Some translated excerpts of Roberto Guerra’s TRANSVISION 2010 Verso il Futurismo Scientifico (original in Italian), with comments. Roberto is one of the leading Italian Futurist (not Neo-Futurist: Futurism is always Neo) artists and, like all Futurist writers, he uses language in a mercurial and unconventional way which makes his writings a pleasure to read, but difficult to translate. My translation is understandable, but does not have the futurist sparks of the original, and I encourage those who read Italian to read the original.
“Soon (October 2010, Milano) starts Transvision 2010, the periodic event of the Transhumanist Movement, the futurology of the age of Internet, globally disseminated. A Great Event once promoted by the Humanity + (ex W.T.A) mother-ship. This edition is organized by the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT).”
Of course, the “mother-ship” Humanity+ will be represented by many participants and speakers, including the Chair David Orban, the Vice Chair Ben Goertzel and the Executive Director Alex Lightman. From this article is evident that TransVision 2010 will not be focused only on contemporary and future scientific advances, but also on the synergies between Science and Art, of which contemporary Italian Futurism represents one of the best examples.
“The AIT, in a recent and very significant turn of the movement toward activism in the media, collaborates with the promoters of contemporary Futurism: Graziano Cecchini (well known for the Red Fountain performance and other futurist actions, the only italian artist in the Taschen Usa 2010 catalog), Antonio Saccoccio (the net-futurist digital natives of the web), Giovanni Tuzet (teacher at the Bocconi in Milano, theorist of logic futurism) and the author [Roberto] (writer and electronic poet). A futurology-transhumanism-neofuturism synergy, officially defined in the year of the futurist centenary, with the live centenary in Ferrara-emphasized by Rai Due [Italian television] in The Future of Futurism… and the book published by the AIT Divenire 3 Futurismo: the re-invention of futurism in its essence, dynamic and techno-scientific ante litteram….”
Transhumanists of the world, unite and come to Milan to meet Italian Futurists! Many of the Futurist artists, writers and theorists above will participate in TransVision 2010. Issue 3 of the AIT’s print magazine Divenire, dedicated to Futurism, is available online.
“[Riccardo] Campa [in his recent book Mutare o Perire (Change or Perish - The Challenge of Transhumanism)] emphasizes also the need for the collaboration of the artists more attuned to the new cyber-cultures (for example the writers- in Italy, the young connectivists like Verso, Battisti and others- science-fiction film makers, even the still leading futurist aesthetics) to facilitate overcoming a certain future shock, whose neo-obscurantist symptoms are often clearly evident in old media (like the printed press), in Italy, in certain cultural circles historically entrenched in obsolete epistemologies, para-religious or para-secular and ideological (right/left together… not surprisingly!), the well known gap between the national humanistic tradition and… the Earth rapidly spinning in the universe. The urgency of new paradigms, also social and cultural, and especially institutional and economic, insists Campa, appears even more urgent in view of the most advanced frontiers of contemporary science, which is now close, beginning in the second half of this century, to make reality of apparently science fictional ideas like human hibernation, cloning, Artificial Intelligence, Mind-Up Loading (that is, the transfer of human consciousness in cloned, robotic or even virtual bodies, practically a form of semi-immortality), the so-called technological Singularity, not to speak of very current and “vulgar” developments like cognitive science, education after Internet, online information, eBooks, domotics, cybersex, almost total autimation, space travel, GMO and nanotechnology for medical and other applications (and similar things behind the corner…).”
Mind-Up Loading is Roberto’s Futurist version of the more frequent Mind Uploading, which will be extensively discussed at the conference in all its scientific, technical and philosophical aspects.
“Another plane of the human condition is already surfacing with the post- and trans- human, perhaps a new phase of evolution, which requires entirely new mental paradigms, even more complex and revolutionary, almost multitasking brains to answer with speed… beauty and truth (and well-being) to such new challenges of modernity…”
Speed is a quintessential Futurist meme. From the current version of the Wikipedia article on Futurism: “the ideals of futurism remain as significant components of modern Western culture; the emphasis on youth, speed, power and technology finding expression in much of modern commercial cinema and culture.” The article defines and characterizes Futurism as “Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century… The founder of Futurism and its most influential personality was the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti launched the movement in his Futurist Manifesto, which he published for the first time on 5 February 1909 in La gazzetta dell’Emilia, an article then reproduced in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and the composer Luigi Russolo. Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. “We want no part of it, the past”, he wrote, “we the young and strong Futurists!” The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists. They repudiated the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality, “however daring, however violent”, bore proudly “the smear of madness”, dismissed art critics as useless, rebelled against harmony and good taste, swept away all the themes and subjects of all previous art, and gloried in science… Marinetti’s legacy is also obvious in philosophical ingredients of transhumanism, especially in Europe.” Modern transhumanists who may find something objectionable in this description should bear in mind that the strongly unPC language of Marinetti was typical of the artistic circles of his times, and that some historically inaccurate allegations written by the winners (like most of history) are not correct. Come to Milan to learn about Futurism – at TransVision 2010 many different interpretations of Transhumanism will be represented, including its most radical and hardcore interpretations.
"In the healthy crisis of ideologies, beyond future shock in Italy, evident in the historic and cultural stagnation (even political…) facing the evolution of contemporary science, Transvision 2010, in summary, announces the arrival in the field of the new italian futuribiles- marching with the global movement- hoping in new synergies with possible scientific and cultural movements as a fundamental means to re-futurize XXI century’s Italy and cast it into new, strong, humanist and post-humanist, net-modern scenarios."
Eppur si vola
Roberto Guerra: writer and video poet. His published works include, among other writings, “Marinetti e il Duemila” (in AA.VV. “Divenire 3 Futurismo” edited by AIT, 2009, Sestante Edizioni) and “Moana Lisa Cyberpunk” (Edizioni Diversa Sintonia, 2010). He participated in “The Scientist International Videoart Festival” organized by Ferrara Video&Arte. In 2009 he organized, with Graziano Cecchini “Futurismo 100 live”, dedicated to 100 years of Futurism. Since 2010 he is the coordinator of the Laboratory of Futurist Literature of AIT (Italian Transhumanist Association).
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Book Review - A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel
This article has been republished on the IEET blog. A revised and expanded version: "A Cosmist Manifesto, an Advocacy" has been published on H+ Magazine.
A Cosmist Manifesto: Practical Philosophy for the Posthuman Age, by Ben Goertzel, published by Humanity+ Press, is now available on Amazon.
The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel's "Cosmist Manifesto" gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities.
Dr. Ben Goertzel, a research scientist working on various futuristic technologies including artificial general intelligence and life extension, is also CEO of tech consulting firms Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC. He lives in Maryland with multiple children and animals, and his doings are linked online via http://goertzel.org.
The book has been available online since the summer of 2009 on Ben's Cosmist Manifesto blog. Many chapters have been republished online by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, so the Cosmist Manifesto has been frequently discussed online already.
I am sure this book will be a life-changer for many readers. It is a transhumanist book, full of mind boggling future options and possibilities enabled by science and technology: extreme life extension aka immortality, artificial intelligences of human and super-human level, brain-computer interfacing, mind uploading, synthetic realities, spreading to the galaxies and beyond, perhaps to other dimensions of existence, resurrection, building gods... this is the real, visionary, wonderful, space-opera like transhumanism that was discussed on the Extropy list in the 90s. Unfortunately, real transhumanism is difficult to find in the sedate, politically correct dullness of many contemporary ex-transhumanist discussion spaces, but the fire is still burning under the ashes and Ben's book will put your mind on fire.
Though it is not meant as a scientific or technical book, but rather as an impressionist painting of the sense of wonder and meaning inspired by science and technology, the Cosmist Manifesto is a pleasure to read for technology enthusiasts, especially those interested in very imaginative technologies and future possibilities. But it is also a book about consciousness, spirituality, and a practical guide to living our lives in this unique phase of the evolution of our species, which is preparing to leave biology behind and spread to the universe. In the Cosmist Manifesto, Ben writes also about meditation, mental health, relationships, sexuality, zen, joy, wisdom, and, why not, religion. Ben's book is a unique blend of science and spirituality, futurism and compassion, technology and art, practical life strategies and cosmic visions.
In his book, Ben outlines my own world-view: there is not one word that I disagree with, and there is not one important omission that I can criticize. I have often thought of writing a book, but Ben has written my book, and much better than I could have ever done. I am honored to have participated in some of the online discussions which have led to this book, and I am honored to be quoted in the Cosmist Manifesto.
Congratulations to Ben, and congratulations to Humanity+ for publishing this excellent book! I have already bought the book on Amazon. Of course I had already read the online and PDF versions cover to cover, but this book deserves its place in the physical bookshelves of all transhumanists.
In 2008 I resigned from the Board of Directors of Humanity+, called WTA at the time, in protest against what I considered as an excessively moderate stance and taking a distance from radical transhumanist visions. I am happy to see that the current Board, by publishing Ben's Cosmist Manifesto, is re-affirming the commitment of Humanity+ to real, radical and visionary transhumanism.
In both the published book and private communications, Ben is careful not to propose Cosmism as a new religion. He writes: "Cosmism is not a religion. But it has the potential to deliver some of the benefits of religion in a manner more consilient with science." I completely agree, but I am willing to go one little step further, and to propose Cosmism as a meta-religion: a loose framework of ideas, concepts, hopes, feelings and sensibilities at the intersection of science and religion, compatible with many existing and new frameworks, a magic place where science and religion meet, science becomes religion, religion becomes science, and wanderers can find sense of wonder, sense of meaning, hope and happiness.
Monday, July 19, 2010
TransVision 2010: New confirmed speakers
The following speakers will give talks at TransVision 2010, which brings the number of confirmed speakers to 24. Other speakers will be announced in a few days.
Roberto Guerra: writer and video poet. His published works include, among other writings, “Marinetti e il Duemila” (in AA.VV. “Divenire 3 Futurismo” edited by AIT, 2009, Sestante Edizioni) and “Moana Lisa Cyberpunk” (Edizioni Diversa Sintonia, 2010). He participated in “The Scientist International Videoart Festival” organized by Ferrara Video&Arte. In 2009 he organized, with Graziano Cecchini “Futurismo 100 live”, dedicated to 100 years of Futurism. Since 2010 he is the coordinator of the Laboratory of Futurist Literature of AIT (Italian Transhumanist Association).
Alex Lightman is the Executive Director of Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association), author of over 800,000 words mainly about science, technology, science fiction, and the future including Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and the Infinite Internet. He is a graduate of MIT and attended graduate school at MIT and Harvard. He completed Army Airborne paratrooper training, Navy Cold Weather Survival School, and over 25 road races including six marathons in the last 18 months. He got support from 40 countries for his government policy recommendations for IPv6.
Marta Rossi graduated (B.A.) in Philosophy of Mind and Languages from San Raffaele University (Milan) with a dissertation on self-reference. She received her M.A. from the same institution with a final dissertation on the ontology of functionalism and its consequences in ethics and social theory. Her research are focused on mind-body relations, philosophical and scientific accounts of consciousness and the link between Singularity and social changes. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, she has been working @ iLabs since 2006, where she is Strategic Partnership Manager, leading the management of projects in ethics, social and political theory.
Jacopo Tagliabue graduated (B.A.) in Philosophy of Mind and Languages from San Raffaele University (Milan) with a dissertation on formal ontology. He received his M.A. from the same institution with a final dissertation on scientific explanations in complex systems. He studied microeconomics, statistics and complexity theory in renowned international institutions (London School of Economics, New York University, Santa Fe Institute) and he is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences. He has been working @ iLabs since 2006, where he is now Chief Scientist for Qualitative Modelling.
Francesco Verso is an Italian SF writer (tough he defines his genre as “future fiction” from a definition of Anthony Burgess for A Clockwork Orange). He follows transhumanism since many years because its themes are strictly connected to the ones of his novels. Books: Antidoti umani – (Human Antidotes) – short-listed for the Urania Mondadori 2004 Award, deals with human augmentation & sensorial prosthetis. e-Doll – winner of the Urania Mondadori 2008 Award – is about the relationship between Maya, a moscow teenager, and Angel, an highly sofisticated replicant who is employed in the business of sex. The novel talks about the birth of consciousness and analyses aspects of human sexuality.
TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
Register now
to take advantage of our special early Bird rates, post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.
Roberto Guerra: writer and video poet. His published works include, among other writings, “Marinetti e il Duemila” (in AA.VV. “Divenire 3 Futurismo” edited by AIT, 2009, Sestante Edizioni) and “Moana Lisa Cyberpunk” (Edizioni Diversa Sintonia, 2010). He participated in “The Scientist International Videoart Festival” organized by Ferrara Video&Arte. In 2009 he organized, with Graziano Cecchini “Futurismo 100 live”, dedicated to 100 years of Futurism. Since 2010 he is the coordinator of the Laboratory of Futurist Literature of AIT (Italian Transhumanist Association).
Alex Lightman is the Executive Director of Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association), author of over 800,000 words mainly about science, technology, science fiction, and the future including Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and the Infinite Internet. He is a graduate of MIT and attended graduate school at MIT and Harvard. He completed Army Airborne paratrooper training, Navy Cold Weather Survival School, and over 25 road races including six marathons in the last 18 months. He got support from 40 countries for his government policy recommendations for IPv6.
Marta Rossi graduated (B.A.) in Philosophy of Mind and Languages from San Raffaele University (Milan) with a dissertation on self-reference. She received her M.A. from the same institution with a final dissertation on the ontology of functionalism and its consequences in ethics and social theory. Her research are focused on mind-body relations, philosophical and scientific accounts of consciousness and the link between Singularity and social changes. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, she has been working @ iLabs since 2006, where she is Strategic Partnership Manager, leading the management of projects in ethics, social and political theory.
Jacopo Tagliabue graduated (B.A.) in Philosophy of Mind and Languages from San Raffaele University (Milan) with a dissertation on formal ontology. He received his M.A. from the same institution with a final dissertation on scientific explanations in complex systems. He studied microeconomics, statistics and complexity theory in renowned international institutions (London School of Economics, New York University, Santa Fe Institute) and he is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences. He has been working @ iLabs since 2006, where he is now Chief Scientist for Qualitative Modelling.
Francesco Verso is an Italian SF writer (tough he defines his genre as “future fiction” from a definition of Anthony Burgess for A Clockwork Orange). He follows transhumanism since many years because its themes are strictly connected to the ones of his novels. Books: Antidoti umani – (Human Antidotes) – short-listed for the Urania Mondadori 2004 Award, deals with human augmentation & sensorial prosthetis. e-Doll – winner of the Urania Mondadori 2008 Award – is about the relationship between Maya, a moscow teenager, and Angel, an highly sofisticated replicant who is employed in the business of sex. The novel talks about the birth of consciousness and analyses aspects of human sexuality.
TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
Register now
to take advantage of our special early Bird rates, post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Randal A. Koene on Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds, Teleplace, July 17, 2010
Randal A. Koene gave a talk in Teleplace on “Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds” on July 17, 2010. We recorded the full video of the presentation and Q/A in two versions: one from a fixed point of view, and another from the dynamic point of view of a participant who zooms on all slides to read the text better.
Full video of the presentation and Q/A (fixed point of view)
Full video of the presentation and Q/A (participant’s dynamic point of view)
This presentation has been a very comprehensive introduction to Substrate-Independent Minds and a very interesting discussion of current research, recent advances, and future possibilities. The Q/A session has been very lively, and there has been no time to ask and answer all the questions raised by the presentation. The good friends at KurzweilAI have created a discussion forum on Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds (continuation of Teleplace), where we can continue the discussion. We encourage all those who attended the live presentation in Teleplace and have other questions, as well as those who have watched the video of the presentation and Q/A, to ask questions and discuss on the KurzweilAI forum.
Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds
Randal A. Koene – carboncopies.org
Take as a given that the Church-Turing thesis applies to human thinking, that our minds are complex machines, but machines nonetheless. Let us also assume that we already understand many of the scientific, societal and even evolutionary pressures – as described in several of my previous talks – that underscore the need to augment our minds with the capabilities of machine intelligence and the adaptability to operate in computational substrates other than those of the cerebral neurophysiology. What do we know about the possible target substrates and the procedures that may achieve a transition to such substrates? Which are the primary remaining scientific challenges, and which are the engineering hurdles to be overcome? At carboncopies.org, we are taking steps to identify and formulate rational approaches to these problems. For example, on one end of the spectrum we investigate feasible and careful ways to accomplish subject-specific data acquisition and whole brain emulation, while on the other we lend support to proposals for commercially viable developments in cognitive augmentation. We actively encourage peer review through publications and events such as the workshop on Advancing Substrate Independent Minds (ASIM-2010) in San Francisco, August 16-17, 2010.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Chemical brain preservation: cryonics for uploaders
Republished in part by the Cryonics Institute (PDF)
The Brain Preservation Foundation and the Brain Preservation Technology Prize were announced at the recent H+ Summit. The week before Ken Hayworth gave a fascinating preview at the ASIM2010-1 First Online Workshop on Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds. Hayworth, a brain researcher at Harvard University, has spent years developing techniques to scan the brain and record its synaptic circuits.
The Brain Preservation Foundation has been established to promote serious scientific research in the field of brain preservation for long-term static storage. Its goal is to spur development of a hospital surgical procedure which can reliably and demonstrably preserve the structural connectivity of 99.9% of the synapses within a human brain. Existing scientific literature suggests that such a goal should be readily achievable by extending (via vascular perfusion) existing laboratory protocols for the chemical fixation and plastic-embedding of small pieces of brain tissue. If such a surgical procedure were available in hospitals it could provide interested persons a means of avoiding death and reaching the distant future. One of the first initiative of the Foundation is the Brain Preservation Technology Prize, a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure.
Brain preservation is a form of cryonics: preserving dead persons until future technology can restore them to life. In this sense, brain preservation is not an alternative to cryonics, but on the contrary it is conceptually equivalent to cryonics. The chemical brain preservation, or plastination, technique favored by the Brain Preservation Foundation is different from the cryopreservation technique cuttently used by the three major operational cryonics organization (Alcor, the Cryonics Institute and Kryorus), but the objectives are the same. Therefore, I think plastination should be actively investigated by cryonics service providers with the objective of including it as a supported cryonic service when the time is right. The prefix cryo- is not applicable because storing chemically preserved brains does not require ultra low temperatures, but I think the terminology should be preserved to show respect, recognition and gratitude to the cryonics community for their excellent work.
According to Hayworth, a chemically preserved, plastic-embedded brain can be losslessly subdivided in strips that can be imaged at nanometer resolution by current technology. This resolution is sufficient to image the smallest brain structures which, according to current scientific knowledge, are the physical substrate of our thoughts, memories, feelings, emotional responses, hopes, dreams and identity. It is important to stress that this can be done with current technology, and Hayworth cites experimental results to prove it.
So, where is the catch? The catch is that chemical preservation is irreversible, or at least very difficult to reverse (some skeptics think that also conventional cryonics is irreversible). But on the other hand, the information in a chemically preserved brain can be retrieved and run on a different substrate ("mind uploading"). This makes chemical brain preservation a storage technique optimized for future nanoscale scanning, and an ideal form of "cryonics for uploaders". For those who accept scanning the brain and running the information in the scan file on a different substrate as a valid form of identity preservation, chemical brain preservation seems clearly superior to cryopreservation.
I definitely belong to this group. I look forward to being extracted from my brain, leave biology behind, and run as substrate-independent software in a virtual body, roaming the universe and perhaps wearing a physical body on occasions. Mind uploading is a two steps process, 1) scanning the brain to read the information in it, and 2) running the information in the scan file (mindfile) on a suitable alternative substrate. Of course, after the first scanning step 1), the resulting mindfile can be stored until a suitable technology is available for 2). But I used to think that even developing suitable brain scanning technology would take many decades and perhaps centuries. On the contrary, I am now persuaded that chemical brain preservation may permit storing "solid mindfiles", physical databases of memory and personal identity, which future technologies will be able to ignite and bring back to life in a suitable physical substrate, in only one or two decades.
So, I will choose chemical brain preservation once it is operationally available.
Hayworth's "uploading may be only 15 years in the future" (in the sense of operational brain preservation suitable for future scanning and uploading) is very refreshing compared to the cautious, boring and defeatist attitude of today's moderate transhumanists, repented ex-transhumanists and anti-transhumanists in disguise. I feel back in the optimistic 90s, and I hope it lasts. I prefer not to discuss philosophical issues related to personal identity preservation. For me things are clear enough, and I encourage you to read Hayworth's "Killed by bad philosophy - Why brain preservation followed by mind uploading is a cure for death" for a crystal clear analysis.
Chemical brain preservation has also simple operational advantages over cryopreservation. Since it does not require especially expensive storage facilities, it can be offered at a lower price (perhaps at a much lower price). Also, it may be already covered by existing laws and regulations. If chemical preservation can be legally considered as a form of embalming, as the Body Worlds art exhibit seems to indicate, then the preparation of patients, their transport to a storage facility abroad, and running a local storage facilities, are already permitted by the law in most countries.
From the Open Letter on Brain Preservation, which you should sign now: "We accept the current scientific consensus that our unique conscious self is generated by processes within our physical brain. Further, we accept that all the memories, skills, and personality traits that make us unique are hardwired into the physical and molecular connections among our brain’s hundred billion neurons... The structural basis of memory and personality -- the synaptic connectivity between neurons -- can be preserved essentially perfectly by today’s chemical fixation and plastic embedding techniques. Extrapolating from current technologies for the nano‐imaging of plastic embedded brain tissue, we believe that one day science will have advanced sufficiently to allow complete retrieval of memories from such a preserved brain."
Some references:
Ben Goertzel on KurzweilAI: "Ken Hayworth asked in his H+ Summit talk, “Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain?” His collaborator John Smart hit the same theme — and spent most of the conference sitting in the lobby at a table raising money to pay a summer intern to help with the research. With a PhD from USC and a post-doc at Harvard, Ken isn’t exactly an amateur — but he’s looking at his field with new eyes. Plastination of body tissues was developed for other purposes (did you see the beautiful Body Worlds art exhibit?), but it may well obsolete cryopreservation, posing a lower-cost and more effective way to preserve the minds of the deceased till the Singularity when they can potentially be reanimated."
George Dvorsky: "I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation... brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation... As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off."
Fibur.ru: "Is there a way to preserve your brain, and thus your identity for the future? Traditionally, some people have turned to cryonics —basically freezing their brains and bodies in a vat of liquid nitrogen with the idea that in the future nanotechnology will be able to unthaw and revive them. At the summit, John Smart, president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, announced the Brain Preservation Prize. (Disclosure: I made a $50 contribution to the foundation while at the summit.) Modeled on the X Prizes, the Brain Preservation Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”The idea is that the precise pattern of information in an individual’s brain constituting that person’s identity would be preserved and could be revived later by being uploaded into an advanced information technology network or perhaps a new body and brain. Although any technique could qualify for the prize, Smart evidently believes that a kind of plastination is the most likely way to go. People who attend the Body Worlds exhibition are familiar with one type of plastination that is used to preserve entire human bodies for display. One technique involves flooding a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. This process turns a brain into a black block of plastic that will last indefinitely. Smart was followed by Harvard researcher Kenneth Hayworth whose work focuses on using electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains. Plastination preserves both structure and molecular level information. He predicted that scientists would produce a synapse level atlas of an entire human brain over the next decade. “Can a mind be extracted from a plastic embedded brain?” ask Hayworth. “The answer is almost certainly yes.” When? In the next 50 years, predicted Hayworth."
H+ Magazine: "In the future, we might understand brain circuitry so well that such devices could be used to scan and “upload” an individual’s mind to any type of substrate (a new body, robot, or artificial environment). This Matrix-like immortality would be the ultimate backup of ourselves."
Aschwin de Wolf: "Mind uploading advocate Kenneth Hayworth has launched an interesting website devoted to the science of brain preservation. Of particular interest is his Proposal for a Brain Preservation Technology Prize (PDF). This document includes one of the most comprehensive discussions of chemopreservation as a strategy for personal survival."
Greg Jordan, in a 2008 article on Biostasis through chemopreservation: "Twenty years ago, Charles B. Olson published an article called “A Possible Cure for Death” in the journal Medical Hypotheses. In it, he favorably compares methods of chemical preservation to cryogenic preservation. Unfortunately, this article provoked no wide discussion or attempts at implementation... Chemical methods of preservation such as fixation are not only adequate, they have long been the gold standard for biologists studying the structure of cells and the brain... But what of reversibility? Olson dismisses the need for reversibility. The information in the brain can be retrieved and run on a different substrate - a new organic or machine brain.. For those who accept the method of resuscitation by scanning the brain and running it its processes on a different substrate (“mind uploading“), chemopreservation might present additional benefits. The chemopreserved brain, unlike the cryopreserved brain, is ideally suited to microscopic extraction of information."
The Brain Preservation Foundation and the Brain Preservation Technology Prize were announced at the recent H+ Summit. The week before Ken Hayworth gave a fascinating preview at the ASIM2010-1 First Online Workshop on Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds. Hayworth, a brain researcher at Harvard University, has spent years developing techniques to scan the brain and record its synaptic circuits.
The Brain Preservation Foundation has been established to promote serious scientific research in the field of brain preservation for long-term static storage. Its goal is to spur development of a hospital surgical procedure which can reliably and demonstrably preserve the structural connectivity of 99.9% of the synapses within a human brain. Existing scientific literature suggests that such a goal should be readily achievable by extending (via vascular perfusion) existing laboratory protocols for the chemical fixation and plastic-embedding of small pieces of brain tissue. If such a surgical procedure were available in hospitals it could provide interested persons a means of avoiding death and reaching the distant future. One of the first initiative of the Foundation is the Brain Preservation Technology Prize, a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure.
Brain preservation is a form of cryonics: preserving dead persons until future technology can restore them to life. In this sense, brain preservation is not an alternative to cryonics, but on the contrary it is conceptually equivalent to cryonics. The chemical brain preservation, or plastination, technique favored by the Brain Preservation Foundation is different from the cryopreservation technique cuttently used by the three major operational cryonics organization (Alcor, the Cryonics Institute and Kryorus), but the objectives are the same. Therefore, I think plastination should be actively investigated by cryonics service providers with the objective of including it as a supported cryonic service when the time is right. The prefix cryo- is not applicable because storing chemically preserved brains does not require ultra low temperatures, but I think the terminology should be preserved to show respect, recognition and gratitude to the cryonics community for their excellent work.
According to Hayworth, a chemically preserved, plastic-embedded brain can be losslessly subdivided in strips that can be imaged at nanometer resolution by current technology. This resolution is sufficient to image the smallest brain structures which, according to current scientific knowledge, are the physical substrate of our thoughts, memories, feelings, emotional responses, hopes, dreams and identity. It is important to stress that this can be done with current technology, and Hayworth cites experimental results to prove it.
So, where is the catch? The catch is that chemical preservation is irreversible, or at least very difficult to reverse (some skeptics think that also conventional cryonics is irreversible). But on the other hand, the information in a chemically preserved brain can be retrieved and run on a different substrate ("mind uploading"). This makes chemical brain preservation a storage technique optimized for future nanoscale scanning, and an ideal form of "cryonics for uploaders". For those who accept scanning the brain and running the information in the scan file on a different substrate as a valid form of identity preservation, chemical brain preservation seems clearly superior to cryopreservation.
I definitely belong to this group. I look forward to being extracted from my brain, leave biology behind, and run as substrate-independent software in a virtual body, roaming the universe and perhaps wearing a physical body on occasions. Mind uploading is a two steps process, 1) scanning the brain to read the information in it, and 2) running the information in the scan file (mindfile) on a suitable alternative substrate. Of course, after the first scanning step 1), the resulting mindfile can be stored until a suitable technology is available for 2). But I used to think that even developing suitable brain scanning technology would take many decades and perhaps centuries. On the contrary, I am now persuaded that chemical brain preservation may permit storing "solid mindfiles", physical databases of memory and personal identity, which future technologies will be able to ignite and bring back to life in a suitable physical substrate, in only one or two decades.
So, I will choose chemical brain preservation once it is operationally available.
Hayworth's "uploading may be only 15 years in the future" (in the sense of operational brain preservation suitable for future scanning and uploading) is very refreshing compared to the cautious, boring and defeatist attitude of today's moderate transhumanists, repented ex-transhumanists and anti-transhumanists in disguise. I feel back in the optimistic 90s, and I hope it lasts. I prefer not to discuss philosophical issues related to personal identity preservation. For me things are clear enough, and I encourage you to read Hayworth's "Killed by bad philosophy - Why brain preservation followed by mind uploading is a cure for death" for a crystal clear analysis.
Chemical brain preservation has also simple operational advantages over cryopreservation. Since it does not require especially expensive storage facilities, it can be offered at a lower price (perhaps at a much lower price). Also, it may be already covered by existing laws and regulations. If chemical preservation can be legally considered as a form of embalming, as the Body Worlds art exhibit seems to indicate, then the preparation of patients, their transport to a storage facility abroad, and running a local storage facilities, are already permitted by the law in most countries.
From the Open Letter on Brain Preservation, which you should sign now: "We accept the current scientific consensus that our unique conscious self is generated by processes within our physical brain. Further, we accept that all the memories, skills, and personality traits that make us unique are hardwired into the physical and molecular connections among our brain’s hundred billion neurons... The structural basis of memory and personality -- the synaptic connectivity between neurons -- can be preserved essentially perfectly by today’s chemical fixation and plastic embedding techniques. Extrapolating from current technologies for the nano‐imaging of plastic embedded brain tissue, we believe that one day science will have advanced sufficiently to allow complete retrieval of memories from such a preserved brain."
Some references:
Ben Goertzel on KurzweilAI: "Ken Hayworth asked in his H+ Summit talk, “Can we extract a mind from a plastic-embedded brain?” His collaborator John Smart hit the same theme — and spent most of the conference sitting in the lobby at a table raising money to pay a summer intern to help with the research. With a PhD from USC and a post-doc at Harvard, Ken isn’t exactly an amateur — but he’s looking at his field with new eyes. Plastination of body tissues was developed for other purposes (did you see the beautiful Body Worlds art exhibit?), but it may well obsolete cryopreservation, posing a lower-cost and more effective way to preserve the minds of the deceased till the Singularity when they can potentially be reanimated."
George Dvorsky: "I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation... brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation... As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off."
Fibur.ru: "Is there a way to preserve your brain, and thus your identity for the future? Traditionally, some people have turned to cryonics —basically freezing their brains and bodies in a vat of liquid nitrogen with the idea that in the future nanotechnology will be able to unthaw and revive them. At the summit, John Smart, president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, announced the Brain Preservation Prize. (Disclosure: I made a $50 contribution to the foundation while at the summit.) Modeled on the X Prizes, the Brain Preservation Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”The idea is that the precise pattern of information in an individual’s brain constituting that person’s identity would be preserved and could be revived later by being uploaded into an advanced information technology network or perhaps a new body and brain. Although any technique could qualify for the prize, Smart evidently believes that a kind of plastination is the most likely way to go. People who attend the Body Worlds exhibition are familiar with one type of plastination that is used to preserve entire human bodies for display. One technique involves flooding a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. This process turns a brain into a black block of plastic that will last indefinitely. Smart was followed by Harvard researcher Kenneth Hayworth whose work focuses on using electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains. Plastination preserves both structure and molecular level information. He predicted that scientists would produce a synapse level atlas of an entire human brain over the next decade. “Can a mind be extracted from a plastic embedded brain?” ask Hayworth. “The answer is almost certainly yes.” When? In the next 50 years, predicted Hayworth."
H+ Magazine: "In the future, we might understand brain circuitry so well that such devices could be used to scan and “upload” an individual’s mind to any type of substrate (a new body, robot, or artificial environment). This Matrix-like immortality would be the ultimate backup of ourselves."
Aschwin de Wolf: "Mind uploading advocate Kenneth Hayworth has launched an interesting website devoted to the science of brain preservation. Of particular interest is his Proposal for a Brain Preservation Technology Prize (PDF). This document includes one of the most comprehensive discussions of chemopreservation as a strategy for personal survival."
Greg Jordan, in a 2008 article on Biostasis through chemopreservation: "Twenty years ago, Charles B. Olson published an article called “A Possible Cure for Death” in the journal Medical Hypotheses. In it, he favorably compares methods of chemical preservation to cryogenic preservation. Unfortunately, this article provoked no wide discussion or attempts at implementation... Chemical methods of preservation such as fixation are not only adequate, they have long been the gold standard for biologists studying the structure of cells and the brain... But what of reversibility? Olson dismisses the need for reversibility. The information in the brain can be retrieved and run on a different substrate - a new organic or machine brain.. For those who accept the method of resuscitation by scanning the brain and running it its processes on a different substrate (“mind uploading“), chemopreservation might present additional benefits. The chemopreserved brain, unlike the cryopreserved brain, is ideally suited to microscopic extraction of information."
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
David Pearce at TransVision 2010: Fostering Post-Darwinian Life
David Pearce will give a talk at TransVision 2010:
Fostering Post-Darwinian Life
The case for paradise-engineering
by David Pearce
In the state-space of all possible minds, presumably only a tiny percentage can ever be physically realized – since matter, energy and information in the accessible universe are all finite. So we need to consider not just whether intuitively it is ethically good or bad for a sentient being – or species of sentient beings – to exist, but also the cost of such existence in terms of opportunities forgone. Some minds are clearly much more beautiful than others. For example, when the technology matures, would it be better if all our matter and energy were converted into different species of posthuman “smart angel”?
Our response to this question may depend at least in part on how it is posed. Thus if asked whether you’d take a wonderpill that overnight made you several orders of magnitude smarter, happier and more ethically sophisticated than you are now, then one might say yes. On the other hand, if asked whether you’d consent to having your brain reformatted and its matter reprogrammed into a different sentient being who was unimaginably more wonderful, then one might say no. For such a supermind wouldn’t be “me”.
More generally, a problem with being a classical utilitarian is that one is (apparently) obliged to seek the extinction of all existing species, including humans. This is because our matter and energy could be used more efficiently to produce utilitronium – whether in the guise of orgasmium, hedonium, pleasure plasma or Jupiter brains is still unclear. Critics might see this conclusion as a reductio of classical utilitarian ethics. Yet in a world run on utilitarian principles, it’s hard to see how such an outcome could be avoided, in the long run, on pain of inconsistency. True, the physical capacity to manufacture utilitronium is decades away at best, and perhaps centuries or more. So this argument might seem idle philosophizing. But the classical utilitarian is supposed to recognize that time-discounting at a rate different from zero is morally unacceptable too.
In this talk, I shall argue that we should strive for an impartial, “God”s-eye-view” in ethics, just as we do in natural science. Thus we should aim computationally to maximise the cosmic abundance of subjectively hypervaluable states in our Hubble volume. This entails fostering the emergence and spread of post-Darwinian life. I predict our descendants – and maybe our mature selves – will be wiser and happier beyond the bounds of normal human experience.
TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
Register now
to take advantage of our special early Bird rates, post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.
Fostering Post-Darwinian Life
The case for paradise-engineering
by David Pearce
In the state-space of all possible minds, presumably only a tiny percentage can ever be physically realized – since matter, energy and information in the accessible universe are all finite. So we need to consider not just whether intuitively it is ethically good or bad for a sentient being – or species of sentient beings – to exist, but also the cost of such existence in terms of opportunities forgone. Some minds are clearly much more beautiful than others. For example, when the technology matures, would it be better if all our matter and energy were converted into different species of posthuman “smart angel”?
Our response to this question may depend at least in part on how it is posed. Thus if asked whether you’d take a wonderpill that overnight made you several orders of magnitude smarter, happier and more ethically sophisticated than you are now, then one might say yes. On the other hand, if asked whether you’d consent to having your brain reformatted and its matter reprogrammed into a different sentient being who was unimaginably more wonderful, then one might say no. For such a supermind wouldn’t be “me”.
More generally, a problem with being a classical utilitarian is that one is (apparently) obliged to seek the extinction of all existing species, including humans. This is because our matter and energy could be used more efficiently to produce utilitronium – whether in the guise of orgasmium, hedonium, pleasure plasma or Jupiter brains is still unclear. Critics might see this conclusion as a reductio of classical utilitarian ethics. Yet in a world run on utilitarian principles, it’s hard to see how such an outcome could be avoided, in the long run, on pain of inconsistency. True, the physical capacity to manufacture utilitronium is decades away at best, and perhaps centuries or more. So this argument might seem idle philosophizing. But the classical utilitarian is supposed to recognize that time-discounting at a rate different from zero is morally unacceptable too.
In this talk, I shall argue that we should strive for an impartial, “God”s-eye-view” in ethics, just as we do in natural science. Thus we should aim computationally to maximise the cosmic abundance of subjectively hypervaluable states in our Hubble volume. This entails fostering the emergence and spread of post-Darwinian life. I predict our descendants – and maybe our mature selves – will be wiser and happier beyond the bounds of normal human experience.
TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access.
Register now
to take advantage of our special early Bird rates, post links to Twitter, your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook page.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Randal A. Koene on Realistic Routes to Substrate Independent Minds, Teleplace, July 17, 10am PST
Randal A. Koene will give a talk in Teleplace on July 17, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm CET).
Realistic Routes to Substrate Independent Minds
Randal A. Koene – carboncopies.org
Take as a given that the Church-Turing thesis applies to human thinking, that our minds are complex machines, but machines nonetheless. Let us also assume that we already understand many of the scientific, societal and even evolutionary pressures – as described in several of my previous talks – that underscore the need to augment our minds with the capabilities of machine intelligence and the adaptability to operate in computational substrates other than those of the cerebral neurophysiology. What do we know about the possible target substrates and the procedures that may achieve a transition to such substrates? Which are the primary remaining scientific challenges, and which are the engineering hurdles to be overcome? At carboncopies.org, we are taking steps to identify and formulate rational approaches to these problems. For example, on one end of the spectrum we investigate feasible and careful ways to accomplish subject-specific data acquisition and whole brain emulation, while on the other we lend support to proposals for commercially viable developments in cognitive augmentation. We actively encourage peer review through publications and events such as the workshop on Advancing Substrate Independent Minds (ASIM-2010) in San Francisco, August 16-17, 2010.
Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
Realistic Routes to Substrate Independent Minds
Randal A. Koene – carboncopies.org
Take as a given that the Church-Turing thesis applies to human thinking, that our minds are complex machines, but machines nonetheless. Let us also assume that we already understand many of the scientific, societal and even evolutionary pressures – as described in several of my previous talks – that underscore the need to augment our minds with the capabilities of machine intelligence and the adaptability to operate in computational substrates other than those of the cerebral neurophysiology. What do we know about the possible target substrates and the procedures that may achieve a transition to such substrates? Which are the primary remaining scientific challenges, and which are the engineering hurdles to be overcome? At carboncopies.org, we are taking steps to identify and formulate rational approaches to these problems. For example, on one end of the spectrum we investigate feasible and careful ways to accomplish subject-specific data acquisition and whole brain emulation, while on the other we lend support to proposals for commercially viable developments in cognitive augmentation. We actively encourage peer review through publications and events such as the workshop on Advancing Substrate Independent Minds (ASIM-2010) in San Francisco, August 16-17, 2010.
Those who already have Teleplace accounts for teleXLR8 can just ahow up at the talk. There are a limited number of seats available for others, please contact me if you wish to attend.
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