Tag: C.H. Antony

Transhumanism: The Important Gray Area Between the Madness of the Two-Party System in America – Article by C. H. Antony

Transhumanism: The Important Gray Area Between the Madness of the Two-Party System in America – Article by C. H. Antony

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logo_bgC. H. Antony

What’s missing from politics today? Some will leap to simple responses like “integrity”, “honesty”, “education”. But I say it’s worse than all that. However, I will not spend paragraphs going into the various conspiracies and fear-mongering – that is behavior more fitting for the main two political parties. What I would like to accomplish here is to propose the values and intentions of the United States Transhumanist Party (USTP) as solutions. 

To begin, we must examine the current most pressing issue, that of human rights. As you read this, many thousands have taken to the streets in every major city and 18 countries around the world to scream at their governments that enough is enough – that they will not be duped into economic caste systems, race wars, or trafficking schemes. Whether the battle cry is “Black Lives Matter” or whether it is a cry against manufactured poverty, or a call to defund the police and reallocate resources toward fundamental solutions over enforcement, the message is clear: humanity is ready to move on. Here at the USTP, we have assembled a comprehensive Platform and identified areas for reform such as sentient rights, improved economic policy, medical technology and accessibility, and, of course, the imperative to recognize death as a limitation to overcome. While those are just some examples of the body of work offered by the USTP, I believe they are the most important foundations, as from them, all other potential improvements for the human condition are possible. 

We Transhumanists are the gray area in between the madness that is the two-party system in America. We unfortunately inhabit the very system we were warned about in our earliest days as a country. We offer rational and compassionate alternatives to the systems Americans have been repeatedly manipulated into accepting. Where other parties seek to polarize the citizenry, we seek to unite it with scientific and technological solutions to the issues that have us at each other’s throats. With respect to urgency, I will only illustrate existing or easily obtainable technologies here. Consider, for example, the abortion issue. To us, it is no issue at all, as there already exist ample resources for preventing unintended pregnancy. The education and social studies are there to better inform young people of the consequences of irresponsible behavior.  We are steady in our call that life is the most important argument and support those approaches which lengthen the lives and improve the health of all humankind, regardless of any differences. If a few more million dollars were devoted to the works of visionaries like Aubrey de Grey, aging and disease could be eradicated in a few short years. With some more million dollars, we could eliminate the arguments regarding abortion by making the practice obsolete with technologies such as indefinite stasis and ectogenesis. Such advances would render divisive moral arguments moot. 

The incorporation of artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) assistance and oversight  into governance and healthcare could virtually eliminate malpractice and marginal qualification in both fields. Justice can be free of bias with ANI incorporated into the process; lawyers and judges and even jurors can be in complete understanding of the law and precedents in question. This could shrink the margin for abuse and error to nearly null in real time. With medical assistance ANI, doctors can access the diagnostic power of the sum total of human medical knowledge instantaneously, never leaving a patient undiagnosed or misdiagnosed until it’s too late to save that individual. In matters where interaction is the essential element, such as international relations, local law enforcement, or conveying your symptoms to your doctor, language and communication need no longer be a divider riddled with misunderstanding and lost cultural context. Imagine how these three simple applications of technology could change the fabric of society, and it is ready and applicable right now. Right now, humans are fighting in the streets for equal justice, equal access, and equal treatment; the wise application of artificial intelligence systems can deliver on those demands and act as a safeguard against those that currently engage in the manipulation of those systems or underperform and cost lives. How many loved ones are in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, but hadn’t the resources to fight the argument the state was infinitely capable of delivering? How many loved ones are dead because the doctors in the local hospital were either prevented from accessing other techniques or unaware of them? How many people are dead under the knee or boot of a government that has no meaningful oversight or accountability to the people it was constructed to serve?

We at the USTP believe that human suffering must end, but moreover, it can end if we begin actively applying the advancements we have right now. This isn’t some far-flung future fiction we’d all like to see someday; indeed, “someday” for much of this was ten years ago. So while we are out there advocating for rights and justice, let’s begin to embrace the tools that can ensure the equal application and universally competent execution of these goals. Let us be the tool users that we’ve evolved to be. 

C. H. Antony is Vice-Secretary of the United States Transhumanist Party.

The Imperative to Build a Transhumanist Society – Article by C. H. Antony

The Imperative to Build a Transhumanist Society – Article by C. H. Antony

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logo_bgC. H. Antony

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party publishes this article by member C. H. Antony as a reminder that the aspirations of the transhumanist movement and the imperative to develop technologies to instantiate it are personal to many of us. Delays in achieving our vision come at the cost of innocent lives. In Section XXII of its Platform, “The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts at political, economic, and cultural experimentation in the form of seasteads and micronations.” To what extent can such experimentation be explicitly transhumanist in nature? To what extent can the U.S. Transhumanist Party collaborate and its members contribute their efforts to advance emerging efforts to create seasteads and micronations – such as Blue Frontiers? Do members agree with Mr. Antony’s critique of the U.S. Transhumanist Party’s predominant approach, which is aimed at incrementally reforming existing political systems? Comments from various perspectives are welcome.

~ Gennady Stolyarov II, Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party, December 17, 2018

        Amanda Y. Bowers

         September 25th, 1984 – December 8th, 2018

My wife had been sick for a long time. Off and on she suffered peculiar gastrointestinal problems and was given a different reason every time. Finally, in 2015, Amanda was diagnosed with celiac sprue symptomatically, though she presented no protein markers. We were told that is sometimes the case and began a gluten-free diet and some important lifestyle changes we hoped would alleviate her suffering. As time went on, we believed every other GI problem to be easily explained by some cross-contamination or hidden filler in something. We had no idea that she was suffering from colorectal cancer that was slowly reaching a critical point. In July of 2018 her left ureter collapsed, and she was sent home with the explanation that she had passed a kidney stone. I came home from a trip to find her more ill than when I had left and brought her back in and had to fight for her admission and testing. The results were inconclusive, the prevailing theory being a progression of Celiac Disease to Crohn’s Disease. She was sent home on a steroidal regiment. Before we could follow up with the GI issues, we found ourselves back in the hospital, where they refused to do imaging and her bowel ruptured right there in front of them. But again she was sent home after the pain meds she was on quieted things down. I brought her back the very next day after begging a hospitalist we hit off with to grease the wheels a little. The result was emergency surgery and an ileostomy. Three days later, after narrowly surviving the rupture and sepsis, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. A week later, as her pleural tissues filled with fluid, and they determined the cancer to be at Stage 4. The last 5 months had been a breakneck race against a clock we couldn’t see. She endured 4 rounds of chemo, a pericardial effusion that she was again sent home with to die, and finally, her lungs began filling with fluid. On Tuesday last week, she came home on hospice; she died that Saturday night.

The longer history of this is filled with misdiagnosis, marginalization, even accusations of attempting to fraudulently obtain opioids. The local hospital corporation, the Veterans’ Administration (VA), all the affiliated specialists – they all guessed and missed. This is an all-too-common story. Cancer is nearly epidemic in our country; patients get passed around and dumped here and there, and diagnoses are rarely found before their deaths. My wife, Amanda, leaves behind two young children and a distraught husband. Her life thus far was rife with struggle and abuse; we had only a short time together for that to abate before she died in the most horrific manner I’ve ever witnessed. It has to stop.

Many investors have sniffed at the idea of breakaway nations, never quite biting in. But I believe it is now critical. The system of cronyism and lobbying that retards advancement and availability of medical science will not be remedied in this or any other nation. We must do it ourselves. My wife died because of this system. Her cancer was not a mutation of her own genes, nor inherited. It was most likely environmental, and most likely caused by the contaminated water on the bases where she was stationed. There will never be enough accountability to atone for this. We are soaked in contaminants we don’t understand and can’t remove from our daily lives. It’s time to take what we do know and start over.

Jeff Bezos recently expressed interest in seastead nations. Imagine if we could have the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and others backing a transhumanist colony? What opportunity for human advancement we would have! The good people at Blue Frontiers are doing their best, but they need more backing and interest. We need a more solid plan; we can’t simply say what we will do; we must show and sell. It’s not enough to simply say “solar”, “materials science”, “sapioponics”; we have to design it and sell the design, down to the last bolt. And we need to sell it to the men who currently captain our industry, make it appealing and beneficial to them as well. Our wants are simple: freedom – the freedom to live without disease or fear in any form we choose, the freedom to never know hunger or disparity, the freedom to explore each of our individual potentials. But we will not have this freedom in America. Freedom here is truly an illusion.

To borrow heavily from greater minds than mine, we of good conscience cannot abide this culture of blinders and muzzles. We can do better and we must. Should great minds like Elon Musk, Bezos, Sir Branson, Ray Kurzweil, and so on come together and help become the architects of the future, we may yet survive the filthy politics of our current condition. I fear that no matter the achievement, it will be boxed up and slow-rolled for as long as politically possible. We can speculate forever the motivations of our various political parties as to why we are so far behind when we know how to be so far ahead; I do not intend to argue these points anymore. Instead, we must ignore the Luddites and move ahead on our own in the hopes that, through our example, the rest of humanity will eventually follow.

The meat of it is that we must acquire sufficient land and sovereignty to live as we wish, invite the industry and economy that we choose to utilize, and encourage the availability of advancements that are necessary to transcend this mortality and banality. We require financiers, captains of industry who want this future as much as we do, a nation attractive to the sciences and technology that we need in our endeavor, UN representation to protect our sovereignty as we pursue our human birthright, and a well thought-out design ethic to ensure no individual is encroached up on by another. We must not only design our nation, but the very infrastructure with purposeful intent.

To put the finest point on it that I can, I submit the following as the most humble beginning of a Transhumanist Nation:

  • A carefully laid-out infrastructure and topography conducive to peaceful coexistence among the population. One idea is a city-center of commerce and industry, surrounded by suburbs for families and recreation, and outskirt establishments for research and development.
  • The layout would prevent the tendencies for crime and predation that emerge when humans are forced to live in close quarters and congestion. Tunnel systems, electric vehicles, solar and other alternative energies, new forms of currency and trade, methods of education will all be prototyped and heavily utilized as a proof of concept for the rest of the world. The stress of daily living can be mitigated further with the adoption of universal basic income, uninfringed property rights, and universal, state-of-the-art medical-care access.
  • The presence of Amazon, Tesla, Neuralink, Virgin, and Google and all their various useful subsidiaries as our primary industry and commerce. This would serve as an enticement for the funding necessary to establish a new nation, no doubt purchased from another nation that may be willing to benefit from the vast technological advancement of a Transhumanist Society. The sponsoring corporations will be free to innovate and advance so long as doing so is in line with Transhumanist ideals and sensibilities.
  • Recruitment of Researchers and Medical Professionals germane to our intent and ideals.
  • Recruitment of Scholars and Philosophers, Artists and Artisans, Educators, and anyone else who believes that we can be more than the sum of our parts.

We need to achieve a society driven by life and betterment, not this crippling stagnation that sees millions die as the pace is slowed to one comfortable for limited minds and ambitions. Again, I cite Blue Frontiers as a group actively trying for this; I suggest we back them vigorously and attempt to build a purposeful society as soon as possible.

The United States Transhumanist Party has already brilliantly laid out the groundwork for this society in its Transhumanist Bill of Rights and Party Platform. We have the foundation of a great nation in our hands, but the status quo will never allow it. Power, such as it is, is too seductive a drug. Were we to gather our resources, both financial and human, I believe we could engineer a new, greater society of free minds and exchange, one where our coming Singularity propels us to heights we can only imagine. But we must come together. My wife was only 34 years old at the time of her death – a young mother, a veteran, a brilliant mind. As a paid intern, she coauthored a USGS study regarding asteroid mining, because she did the math for the researchers – a feat that required her to learn chemistry and new physics on the fly, all while finishing her own degree work. And now she is gone – just like that.

No More.

Let us begin now. Let us come together and create an opportunity, rather than wait for it to present itself. With the deepest respect to this party and its leadership, I believe that we are wasting our precious time attempting to participate in the American political system. I propose we open discussions with Blue Frontiers, Amazon, Virgin, Tesla, and other innovative organizations and begin the process – before more lives are lost.

C. H. Antony is a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. He may be contacted here. 

Is the Soul Digital or Analogue? – Article by C. H. Antony

Is the Soul Digital or Analogue? – Article by C. H. Antony

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logo_bgC. H. Antony

I am probably not the ideal Transhumanist; I do believe that I have a soul, that it is more the essence of me than the sum of my neurons and how they interact with each other to create my thoughts, and that it is an extremely fragile thing. Should I die and preserve myself to be revived at a later date, I fear that I would never know of the success or failure of that endeavor. That a living breathing thinking person who acts like me and reasons like me will rejoin society is not in question; I only wonder that I might miss it as my essence passes on into some other form of existence… or worse – not. I do not believe that a digital substrate will, in fact, carry my soul on uninterrupted.

I want to explore the question of the soul for a moment. In The Singularity is Near (2005), Ray Kurzweil stated that the Calculations Per Second of the human brain are in the vicinity of 10 to the 14th power, based on the assumption, and rightly so, that each neuron in the brain could be considered a digital on/off or 1/0. Around six years ago, we began seeing articles describing microtubules in the axons of the neuronal cells that seemed to have quantum properties I freely admit to not understanding. I cheerfully invite anyone to correct me on this, but it seems that while the neuron either fires or doesn’t as it communicates with the neighboring cell, the microtubule seems to exist in a sort Schrödinger-like state of possibilities – like a multiplexing wire that might convey one piece of information by doing so at a particular combination of wattage, voltage, and resistance, then convey a completely different set of instructions with another combination of the same. It seems to me that if every neuron is operating in a digital on/off state, then 1014  computations per second (CPS) are likely given the average number of neuronal cells in the human brain, and if that number might be horribly wrong because of what we now know of the activity within the axon – then this suggests that superposition state of neural activity might very well be the essence of our consciousness and, if interrupted, could be lost and what remains would be something else only a comfort to those we would have left behind.

I agree that an entirely biological existence is not only a seriously limiting factor in our future development, but also something we are destined to outgrow and will do so. However, I would say that my ideal manifestation of this is a seamless combination of man and machine. Medical technology could eliminate all the senescence we suffer to the point where the next logical step is enhancement over a timeless organic form. I, for one, would hate to live for hundreds of years and gather all the knowledge and experience of those times only to die because of some future equivalent of a drunk driver. That in itself is good enough reason to fortify my existence any way I can. If that means that my body must be replaced with an artificial one, so be it. But, I want to keep my squishy, limited, fragile brain! I want my cake and to eat it, gleefully, with a nearly indestructible form that doesn’t need the cake, won’t get fat from it, and still let’s me enjoy the flavors and textures as I do now. I want to enjoy all the many hedonistic joys freely and with only greater precision than my limited biological form can experience.

I believe we’re seeing this very trend emerge and that the collective instinct of man is far more ready to accept an enhanced human/cyborg than uploading oneself to a purely artificial substrate. Evidence of this can be seen in the amazing promise of Elon Musk’s Neuralink project, the recent X-Prize challenge for a robot avatar, and the many amazing advancements in prosthetic limbs and organs. As I previously stated, medical technology will soon overcome senescence, allowing our tissues to go on indefinitely, so to essentially cure our brain of degeneration, enhance it with a neural mesh, and go about our lives in a perfected cybernetic body akin to Ghost in the Shell: Altered Architecture is probably a pretty good direction to be steering ourselves as Transhumanists. It’s also the most likely Next Step, if you will, considering how well society is conditioned for these themes. I would certainly feel more comfortable with my own enhanced mind in a perfect and durable body that can be easily upgraded and modified as the centuries pass.

So now I ask the members of this community to bring their thoughts here. What is your ideal existence?

C. H. Antony is a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. He may be contacted here. 

Proposal by C.H. Antony on a U.S. Transhumanist Party Working Group on Universal Basic Income (UBI) Implementation

Proposal by C.H. Antony on a U.S. Transhumanist Party Working Group on Universal Basic Income (UBI) Implementation

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logo_bgC. H. Antony

The United States Transhumanist Party seeks any willing individuals to participate in the discussion of a proposal by Mr. C.H. Antony to craft detailed ideas for achieving the implementation of an unconditional Universal Basic Income (UBI) system. To indicate your interest and provide ideas in relation to Mr. Antony’s proposal, please post in the comments below.

Background: The United States Transhumanist Party supports a major streamlining of fiscal policy, combined with a streamlining of the manner in which financial support is provided by government to individuals. Sections XVI, XXXV, and XXXVI of the U.S. Transhumanist Party Platform address, respectively, UBI, reduction of the U.S. national debt, and dramatic tax simplification. Our goal, therefore, is a government that has as little debt as possible, and whose revenues and transfer payments are as straightforward as possible.

Section XVI [Adopted by a vote of the members during March 26 – April 1, 2017]: Given the inevitability of technology eventually replacing the need for the labor of sentient entities, the United States Transhumanist Party holds that all sentient entities should be the beneficiaries of an unconditional universal basic income, whereby the same minimum amount of money or other resources is provided irrespective of a sentient entity’s life circumstances, occupations, or other income sources, so as to provide a means for the basic requirements of existence and liberty to be met.

Section XXXV [Adopted by a vote of the members during May 7-13, 2017]:  The United States Transhumanist Party considers it imperative to achieve reductions of the United States national debt in order to avoid calamitous scenarios of extreme inflation, default, and burdensome future tax increases on individuals. The United States Transhumanist Party supports the following measures to reduce the national debt:

  1. Elimination of wasteful federal spending on programs, goods, and services where equivalent positive results could be obtained through lower expenditures.
  2. Cessation of foreign military occupations and the return of American troops to be stationed exclusively on American territory. However, if a mutually appropriate defense treaty with another country requires the United States to station troops in that country, those troops would be allowed to remain there until the treaty obligations are fulfilled or reduced by mutual agreement with the affected country. If the United States continues to station troops in any country due to mutually appropriate defense treaties, the United States Transhumanist Party supports greater reciprocity in allowing military personnel from that country to be stationed in the United States for purposes of training and information exchange.
  3. Removal of barriers to technological innovation and technologically driven economic growth, in order that a surge in such growth could increase federal revenues so as to generate increasing surpluses, as long as federal spending does not materially rise from current levels.
  4. Elimination of the current cumbersome system of federal contracting, which favors politically connected incumbent firms whose advantage consists of navigating the system, rather than performing the best possible work. Instead, all federal agencies should be empowered to purchase supplies and equipment and to requisition projects from any entity capable of satisfying an immediate need at a reasonable cost. Exclusive and preferential contracts for particular entities should be prohibited, and all payments by federal agencies for work by non-employees should be determined on a case-by-case basis.
  5. Digitization of as many federal services and functions as possible – to eliminate the waste and expense of paperwork, physical queues, and legacy information technology systems.

Section XXXVI [Adopted by a vote of the members during May 7-13, 2017]: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the elimination of graduated taxation and income taxation more generally. Instead, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates a flat percentage-of-sales tax applicable only to purchases from businesses whose combined nationwide revenues from all affiliates exceed a specified threshold. This tax should be built into the price of goods from such large businesses and should not impede transaction efficiency in any manner. Transactions pertaining to wages, salaries, gifts, donations, barter, employee benefits, and inheritances should remain completely untaxed, as should transactions involving solely individuals and/or small businesses, for whom the establishment of a tax-reporting infrastructure would be onerous. Furthermore, all taxes on land and property should be abolished.

The following proposal is not a final outline of solutions, nor is it, in its present form, a reflection of the positions of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Rather, it is a set of ideas put forth by Mr. Antony in a desire to elicit the expertise of those who are willing to contribute to a policy paper that the U.S. Transhumanist Party may develop in order to put forward a viable plan for making a Universal Basic Income a reality, beginning from today’s conditions. The specific content of that paper is to be determined based on the contributions and deliberations of any future working group. 

Discussion by C.H. Antony: I have a stepped plan based on my own limited knowledge that I think is the ticket, but I need to combine the work of individuals with expertise in the following fields:

  • Economics with an understanding of federal spending.
  • Corporate law with an understanding of the Constitution’s position on corporations.
  • A tax professional who can weigh the benefits/detriments within the previously described fields.
  • Someone who can discuss sociological matters pertaining to a UBI and who can show statistical models of the argument.

The following is the essence of my model.

I. Calculate the minimum necessary expense of the GDP necessary to fund a functioning government with regard to the following conditions:

  1. Fully automated IRS that only employs a handful of programmers and analysts to maintain and upgrade the automated systems and address potential or reported errors. Apply this model elsewhere in government where possible.
  2. Cancel all social programs with the intent of replacement with UBI (i.e., SSDI, SSI, Food stamps, VA Income, Tax Credits, etc.).
  3. Consolidate redundant government agencies and eliminate certain specialized enforcement branches. Examples: we don’t need five intelligence agencies when a single well-organized agency could perform all the same functions, BATF can be disbanded, etc.
  4. A fully funded modern military where no soldier’s family barely makes it above the poverty line.
  5. No foreign payments without a tangible financial return to the US in the form of goods or services.
  6. No federal pensions of any kind for any level of service. [Constitutionally, this would only be possible for new hires going forward.]
  7. Save and invest 18% for our own economic growth and to outpace global inflation.
  8. Apply AI and automation as liberally as possible where it can replace functionaries at all levels.

II. Eliminate all federal income tax on private individuals and small businesses and also eliminate income taxes at local and state levels. Determine a fair and sustainable Flat Sales Tax paid on all non-essential purchases that is paid directly into the UBI fund. Sales-tax-exempt items would be the following:

  1. Food stuffs.
  2. Water
  3. Sewer and waste services.
  4. Electricity and other domestic use fuels.
  5. Medical and health-related items.
  6. Educational items and services.
  7. Home and land purchases that are the primary residence; no annual property taxes.

III. Further reduce the federal budget by saving on prosecuting victimless crimes (consensual prostitution, recreational narcotic use, etc.) and remove the state as an entity that may be called as a victim in a crime.

IV. Allow free air-time, equally disseminated, for any candidate running for political office. Social media and digital streaming are more than adequate in this era to give every candidate an equal voice for the people to hear and vote on. States should be directed to follow the same model.

V. Create a payment schedule whereby the national debt is paid in full as quickly as possible from the GDP alone.

VI. Restructure corporate taxes to be both competitive with the rest of the world and be useful to the UBI fund. Determine qualifications where a small business may incorporate that does not punish a successful small business, has clear advantages, and encourages growth within a new corporate structure.

VII. Create a fund whereby two years of field-specific education is available to every adult American citizen. Apply a nation-wide school voucher program to grades K-12, allowing schools to compete for students through quality and safety.

VIII. Create a fund that provides unlimited and free healthcare at a fair market value to all US citizens.

IX. Encourage a near-zero human labor manufacturing trend in the US with an eye on converting other nations into customers and partners for products of US companies.

X. Aim for an average of $52,000 per year for each adult American citizen (approximately 250,000,000 adult citizens).

I believe the above, when fleshed out and mathematically modeled, will serve as a succinct and presentable plan that we could, essentially, sell to voters causing representatives to take notice and have to discuss it publically.

This model in no way, I feel, reflects any form of socialism or communism, as it does not take a dime out of the pockets of any one higher-wage earner for the purpose of giving it to a lower-wage earner. It is self-scalable for inflation and deflation without affecting an individual’s quality of life. It in no way precludes anyone from seeking and obtaining opportunity and earning potentials beyond the UBI, thusly not endangering free market capitalism.

Also, I believe the easiest sell will be to corporations that are already having to maneuver the cost of human labor vs. automation. They can help push the reforms by leveraging lobbying power for us.

C. H. Antony is a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. He may be contacted here. 

The Need for an Architect – Article by C. H. Antony

The Need for an Architect – Article by C. H. Antony

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logo_bgC. H. Antony

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party features this perspective from one of our members, Mr. C. H. Antony, as a way of motivating discussion about possibilities for effectively spreading transhumanist ideas with a significant impact on contemporary culture and politics.

 ~ Gennady Stolyarov II, Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party, May 10, 2018

Orphan Tech

As a high-school student, I filled my free periods with Architectural Drafting classes. In retrospect, I believe it was the aspect of structured creativity that I found most attractive, indeed, comforting. Here was a way of expressing unique visions of domiciles and utilitarian structures that challenged me to use my imagination applied within a set of established rules; if I wanted to stretch the limits of a design, I had to justify it within the tolerances of the materials used. I would have to be mindful of construction techniques and building codes if I ever wanted to see a schematic make it to the modeling phase of the class. As a result, I was introduced to some surface knowledge of materials sciences, construction, geometry, physics, electrical theory, and so on. But, most importantly, it molded my mind in such a way that I approach all things with the baseline assumption that there are a multitude of variables that influence all things. That you can’t simply analyze a painting on the grounds of colors, canvas, and light. One must also consider the chemistry of paint (e.g. oil, egg tempera, etc.), the medium on which it is painted, the brushes, the cultural context of the artist, ad infinitum. Indeed, imagining all the variables and eliminating them can be as entertaining and transformative as the artist’s work. I say we need to assume a similar attitude as we approach the inevitable convergence of technological and sociopolitical evolution we are collectively calling The Singularity.

It’s pretty clear that there are more technologies than there are applications now. We create seemingly supernatural metamaterials, then study their properties, then figure out where we can apply them. In previous decades, the technology often followed a need. The wheel, the cart, the locomotive, the internal combustion engine, rocket propulsion, jet propulsion, all came along in response to a specific need to convey resources from one place to another. Today, we have fields of research that grew from no particular need at all, save for our insatiable curiosity, in which we now are scrambling to find relevant and marketable applications. Still being a market-driven culture, without a product in which to incorporate these groundbreaking technologies, they die in the womb, no matter how remarkable.

We need a team or committee that can intelligently gather up these technologies in order to advance them toward a specific project goal. It will take more than simply musing about a “metabrain” and offering imaginative graphics of how it could be used by future humans. We need to actually design something! Elon Musk, the man warning us of dangerous AI, rightly so, has an actual plan; the Neuralink project. And I think we can all agree that something like that has nothing to do with the latest gaming platform or smart toaster, and everything to do with the technology that could significantly enhance human intelligence and help get us out ahead of AI.

Often times the developers of these amazing technologies will justify them as applicable to new smartphones or medical devices, almost deliberately avoiding their potential for human enhancement. I suspect that this is because they fear losing project funding. And, again, right they should. Dreamers are feared in business, much as we’d like to think otherwise.

The recent break-through meta-lense that functions similarly to the human iris, but can resolve distance, perspective, parallax, and color shift all at once and magnify sight profoundly, is being applied for integrated camera systems. What a tragedy
 Imagine, sliding a meta-lense into the human eye as we do for replacement artificial lenses now, and enhancing our vision beyond anything man has viewed with the healthiest natural eye! Instead of openly discussing this amazing possibility and striving for it, they hope to sell it to Apple for the next generation of selfie-takers.

The Genetics industry has brought us CRISPR/Cas9, MITI, and all the other amazing things above my education. As our ability to run advanced computer models grows less fallible, these techniques could be the very tools that could create a flawless human genome that could be naturally immune to most disease and degeneration, but instead we will lose precious time as scientists are forced to sing for their supper to an audience that is more likely to shelve the technology for fear of losing the vast income of pharmaceutical treatment for indefinite periods of time.

Building a Better World

The list of amazing new science goes on and on, but I fear many of them will miss their mark due to the influence of big industries. A well-organized, funded, and mission-directed committee that is constantly monitoring and ready to save these technologies from their ultimately inglorious applications is essential to realizing the goals of radical life extension (if not true immortality), cognitive and physical enhancement, and cessation of suffering. We also need to be prepared for creating a new form of civilization in which to flourish as enhanced Human 2.0.

It has been often postulated that when one takes the total annual GDP of the United States, adds it with a low and competitive corporate tax, deletes all individual and small-business tax income, then strips down the federal spending, that a Universal Basic Income can be given to all American citizens, without having taken it from the highest earners, thus avoiding the moral pitfalls of wealth redistribution or Socialism. To put a finer point on it, if all entitlement programs and social security programs were stripped away, if five intelligence agencies with individual budgets were wisely consolidated and reorganized into one agency, if the IRS were automated and only employed a few dozen people to maintain the system and analyze for errors, and so on with all aspects of government, there would be likely enough to provide that basic income and top-shelf healthcare to every American citizen. I would ask that far more educated people than I examine these economic hypotheticals. We need a specific and easily conveyable plan to take what we have and make it better. Then the United States could lead the rest of the world by example, not direct influence.

One could argue that after over a century of bending our constitutional position on federal taxes, that we are due a return on our investment. That is where the social engineering speculated on above will come into play. When calculating a reasonable UBI, we should be taking into account that it may be that a generation of workers, those laboring at jobs they dislike, may stop working altogether. Those who have created meaningful careers for themselves will have the freedom to either stay where they are and continue to advance or take the risk of trying other applications for their expertise. But those who are merely working for survival, or the value of a needed benefits package, may need time to explore something more meaningful from the ground up – or not at all. And that will be their choice. But we cannot predict what impact a society free of death, disease, debt, and destitution will have on the sociopolitical future of the United States. I choose to believe that, in the long run, it will make it nearly impossible for future bureaucrats to benefit from miscarriages of their duties. A truly free society won’t tolerate it.

However, the entrenchment of the current establishment is vicious and violent. I won’t go out into the weeds of conspiracy, but I think it can be agreed that we have good reason to fear the tactics of those who would retain their power. As such, the aforementioned plan would need to be made as public as possible. That way, the citizenry as a whole has an opportunity to examine it and freely decide their position on it before it can be spun out of context and meaning. It would enable a discourse that would not only advance our ideas, but enable new ideas and means of implementation to bubble to the surface. It must be done from both the grass-roots level, and from the upper branches. We will need figures with the means and resources to swat down the many scandals that will be heaved in their directions, the false narratives, and manufactured evidence. We’ll need legal teams, private investigators, media specialists, and meticulous care to combat these easily recognizable, yet devastatingly effective, tactics. It will be a fight.

I should explain that I am a proud American. I stand for the ideals of our founding fathers in that the freedom of the individual is paramount. I believe that a representative republic, when not corrupted, is the best form of government we, as human beings, can establish so long as we are in need of a government at all. While I believe that we as a species will ultimately outgrow such things, for now, in our formative years, it is a necessary evil. That is why it is our duty to retain control over it, not relinquish it. I believe it is time to evolve our country into something the world will want to emulate. Our core principles and our Constitution are perfectly adequate, but the endless “interpretations” of them have led to no end of judicial misconduct and entrapment. At no time, I believe, has the will of the people truly and consistently been applied since before the Civil War. With the societal and personal benefits attainable by the U.S. Transhumanist Party, we have an opportunity to return reason and liberty to American politics, to eliminate poverty, disease, and tragedy. We have the ability to change, not only the American experience, but to encourage the change of all of humanity for the extreme betterment of the species. I believe that the founding fathers would have agreed if placed in our modern contexts.

The Perfect Organism

I would argue that we need a product to sell, distasteful as that may sound. Natasha Vita-More has done a wonderful job of illustrating an idealized form, but I respectfully disagree with her lack of explanation of specific applied technologies. In today’s world, driven by millennial consumers, specs count. When a ten-year-old child begs their parent for a smartphone, they will often blend the processing speed, refresh rate, and connectability in with the fact that Sarah’s or Johnny’s parent got them one a month ago. While the child might not completely understand the value of the specifications they are repeating, the behavior of absorbing and comparing specifications from product to product is already ingrained. For this reason, I am reiterating my previous statement that we must develop a plan of approach that clearly delineates the desired technologies, reasonable expectation of cost and time to achieve, and the benefits of the product. Without more tangibility in our proposed future, we’ll never gain the public support for it.

I propose that we create the Human 2.0 in full concept with all the detailed features and the applied sciences necessary to execute it. It must reflect the potentials of current technology, retain enough of the biological self to allow mankind time to grow out of it on it’s own, ensure safety and system security, and fundamentally enhance not only the body, but the mind and experience of the individual. It will require the conversation and debate necessary to agree on a platform that substantially advances the human condition, lays the groundwork for the future expression of individualism and self beyond the original design.

I can only speak for myself, but I for one would prefer a stepped process toward the end of biological man. I believe a measure of maturity is still required and can’t be obtained by the addition of software to wetware. If we do not grow out of our childish ways, I fear we will only carry them with us into a potentially limitless existence with few or no consequences. We need time. But the coming Singularity may not afford us enough time. That, too, is a discussion that must be had – but not here.

Selling the Future

I have previously expressed my call for organizing Transhumanism into something the general public can understand and choose for themselves, or not. That will require a measure of showmanship. I’m not suggesting making dubious claims or using trickery, but there is an art to selling complicated concepts to the lay-public while remaining honest. Such individuals most easily recognizable today are industry leaders like Elon Musk, Natasha Vita-More, Jeff Bezos, Ray Kurzweil, and so on. We must also take care to avoid further marginalization as “fringe”. All that said, let us explore the Sale of Transhumanism:

Example: Genetic Product X will eliminate cell-division errors, allow your healthy cells to infinitely produce telomerase, and never create a cancer cell. You will lose all predispositions to all known degenerative diseases. Heart cells and liver cells will divide the same way as all your other healthy cells. These incredibly over-simplified features alone could end the aging process and death entirely. But, wait! there’s more; these advanced nanocytes will repair any damage caused to your cells by environmental aggressors. They’ll carry more oxygen and remove more CO2 than the rest of your natural hemoglobin. They can deliver medications precisely where needed! With easy firmware updates, they’ll physically destroy pathogens of all kinds if your genetically advanced immune system somehow misses them. And if you call now, we’ll tell you how these amazing advancements will pave the way to increasing your IQ exponentially as you are instantly linked to the total sum of human knowledge. The first million callers will receive sensory enhancements at no additional charge! And so on.

I know how ghastly that sounds. It disgusts me as well. But as ugly as it is, we should always bear in mind that that is precisely the culture we are trying to outgrow. Pretending it doesn’t exist will cause it to lay hidden in the grass, like a viper, waiting to strike at us when we accidentally step on its tail. The right people actively promoting the concept of advancing humanity will make all the difference in how well it is adopted. And I don’t speak only of acceptance; this is a concept that needs to be reconciled with the current state of human nature. It must be attainable by the average-income individual, it must be a free choice, it must not be a threat to the individual sense of self or freedom of thought. And this must be learned by way of vigorous debate centered around the ‘how’ and ‘when’, not the ‘if’. When properly packaged with well-presented and modeled societal changes, we could carefully usher our citizens away from the deceptive and divisive politics of the current system, and into a new age of reason that respects spirituality in all its forms, but is not at the mercy of it.

As I look over the party now, I see a lot of great ideas, a well-thought-out platform, and a constitution that seems to offer a much better life for all than this existential mud-trap we’ve been spinning our wheel in. But it doesn’t have a good spokesman. What it lacks is a face for Transhumanism, a person intelligent enough to fully grasp all the concepts and has the ability to debate them, has the talent for conveying complicated concepts to the layperson, without condescending, that endeared Carl Sagan to those of us lucky enough to have grown up with the original Cosmos series, and is comfortable within the media environment to remain sincere and perform as comfortably in front of a camera as they would in private.

Hope

Ultimately, the Transhumanist Party must convey sincere hope. Anyone who has ever suffered a midlife crisis can attest the overwhelming sense of loss and hopelessness that accompanies it. Loss of one’s youth and potential is the most potent reminder of mortality. Sometimes, we experience the crisis multiple times and long before our hopeful midlife mark. I’ll take this moment to speak of myself, and only for myself.

I grew up rather poor, and with much of the ire that comes with that. I have starved, I have been cold and miserable, I have been marginalized. I have lost a really good job because my five-hundred-dollar car broke down before I had made enough at that job to afford to fix it. There was no bus I could take, nor could I afford the cab fare. So I sucked it up, swallowed the humiliation, and tried to find another job. I’ve even worked four of them at a time. I didn’t get to go to college. At the time, the amount of job-hours necessary to keep an apartment, an extremely modest means of conveyance, and the required insurances, meant that time wasn’t available. So I worked harder, gained a broader skill set, and, over time, got better job opportunities. As a result, I spent all those years one usually does amassing memories of fun summers with friends working my tail off to improve my station in life. I’ve done all right, but not so far as the stress of each paycheck and the pockets it ends up in doesn’t haunt me. I’m riddled with anxiety and stress-induced chest pains, and most sadly, the crushing realization that I missed so much joy and discovery toiling away my youth in hopes of never despairing of a cold night or empty stomach again.

I’ve always loved Star Trek. I love science fiction in general, but Star Trek in particular. I have a favorite spin-off, Deep Space Nine, but I truly love them all. Gene Roddenberry’s future for humanity was both inspiring and believable when one was interested enough to put together all the fictional historical points that led us to the stars: high hopes for perfecting the species, the resulting war, and the hard lessons learned along the way. It took half a century after the human race was decimated by its own hand to raise itself up and take the fateful step that brought us to the attention of other life in the great Out There. From that point on, it took only another century to clean up the environment, eliminate poverty and disease, and build our first ships to travel beyond our solar system. I’m afraid we simply don’t have that kind of time to grow up, not with the rate at which our technology is advancing, and our enlightenment seems to be retarding. But, nevertheless, I often wished that I might fall asleep one night and wake up on the Promenade of DS9, with no bills and no demands on my labor, so that I might pursue at my own pace something I could be passionate about.

As a man, I have studied history with a far less biased perspective than that of a young man’s dreams, grown to understand the Master/Slave Morality proposed by Nietzsche, understand the dance of control and deception that now embodies American politics. Transhumanism as a movement means hope for stripping away all the waste and corruption of our current system, while preserving principles of individual freedom, the right of self-manifestation, a government in service of its people, and the preservation of liberty.

I find this current trend of using social media and mainstream media to shame individuals into accepting the group-think of a few outraged individuals nauseating. It is no less discriminatory to ruin a person’s livelihood and reputation for having a different outlook than another, or on the basis of an accusation without evidence, than to deny a person service in one’s establishment on the grounds of that outlook. It is morally on the level of terrorism and extortion. Yet, this is the level of maturity and decency that we have reached as a result of the interconnectedness that our modern world allows for. I’m not denouncing technology, or social evolution. I’m pointing out how viciously we’ve applied it. This viciousness will continue unless we move back toward a society of personal accountability, while moving toward a society that transcends today’s prevalent pettiness. The safe-zones, public shaming, social justice, whitewashing, and hypocrisy of the liberal society is frighteningly Orwellian, and most of the practitioners of these behaviors are too ignorant to realize it. Likewise, conservatism has lost all compassion and is polluted by religious doctrine and cronyism as badly as the liberal side of the coin. Libertarians seem dangerously naive of how other countries might not be as innately friendly as they are now, if we were to suddenly pull back our military might. So, the emergence of a political party that calls for rational discussion and governance, financial freedom, and unabashed pursuit of infinite life and health is a shining beacon of hope for one who has been deceived and disenfranchised by the two-party system, only occasionally tickled by a third or fourth upstart.

Unless we present the public with facts and steps toward this future, in a manner that carefully points out the lies they’ve lived on, we have no chance of ever seeing a human future that transcends the current stagnation. AI will become a weapon, instead of a partner, and we will wipe ourselves out. We will wallow in this carefully concealed slavery while the machinations we’ve created bring us our end.

C. H. Antony is a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. He may be contacted here.Â