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Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.
We believe that humanity?s potential is still mostly unrealized. There are possible scenarios that lead to wonderful and exceedingly worthwhile enhanced human conditions.
We recognize that humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress.
Research effort needs to be invested into understanding these prospects. We need to carefully deliberate how best to reduce risks and expedite beneficial applications. We also need forums where people can constructively discuss what should be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.
Reduction of existential risks, and development of means for the preservation of life and health, the alleviation of grave suffering, and the improvement of human foresight and wisdom should be pursued as urgent priorities, and heavily funded.
Policy making ought to be guided by responsible and inclusive moral vision, taking seriously both opportunities and risks, respecting autonomy and individual rights, and showing solidarity with and concern for the interests and dignity of all people around the globe. We must also consider our moral responsibilities towards generations that will exist in the future.
We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise.
We favour allowing individuals wide personal choice over how they enable their lives. This includes use of techniques that may be developed to assist memory, concentration, and mental energy; life extension therapies; reproductive choice technologies; cryonics procedures; and many other possible human modification and enhancement technologies. |
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| There are no conversations. |
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| cauz |
July 10, 2014, 1:13 p.m. |
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| Ambrose Bierce |
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools. |
| Andre Agassi |
I've been motivated by overcoming challenge and overcoming the hurdles and obstacles that face me. There still is plenty out there to get motivated by. |
| Lisa Edelstein |
Aging on camera is just very hard. I love my age. I feel good about myself but high definition television is not kind. You don't even look like yourself in high-def. It just makes every little line on your face more exaggerated so it ends up aging you. It's like you're watching yourself seven years older. |
| Stephen Covey |
Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition - such as lifting weights - we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity. |
| Chuck Palahniuk |
I think in a way, you're doomed, once you can envision something. You're sort of doomed to make it happen. I've found that the moment I can envision leaving a relationship, that's usually the moment that the relationship starts to fall apart. |
| Sylvia Earle |
Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around. |
| James Cameron |
I believe 3D is inevitable because it's about aligning our entertainment systems to our sensory system. We all have two eyes; we all see the world in 3D. And it's natural for us to want our entertainment in 3D as well. It's just getting the technology - it's really more the business model than the technology piece. We've solved the technology. |
| Afrika Bambaataa |
The Universal Zulu Nation stands to acknowledge wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, and equality, peace, unity, love, and having fun, work, overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah. |
| Anthony Daniels |
We have people being a little uncomfortable in their life on Earth with finances and so on, so Science Fantasy or Science Fiction allows people to think that there are possibilities beyond the gravity of our planet. |
| Angelina Jolie |
Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life. |
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We saw everything as small metaphors for the origins of humanity. We hit all the major points. How did we get here? The war paint, the Tai Chi, fire, discovery, the commandments, friendship, love, jealousy, sacrifices, blessings, old technology and familiarity, unknown travelers of similar origins. Those who were in the exact same place in the past, doing the same basic things. Our version of the cycle was life changing and we represented all different aspects of humanity.
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"If we send a human to a star millions of light years away by the time we get there a human would quite possibly already be there. This is due to technology advancing in the far future allowing us to travel faster than we can today..."
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Human thinking is born out of some sort of neurological defect in the human
body. Therefore, anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive.
_______
Religion has invented that wonderful thing called charity. It is the most
vicious and vulgar thing that we have done. Nature has provided us with a
bounty. But we are individually responsible for the inequities of the world.
_______
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Over the past few years, a new paradigm for thinking about humankind's future has begun to take shape among some leading computer scientists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists and researchers at the forefront of technological development. The new paradigm rejects a crucial assumption that is implicit in both traditional futurology and practically all of today's political thinking. This is the assumption that the "human condition" is at root a constant. Present-day processes can be fine-tuned; wealth can be increased and redistributed; tools can be developed and refined; culture can change, sometimes drastically; but human nature itself is not up for grabs.
This assumption no longer holds true. Arguably it has never been true. Such innovations as speech, written language, printing, engin...
This post is a comment.
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it's somewhere in the future. giants roam. they start to upcycle brick buildings, using them for storage, plant stands, and ottomans.
some humans are around, they're friends with the giants at least in this town. the giants grow giant plants and pot them in their terracotta pottery creations. The kilns fire up in the winter and the human spa next door--who has a wall on the outside of the kiln--have a seasonal special of kiln-powered baths.
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The International Potato Center (CIP) has launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars' atmospheric conditions, as well as under extreme conditions on Earth. The CIP placed a potato inside a "specially constructed CubeSat contained environment" that simulates Mars temperature, air pressure, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. They then used sensors and live-streaming cameras to record the soil and monitor the status of the potato. Preliminary results are positive as cameras inside the container show sprouts. Phys.Org reports:
"We have been looking at the very dry soils found in the southern Peruvian desert. These are the most Mars-like soils found on Earth." Chris McKay of NASA ARC. "This [research] could have a direct technological benefit on Earth and a direct biological benefit on Earth," says Chris McKay of NASA ARC. From the initial experiment, CIP sci...
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There are few subjects relating to spiritual development so
critically important and yet so
incompletely understood as Yoga.
Although the interest in Yoga that started
in the West during the
1960’s has abated to some degree
, the teaching of the various
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I like the psyche distinction. How do you know you did everything you needed to do? What did you need to do?
I always feel like my life would be completely different if I had made a few different decisions and I don't know if I'd be happier or not in those other scenarios. The stress for me comes from trying to avoid missing the decisions that would lead to better scenarios. Every day the things I do have opportunity costs.
This post is a comment.
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How Arthur C. Clarke Predicted We'd Communicate in the 21st Century
https://paleotronic.com/2019/01/30/arthur-c-clarke-communications-in-the-second-century-of-the-telephone-1977/
While researching for our magazine we sometimes find nuggets buried by time that have been forgotten by the Internet. This particular nugget was found in the May 1977 issue of Creative Computing. Science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke's predictions of the future are fascinating, both for what he got right, and what he got wrong.
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MIT's AI Uses Radio Signals To See People Through Walls
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new piece of software that uses wifi signals to monitor the movements, breathing, and heartbeats of humans on the other side of walls. While the researchers say this new tech could be used in areas like remote healthcare, it could in theory be used in more dystopian applications. Inverse reports:
"We actually are tracking 14 different joints on the body [...] the head, the neck, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists, the hips, the knees, and the feet," Dina Katabi, an electrical engineering and computer science teacher at MIT, said. "So you can get the full sti...
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