Lifeboat Foundation

The Cyborg and Transhumanist Forum at the Nevada Legislature on May 15, 2019, marked a milestone for the U.S. Transhumanist Party and the Nevada Transhumanist Party. This was the first time that an official transhumanist event was held within the halls of a State Legislature, in one of the busiest areas of the building, within sight of the rooms where legislative committees met. The presenters were approached by tens of individuals – a few legislators and many lobbyists and staff members. The reaction was predominantly either positive or at least curious; there was no hostility and only mild disagreement from a few individuals. Generally, the outlook within the Legislative Building seems to be in favor of individual autonomy to pursue truly voluntary microchip implants. The testimony of Anastasia Synn at the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 26, 2019, in opposition to Assembly Bill 226 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXGessk5c24 — is one of the most memorable episodes of the 2019 Legislative Session for many who heard it. It has certainly affected the outcome for Assembly Bill 226, which was subsequently further amended to restore the original scope of the bill and only apply the prohibition to coercive microchip implants, while specifically exempting microchip implants voluntarily received by an individual from the prohibition. The scope of the prohibition was also narrowed by removing the reference to “any other person” and applying the prohibition to an enumerated list of entities who may not require others to be microchipped: state officers and employees, employers as a condition of employment, and persons in the business of insurance or bail. These changes alleviated the vast majority of the concerns within the transhumanist and cyborg communities about Assembly Bill 226.

This Cyborg and Transhumanist Forum comes at the beginning of an era of transhumanist political engagement with policymakers and those who advise them. It was widely accepted by the visitors to the demonstration tables that technological advances are accelerating, and that policy decisions regarding technology should only be made with adequate knowledge about the technology itself – working on the basis of facts and not fears or misconceptions that arise from popular culture and dystopian fiction. Ryan Starr shared his expertise on the workings and limitations of both NFC/RFID microchips and GPS technology and who explained that cell phones are already far more trackable than microchips ever could be (based on their technical specifications and how those specifications could potentially be improved in the future). U.S. Transhumanist Party Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II introduced visitors to the world of transhumanist literature by bringing books for display – including writings by Aubrey de Grey, Bill Andrews, Ray Kurzweil, Jose Cordeiro, Ben Goertzel, Phil Bowermaster, and Mr. Stolyarov’s own book “Death is Wrong” in five languages. It appears that there is more sympathy for transhumanism within contemporary political circles than might appear at first glance; it is often transhumanists themselves who overestimate the negativity of the reaction they expect to receive. But nobody picketed the event or even called the presenters names; transhumanist ideas, expressed in a civil and engaging way – with an emphasis on practical applications that are here today or due to arrive in the near future – will be taken seriously when there is an opening to articulate them.

Continue reading “Cyborg and Transhumanist Forum at the Nevada State Legislature — May 15, 2019” »

The US government quietly resumed funding experiments on the deadly H5N1 avian flu — research that makes the virus more easily transmissible to mammals.

The researchers say making new strains of the H5N1 flu virus in a secure lab can help them see what might happen naturally in the real world. Sounds logical, but many scientists oppose it because the facts show most biosafety labs aren’t really secure at all, and experts say the risks of a mutated virus escaping outweigh whatever public health benefit comes from creating them.

Continue reading “Hey, let’s fight global pandemics by maybe starting one… Say WHAT?” »

Those who watched the full 51-minute version of Jeff Bezos’ May 9 Blue Moon announcement were treated to a tutorial on the work of Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill. In the 1970s Dr. O’Neill popularized the idea of space colonies that rotate in orbit allowing tens of thousands of inhabitants to live comfortable lives in Earth-like habitats. Bezos even commissioned updated renderings to excite the audience’s imagination.

Bezos articulated, as he has on many occasions that human civilization should and must expand out into the space to live and work in permanent space settlements. Doing so will allow the best planet in the Solar System, the Earth, to become a protected treasure in the vast harshness of space.

He understands that by creating the infrastructure to accelerate economic development in space his vision of space settlement will more rapidly come to fruition. But Bezos is sober about his space colony ambitions. He calls it a multigenerational endeavor. And so it may be.

Continue reading “Achieving Bezos’ bold vision of space settlement requires bold policy direction” »

GEDmatch’s revamped genetic privacy policy could set off legal battles that go all the way to the US Supreme Court.

By Peter Aldhous

The global rate of species extinction “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years,” according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a UN committee, whose report was written by 145 experts from 50 countries.

One million of the planet’s eight million species are threatened with extinction by humans, scientists warned Monday in what is described as the most comprehensive assessment of global nature loss ever.

Their landmark report paints a bleak picture of a planet ravaged by an ever-growing human population, whose insatiable consumption is destroying the natural world.

Continue reading “We are in the midst of an extinction crisis, warn UN scientists” »

From the beginning of the year 2019, the sales of Boox eReaders slightly increase, and so do many other brands such as Kindle, Kobo and Sony. All of them suffered a rapid drop in sales in the previous year but now they are getting back. This may cause by the event that France prohibits students from using smartphones and tablets in schools.

Under the legislation passed in 2018, the French students as old as 15 were not allowed to bring their smartphones as well as tablets to schools from September. The law was originally noted in President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign. Now, one semester has gone, actually what do folks think to this policy? Earlier than that, France endorsed a blanket smartphone ban for drivers, even those who park at the side of the road, so the further action to school is not that surprising. It seems that the French government is getting realized that the control of electronics use is significant to beat back the encroachment of digital technology in everyday life.

Fake news is a threat to American democratic institutions and false information can have far-reaching effects. A new study provides a roadmap for dealing with fake news.

Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides new evidence that people’s beliefs about the source of information affects how they take in that information, even at the level of their automatic responses. They also found that new information can modify or even undo existing impressions caused by fake news.

“We wanted to know whether offering information about the source of news matters for people’s gut-level, automatic reactions,” said Melissa Ferguson, co-author on the paper and psychology professor at Cornell University. “Does knowing that something is fake have lingering pernicious effects that can later shape and influence our thoughts and behavior toward the person? Our studies suggest that establishing credibility for news sources is the right policy to combat fake news.”

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We submitted the Longevity Peace Prize, worth $5 million dollars to be awarded to any longevity activist(s) in the next 5 years who can get a major world government or the UN to declare “aging a disease” as a policy and to help reverse regulatory hurdles on life extension research. Hopefully, this early version of a prize may one day become reality. https://xprize.org/

Just days after North Korea announced it was suspending its testing programme, scientists revealed that the country’s underground nuclear test site had partially collapsed. This assessment was based on data gathered from smaller earthquakes that followed North Korea’s biggest nuclear test in 2017. A new study published in Science has now confirmed the collapse using satellite radar imaging.

The collapse may have played a role in North Korea’s change in policy. If correct, and with the hindsight of this research, we might have speculated that the North Koreans would want to make such an offer of peace. This shows how scientific analysis normally reserved for studying natural earthquakes can be a powerful tool in deciphering political decisions and predicting future policy across the globe.

In fact, another unusual earthquake in South Korea in 2017 also has the potential to affect geopolitics, this time by changing energy policy. “Seismic shift” may be a cliche often used by journalists and policymakers to describe changing political landscapes, but these recent earthquakes along the Korean Peninsula remind us there can really be authentic links between seismic events and global affairs.

Continue reading “Earthquake science could have predicted North Korea’s nuclear climbdown” »