02.27.08
Posted in Deutschsprachige Seiten, Human Enhancement, Nootropics, Transhumanism at 7:19 am by rheil
Studie: Antidepressiva wie Prozac so gut wie Placebos (Telepolis)
Florian Rötzer 26.02.2008
Nach einer Auswertung klinischer Daten kommt eine Studie zu dem Schluss, dass SSRIs, die neuen Antidepressiva der dritten Generation, so gut wie wirkungslos sind
Millionen von Menschen werden mit Antidepressiva behandelt. Neue Medikamente sollen besser wirken, weil sie neu sind und dem fortgeschrittenen Stand der Forschung enstpringen. Eine Studie hat sich die Wirkung der neuen Selektiven Serotonin-Wiederaufnahme-Hemmer (SSRI), die auch meisten verschrieben werden, einmal näher mittels einer statistischen Auswertung vieler Studien angeschaut und kam zu dem Ergebnis, dass sie kaum besser als Placebos sind. Die Untersuchung und deren Veröffentlichung ist mutig, denn sie offenbart nicht nur eine Hilflosigkeit der modernen Medizin gegenüber der häufigsten psychischen Erkrankung, sondern könnte auch einen Markt untergraben, der den Herstellern viele Milliarden Euro eingebracht hat. [...]
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11.11.07
Posted in Ethics, Human Enhancement, Organisations, Transhumanism at 8:09 am by rheil
The Fuck Death Foundation
(»MISSION STATEMENT
The Fuck Death Foundation is an organization dedicated to the elimination of death through the generation and distribution of funds to strategically selected causes and initiatives worldwide.
Not only does the FDF effectively address the major precipitants of human demise worldwide, it also takes into consideration the most ruthlessly indiscriminate killer of all — oldness. [...]«)
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10.23.07
Posted in Deutschsprachige Seiten, Human Enhancement, Nootropics, Transhumanism at 6:32 am by rheil
(»Gehirn-Doping: Augen geradeaus
Jörg Auf dem Hövel 23.10.2007
Wie die Pharmafirma Cephalon die vermeintliche Gehirndoping-Substanz Modafinil im psychoaktiven Markt etabliert. Dazu ein Selbstversuch
Im Jahre 1992 wunderte sich Frank Baldino. Die eigentlich nachtaktiven Mäuse in dem Versuchslabor der Pariser Firma Lafon blieben den ganzen Tag wach. Die Tiere standen unter dem Einfluss einer neu entwickelten Substanz, die gegen Depressionen helfen sollte. Die chemisch korrekte Bezeichnung für den Wachmacher lautete kryptisch 2-Diphenylmethyl-Sulfinyl-Acetamid, kurz “Modafinil” genannt.[... ]«)
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10.11.07
Posted in Critics, Ethics, Evolution / Genetics, Human Enhancement, Nanotechnology, Technology, Transhumanism at 5:43 am by rheil
Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Philosophical, Religious, and Ethical Considerations
By Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
(»Introduction1
What is Transhumanism?
The term ‘transhumanism’ denotes a relatively young and still changing ideology that posits a new vision of humanity as a result of the confluence of advancements in the life sciences, neurosciences, genomics, robotics, informatics, and nanotechnology. These developments include new kinds of cognitive tools that combine artificial intelligence with interface technology, molecular nanotechnology, extension of human life span, genetic enhancing of human mental and physical capacities, combating diseases and slowing down the process of aging, and exercising control over desires, moods, and mental states. Those who enthusiastically promote these developments in biotechnology and bioengineering maintain that the accelerating pace of technological development and scientific understanding will usher in a new age in the history of the human species during which people will live longer, will possess new physical and cognitive abilities and will be liberated from suffering and pain due to aging and disease. In the transhuman age, humans will no longer be controlled by nature; instead they will be the controllers of nature. [...]«)
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09.12.07
Posted in Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 6:42 am by rheil
Enough is Enough”
A Thinking Ape’s Critique of Trans-Simianism (Dresden Kodac)
(»To further expound upon the topic of last week’s installment, I will address the more specific claims of Dr. Klomp and his radical theory that has been gaining wider acceptance throughout the community. Once again I would like to thank our readers for sending in your fish bones and boar hides in support of this journalist’s campaign to expose Dr. Klomp’s trans-simianist prattle for what it is: a collection of wishful thoughts out of keeping with any factual evidence.
The term ‘trans-simian’ comes from the shortening of ‘transitional simian,’ a concept Dr. Klomp has developed to describe an individual who is in an evolutionary transition from simian to post-simian, though Klomp himself admits that he is not entirely clear what a true post-simian would be. Characteristics exhibited by a trans-simian include augmentation of one’s natural abilities with ‘tools,’ as well as one’s mental capacities with what has been dubbed ‘culture.’ [...]«)
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05.07.07
Posted in AI / Singularity, Future, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 6:18 am by rheil
Superhuman Imagination – Vernor Vinge on science fiction, the Singularity, and the state
Mike Godwin | Reason Magazin
(»A few decades ago, the most popular science fiction epics were works like Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy or Frank Herbert’s Dune series—stories that were set thousands or even tens of thousands of years in the future but involved human beings more or less like us and societies more or less like our own, but with more advanced technology. Today, by contrast, many of the genre’s top writers are unwilling to speculate more than 20 years ahead. The acceleration of technological advance, they argue, has begun to make traditional visions of far-future humanity look increasingly myopic and parochial.
One increasingly popular vision of that rapidly accelerating progress is called the Technological Singularity (or, sometimes, just the Singularity)—a concept evoked not just in science fiction novels by the likes of Charles Stross and Bruce Sterling but in works of speculative nonfiction, such as the futurist Ray Kurzweil’s popular 2005 book The Singularity Is Near. No name is linked more tightly to the idea of the Singularity than that of Vernor Vinge, 63, who for four decades has written stories about the ways humanity and its technologies are building a future that may be impossible for us even to imagine. “It seems plausible,” Vinge says, “that with technology we can, in the fairly near future, create or become creatures who surpass humans in every intellectual and creative dimension. Events beyond such a singular event are as unimaginable to us as opera is to a flatworm.” [...]«)
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04.02.07
Posted in AI / Singularity, Human Enhancement, Neuro, Technology, Transhumanism at 6:59 am by rheil
Chris Chatham: 10 Important Differences Between Brains and Computers
(»”A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.” – G.C. Lichtenberg
Although the brain-computer metaphor has served cognitive psychology well, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed many important differences between brains and computers. Appreciating these differences may be crucial to understanding the mechanisms of neural information processing, and ultimately for the creation of artificial intelligence. Below, I review the most important of these differences (and the consequences to cognitive psychology of failing to recognize them): similar ground is covered in this excellent (though lengthy) lecture. [...]«)
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Posted in Future, Human Enhancement, Nootropics, Transhumanism at 6:54 am by rheil
Russel Blackford: Prolegomena to any defence of human enhancement
(»Any full-scale defence of human enhancement technologies first needs to clear away a lot of misunderstandings. Here’s an attempt to do so.
INTRODUCTION
As a species, we have reached a point in our history where we’ve developed sophisticated, and increasingly powerful, forms of technological intervention in the functioning of our own bodies. Existing possibilities include not only the array of modern techniques for combating disability and disease, but also cosmetic surgery, performance-enhancing or consciousness-altering drugs, the contraceptive pill, and genetically-based methods for the sex selection of children. That list is obviously not exhaustive, and nor does it represent an end point of human inventiveness: for example, there is the much-discussed prospect that we might develop radical new reproductive technologies, such as the asexual creation of embryos through somatic cell nuclear transfer (i.e. reproductive cloning). [...]«)
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Posted in Ethics, Future, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 5:58 am by rheil
James J. Hughes: The Compatibility of Religious and Transhumanist Views of Metaphysics, Suffering, Virtue and Transcendence in an Enhanced Future
(»Abstract
Transhumanism – the proposition that human beings should use technology to transcend the limitations of the body and brain – is a product of the Enlightenment humanist tradition. As a consequence most avowed transhumanists are secular, and many religious are skeptical or hostile towards the transhumanist project. However there are also many religious transhumanists who find the project of human enhancement at least consistent with, and sometimes a fulfillment of, their metaphysics, soteriologies and eschatologies. Transhumanism appears to be especially compatible with religious traditions that emphasize human agency and evolution to a transcendent state, such as Buddhism, or that have incorporated Enlightenment values, such as liberal Christianity. But elements of the transhumanist worldview and enhancement technologies are compatible with one element or another of most world faiths, even the most fundamentalist. We can thus expect that human enhancement technologies will be adopted creatively into the theologies of groups within all the world’s faiths, producing many flavors of “trans-spirituality.” [...]«)
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03.31.07
Posted in Anti-Aging, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 5:53 am by rheil
The Scientist: (»We challenged experts across fields to imagine a new way to solve the problems of human aging. Our question:
What if Humans were Designed to Last?
By S. Jay Olshansky, Robert N. Butler, and Bruce A. Carnes
Illustrations by Thom Graves
When Michelangelo painted The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he portrayed the Renaissance view of humanity as having been molded by the hand of its creator, a “perfect” physical specimen. Charles Darwin, when drafting his theory of evolution, presented imperfections in humans’ anatomic structures and functions as the strongest evidence for his theory. It now appears they were both right. [...]«)
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03.19.07
Posted in Anti-Aging, Future, Human Enhancement, Nootropics, Transhumanism at 7:05 am by rheil
Giulio Prisco (Transhumnar): Engineering Transcendence
(»I moved this old (2004) article here for further editing and translating. I argue that science may develop the capability to resurrect the dead, perhaps sooner than envisaged by Tipler in his Omega Point scenario. I propose to base a “transhumanist religion” (perhaps “religion” is not the right word) on this idea.
The essay is divided in “Engineering Resurrection”, “Engineering God”, and “Engineering Hope and Happiness”. [...]«)
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03.15.07
Posted in Human Enhancement, Nootropics, Technology, Transhumanism at 7:43 am by rheil
Be More Than You Can Be (Wired 15.03)
Heat-resistant. Cold-proof. Tireless. Tomorrow’s soldiers are just like today’s — only better. Inside the Pentagon’s human enhancement project.
By Noah Shachtman
(»The lab is climate-controlled to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and 66 percent humidity. Sitting inside the cramped room, even for a few minutes, is an unpleasantly moist experience. I’ve spent the last 40 minutes on a treadmill angled at a 9 percent grade. My face is chili-red, my shirt soaked with sweat. My breath is coming in short, unsatisfactory gasps. The sushi and sake I had last night are in full revolt. The tiny speakers on the shelf blasting “Living on a Prayer” are definitely not helping. [...]«)
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03.13.07
Posted in AI / Singularity, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 7:27 am by rheil
About Biosingularity
Biosingularity
(»The rate of technical progress amongst humans has been exponentially increasing. According to Ray Kurzweil, as we discover more effective ways to do things, we also discover more effective ways to learn, i.e. language, numbers, written language, philosophy, scientific method, instruments of observation, tallying devices, mechanical calculators, computers, each of these a major advance in our ability to account for information occurring increasingly close together.«)
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02.12.07
Posted in Evolution / Genetics, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 9:58 am by rheil
Dale Carrico
Link: http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2007/02/mass-mediated-hand-holding-depressive.html
(»”Over the past 100 years, films have simultaneously mistrusted and marveled in the possibility of genomic improvement,” comments David Kirby in an intriguing recent article in The Scientist.
Kirby begins his piece with the conjuration of a scene from one of my personal guilty pleasures, the truly (inspired?) kookoo bananas 1996 re-make of The Island of Dr. Moreau, starring Marlon Brando.
“The very essence of the devil is no more than a tiresome collection of genes.” Now imagine Marlon Brando’s voice saying this. Now imagine, as Kirby sketches the scene, in aptly purple prose: “With his white muumuu, rosemary-like beaded necklace and domed ‘Pope-mobile’… Brando’s Moreau suggests the image of a secular priest worshipping at a genetic alter [sic].” [...]«)
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02.08.07
Posted in Critics, Future, Human Enhancement, Politic, Technology, Transhumanism at 8:02 am by rheil
Dale Carrico: Technoprogressivism Beyond Technophilia and Technophobia
(»Technocentrism, Technophilia, and Technophobia
A technophile is a person to whom we attribute a naïve or uncritical enthusiasm for technology, while a technophobe is a person to whom we attribute a no less uncritical dread of or hostility to technology. But what does it tell us that there is no comparably familiar word simply to describe a person who is focused on the impact of technology in a critical way that is attentive both to its promises and its dangers?
Why is it that any technocentric perspective on cultural, historical, political, and social questions is always imagined to be either uncritically technophilic or technophobic? Is it really so impossible to conceive of a critical technocentrism equally alive to real promises and alert to real dangers? [...]«)
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Posted in Ethics, Future, Human Enhancement, Politic, Technology, Transhumanism at 7:48 am by rheil
James Hughes: Democratic Transhumanism 2.0
Abstract
(»Biopolitics is emerging as an axis of modern politics alongside economic politics and cultural politics. Transhumanists, people who embrace technologies that extend and enhance regardless of their effect on “natural” life spans, limitations or social institutions, are the progressive end of the new biopolitical continuum. BioLuddites, who call for bans on technologies that threaten the “natural,” are conservative end of the new biopolitics.
But biopolitics only complicates the preexisting political landscape, they doesn’t supplant it. There are Christian fundamentalists, centrists and socialist-feminists forming alliances to to oppose human genetic engineering and nanotechnology. But the transhumanists are, so far, much less diverse, mostly adhering to one or another flavor of libertarianism. Democratic transhumanists, pro-scitech social democrats or Left technoutopians are conspicuously absent from their theoretical niche in this new political landscape. This essay is an attempt to identify democratic transhumanists and urge their coalescence.
Read the rest of this entry »
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01.31.07
Posted in Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 6:48 am by rheil
Seminar and debate on transhumanism, Lausanne
(»I gave a seminar and participated in a public debate on transhumanism at the University of Lausanne on January 24, 2007, with an audience of about 300 persons of mixed backgrounds.
I gave a simple and non threatening introduction to transhumanism trying to present clear concepts with simple language and without too many big words. Shortly after the beginning I wore my glasses and said that glasses are an example of “transhumanist” technology invented centuries ago. Glasses are, indeed, a simple means to overcome a typical human limitation. In Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”, monks react to the recently invented eyeglasses as to an invention of the devil and a means to cheat god’s will (nothing new under the sun). [...]«)
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01.10.07
Posted in Future, Human Enhancement, Technology, Transhumanism at 7:20 am by rheil
Top Ten Cybernetic Upgrades Everyone Will Want (»Science fiction, computer games, anime… cyborgs are everywhere. Transhumanists are philosophers who believe that one day, cybernetic upgrades will be so powerful, elegant, and inexpensive that everyone will want them. This page lists ten major upgrades that I think will be adopted by 2050.«)
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01.07.07
Posted in Ethics, Future, Human Enhancement, Technology, Transhumanism at 7:04 am by rheil
(“WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?
As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.
What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us!”)
Read the rest of this entry »
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01.05.07
Posted in Anti-Aging, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 9:38 am by rheil
Al Fin Longevity (Blog): (»Primary interest is seeing that the best of humanity survives long enough to reach the next level.«)
Blog with a lot of links and videos about life extension.
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Posted in Critics, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 9:17 am by rheil
Secondhand Smoke: (»This WEB log considers issues involving assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)«)
Give Me That New Transhumanist Religion: (»Transhumanism is, in my view, a branch of scientism, that is, a quasi religion that seeks to use science in ways for which the great method is not meant. Here’s a little proof. A transhumanist named Giulio Prisco is optimistic about the future of the great post human movement.»)
With a comment from Giulio Prisco.
Wesley J. Smith is a slasher of transhumanism. Senior Fellow Discovery Institute (Thinktank).
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01.03.07
Posted in Deutschsprachige Seiten, Human Enhancement, Transhumanism at 7:50 am by rheil
Telepolis [02.01.2007]:
James Hughes: Träumen mit Diderot
(»Der Gedanke der Aufklärung, dass wir uns eine bessere Zukunft erschaffen können, ist noch jung und hat noch immer überall auf der Welt zündende Wirkung.
Die Anfänge der Aufklärung liegen im 17. Jahrhundert. Seither haben ihre Ideen immer wieder Kämpfe um religiöse Toleranz, Freiheit der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Demokratie und persönliche Freiheit ausgelöst. Noch heute wird um Aufklärung und Fortschritt gerungen, und das Schlachtfeld hat mittlerweile sogar unsere Keimzellen und Neuronen erreicht. [...]«)
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12.29.06
Posted in Human Enhancement, Politic, Transhumanism, Transhumanists at 9:18 am by rheil
Cyborg Democracy (“is a nexus for techno-progressives, transmitting a sexy, high-tech vision of a radically democratic future.”)
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Posted in Human Enhancement, Organisations, Transhumanism at 7:34 am by rheil
Betterhumans > Create the Future™ (“Betterhumans helps people understand, anticipate and create the future. Through the production and aggregation of informative and provocative editorial and the creation and application of enabling communications technology, Betterhumans aims to get more people thinking about and discussing the future, inspire people into assuming a proactive and participatory role in its creation and build, lead and support a community of informed forward thinkers.”)
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Posted in Human Enhancement, Organisations, Transhumanism at 7:31 am by rheil
Immortality Institute (“Main Mission: The mission of ImmInst is to conquer the blight of involuntary death. Umbrella Organization ImmInst shall function as an umbrella organization to help its members succeed in working towards the possibility of human physical immortality. This Institute shall serve as a platform for the exhibition, exchange, debate, and creation of concepts and methods toward that end as well as to disseminate any and all relevant information for the purpose of human physical immortality.”)
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