U.S. Transhumanist Party General Discussion Thread for the Second Quarter of 2018
The purpose of this post is to facilitate member comments pertaining to transhumanism and the U.S. Transhumanist Party, which might not specifically fit the subjects of any other post or article on the U.S. Transhumanist Party website. This is the place for members to offer suggestions or converse about any areas of emerging technologies and their political, moral, societal, cultural, and esthetic implications. The general discussion thread is also an ideal location to suggest or propose platform planks that may be considered for future platform voting.
The U.S. Transhumanist Party will endeavor to open one of these general comment threads per quarter. This comment thread pertains to the months of April, May, and June 2018.
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3 thoughts on “U.S. Transhumanist Party General Discussion Thread for the Second Quarter of 2018”
Given the recent heated debates regarding Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, etc., I’ve really started thinking about where the main issues lie within the current chaotic exchange of ideas.
I’m not convinced that privacy is actually the main debate going on regarding the above-mentioned entities; but rather, the real debate is on data ownership.
As we continue becoming an increasingly less private, and increasingly more public society, people are now starting to ask: Where does OUR personal data stand in all of this? Should it continue being exploited by private corporations and government institutions or should our data be correlated as that of our personal property, and thus of our own individual dictations on how said data is to be used?
Even more interestingly, if our personal data were to be used by entities such as Facebook, shouldn’t the people whose data is being used be compensated for it or given some form of revenue if they were to so choose?
In our current climate, our data isn’t being treated as *OUR* data; rather is being taken and used in a number of ways without either our consent or knowledge. And it’s definitely an issue that I believe the U.S. Transhumanist Party should take a position on, given how increasingly important this topic is going to become in the next few short years.
I think this disregards the right of others to make use of things they know about me.
If I heard my boss liked a certain movie, and bring it up in our next conversation in an attempt to curry favor with him, I’m doing the same thing Facebook does when it offers me a new preworkout powder. They are just more organized with how they curate and store the information they have consensually obtained.
Lingo
I think we should all get a little more experience with the technical lingo as we look for ways to beat death.
Today I learned (from the interview with Gary Hudson of Oisin Biotech) about the word senescence, which means when a cell stops dividing. It sounds like we need to find ways to keep cells dividing and rejuvenating.
Here were a couple more good vocab lingo words to know: and my ELI5 comments (about as good as I can do!)
Sensolytic- a compound which kills senescent cells.
Fibrosis- formation of too much fibrous tissue blocking things up
Telomere- the endcap of a strand of DNA, kind of like the little cap on the end of your shoelace that keeps it from getting frayed
p53- an important gene that keeps tumors from forming
ALT- Telomere length is maintained by 2 known mechanisms, activation of telomerase or alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT).
OSKM – Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc (OSKM)
I do not know what this one means.