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Posted to youtube.com
Beyond Human: The Cyborg Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AMNNtXdxSI&feature=youtube_gdata
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Posted to ethernettv.net
City: 2050
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/NO-0BS1Eb_Q/
- Tags:
- Future
- technology
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Posted to delicious.com
In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits | Magazine
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/all/1
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Posted to google.com
Genescient Will Have will have Nutrigenomic Products, fully lab tested, by end of 2009
Gregory Benford will be presenting an update of Genescient's work at the Singularity Summit in New York on October 3rd and 4th, 2009.Our laboratory animals live for 5 times the normal lifespan. They have health and vigor. We use their genetic properties to find what works similarly in humans.Genescient applies 21st century genomic technology to identify, screen and develop benign therapeutic substances to defeat the diseases of aging. Genescient's singular approach addresses the complex genomic networks that underlie aging and aging-associated diseases such as cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. We will have nutrigenomic products, fully lab tested, by end of 2009Genescient has released a research paper detailing their study of two common stimulants (caffeine and the stimulant in chocolate) and two common sedatives (valproic acid and lithium).Genescient has found that caffeine consistently impaired mating success in experiments. By contrast, at normal doses theobromine (the chief stimulant in chocolate) was benign. Worse still, caffeine impaired survival and female reproduction. Again, theobromine proved relatively benign for survival and reproduction.Genescient corporate overviewOur focus is to extend healthy human lifespan by using advanced genomics to develop therapeutic substances that attack the diseases of aging. We are the first company founded to exploit artificial selection of animal models for longevity.Our extremely long-lived animal models (Drosophila melanogaster) have been developed over 700 generations. They are an ideal system for the study of aging and age-related disease because Drosophila metabolic genetic pathways that are highly conserved in humans.Our sophisticated analysis cross-links gene function in Drosophila with their human orthologs, thus revealing the targets for therapeutic substance development. To date we have discovered over 100 of these genomic targets, all related to the primary diseases of aging.This large library of targets, enables Genescient to effectively select and test therapeutic drug candidates. To date, Genescient’s “proof-of-concept” testing program has yielded a number of very promising therapeutic substances.Genescient’s screening platform also enables us to partner with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to test and rapidly move forward promising drug candidates. In an era where drug failure at a late clinical trial phase can cost a company hundreds of millions of dollars, Genescient’s unparalleled screening technology helps pharmaceutical companies to rapidly eliminate poor candidates.
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Posted to google.com
Investing for the Long Slump
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/the-long-slump.html
I have no crystal ball with which to predict the Future, a confession that comes as a surprise to some journalists who interview me. Still less do I think I have the ability to out-predict markets. On every occasion when I've considered betting against a prediction market - most recently, betting against Barack Obama as President - I've been glad that I didn't. I admit that I was concerned in advance about the recent complexity crash, but then I've been concerned about it since 1994, which isn't very good market timing.I say all this so that no one panics when I ask:Suppose that the whole global economy goes the way of Japan (which, by the Nikkei 225, has now lost two decades).Suppose the global economy is still in the Long Slump in 2039.Most market participants seem to think this scenario is extremely implausible. Is there a simple way to bet on it at a very low price?If most traders act as if this scenario has a probability of 1%, is there a simple bet, executable using an ordinary brokerage account, that pays off 100 to 1?Why do I ask? Well... in general, it seems to me that other people are not pessimistic enough; they prefer not to stare overlong or overhard into the dark; and they attach too little probability to things operating in a mode outside their past experience.But in this particular case, the question is motivated by my thinking, "Conditioning on the proposition that the Earth as we know it is still here in 2040, what might have happened during the preceding thirty years?" There are many possible answers to this question, but one answer might take the form of significantly diminished investment in research and development, which in turn might result from a Long Slump.So - given the way in which the question arises - I know nothing about this hypothetical Long Slump, except that it diminished investment in R&D in general, and computing hardware and computer science in particular.The Long Slump might happen for roughly Japanese reasons. It might happen because the global financial sector stays screwed up forever. It might happen due to a gentle version of Peak Oil (a total crash would require a rather different "investment strategy"). It might happen due to deglobalization. Given the way in which the question arises, the only thing I want to assume is global stagnation for thirty years, saying nothing burdensome about the particular causes.What would be the most efficient way to bet on that, requiring the least initial investment for the highest and earliest payoff under the broadest Slump conditions?
- Tags:
- Current Affairs
- Future
- Disaster
- Finance
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Posted to google.com
Seduced by Imagination
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/souleating-dreams.html
Previously in series: Justified Expectation of Pleasant Surprises"Vagueness" usually has a bad name in rationality - connoting skipped steps in reasoning and attempts to avoid falsification. But a rational view of the Future should be vague, because the information we have about the Future is weak. Yesterday I argued that justified vague hopes might also be better hedonically than specific foreknowledge - the power of pleasant surprises.But there's also a more severe warning that I must deliver: It's not a good idea to dwell much on imagined pleasant futures, since you can't actually dwell in them. It can suck the emotional energy out of your actual, current, ongoing life.Epistemically, we know the Past much more specifically than the Future. But also on emotional grounds, it's probably wiser to compare yourself to Earth's past, so you can see how far we've come, and how much better we're doing. Rather than comparing your life to an imagined future, and thinking about how awful you've got it Now.Having set out to explain George Orwell's observation that no one can seem to write about a Utopia where anyone would want to live - having laid out the various Laws of Fun that I believe are being violated in these dreary Heavens - I am now explaining why you shouldn't apply this knowledge to invent an extremely seductive Utopia and write stories set there. That may suck out your soul like an emotional vacuum cleaner.
I briefly remarked on this phenomenon earlier, and someone said, "Define 'suck out your soul'." Well, it's mainly a tactile thing: you can practically feel the pulling sensation, if your dreams wander too far into the Future. It's like something out of H. P. Lovecraft: The Call of Eutopia. A professional hazard of having to stare out into vistas that humans were meant to gaze upon, and knowing a little too much about the lighter side of existence.But for the record, I will now lay out the components of "soul-sucking", that you may recognize the bright abyss and steer your thoughts away: Your emotional energy drains away into your imagination of Paradise: You find yourself thinking of it more and more often. The actual challenges of your current existence start to seem less interesting, less compelling; you think of them less and less. Comparing everything to your imagined perfect world heightens your annoyances and diminishes your pleasures.
You go into an affective death spiral around your imagined scenario; you're reluctant to admit anything bad could happen on your assumptions, and you find more and more nice things to say. Your mind begins to forget the difference between fiction and real life: You originally made many arbitrary or iffy choices in constructing your scenario. You forget that the Future is actually more unpredictable than this, and that you made your choices using limited foresight and merely human optimizing ability. You forget that, in real life, at least some of your amazing good ideas are guaranteed not to work as well as they do in your imagination. You start wanting the exact specific Paradise you imagined, and worrying about the disappointment if you don't get that exact thing.
Hope can be a dangerous thing. And when you've just been hit hard - at the moment when you most need hope to keep you going - that's also when the real world seems most painful, and the world of imagination becomes most seductive.It's a balancing act, I think. One needs enough Fun Theory to truly and legitimately justify hope in the future. But not a detailed vision so seductive that it steals emotional energy from the real life and real challenge of creating that future. You need "a light at the end of the secular rationalist tunnel" as Roko put it, but you don't want people to drift away from their bodies into that light.So how much light is that, exactly? Ah, now that's the issue.I'll start with a simple and genuine question: Is what I've already said, enough?Is knowing the abstract fun theory and being able to pinpoint the exact flaws in previous flawed Utopias, enough to make you look forward to tomorrow? Is it enough to inspire a stronger will to live? To dispel worries about a long dark tea-time of the soul? Does it now seem - on a gut level - that if we could really build an AI and really shape it, the resulting future would be very much worth staying alive to see?
- Tags:
- Future
- Psychology
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