"If neuroscientist Henry Markram had a dollar for every neuron he wants to map, he still wouldn't have enough money. As it happens, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) researcher has a billion euros, or $1.38 billion, from the European Union to spend over the next ten years, but the normal means of determining a neuron's activity can cost $1 million and take a year. By the time he got through the 3000-odd pathways shown in the photograph of a pinhead-sized slice of brain behind him in a conference room last month, he'd be flat broke, decades older, and he'd still have to map countless more pinheads' worth of neurons to understand the brain. As Markram has been telling everyone since he got the €1 billion nod to lead the Human Brain Project, the way researchers study the brain needs to change. His approach—and it's not the only one—stands on an emerging type of computing that he and others claim will let machines learn more like humans do. They could then offer generalizations from what's known about a handful of neural pathways and find shortcuts to understanding the rest of the brain, he argues. The concept will rely as much on predictions of neural behavior as on experimental observations. Yet such predictions will have to come from people until they can better train their computers to do it. So-called cognitive computing, which relies on recognizing elements of a familiar thing in new settings, is difficult to achieve through the kind of raw calculation to which most supercomputers are suited. It's not like winning at chess or even "Jeopardy!", two tasks IBM machines have mastered. But IBM researchers are already turning Watson, the supercomputer that beat "Jeopardy!", into a recipe-remixing machine, and they are sure to program it for other tasks that require massive data sifting and some level of semantic analysis. That's the direction Markram expects computing to go for biologists, who need their computers to think more like people do. Human intelligence seems to rely on the art of the analogy, as Douglas Hofstadter writes in his new book on artificial intelligence, which James Somers explores at length in The Atlantic this month. That's why CAPTCHAS have been so hard to defeat: the letters are easy for a computer to learn but difficult to recognize out of context. Yet we can quickly hypothesize what's important enough about a letter to recognize it when it is distorted. Markram is counting on those computing capabilities to improve over the course of the project, he says. He's also counting on being able to persuade his colleagues that such computer-generated hypotheses about neural behavior will be good enough to start making higher-level hypotheses about the brain's emergent structures. The computer they will use, an updated version of the Blue Brain project's Swiss-owned IBM Blue Gene, will use a hybrid memory approach, which is handy for keeping massive datasets close to the processors, but it does not yet offer any special artificial intelligence. In the meantime Markram is focusing his efforts on another kind of computing: cultural. A major element of the Human Brain Project is the ability to unite researchers around common problems and share questions, findings, and interpretations: "we're basically layering social networking on top of neuroscience," Markram says. But he will have a lot of persuading to do. One colleague told The Observer; "whatever your take is on Big Neuro, do not expect them to make good on all their promises to find causes, let alone cures, for any of the big neuro diseases they list in 10 years, and as for new computing technologies? They are pulling your leg." To his credit, Markram did not oversell cures to diseases during a conversation with journalists earlier this month shortly after the project's formal launch. He also gave a realistic reply to a question about whether cognitive findings from the brain project could change the way supercomputing is done: the short version is "not yet." Instead, the remarkable thing about the Human Brain Project may not be its computing power so much as its convening power. The social networking layer, Markram says, "is designed for tens of thousands of scientists to be able to collaboratively work on unifying all the knowledge that we have about the brain." Photo: Swiss National Supercomputing Center
The Immortality Institute (ImmInst.org) is an international, not-for-profit, membership-based organization ("501-3-c status" in the United States). Its mission is "to conquer the blight of involuntary death". To advance this mission, ImmInst.org aims to provide, among other things:
a repository of high-quality information,
an open public forum for the free exchange of information and views,
an infrastructure to support community projects and initiatives, and
the facilities for supporting an international community of those with an interest in life extension.
ImmInst.org hosts an online forum, publishes books, creates films, sponsors conferences and supports a varied portfolio of community projects in life-extension research and activism. ImmInst.org is governed by a board of 7 directors who are elected for a 2-year term by the membership. Many ImmInst.org activities are managed by an Executive Director who is appointed by the board. Membership status is acquired by donation as a student, regular or lifetime member. ImmInst.org is supported by donations and by sponsored advertising. To make a one-time donation or to become a member of ImmInst.org, please see the "Donate" page. ImmInst.org was founded in 2002 by Bruce J. Klein.
"Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have discovered that the skin is capable of communicating with the liver. The discovery has surprised the scientists, and they say that it may help our understanding of how skin diseases can affect the rest of the body."
We have to force Computing to be superior to animal experiments.
One model of Intelligence that can be used for Intelligence Engineering, is a Society of Mind. Many hierarchies of 'programs' that exist selfishly playing off each other in bundles
It would be a brave scientist to argue men are outside the laws of physics.
If we are part of the laws of physics, it is logical we are absolutely determined by them.
Free will is an illusion as Parmonides said.
This is our future, as selves and as societies:
You need may to turn the sound off!
Anyone who doesn't modify might be smashed up converting to radiant heat, by the laws of thermodynamics.
but it might be noted we have incomplete knowledge (eg gluons and protons may have fields like gravity and higgs). Confusion over the words physical and reality arise in this pretty good vid:
(reality is 'the total number of facts' : facts are events: events are relationships between one thing and any number of things: physical means 'something in Nature' and physics 'the study of things in Nature').
Quantum Archaeology isn't going so far to resurrect people!
"In Brief Engineered materials such as chip-grade silicon and fiber-optic glass underpin the modern world. Yet designing new materials has historically involved a frustrating and inefficient amount of guesswork. Streamlined versions of the equations of quantum mechanics—along with supercomputers that, using those equations, virtually test thousands of materials at a time—are eliminating much of that guesswork. Researchers are now using this method, called high-throughput computational materials design, to develop new batteries, solar cells, fuel cells, computer chips, and other technologies." Scientific American
Quantum Archaeology can been seen as an attack on the uniqueness of man. It is. We are physics, and this the laws of physics. in motion. Any number of yous are manufacturable given sufficient technology. Robert Ettinger has dealt with this in Chapter 8 of the Prospect of Immortality (free online).
We are MORE imortal not less, with Quantum Archaeology:
death is not only avoidable.
it is logically impossible if our species survives OR the cosmos is infinite, since everything that can happen probably will happen.
Nothing done is concealable.
Information is incapable of destruction.
Intelligence in machines is rising.
Computation is increasing.
Machines are getting smaller and more dexterous.
Archaeology is improving.
All this must result in resurrection.
Almost no-one's heard of Quantum Archaeology, so it's not being discussed outside a handful of us who are all brought up to believe in death: so none of us really internalise it as part of our lifestyles and planning, even though we accept it scientifically.
Humanoid Robots are next and will hit during 2015, tumbling in price even faster than 3 did printers which advented for the public 12 months ago.
2017 gemomic medicine will hit similarly. Most illnesses will be abolished in living people.
2022 Machine intelligence and Quantum Computing will hit, with complexity dwarfing SiRi.
2023 The Weather will be steered by A.I. machines
2024 atomic assemblers (like 3D printers but on atomic scales eg fancy an instant gourmet meal... a new car..it will take garbage and dust from the air and convert it.
2027 Superintelligence will be months away, and Resurrection of the dead already begun with space colonisation.
Hybrid Spaceplane Engine Could Change The Economics Of Space Travel - FORBES
Scientists are testing a new form of rocket technology that could lead to spaceplanes that launch satellites, carry passengers or fly anywhere in the world in four hours, all by taking off from a runway. Barring any regulatory or engineering hitches, the technology is being proposed for use with an aircraft named Skylon, which could be automated to fly into orbit. Crucial to the technology being developed by the engineers at Reaction Engines Limited is their Sabre engine, which takes in air like a jet engine at lower speeds, but switches to rocket mode to get into orbit. The idea has been around since the 80s, but technology is only just getting to the point where it’s commercially viable. The Sabre’s hybrid jet and rocket engine uses both hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust, avoiding the need for the throwaway rocket propellants, and also making flights into space cheaper. Here is where Reaction Engines has the potential to be truly disruptive. The company estimates it would cost $12 billion to develop the Skylon, which sounds like a lot but is roughly comparable to the price of developing Airbus’ A380 superjumbo or the Ariane 5 rocket, which is manufactured by Airbus’ sister company, Astrium. Each launch of the Skylon would cost roughly $35 million, but, the company adds, that could fall to $10 million as the number of Skylons increase and $2 million if there’s a rise in certain satellites that calls for more launches." more>> http://www.forbes.co...f-space-travel/
" Boehm has been involved with nanotechnology and especially nanomedicine since 1996, and has been developing numerous concepts and designs for advanced nanomedical tools. His ultimate goal is to develop and transform these concepts into real world applications for global benefit. During our conversation, we spoke about current nanomedical efforts and those still yet to come — including molecule-sized robots and capsules that will detect and treat diseases. But we also talked about the potential for nanotechnology to radically alter human capacities, such as giving us infrared and night vision, extended lifespans, and the ability to live and work in outer space and planetary colonies. We also discussed the downsides and what we'll have to do to protect our nano-infused selves from hackers and viruses. more
New York Risks $225M on Early-Stage Solar and Lighting Startups
Advanced silicon solar-cell technology gets a big investment from the state of New York.
" Late last month, Silevo, an advanced silicon solar-cell startup, announced that it was building a 200-megawatt solar cell factory in Buffalo, New York. According to the Buffalo News, the Empire State will be investing $225 million into the facilities of Silevo and LED firm Soraa, with the aim of employing 475 people at the Riverbend site. Full production is anticipated in 2015. Silevo has also agreed to spend $750 million in the region. These are the aspirational promises typically made at state-funded energy hub unveilings across the nation. Silevo had $16 million in revenue last year and is not yet profitable, according to reports. Founded in 2007 by a team from Applied Materials, Silevo has raised $75 million in funding. The firm has a $33 million, 32-megawatt production facility in China and production facilities in Fremont, California. Silevo Technology
As we've reported, Silevo claims its tunneling junction device uses elements of standard crystalline silicon solar cells and elements of thin-film solar cells. The silicon-based PV cell combines n-type substrates, thin-film passivation layers and a tunneling oxide layer that yields high conversion efficiencies. The Silevo cells’ high voltage-to-current ratio, CEO Zheng Xu has stated, make them capable of “greater than 21 percent conversion efficiency.” The hybrid concept’s use of oxide as the middle layer evolved from experimental work with metal insulated semiconductor cells carried out by solar energy pioneer Martin Green in Australia in the late 1970s. Company representatives have claimed that an 18.3-percent-efficient module with costs below $1 per watt will soon be in volume production. Silevo competes with high-efficiency panels from SunPower, Panasonic, Sanyo, and Suniva. Most vendors aim high-efficiency panels toward area-constrained applications (like Japan's rooftops), or, as in the case of vertically integrated SunPower, utility applications." http://www.greentech...PV-Cell-Factory
" Nvidia, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker, is well known for inventing the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Its chips have long souped up gaming PCs, laptops, workstations and supercomputers. But you might be surprised to learn how the company is revving up cars to become sophisticated, sensor-driven, connected mobility machines. Four million cars today already have a 21st century tiger in the tank—in the form of Nvidia's Tegra chips. Another 25 million more cars are in the pipeline—by virtue of relationships with long list of high-end German luxury auto brands like BMW/Rolls Royce, Volkswagen/Audi, and Aston Martin. Japanese and American car companies can't be far off. Nvidia’s automotive development kit, called Jetson, is an under-the-hood car-stereo-sized box that provides all the I/O connectors a modern car needs, including USB, Ethernet and HDMI. Nvidia system-on-a-chip processors—essentially fully functional, self-contained computers—power the instrument clusters, navigation and infotainment. It’s what provides the computing horsepower for the giant dual-touchscreen console on the Tesla Model S. Nvidia provides some of the most complex 3D rendering for games and technical design—so it has a decisive head start in the brave new world of automotive computing. Other players—Qualcomm or even Apple—will make a similar transition from consumer electronics to cars, according Thilo Koslowski, an analyst of vehicle information and communication technology at Gartner. “Yet Nvidia is pushing the envelope,” said Koslowski. “It’s like a Ferrari versus a Volkswagen.” Where Sensors Meet The Road
EXTROPY: A measure of intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, and growth.
EXTROPIANISM: The philosophy that seeks to increase extropy.
Extropianism is a transhumanist philosophy: Like humanism, transhumanism values reason and humanity and sees no grounds for belief in unknowable, supernatural forces externally controlling our destiny, but goes further in urging us to push beyond the merely human stage of evolution. As physicist Freeman Dyson has said: "Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word." Religions traditionally have provided a sense of meaning and purpose in life, but have also suppressed intelligence and stifled progress. The Extropian philosophy provides an inspiring and uplifting meaning and direction to our lives, while remaining flexible and firmly founded in science, reason, and the boundless search for improvement.
1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION: Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to selfactualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end.
2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION: Affirming continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through reason and critical thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation.
3. DYNAMIC OPTIMISM: Fueling dynamic action with positive expectations. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, shunning both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.
4. INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY: Applying science and technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment.
5. SPONTANEOUS ORDER: Supporting decentralized, voluntaristic social coordination processes. Fostering tolerance, diversity, long-term thinking, personal responsibility, and individual liberty.
These principles are developed below. Deeper treatments can be found in various issues of EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought Spontaneous Order in #7, Dynamic Optimism in #8, and Self-Transformation in #10.
1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION
Extropians recognize the unique place of our species, and our opportunity to advance nature's evolution to new peaks. Beginning as mindless matter, parts of nature developed in a slow evolutionary ascendence, leading to progressively more powerful brains. Chemical reactions generated tropistic behavior, which was superseded by instinctual and Skinnerian stimulus-response behavior, and then by conscious learning and experimentation. With the advent of the conceptual awareness of humankind, the rate of advancement sharply accelerated as intelligence, technology, and the scientific method were applied to our condition. We seek to sustain and quicken this evolutionary process of expanding extropy, transcending biological and psychological limits into posthumanity.
In aspiring to posthumanity, we reject natural and traditional limitations on our possibilities. We champion the rational use of science and technology to eradicate constraints on lifespan, intelligence, personal vitality, freedom, and experience. We recognize the absurdity of meekly accepting "natural" limits to our lifespans. The future will bring a graduation from Earth the cradle of human and transhuman intelligence and the inhabitation of the cosmos.
Resource limits are not immutable. Extropians affirm a rational, market-mediated environmentalism aimed at sustaining and enhancing the conditions for our flourishing. We oppose apocalyptic environmentalism which hallucinates catastrophe, issues a stream of irresponsible doomsday predictions, and attempts to strangle our continued evolution. Intelligent management of resources and environment will be fostered by the Extropian goal of vastly extended lifespan. The market price system encourages conservation, substitution, and innovation, preventing any need for a brake on growth and progress. Migration into space will immensely enlarge the energy and resources accessible to our civilization. Extended lifespans will foster wisdom and foresight, while restraining recklessness and profligacy.
No mysteries are sacrosanct, no limits unquestionable; the unknown will yield to the ingenious mind. We seek to understand the universe and to master reality up to and beyond any currently foreseeable limits.
2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION
Extropians affirm reason, critical inquiry, intellectual independence, and honesty. We reject blind faith and the passive, comfortable thinking that leads to dogma, mysticism, and conformity. Our commitment to positive self-transformation requires us to critically analyze our current beliefs, behaviors, and strategies. Extropians therefore feel proud by readily learning from error rather than by professing infallibility. We prefer analytical thought to fuzzy but comfortable delusion, empiricism to mysticism, and independent evaluation to conformity. We affirm a philosophy of life but distance ourselves from religious dogma because of its blind faith, debasement of human worth, and systematic irrationality.
We seek to become better than we are, while affirming our current worth. Perpetual self-improvement physical, intellectual, psychological, and ethical requires us to continually re-examine our lives. Self-esteem in the present cannot mean self-satisfaction, since a probing mind can always envisage a superior self in the future. Extropians are committed to deepening their wisdom, honing their rationality, and augmenting their physical and intellectual capabilities. We choose challenge over comfort, innovation over emulation, transformation over torpor.
Extropians are neophiles and experimentalists who track new research for more efficient means of achieving goals and who are willing to explore novel technologies of self-transformation. In our quest to advance to a posthuman stage, we rely on our own judgment, seek our own path, and reject both blind conformity and mindless rebellion. Extropians frequently diverge from the mainstream because they refuse to be chained by any dogma, whether religious, political, or intellectual. Extropians choose their values and behavior reflectively, standing firm when required but responding flexibly to new conditions.
Personal responsibility and autonomy go hand-in-hand with self-experimentation. Extropians take responsibility for the consequences of their choices, refusing to blame others for the results of their own free actions. Experimentation and self-transformation require risks; we wish to be free to evaluate potential risks and benefits for ourselves, applying our own judgment, and assuming responsibility for the outcome. We seek neither to rule others nor to be ruled. We vigorously resist those who use the institutionalized coercion of the State to impose their judgments of the safety and effectiveness of various means of self-experimentation. Personal responsibility and selfdetermination are incompatible with authoritarian centralized control, which stifles the choices and spontaneous ordering of autonomous persons.
Coercion, whether for the purported "good of the whole" or for the paternalistic protection of the individual, is unacceptable to us. Compulsion breeds ignorance and weakens the connection between personal choice and personal outcome, thereby destroying personal responsibility. Extropians are rational individualists, living by their own judgment, making reflective, informed choices, profiting from both success and shortcoming.
As neophiles, Extropians study advanced, emerging, and future technologies for their self-transformative potential. We support biomedical research to understand and control the aging process. We examine any plausible means of conquering death, including interim measures like biostasis, and long-term possibilities such as migration of personality from biological bodies into superior embodiments ("uploading").
We practice and plan for biological and neurological augmentation through means such as neurochemical enhancers, computers and electronic networks, General Semantics, fuzzy logic, and other guides to effective thinking, meditation and visualization techniques, accelerated learning strategies, applied cognitive psychology, and soon neural-computer integration. Shrugging off the limits imposed on us by our natural heritage, we apply the evolutionary gift of our rational, empirical intelligence, aiming to surpass the confines of our humanity.
3. DYNAMIC OPTIMISM
Extropians espouse a positive, dynamic, empowering attitude. Seeing no rational support for belief in a non-physical "afterlife", we seek to realize our ideals in this world. Rather than enduring an unfulfilling life sustained by a desperate longing for an illusory heaven, we direct our energies enthusiastically into moving toward our ever-evolving vision.
Living vigorously, effectively, and joyfully, requires dismissing gloom, defeatism, and ingrained cultural negativism. Problems technical, social, psychological, ecological are to be acknowledged but not allowed to dominate our thinking and our direction. We respond to gloom and defeatism by exploring and exploiting new possibilities. Extropians hold an optimistic view of the future, foreseeing potent antidotes to many ancient human ailments, requiring only that we take charge and create that future. Dynamic optimism disallows passively waiting and wishing for tomorrow; it propels us exuberantly into immediate activity, confidently confronting today's challenges while generating more potent solutions for our future.
We question limits others take for granted. Observing accelerating scientific and technical learning, ascending standards of living, and evolving social and moral practices, we project continuing progress. Today there are more researchers studying aging, medicine, computers, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other enabling disciplines than in all of history. Technological and social development continue to accelerate leading, in the eyes of some of us, to a Singularity a time in the future when everything will be so radically different from today, and changing so fast, that we cannot accurately foresee life beyond that horizon. Extropians strive to maintain the pace of progress by encouraging support for crucial research, and pioneering the implementation of its results.
Adopting dynamic optimism means focusing on possibilities and opportunities, being alert to solutions and potentialities. It means refusing to whine about what cannot be avoided, learning from mistakes rather than dwelling on them in a victimizing, punishing manner. Dynamic optimism requires us to take the initiative, to jump up and plough into our difficulties, our actions declaring that we can achieve our goals, rather than sitting back and submerging ourselves in defeatist thinking.
Our actions and words radiate dynamic optimism, inspiring others to excel. We are responsible for taking the initiative in spreading this invigorating optimism; sustaining and strengthening our own dynamism is more easily achieved in a mutally reinforcing environment. We stimulate optimism in others by communicating our Extropian ideas and by living our ideals.
Dynamic optimism and passive faith are incompatible. Faith in a better future is confidence that an external force, whether God, State, or extraterrestrials, will solve our problems. Faith, or the Pollyanna/Dr. Pangloss variety of optimism, breeds passivity by promising progress as a gift bestowed on us by superior forces. But, in return for the gift, faith requires a fixed belief in and supplication to external forces, thereby creating dogmatic beliefs and irrationally rigid behavior. Dynamic optimism fosters initiative and intelligence, assuring us that we are capable of improving life through our own efforts. Opportunities and possibilities are everywhere, calling to us to seize them and to build upon them. Attaining our goals requires only that we believe in ourselves, work diligently, and be willing to revise our strategies.
Where others see difficulties, we see challenges. Where others give up, we move forward. Where others say enough is enough, we say: Forward! Upward! Outward! We espouse personal, social, and technological evolution into ever higher forms. Extropians see too far and change too rapidly to feel future shock. Let us advance the wave of evolutionary progress.
4. INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY
Extropians affirm the necessity and desirability of science and technology. We use practical methods to advance our goals of expanded intelligence, superior physical abilities, self-constitution, and immortality, rather than joining the well-trodden path of comfortable self-delusion, mysticism, and credulity. We regard science and technology as indispensable means to the evolution and achievement of our most noble values, ideals, and visions. We seek to foster these disciplined forms of intelligence, and to direct them toward eradicating the barriers to our extropian objectives, radically transforming both the internal and external conditions of existence.
Technology is a natural extension and expression of human intellect and will, of creativity, curiosity, and imagination. We foresee and encourage the development of ever more flexible, smart, responsive technology. We will co-evolve with the products of our minds, integrating with them, finally merging with our intelligent technology in a posthuman synthesis, amplifying our abilities and extending our freedom.
Profound technological innovation excites rather than frightens us. We welcome change, expanding our horizons, exploring new territory boldly and inventively. We favor careful and cautious development of powerful technologies, but will neither stifle evolutionary advancement nor cringe before the unfamiliar. Regarding timidity and stagnation as unworthy of us, we choose to stride valiantly into the future. Extropians therefore favor surging ahead delighting in future shock rather than ignobly stagnating or reverting to primitivism. Intelligent use of biotechnology, nanotechnology, space and other technologies, in conjunction with a free market system, can remove resource constraints and discharge environmental pressures.
We see the coming years and decades as a time of enormous changes, changes that we can use to vastly expand our opportunities and abilities, transforming our lives for the better. This technological transformation will be accelerated by genetic engineering, life extending biosciences, intelligence intensifiers, smarter interfaces to swifter computers, neural-computer integration, virtual reality, enormous and interconnected databases, swift electronic communications, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, neural networks, artificial life, off-planet migration, and nanotechnology.
5. SPONTANEOUS ORDER
Extropians emphasize self-generating, organic, spontaneous orders over centrally planned, imposed orders. Both types of order have their place, but the under-appreciated spontaneous variety are crucial for our social interactions. Spontaneous orders have properties that make them especially conducive to Extropian goals and values; we see spontaneously ordering processes in many contexts, including biological evolution, the self-regulation of ecosystems, artificial life studies, memetics (the study of replicating information patterns), agoric open systems (market-like allocation of computational resources), brain function and neurocomputation.
The principle of spontaneous order is embodied in the free market system a system that does not yet exist in a pure form. We are evolving away from tribalism, feudalism, authoritarianism, and democracy towards a polycentric system of distributed power shared among autonomous agents, their plans coordinated by the economic network. The free market allows complex institutions to develop, encourages innovation, rewards individual initiative, cultivates personal responsibility, fosters diversity, and decentralizes power. Market economies spur the technological and social progress essential to the Extropian philosophy. We have no use for the technocratic idea of central control by self-proclaimed experts. No group of experts can understand and control the endless complexity of an economy and society. Expert knowledge is best harnessed and transmitted through the superbly efficient mediation of the free market's price signals signals that embody more information than any person or organization could ever gather.
Sustained progress and effective, rational decision-making require the diverse sources of information and differing perspectives that evolve in spontaneous orders. Centralized command of behavior constrains exploration, diversity, and dissenting opinion. Respecting spontaneous order means supporting voluntaristic, autonomy-maximizing institutions as opposed to rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian groupings with their bureaucratic structure, suppression of innovation and dissent, and smothering of individual incentives. Our understanding of spontaneous orders grounds our opposition to self-proclaimed and involuntarily imposed "authorities", and makes us skeptical of political solutions, unquestioning obedience to leaders, and inflexible hierarchies.
Making effective use of a spontaneously ordering social system requires a degree of tolerance and self-restraint, allowing others to pursue their lives as they choose, just as we wish to be free to go our own way. Mutual progress and fulfillment will result from a cooperative and benevolent attitude towards all those who respect our rights. Tolerating diversity and disagreement requires us to maintain control of the impulses built into the human organism, and to uphold demanding standards of rational personal behavior. Extropians are guided in their actions by studying the fields of strategy, decision theory, game theory, and ethology. These reveal to us the benefits of cooperation, and encourage the long-term thinking appropriate to persons seeking an unlimited lifespan.
CONCLUSION
These are principles not only of belief but of action. We become transhuman only when we have fully integrated these values into our lives, when we have consciously transformed ourselves ready for the future, rising above outmoded human beliefs and behaviors. When technology allows us to reconstitute ourselves physiologically, genetically, and neurologically, we who have become transhuman will be primed to transform ourselves into posthumans persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual, and psychological capacity, self-programming, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals.
As posthumans we will both embody extropy and generate more more intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, and growth. The Extropian Principles serve as a codification of values helpful in guiding us into the future. These Principles continue to evolve and cannot replace independent thinking by the individual.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My thanks to all those who have commented on the numerous drafts of the revised Principles, especially Jamie Dinkelacker, Derek Ryan (aka Derek Strong), and Ralph Whelan.
COPYRIGHT POLICY
The Extropian Principles 2.6 may be reproduced in any publication, private or public, physical or electronic, without need for further authorization, so long as they appear unedited, in their entirety and with this notice. Notification of publication or distribution would be appreciated.
"Sensoria’s $149 kit comes with both the sock and the anklet which works with an accompanying app to give its wearer feedback. The sock features sensors on the inside that detect pressure, so the sock can tell whether you’re putting more weight on a certain part of your foot or if you’re landing on the balls of your feet as you run. The electronic anklet can also monitor weight distribution and cadence in addition to speeds, calories, altitude and distance like other fitness devices. The app will be available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone."
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s scientists have successfully converted human stem cells grown in the laboratory to a state that is closer to cells formed in natural biological development than was previously possible. Researchers at Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) had worked on human embryonic stem cells (hESC) cultured in the lab. They then brought them to a state that is closer to cells found in the human blastocyst, which is a structure that forms five days after fertilisation. In a statement, GIS, a research centre under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore, described the work as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine. Human embryonic stem cells, including those grown in the lab, are known to have the remarkable ability to differentiate into various types of cells in the adult body. In the field of regenerative medicine, these cells are potentially a limitless resource to generate cells of different body parts such as the eye, liver and brain. Previously, human blastocyst cells cultured in the lab would adopt molecular differences, which limit their use in therapeutic applications or disease modelling. Using previously established hESC, GIS researchers screened for culture conditions that could induce a stable change of cell state. They found that the use of a specific combination of small molecules and growth factors could convert such cells cultured in the lab to a state that resembles cells in the native blastocysts.
GIS executive director Ng Huck Hui said: "For the past 15 years, scientists could only work on a single hESC state. We now provide a novel cell state for all hESC applications.” He added: "The results from the study will open many new possibilities to study human development and disease." These findings are published in the current issue of science journal Cell Stem Cell. "
notes physicists, mathematicians and statisticians in Archaeology!
Prof Paula Reimer
Qualifications
BSc in Physics 1974 Iowa State University MSc in Biophysics 1976 Iowa State University PhD University of Washington (1998)
Professor Paula Reimer Prof Paula Reimer said the project built on research begun in the 1980s at Queen's University Belfast
DATING BREAKTHROUGH FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS!
The Rosetta Stone was one of the biggest finds denoueing Hieroglyphs.
BBC 3rd dec 2013
" Prof Paula Reimer, along with two professors from the University of Sheffield, has developed a new carbon dating calibration curve.
It will provide improved accuracy to archaeologists, environmental scientists and climate researchers who rely on carbon dating.
The research has been published in the international journal Radiocarbon.
Prof Caitlin Buck from the University of Sheffield, said: "We are proud to have developed such an important tool for archaeologists and environmental scientists, allowing them to more accurately date their findings and reduce uncertainty about the timings of major events. "We're also grateful to the more than 30 other scientists who have shared data and research ideas with us to make it all possible."
Quantum Archaeology anticipates vast numbers of new techniques many based on maths.
Sheffield University Maths and Statistics department.
nearly 1000 biblical manuscrips were found called the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves
wiki The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank. They were found in caves about a mile inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name.[1] The texts are of great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the earliest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Biblecanon, along with extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. The texts are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, mostly on parchment but with some written on papyrus and bronze.[2] The manuscripts have been dated to various ranges between 408BCE and 318 CE.[3] Bronze coins found on the site form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus (135–104 BCE) and continuing until the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE).[4] The scrolls have traditionally been identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, although some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.[5][6]
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