens taking over Mars or portals to different worlds, but instead, makes us question things that are unordinary, yet seemingly possible. 20 years ago, did anyone predict the self-parking cars? In 20 years, will humans be able to extend their lives through technology?

AMELIA 2.0s all-star cast includes Ed Begley Jr. (Ghostbusters, Pineapple Express), Chris Ellis (The Dark Knight Rises, Apollo 13), Debra Wilson (Avatar), Eddie Jemison (Oceans Eleven, War Dogs) and Kate Vernon (Malcolm X, The Last Song, Pretty in Pink).

Watch AMELIA 2.0 now on: AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, DISH, FandangoNow, FlixFling, Google, InDemand, iTunes, SlingTV, Sony (Playstation), Vubiquity, Vudu, and Amazon. Stay tuned for the DVD release!

Trailer Link: https://vimeo.com/200433561

For more information, go to: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3831344/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

AMELIA 2.0 (2017, 89 min.) Directed by Adam Orton. Editor: Izaak Levinson-Share. Cinematographer: Camrin Petramale. Original Music: Michael A Levine. US, English. MORE Productions, WeatherVane Productions. TriCoast Entertainment.

PRODUCTION COMPANY: MORE Productions, Weather Vane Productions

About TriCoast Entertainment:

A new home for story-driven American films, TriCoast Entertainment is a full service media company that creates, produces, manages and distributes unique and unusual entertainment. Bringing together filmmakers, distributors, financiers, and technologists, TriCoast Entertainment embraces change by redefining the production and distribution model for indie filmmakers, providing them with low cost tools, financing, and worldwide theatrical and digital distribution, along with market feedback and storytelling opportunities.

Media Contact Company Name: TriCoast Entertainment Contact Person: Jenna Wilen Email: jenna@tricoast.com Phone: 3107410070 Address:11124 Washington Blvd City: Culver City State: CA Country: United States Website: http://www.tricoastworldwide.com

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TRICOAST ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES FIRST TRANSHUMANISM VOD, AMELIA 2.0 - Digital Journal

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Today, well be discussing how a Selena Gomez song might foreshadow humanitys triumph over biological death but first, raise your hand if you remember EDM. It was short for electronic dance music, a style once poised to eat the planet for lunch, and then eat itself for dessert.

Five summers ago, as a new league of superstar DJs were being paid astronomical amounts of money to perform at packed festivals the world over, the musics sustainability didnt appear to be at the forefront of anyones mind. In 2015, Forbes reported that the EDM bubble was about to burst. In 2016, Pitchfork made the case that it had.

But this unofficial collapse hasnt forced the star producers of EDM to unplug their laptops and register for the GRE. In fact, plenty are faring exceptionally well this summer, taking up residence on the Billboard Hot 100 after partnering up with an array of willing pop vocalists Calvin Harris with Pharrell, the Chainsmokers with Coldplay, David Guetta with Justin Bieber.

These kinds of genre-splicing collaborations arent anything new, but with EDM now in decline, theyve quietly reversed their polarity. Instead of making dance tracks that behave like pop songs, these producers now appear to be making pop songs that behave a little more like dance tracks.

In most instances, the result is just a mirror-image of the same old thing, but for a certain class of pop singers, it seems to be changing the way they apply their physicality to a geometric dance rhythm. You can hear it on the radio this summer whenever Gomez goes hopscotching across the grid of Kygos It Aint Me, or when Alessia Cara leans hard against the right-angles of Zedds Stay, or in the way Halsey seems to be gasping for air in the digital vacuum of her solo single, Now or Never. All three songs are delivered with mechanical clarity, with all three vocalists making direct lyrical references to eternity. Are they singing about transhumanism?

Not long after our species learned how to dream, we were probably dreaming of ways to exceed the limitations of our bodies. Its the stuff of religions and comic books. Now, its the work of Silicon Valley, where a growing number of transhumanists believe that mankinds next evolutionary leap will occur once we figure out how to convert consciousness into code, allowing for a digital transmigration of souls.

In his recent book, To Be a Machine, author Mark OConnell describes transhumanism as a liberation movement advocating nothing less than a total emancipation from biology itself. That emancipation means eternal life inside a supercomputer. Heaven is a hard drive.

The idea isnt so shocking if you watch Black Mirror, or if you listen to pop music. For well over a decade now, Auto-Tune software has been narrowing the musical gap between humans and machines, generating signature hooks for everyone from T-Pain to Future.

However, whether we as listeners embrace Auto-Tune as a tool or denounce it as a crutch often depends on whos singing through it. When Kanye West uses computer software to manipulate his voice, hes an artist. When Britney Spears does the same thing, shes a girl who cant sing.

That double standard helps to explain why Ellie Goulding hasnt been recognized as one of the more significant pop vocalists of our time. The British singer always had bright ideas about phrasing, but it wasnt until she loaned her voice to a few juggernaut EDM singles that her singing began to feel totally frictionless. And it had more to do with Gouldings inflection than whatever digital processing she was applying to it. By the time she released her 2015 album, Delirium, Goulding was weaving the curves of her voice through a world of clean-edged rhythms as if drawing a map to the future.

With Now or Never, Halsey has that map folded-up her back pocket. Its a slower, stronger, smarter, more spacious song than Closer, her massive EDM hit with the Chainsmokers, and it gives the 22-year-old the opportunity to do some captivating things with her breath. When shes breathing in, shes all human, taking sharp little hits of oxygen that dramatize the ballads sustained romantic ache. But when shes breathing out, shes at least half-machine, singing about pain with precision. Listen close to how she lingers on the words now, time and forever. The grain in her voice sounds like its pixelating.

Alessia Caras Stay a collaboration with the German EDM producer, Zedd addresses the gap between data and soul in the form of a simple duet, with a refrain thats delivered in two parts. First comes Cara pushing her voice especially hard into the songs rigid architecture. Then comes a gush of synthesized melodies pantomiming what the 21-year-old just sang. Its a game of call-and-response, but the call sounds big-hearted, and the response sounds no-hearted, giving the dialogue a sinister glint. Cara is singing about forestalling a separation, but she might as well be teaching the HAL 9000 how to sing Daisy.

With It Aint Me, Norwegian producer Kygo isnt playing a game so much as conducting a test one in which Selena Gomez must first coo alongside a gently-plucked guitar, and then over the relentless thuds of sub-woofing bass. As the song builds its graceless crescendo, the coffee shop turns into a rave, with the most promising 25-year-old in pop showing us how she can make her voice feel artificial in an intimate setting and expressive in an anonymous one.

Originally posted here:

Pop music moves a step closer to eternal life - The Columbian

Today, well be discussing how a Selena Gomez song might foreshadow humanitys triumph over biological death but first, raise your hand if you remember EDM. It was short for electronic dance music, a style once poised to eat the planet for lunch, and then eat itself for dessert. Five summers ago, as a new league of superstar DJs were being paid astronomical amounts of money to perform at packed festivals the world over, the musics sustainability didnt appear to be at the forefront of anyones mind. In 2015, Forbes reported that the EDM bubble was about to burst . In 2016, Pitchfork made the case that it had .

But this unofficial collapse hasnt forced the star producers of EDM to unplug their laptops and register for the GRE. In fact, plenty are faring exceptionally well this summer, taking up residence on the Billboard Hot 100 after partnering up with an array of willing pop vocalists Calvin Harris with Pharrell, the Chainsmokers with Coldplay, David Guetta with Justin Bieber. These kinds of genre-splicing collaborations arent anything new, but with EDM now in decline, theyve quietly reversed their polarity. Instead of making dance tracks that behave like pop songs, these producers now appear to be making pop songs that behave a little more like dance tracks.

In most instances, the result is just a mirror-image of the same old thing, but for a certain class of pop singers, it seems to be changing the way they apply their physicality to a geometric dance rhythm. You can hear it on the radio this summer whenever Gomez goes hopscotching across the grid of Kygos It Aint Me, or when Alessia Cara leans hard against the right-angles of Zedds Stay, or in the way Halsey seems to be gasping for air in the digital vacuum of her solo single, Now or Never. All three songs are delivered with mechanical clarity, with all three vocalists making direct lyrical references to eternity. Are they singing about transhumanism?

Not long after our species learned how to dream, we were probably dreaming of ways to exceed the limitations of our bodies. Its the stuff of religions and comic books. Now, its the work of Silicon Valley, where a growing number of transhumanists believe that mankinds next evolutionary leap will occur once we figure out how to convert consciousness into code, allowing for a digital transmigration of souls. In his recent book, To Be a Machine, author Mark OConnell describes transhumanism as a liberation movement advocating nothing less than a total emancipation from biology itself. That emancipation means eternal life inside a supercomputer. Heaven is a hard drive.

The idea isnt so shocking if you watch Black Mirror, or if you listen to pop music. For well over a decade now, Auto-Tune software has been narrowing the musical gap between humans and machines, generating signature hooks for everyone from T-Pain to Future. However, whether we as listeners embrace Auto-Tune as a tool or denounce it as a crutch often depends on whos singing through it. When Kanye West uses computer software to manipulate his voice, hes an artist. When Britney Spears does the same thing, shes a girl who cant sing.

That double standard helps to explain why Ellie Goulding hasnt been recognized as one of the more significant pop vocalists of our time. The British singer always had bright ideas about phrasing, but it wasnt until she loaned her voice to a few juggernaut EDM singles that her singing began to feel totally frictionless. And it had more to do with Gouldings inflection than whatever digital processing she was applying to it. By the time she released her 2015 album, Delirium, Goulding was weaving the curves of her voice through a world of clean-edged rhythms as if drawing a map to the future.

[Ellie Goulding is singing from inside the pop machine]

With Now or Never, Halsey has that map folded-up her back pocket. Its a slower, stronger, smarter, more spacious song than Closer, her massive EDM hit with the Chainsmokers, and it gives the 22-year-old the opportunity to do some captivating things with her breath. When shes breathing in, shes all human, taking sharp little hits of oxygen that dramatize the ballads sustained romantic ache. But when shes breathing out, shes at least half-machine, singing about pain with precision. Listen close to how she lingers on the words now, time and forever. The grain in her voice sounds like its pixelating.

Alessia Caras Stay a collaboration with the German EDM producer, Zedd addresses the gap between data and soul in the form of a simple duet, with a refrain thats delivered in two parts. First comes Cara pushing her voice especially hard into the songs rigid architecture. Then comes a gush of synthesized melodies pantomiming what the 21-year-old just sang. Its a game of call-and-response, but the call sounds big-hearted, and the response sounds no-hearted, giving the dialogue a sinister glint. Cara is singing about a forestalling a separation, but she might as well be teaching the HAL 9000 how to sing Daisy.

With It Aint Me, Norwegian producer Kygo isnt playing a game so much as conducting a test one in which Selena Gomez must first coo alongside a gently-plucked guitar, and then over the relentless thuds of sub-woofing bass. As the song builds its graceless crescendo, the coffee shop turns into a rave, with the most promising 25-year-old in pop showing us how she can make her voice feel artificial in an intimate setting and expressive in an anonymous one.

All of that so-real-it-sounds-fakeness in Gomezs singing is put to far better use over the uncluttered beat of Bad Liar, a hit single about an affection that cant be suppressed. The song radiates such indomitable charm, even its bad lyrics ooze weird charisma. In the first verse, Gomez asserts, just like the Battle of Troy, theres nothing subtle here. Sure. In the second verse she purrs, If youre the art, Ill be the brush. If she says so. And does she? Are these malformed bits of poetry the result of human error, or were they written by a buggy algorithm? Its hard to know for sure, and the pleasure is in the not-knowing.

Youll want to savor that confusion until Gomez reaches the bridge and blurts out the most metaphysical romantic advance to grace the radio in years: Oh baby, lets make reality. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. The nature of her proposition depends entirely on whether shes pretending to be a machine, but either way, whos going to say no?

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How the death of EDM brought pop music one step closer to eternal life - Washington Post

[Editors note: Brian Patrick Greenis Assistant Director of Campus Ethics Programs at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and faculty in the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University. He has a strong interest in the dialogue between science, theology, technology, and ethics. He has written and talked on genetic anthropology, the cognitive science of the virtues, astrobiology and ethics, cultural evolution and Catholic tradition, medical ethics, Catholic moral theology, Catholic natural law ethics, transhumanism, and many other topics. He blogs atTheMoralMindfieldand many of his writings are available at hisAcademia.eduprofile. He spoke to Charles Camosy about the ethical challenges posed by advances in artificial intelligence.]

Camosy: One cant follow the news these days without hearing about artificial intelligence, but not everyone may know precisely what it is. What is AI?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, can be thought of as the quest to construct intelligent systems that act similarly to or imitate human intelligence. AI thereby serves human purposes by performing tasks which would otherwise be fulfilled by human labor without needing a human to actually perform the task.

For example, one form of AI is machine learning, which involves computer algorithms (mathematical formulas in code) being trained to solve, under human supervision, specific problems, such as how to understand speech or how to drive a vehicle. Often AI algorithms are developed to perform tasks which can be very easy for humans, such as speech or driving, but which are very difficult for computers. However, some kinds of AI are designed to perform tasks which are difficult or impossible for humans, such as finding patterns in enormous sets of data.

AI is currently a very hyped technology and expectations may be unrealistic, but it does have tremendous promise and we wont know its true potential until we explore it more fully.

What are some of the most important reasons AI is being pursued so energetically?

AI gives us the power to solve problems more efficiently and effectively. Some of the earliest computers, likethe ENIAC, were simply programmable calculators, designed to perform in seconds calculations that took humans hours of hard mental work. No-one would now consider a calculator to be an AI, but in a sense they are, since they replace human intelligence at solving math problems.

Just as a calculator is more efficient at math than a human, various forms of AI might be better than humans at other tasks. For example,most car accidents are caused by human error what if driving could be automated and human error thus removed? Tens of thousands of lives might be saved every year, and huge sums of money saved in healthcare costs and property damage averted.

AI may also give us the ability to solve other types of problems that have until now either been difficult or impossible to solve. For example, as mentioned above, very large data sets may contain patterns that no human would be capable of noticing. But computers can be programmed to notice those patterns.

Altogether, AI is being pursued because it will offer benefits to humanity, and corporations are interested in that because if the benefits are great enough then people will pay to have them.

What kinds of problems might AI solve? What sorts of problems might it raise?

We do not yet know all the types of problems that we might be able to hand over to AI for solutions.For example, currently, machine learning is involved in recommendation engines that tell us what products we might want to buy, or what advertisements might be most influential upon us. Machine learning can also act much more quickly than humans and so is excellent for responding to cyber attacks or fraudulent financial transactions.

Moving into the future, AI might be able to better personalize education to individual students, just as adaptive testing evaluates students today. AI might help figure out how to increase energy efficiency and thus save money and protect the environment. It might increase efficiency and prediction in healthcare; improving health while saving money. Perhaps AI could even figure out how to improve law and government, or improve moral education. For every problem that needs a solution, AI might help us find it.

At the same time, for every good use of AI, an evil use also exists. AI could be used for computer hacking and warfare, perhaps yielding untold misery. It could be used to trick people and defraud them. It could be used to wrongly morally educate people, inculcating vice instead of virtue. It could be used to explore and exploit peoples worst fears so that totalitarian governments could oppress their people in ways beyond what humans have yet experienced.

Those are as-yet theoretical dangers, but two dangers (at least) are certain. First, AI requires huge computing power, so it will require enormous energy resources that may contribute to environmental degradation. Second, AI will undoubtedly contribute to social inequality and enriching the rich, while at the same time causing mass unemployment.

Could robots with AI ever be considered self-conscious? A kind of non-human person?

This is a subject of debate and may never clearly be answered. It is hard enough to establish the self-consciousness of other living creatures on Earth, so a much more alien entity like an intelligent artifact would be even more difficult to understand and evaluate. Establishing the self-consciousness of non-biological intelligent artifacts may not happen any time soon.

What almost certainly will happen in the next decade or so is that people will try to make AIs that can fool us into thinking that they are self-conscious. The Turing Test, which has now achieved near mythological status, is based on the idea that someday a computer will be able to fool a human into believing it is another human is a goal of AI developers.

When we are finally unable to distinguish a human person from an intelligent artifact, should that change how we think of and treat the artifact? This is a very difficult question, because in one sense it should and in another it shouldnt. It should because if we dismiss the person-like AI as merely simulating personhood then perhaps we are training ourselves towards callousness, or even potentially wrongly dismissing something that ought to be treated as a person because if it was a really strong imitation we could never know if it had somehow attained self-consciousness or not.

On the other hand, I think there are good reasons to assume that such an artefactual person simply is not a self-conscious person precisely because it is designed as an imitation. Simulations are not the real thing. It is not alive, it would not metabolize, it probably could be turned on and off and still work the same as any computer, and so on.

In the end, we have very little ability to define what life and mind are in a precise and meaningful sense, so trying to imitate those traits in artifacts, when we dont really know what they are, will be a confusing and problematic endeavor.

Speaking specifically as a Catholic moral theologian, are there well-grounded moral worries about the development of AI?

The greatest worry for AI, I think, is not that it will become sentient and then try to kill us (as in various science fiction movies), or raise questions of personhood and human uniqueness (whether we should baptize an AI wont be a question just yet), but rather whether this very powerful technology will be used by humans for good or for evil.

Right now machine learning is focused on making money (which can itself be morally questionable), but other applications are growing. For example, if a nation runs a military simulation which tells them to use barbaric tactics as the most efficient way to win a war, then it will become tempting for them to use barbaric tactics, as the AI instructed. In fact it might seem illogical to not do that, as it would be less efficient. But as human beings, we should not be so much thinking about efficiency as morality. Doing the right thing is sometimes inefficient (whatever efficiency might mean in a certain context). Respecting human dignity is sometimes inefficient. And yet we should do the right thing and respect human dignity anyway, because those moral values are higher than mere efficiency.

As our tools make us capable of doing more and more things faster and faster we need to pause and ask ourselves if the things we want to do are actually good.

If our desires are evil, then efficiently achieving them will cause immense harm, perhaps up to and including the extinction of humanity (for example, to recall the movie War Games, if we decide to play the game of nuclear war, or biological, or nanotechnological, or another kind of warfare). Short of extinction, malicious use of AI could cause immense harm (e.g. overloading the power-grid to cause months-long nation-sized blackouts, or causing all self-driving cars to crash simultaneously). Mere accidental AI errors can also cause vast harm, for example, if a machine learning algorithm is fed racially biased data then it will give racially biased results (as hasalready happened).

The tradition of the Church is thattechnology should always be judged by morality. Pure efficiency is never the only priority; the priorities should always be loving God and loving neighbor. Insofar as AI might facilitate that (reminding us to pray, or helping reduce poverty), then it is a good thing and should be pursued with zeal. Insofar as AI facilitates the opposite (distracting us from God, or exploiting others) then it should be considered warily and carefully regulated or even banned. Nuclear weapons should probably never be under AI control, for example; such a use of AI should be banned.

Ultimately, AI gives us just what all technology does better tools for achieving what we want. The deeper question then becomes what do we want? and even more so what should we want? If we want evil, then evil we shall have, with great efficiency and abundance. If instead we want goodness, then through diligent pursuit we might be able to achieve it. As inDeuteronomy 30, God has laid before us life and death, blessings and curses. We should choose life, if we want to live.

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Artificial intelligence ethics the same as other new technology - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

DAILY NEWS CONTRIBUTOR

Friday, July 28, 2017, 4:30 PM

Super humans created by design will be a reality in the near future.

Imagine if we could create the perfect President Trump by simply upgrading him a little from a "Of the people, for the people" ethical point of view. Throw in an anti-collusion, Don Jr. malware system and weve already got ourselves a better America.

This is not fake news, so saddle up: It's called Transhumanism. If you're thinking, "Wow, this sounds like a new culture whose goal is to evolve humans physically and intellectually in order to create life extension through genetic engineering with eternal life at the core," then you are correct. Good job!

Tranhumanistic thinking means you believe that you can upgrade yourself with a little help from nanotech, which honestly sounds good to meI already bought the headphones! (I wouldn't frown at a little time management and decision making skills improvements. I freely admit I have a list of complaints for my brain's manufacturer. I'm ready for some upgrades.)

The MetroSpiritual: Does your DNA code prove youre part alien?

The general public believes we are a good 100 years away from this type of technology, but surprisewe are already there. They can already genetically create superior human beings.

One way, but not the only way, is by using CRISPR Cas- 9 kits. It is a fairly inexpensive, already available system for genome editing. The bare-bones for beginners explanation: It targets and modifies gene sequences and can be used for cloning and reproducing preferred traits as well as reprogramming our current DNA to seek out and destroy traits we don't like.

Transhumanism manipulates energy waves, which is what we and everything and anything at its core is made up of, the entire universe included. For example, running weak electrical currents through certain areas of the brain speeds up reaction time. It's called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS, and is already used by the U.S. military to train snipers.

As a Metro-Spiritual, there's a layered but unique perspective that comes to mind. What if higher beings are already using a form of Transhumanism on millions of humans already and have been for some time?

The MetroSpiritual: Make meditation part of your daily journey

Scientists from the Human Genome project say that our DNA was not written on this planet and is a complex mathematical code. What if we have the ability to upgrade, but haven't in a while because we didn't know that we even could?

Without updating the How to be Human software, life would be more confusing and run much slower, don't you think? Perhaps many of us were born with semi- superhuman abilities by virtue of our past but still can't warp our minds around the system upgrades. Stay with me

If advanced entities and let's face it, there are smarter ones then us in this galaxy and universe have already encoded our DNA to allow for upgrades, unarguably this seems like a good anti- corruption software program.

But if available technology for human advancement is just a matter of simple software, is humanity better or worse off? There is likely a built-in level of accountability that is necessary for spiritual growth. I assume expecting anything less always needs to be updated.

The MetroSpiritual: 10 ways to stay spiritually balanced in 2017

Curiously, in the oldest of texts, extraterrestrials have had this Transhumanism thing down since forever ago. Biblical texts even talk about ancient Abraham having his first child when he was 80 years old, because humans supposedly lived for upwards of 200 years way back then. Eternal life might just be sophisticated technology which history, and now science, supports.

Erich von Dniken, who wrote Chariots of the Gods, was one of the first to talk about the ancient alien theory. His research and studies state that thousands of years ago space travelers from other planets visited Earth and taught humans about technology, and influenced their beliefs on religion.

The late Zecharia Sitchin was the first to decode the most ancient texts from the Sumerians. According to his translations, a race of extraterrestrials called the Anunnaki, which means those who are from heaven, came to Earth from a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. They have been here long before humans and are the ones responsible for creating the human race. Or so they say

The Greeks, Indians, Mayans, Romans the list goes on all believed in gods who visited Earth and advanced humanity. Their recorded history supports the ancient alien theory. (Are those who learned how to live forever considered gods? Lord help us!)

The MetroSpiritual: How to connect with extraterrestrials

Perhaps the Anunnaki were space travelers. Some believe their home planet was destroyed and their race was dying and so they began to interbreed with humans way, way back then ago. Some believe they created humans. Biblical texts support all this. There are cave drawings dating back more than 5,000 years of alien beings with tall bodies, big heads and big hands interacting with humans. An unnamed source says one looks just like Trump too. Fake news?

Ancient texts talk about the Lyrian Wars and today you can see actual NASA footage of modern day space wars on the internet. Perhaps times don't change that much when it comes to history repeating itself.

Let's skip thousands of years ahead and go to the 1930s to the 1980s. UFO sightings were at an all-time high. The scoop was hundreds of everyday common folk being abducted by aliens. Roswell helped top it off with a cherry.

Scientific evidence from notable cases where taken seriously by the general public and for the first time in ages, the taboo subject began to regain acceptance. Abductees usually described little grey humanoids with skinny bodies and big heads with bug-looking eyes. Sound familiar? They seemed to be most interested in the human reproductive organs.

The MetroSpiritual: Why finding your true soulmate is so hard

Biblical texts do talk about the fallen angels always mating with female humans. Even Enoch, Noah's great grandfather, talked about being abducted by higher beings, but he said that it was spectacular.

But that was then and this is now, and you don't really hear about those scary abduction stories anymore, right? It's more of an Enoch connection these days. So why?

Did they complete interbreeding their DNA with ours? Are they back with upgraded models of their creations, aka, us? Help from ETs is not a new thing, but it seems to be back on a familiar rise these days.

Maybe the little grey aliens we always here about are the result of robotic Transhumanism from eons ago, and humans will make similar versions in the future. We are well on our way, if not already there. Maybe the result of yesterdays abductions are the currently updated versions of human hybrid star-seeds, and maybe you are one of them!

Humanitys advancement might be included in our DNA. It does not mean you will be richer or smarter, it only means you can download universal information, once you figure it out. Maybe that will lead to your desires, but there is always a catch!

Many of the ETs are currently described as looking like us and not like the grey, bug-eyed beings described in the past. So is the future now? Time seems all messed up these days. It might be due to the modern day form of Transhumanism from the past that some of us are currently experiencing.

Downloading our brains into a computer and growing body parts for replacement is happening today in all sorts of forms. Google it! To live forever is in the works, but do we want everyone to live forever? What about the mean people?

Maybe higher intelligences are a step ahead of us, using ET-made natural selection via DNA. You can only upgrade if you get it and are worthy. Personally, I might have some cosmic figuring out to do.

If we could live forever how would most people even react? If you can get around to doing anything tomorrow, luxury nap facilities would certainly become popular establishments: the anti-Starbucks!

Then again, even forever would eventually become a race against time. Who will get there first? I doubt me. I'll be too busy daydreaming about where the finish line is at one of the many napping facilities I hopefully have some stock in.

Maija Polsley began having otherworldly experiences at a young age and began attending metaphysics classes with her mother at age 12. She has since been dedicated to finding the truth and has not stopped exploring. Co-producer of the ghost investigation web series "Paranormal Pursuit" and founder of TheMetroSpiritual.com, Maija is a natural-born, city-dwelling, soul-seeking, independent former teen mom and single woman who is also a dimensionally educated, spiritually empathic writer, actor, poet, standup comic, tarot card reader, Earth lover and quintessential MetroSpiritual.

For more DAILY VIEWS, The News' contributor network, click here. nydailynews.com/tags/daily-views

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The MetroSpiritual: Creating super-humans through Transhumanism is becoming a reality - New York Daily News

BBC News

Luton hate crime probe over St Thomas's church graffiti BBC News The vandal also made references to transhumanism - a movement that believes in using technology to improve intellectual, physical and psychological capacities - and wrote: "Anti-Christ" and "Hell awaits". More news from Bedfordshire. St Thomas's vicar ... and more »

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Luton hate crime probe over St Thomas's church graffiti - BBC News

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" is a common interpretation of a French quote by critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. Yet, as events of the past year and a half have demonstrated, sometimes things change so much that underlying assumptions must be questioned.

Western society has always had its share of extremist, fringe activists, who are generally dismissed tolerantly or not by the mainstream culture.

British journalist and tech blogger Jamie Bartlett points out that successful radicals of the past are now heroes who changed both history and culture. For instance, in the United States: "American revolutionaries, the abolitionists, the civil rights activists, the LGBTQ rights groups."

Radicals Chasing Utopia interestingly, if unevenly, chronicles Bartletts experiences embedding himself in various radical groups.

"In streets, halls, fields, chat rooms and even parliaments, more and more people are trying to change the world. And for the last two years, Ive tried to find them."

Bartletts 2014 book The Dark Net, about underground and sketchy sub-cultures in various corners of the internet, included "transhumanism," and thats where Radicals Chasing Utopia begins.

Transhumanists "believe that technology can make us physically, intellectually, even morally better."

Bartlett accompanied other journalists and fellow travellers on Zoltan Istvans quixotic 2016 presidential campaign, in a bus "redesigned to look like a giant coffin."

Some transhumanists believe even mortality can be overcome by scientific advances and obsessively careful living.

Other chapters cover anti-immigration activists in Europe, psychedelic drug experiences, the Italian Five Star Momentum movement, and a commune in Portugal attempting to establish "a healing biotope, a template of how man could live in harmony with himself, his fellow man and his environment."

Bartletts reports on most groups achieve his stated goal of "assessing them as honestly and objectively" as possible, but retaining "a degree of scepticism."

The chapter Interlude: Prevent examines the U.K. governments difficulties attempting to "deal with the spread of radical ideas that directly seek to undermine or destroy" liberal democracy.

His chapter about taking part in direct action to protest a coal mine in Wales somewhat exposes his own bias, but the rest of the book does not come across as a polemic either for or against the radicals he observes.

That chapter, The Activists Paradox, discusses the tendency of some radicals to turn off the general public, whose participation in the machinery of change is so important to fundamental shifts in cultural or political norms.

Engaging as Bartletts coverage is, reading the book can be frustrating, partly due to the overwhelming documentation. Over 50 pages of endnotes often containing additional exposition or explanation, not just attribution compete with numerous explanatory or illustrative footnotes.

Some passages point the reader to both a footnote and an endnote. Much of that information would be less intrusive if it were included in the text, rather than interrupting it.

Bartletts observations and analyses of particular groups culminate in an especially thoughtful and challenging epilogue, discussing the dilemmas and difficulties inherent in radicals who are trying to change the world.

"Their energy, imagination and passion might save us; but those very attributes might also lead to ruin and desperation. Yet, for all this, radicals remain our best hope."

Whether one agrees or disagrees with this conclusion, Bartletts book is an enjoyable and thought-provoking addition to the conversation.

Bill Rambo teaches at The Laureate Academy in St. Norbert. He adheres to the radical idea that knowledge of Shakespeare could arrest virtually all decay of the English language.

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Fringe movements key to changing the world - Winnipeg Free Press

The Charlie Gard tragedy has renewed public advocacy for legalizing infanticide. Writing in the New York Times earlier this month, Gary Comstock recounted the tragic death of his son, Sam, who was born with a terminal genetic condition. Many years later, Comstock believes that his son should have been killed instead of being taken off of life support:

We should empathize with Comstock in his grief. But emotion must not tempt us to reject the venerable principles of human exceptionalism. Babieseven those with dire prospectsare precious human beings whose lives have intrinsic dignity and inherent moral value beyond that of any nonhuman.

Acceptance of Comstocks premisethat parents should kill babies who are likely to diewould be culturally catastrophic. It would lead to the legalization of murder. At Nuremberg, the German infanticide program was deemed a crime against humanity. Lets not abandon that wisdom.

The death of his son is not the only motive driving Comstocks advocacy. Comstock is a moral philosopher who rejects human exceptionalism and embraces animal rights and transhumanism. From his webpage:

Judging by Comstocks Times column, it seems these practical implications include legalizing infanticide. Indeed, in my decades of work around issues such as euthanasia, utilitarian bioethics, animal rights, transhumanism, and other associated agendas, I have found that the more one rejects human exceptionalism, the more likely one is to declare that immoral and (still) illegal wrongslike infanticideare virtuous.

The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is an even more vivid case in point. Coyne authors ablog titled Why Evolution is True, where he extrapolates evolutionary theoryinto highly questionable conclusions of morality, philosophy, and ethics. Using Comstocks pro-infanticide column as his launching pad, Coyne argues that if we can abort a fetus diagnosed with serious health issues, we should also be allowed to kill born babies with those conditions. He then makes the predictable claim that since we euthanize our sick pets, we should also be permitted to kill seriously ill and disabled babies:

Coyne then brings in anti-human exceptionalism:

Contrary to Coyne, human exceptionalism need not rely on religion to demonstrate its validity. But heres the germane point: To reject human exceptionalism is essentially to claim that we are just another animal in the forest, which leads to the logical conclusion that killing should be an allowable remedy to illness and disability. This view has already infected the Netherlands, where babies born with serious disabilities and terminal conditions are allowed by winked-at practicenot lawto be killed by doctors.

Many no longer believe that human life has ultimate, objective value simply because it is human. With human exceptionalism cast aside, our new prime directive is to eliminate suffering, and eliminating the sufferer is now advocated in high places as a moral good rather than a pernicious harm. As a result, dying and disabled babies are in mortal danger of consignment into a killable caste that canliterallybe put down like dogs.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institutes Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. His most recent book isCulture of Death: The Age of Do Harm Medicine.

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Putting Infants Down Like Dogs - First Things

Having fouled Earth with the works of their modern substitute for religion, science and technology, liberals imagine they can build a perfect world in outer space by means of science and technology that are now more advanced than they were in the past, or so it is boasted. It is what NASA has been about since the agencys inception. The effort has been joined in recent years by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with space projects of their own financed by them. However, there is a fly in the liberals ointment.

It is that their planned perfect world would be inhabited by imperfect human beings, men and women who are often irrational, some to the degree that they persist in holding to the preposterous notion that a Palestinian peasant two thousand years ago was God, and all of them subject to emotions which can be unruly and lead to messy situations. This, despite liberalism with its belief in the perfectibility of man, having long ago replaced religion as the core around which the life of society is lived.

Some very rich and powerful men, not to speak of scientists and technologists of like mind, think there is now a solution to the problem (as they see it) of human imperfection. It is called transhumanism. Perhaps you have heard of it. The literature of transhumanism is quite extensive. Heavily funded foundations promote it. References to it show up regularly in mass media. Persons under forty are apt to talk about it at social gatherings when they want to appear to have intellectual interests.

Like Christianity ever since the so-called Reformation shattered the unity of the Faith, sectarian differences exist within transhumanism, but all its adherents believe in, work toward, or otherwise support an undertaking of the kind that could only be conceived in a post-Christian age like ours: melding human beings and computers. The idea is to upload artificial intelligence (A.I.) into men so they will become, transhumanists say, more than human. Christians would say it will make them, if successful, less so, but were not going to get into that here.

Not all Christians would say it anyway. Although most transhumanists are atheists, they recognize the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin as a precursor. To anyone looking for clarity of thought and expression the woolly verbiage of Teilhards writings make them difficult to read, but it is possible to get his drift. It appeals to the kind of Catholics who strive to reconcile truths taught by the Church with science and technology in order to rationalize their dependence on machines to transport them, cool them, make things for them, entertain them, keep them alive in some circumstances, do more and more of their thinking for them.

Being a paleontologist, Teilhard was a great believer in evolution. What he envisioned, decades before the development of the internet and worldwide web, was all machines linked in a network by which, and in which, human minds would merge, all consciousness becoming unified so that it would eventually break through the material framework of Time and Space and arrive at what he called Omega Point the Divine, Christ. Of course at that point human beings would not be as we know them and as they have always existed.

Julian Huxley, the famed British eugenicist, was a close friend of Teilhard, but a non-believer. In a 1951 lecture he presented a secularized version of Teilhard: Such a broad philosophy might perhaps be called, not Humanism, because that has certain unsatisfactory connotations, but Transhumanism. It is the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition

Oh, those irksome limitations! (i.e., irrational beliefs and emotions.)

Many transhumanists see Christian belief in particular as positively threatening. Simon Young, one of their leading thinkers, has written: The greatest threat to humanitys continued evolution is theistic opposition to Superbiology in the name of a belief system based on blind faith in the absence of evidence.

Perhaps the most influential transhumanist thinker is Ray Kurzwell, a director of engineering at Google. A book he wrote in 1999, The Age of Spiritual Machines, is a kind of bible of the movement. The twenty-first century will be different, he said therein. The human species, along with the computerized technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problemsand will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future.

Change the nature of mortality? He means his spiritual machines will live forever, their bodies incorruptible, immune to disease and decay. To acquire knowledge, all theyll have to do is upload it effortlessly to their brains.

Kurzwell calls the point in evolution where this happens Singularity. It is analogous to Teilhards Omega Point.

Some transhumanists, including Kurzwell, talk about resurrecting the dead. Theyll do it, they think, using the DNA we all leave behind. This is where space travel comes back into the picture, though in a way unforeseen by the men who launched NASA: What with the dead being brought back to life and everybody living forever (as spiritual machines), it wont take long before Earth really is overpopulated. Migration to other planets will be necessary.

The billionaire Elon Musk identifies as a transhumanist. Besides developing the Tesla electric automobile, he is best known for Space X, a project for developing reusable rockets with a view to their eventually transporting men and material to Mars for human colonization of the Red Planet. (Since there is no oxygen on Mars, vehicles on the planet will have to be powered by electricity. Hence the Tesla.)

Peter Thiel is another billionaire transhumanist and financial angel to enterprises like Future of Humanity Institute and Singularity University. Although he was given a speakers slot at last years Republican National Convention, he is less well known to the public than Elon Musk. Born in Germany and now a citizen of New Zealand, he was a co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, is openly gay, a huge fan of Tolkein (he says he has read Lord of the Rings more than ten times), was a member of the Libertarian Party until 2016, and seems to have an unerring instinct for placing himself where power and influence can be had. His membership on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group shows that. So did his being named to the executive committee of Donald Trumps transition team after Trump won last Novembers election (he had contributed $1.25 million to the Trump presidential campaign). It is known that he is a partner of Jared Kushner in one of the latters investment operations. Oh, he also describes himself as a Christian but acknowledges that his beliefs are not orthodox. His financial contributions to transhumanism are weighted toward life-extension and age-reversal projects. (At one point, pre-PayPal, Thiel was a speech-writer for William Bennett when the former drug czar and U.S. Secretary of Education was marketing himself as a morality guru with books like The Book of Virtues and The Childrens Book of Virtues, but grew tired of the job and quit before the public learned that Bennett was a compulsive gambler who had blown millions of dollars at Las Vegas casinos.)

The defense of civilization requires vigilance, but guarding against treachery from within is hard. Western Christian civilization has been undone by leaders who were really Judases, beginning with the priests, bishops and princes who led millions out of the Church at the time of the Protestant revolt commonly called the Reformation. They were followed by the Revolution which first overthrew Christian government in France in 1789 and has continued to unroll so that it does not now exist anywhere. More recently there were the culture wars, which Christians could never have won, not with the weight of modernity against them.

Why? The Judas factor again. Christianity demands sanctification for entrance into Heaven; and self-denial, self-abnegation, self-discipline are requisite to it. Too many modern Christians, faith and belief run out of them, including belief in Heaven except maybe as a place where everybody will go anyway, have preferred self-aggrandizement instead. What they want is all that will make things easier for self or, better yet, enhance it. What could do that to a greater degree than the promise of immortality, especially immortality without pesky emotions and irrational beliefs to mar its perfection?

The trouble is that only a computer could see such a state of things as perfect.

Footnote: Transhumanists argue among themselves as to whether the right of anyone to stay human, especially for religious reasons, should be respected and protected. If these people ever exercise more power and influence than they already do, the argument will probably prove pointless. When most remaining Christians arent Christian enough to face life without the benefits of modernitys existing appurtenances smartphones, processed foods, automobiles, television, air-conditioning, etc., etc. how many will choose Heaven in whose existence they can believe only by faith over the scientific certainty of life in the here and now forever and ever?

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Transhumanism - Catholicism.org