Tag: Zach Richardson

Pride Should Not Incur Prejudice – Article by Zach Richardson

Pride Should Not Incur Prejudice – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

“Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

-Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

Pride Should Not Incur Prejudice

While there are several aspects of the Christian ethics that I disagree with, one that has particularly irked me was the idea of pride being a sin. If someone has done something noteworthy or respectable or that has had a good result, how can it be wrong for them to not be pleased with themselves and pleased with their actions? Is that not necessary for the action to be self-reinforcing?

Identifying as transhumanist is absolutely something one should be proud of. To be able to have as a core virtue the conviction that it is necessary to think “long-range” to properly ensure one’s survival, to be open to new and radical ideas, and to be part of the epic struggle of this century which is the abolition of death and disease, these are pure virtues.

I work in an extremely conservative industry, and it would not be in my best interest to be extremely vocal about being a Transhumanist – so I don’t. But I do bring up some key facts, if the opportunity arises: I think Death is Wrong. I am Director of Publication of a small third party. I have a refined nootropic stack that enhances my cognition. If there’s any interest, I elaborate. If there’s not, I don’t. If they’re a “normie” and they’re stuck in the matrix and actually give pushback, sometimes that yang energy can be absorbed and redirected. Even if the person says they’d never want to live forever, you can almost always get them to admit that their joints didn’t hurt as much 10 years ago, and they miss the mental energy they once had.

There may be some “dogwhistles” you find for other potential transhumanists, those interested in longevity, biohacking, etc. Found My Fitness, The Peter Attia Drive Podcast, and Huberman Lab have strong followings, and if you find a listener, that’s probably a good sign they’re more interested in beating death than they are border issues/gender politics/gun rights, yadda yadda. Personally I find more in common with the crypto-transhumanists who are primarily focused on longevity than I do with some of the more vocal ones who seem to be focused on standing out from the crowd.

The majority aren’t going to want to stand out from the crowd. The truth is the crowd wants to punish those that behave differently, and a lot of people are focused more on surviving now than on getting their fair due of approval later, after the gains have materialized. Gains like being able to say, “I was an early adopter of the notion that death should be abolished, and I voted for the one party that cared.”

So what I advocate is: be normal and different at the same time. You can follow social norms, try to have many friends, and be polite and generous, but still know the arguments and be able to stand your ground in a debate if the discussions on longevity come up. Or, you could even be the one to raise the topic, if appropriate. There are a plethora of other Platform issues that could come up too. Rights of children, nuclear disarmament, (soft) animal welfare, reasonable minimum timeframes between bill proposal and voting, depoliticizing appointment of Supreme Court justices, and many others could be good to brush up on in our Platform page.

Luckily, one can still be proud of a cause and conform to social norms with relative ease if one is tactful. A very low-risk way to do so this year would be to buy a T-shirt. We have a window of time this election year where we can drive visibility for our movement, and have a low-risk way of being able to say to oneself: “You know what? I *am* proud to be a Transhumanist. It’s not fringe or different to support rationality, ending aging, and smarter governance, and I’m going to take a simple step to show that. If someone asks me about it, I will hold my head high, and maybe I’ll make a new ally.”

Zach Richardson is the Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Find out more about him here. 

BDYXHAX – An Interview with Russ Foxx by R. Nicholas Starr

BDYXHAX – An Interview with Russ Foxx by R. Nicholas Starr

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R. Nicholas Starr
Russ Foxx

Editor’s Note: The event of the website which hosted this article, BDYHAX, is no longer taking place, and this article is being saved due to the risk their website may soon be taken down. Wikipedia basically describes body hacking as transhumanism with high risk-tolerance, but it is my hope as technology progresses those risks will become negligible, and the variety in form we see with our physical manifestations will be limited more by imagination than anything else.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, January 11, 2024

An Interview with BDYHAX Presenter Russ Foxx

Art gives birth to scientific innovation.

In an effort to learn more about the historical origins of transhumanism and posthumanism, R. Nicholas Starr began a journey to look at the many topics popular within those communities and retraced them back to art. To continue the research he began to reach out to the artists and scientists at the forefront of exploring this relationship. While he continues to prepare his research for publication, he has decided to release the transcripts from these interviews in hopes to spark conversation and gather even more insight into how the creative mind has shaped our scientific world as we move past the limits of the human body.

R. Nicholas Starr is a multimedia artist, biohacker, researcher, and theorist. With an education in signals intelligence from the United States Air Force, and 20 years of experience creating art and performing music in the US and abroad, he has become a unique voice for the US Transhumanist Movement and American policy.

The first in this series is an interview with Russ Foxx, world-renowned body-modification and suspension artist, and fellow cyborg.

R. Nicholas Starr: When a client comes to you looking for a “body hack”, do they usually have a specific function/task in mind, or are they just exploring the possibilities?

Russ Foxx: My clients generally have a solid idea of what they want to accomplish prior to contacting me. I don’t push my own ideas on people; rather I’m a catalyst in helping people upgrade themselves to fit their desires. I’ll certainly advise if I feel that an individual may benefit from a certain type of modification in their situation, but people usually do their homework. That’s how they find me to begin with.

RNS: Have you noticed a specific trend in what people want?

RF: In terms of functional implants and human-mountable devices, I commonly work with Magnetic Vision, RFID, NFC, North Sense and Transdermal Implants. I’ve also worked with the North Star V1.0 and the Firefly V1.0.

Social media certainly plays a role in what’s popular at any given time, which gives me the opportunity to roll out new mods and ideas as I see fit. I’m currently waiting on a few different implantable devices that are in the works, so you’ll hear about them when they hit my feeds!

RNS: How much of an inspiration do you think science fiction has been for biohacking and transhumanism?

RF: Science fiction has been huge for me. Having grown up rural; Sci-Fi and horror films and literature during childhood definitely shaped my ideas from a young age. I still find inspiration from them to this day.

RNS: Do you think approaching biohacking in a more artful way, like your tattoos incorporated with the Northstar implant, will help spread the idea?

RF: Unless I’m telling a story via stage performance, I’m not really trying to “spread the idea” per se. I choose to look how I want to look and upgrade what I want to upgrade. I don’t hide my mods, so they tend to be seen a lot on the street and online.

I’ve always been a fan of mixed mediums in art, which is why I incorporated my North Star V1.0 implant into my biomech chest tattoo work. This creates a complimentary coexistence of art and technology in my body; reminiscent of Iron Man’s Arc Reactor.

RNS: What was your first cyborg influence?

RF: Outside of film, Stelarc was certainly one of my first cyborg influences. His views on the obsolete body always resonated in me and inspired me to look at my own body in a similar way. His ear-in-arm project continues to move forward, which actually brought some inspiration to a project I’m currently working on involving sound transmission in my own body. I’ve been 100% deaf in my left ear for most of my life and decided to start working on ways to increase my sound input capability using my own devices rather than limited ability hearing aids currently on the market.

RNS: A small collection of bioartists using live tissue to create art (for example Catts & Zurr’s living leather jacket). As a body artist, how could you use that technology?

RF: I really like their concept of creating victimless leather, although the current state of this experiment is unknown.

Skin grafting using stem cells has been existent in the medical field for quite some time now, which is a relative idea with functional applications in the body. It hasn’t yet been seen entering into the body modification realm, but I don’t doubt its arrival into the picture someday. It’s usually the high costs that hold back a lot of medical technology from the reach of artists.

RNS: As someone who performs with body modification, namely suspension, do you see a possibility for a functional biohacking-driven mod performance? If so, what would it look like and what would be the message? If not, why not?

RF: Stage performance has always been a means to push the limits and boundaries of my body and mind. My past performances have been very primal and visceral, often inspiring buildups of tension and suspense and sometimes even crowd members fainting.

I’ve taken some time off from performing in the last couple years to focus on my modification work, but I plan to be back on the stage soon. Moving forward I see myself putting focus on interactions between technology and biology in ways to challenge our current ideas and relationships with technology.

Keep an eye on my website and YouTube channel for updates!

RNS: In movies and comics we see huge amounts of tech crammed into a person. How much can one body support when it comes to functional implants?

RF: When it comes to implanted technology there will always be limitations in terms of implant size and functionality. Space must be created in the body where the implant is intended to go, while preserving the body’s ability to naturally function and heal. This often requires adapting one’s lifestyle to an extent.

I currently have 4 implants in my left hand alone (3 functional & 1 cosmetic). The functional implants (Magnetic Vision, RFID, NFC) are quite small and placed in locations that will not hinder everyday activities.

Keeping the implantable devices small will make them more easily accepted by the body. This supports the human body as having a vast amount of upgrade capabilities.

RNS: Through dermal piercings, would it be possible to expand current biohacking technology (biofeedback interfacing, extrasensory beyond magnets, interchangeable hardware)?

RF: Transdermal implants and dermal anchors can certainly be used as hardwired interfaces/ports to devices within the body. This idea does not work without consequence though, as it creates an access point for bacteria to enter the body even after much time has passed. As this method increases infection risks, it’s generally seen as less than ideal. Bluetooth connectivity and induction charging are proving to be more solid options in this area.

RNS: How can biohackers, as a small but expanding community, take transhumanism towards a nationally influential movement?

RF: Stay focused on personal safety and the safety and well-being of the public just as much as the progression and pioneering of new ideas. Support open-source information and resource sharing. Collaborate with others. Utilize maker spaces and support events like BDYHAX and BMXNET. Challenge yourself to think outside the box and reprogram your own mind and the world around you. Allow yourself to evolve and adapt with the times and state of the world around you. Share the love.

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon – USTP Officers’ Perspectives on Longevity

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon – USTP Officers’ Perspectives on Longevity

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Gennady Stolyarov II
Dr. Bill Andrews
Daniel Twedt
Tom Ross
Zach Richardson
Jason Geringer
Daniel Twedt
Art Ramon Garcia, Jr.
Ben Ballweg

On Sunday, August 27, 2023, U.S. Transhumanist Party Officers, Candidates, and Advisors shared their perspectives on the pursuit of indefinite life extension and why it is meaningful to them. The panelists also responded to audience questions on the subject of longevity.

Timestamps

4:52 – Dr. Bill Andrews
15:55 – Daniel Twedt
22:03 – Tom Ross
34:56 – Zach Richardson
59:57 – Jason Geringer
1:04:53 – Daniel Twedt on making longevity fun
1:12:29 – Art Ramon Garcia, Jr.
1:29:37 – Ben Ballweg
1:38:27 – Diffusion of anti-aging technology

Join the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free, no matter where you reside.

Validating One’s Virtues and Vices – Article by Zach Richardson

Validating One’s Virtues and Vices – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

When I turned 33, I gifted myself a gadget that has done more than about any other to give me the biofeedback I literally require to change my personal health habits. This splendid device is called the Oura Ring. This casually stylish ring is worn on your index finger and contains a variety of interesting sensors:
  • “Photoplethysmography” PPG sensor – an LED that sends and receives light into the finger to measure heart rate and Heart Rate Variability (HRV).
  • “Negative Temperature Coefficient” NTC sensor – a heat sensor that measures the difference in temperature from your body’s normal baseline averaged out over a 2-week period.
  • 3D Accelerometer – Measures activity during the day, and restlessness at night

These few sensors end up giving enough data that the Oura gives you a “Readiness Score” each morning based on how well their algorithms have calculated you’ve recovered during the previous night’s rest and your activity levels from the previous day.

In Yu-Kai Chou’s excellent book Actionable Gamification he describes a format for driving human-centric engagement in any enterprise or activity based on what he calls the “Octalysis Framework”:

In essence, Yu-Kai breaks down human drives into eight categories. Four of them are “Left Brain”, four of them are “Right Brain”. Four of them are “White Hat”, four of them are “Black Hat.”

I referenced this framework when speaking with VP candidate Daniel Twedt when he brought up the topic of gamification, and we were considering how gamification could apply to healthcare. How could we make people want to take personal responsibility for their health to the utmost degree, engage doctors proactively in the process, and have fun doing it?

I vote for mass adoption of biofeedback devices, incentives for doctors and healthcare providers to give them out to patients and show them how to use them, tax deductions on their purchases, insurance premium discounts for positive engagement.

The Oura Ring engages people’s eight core drives in every way.

The sense of Epic Meaning and Calling is engaged by the user discovering that health is a mission to be accomplished, aided by the acquisition of an innovative breakthrough technology that allows them for the first time to “see their status bar”.

The sense of Development and Accomplishment is felt when the user successfully increases their Readiness Score to the highest they can get it each day. This is no easy task, and requires careful experimentation.

The user’s drive for Creativity and Feedback is fed as the user tests different protocols, such as altering their type or schedule of exercise, when and what they eat, and various other “buffs” that can be tagged on any day (such as valerian root before bed, or morning meditation) to try and increase their Readiness Score to the best it can be each day.

Ownership and Possession is a curious drive, and requires a bit of positive “selfishness” in the Randian sense, to really take off. While often related to acquisition of wealth, your body really is your greatest “asset”, and in this sense you are increasing the value of your most treasured possession – your body and mind.

Social Influence and Relatedness is the drive that led me to write this post – I want to share how absolutely cool this ring is with the rest of you, and provide a discount code for any USTP member who wishes to purchase one of these masterclass biofeedback devices.

Scarcity and Impatience is our first Black Hat drive, and reveals itself with the fact you get one Readiness Score value per day. You’ll spend a good part of your day thinking how to optimize your training and recovery for the next day. Other values are also slow to change, and hard to improve, such as your HRV balance, as I’ll show later.

Unpredictability and Curiosity is tied to wondering what a certain protocol is going to improve, as well as random fluctuations in your Readiness Score due to things you can’t control, such as air quality from the Canadian fires, or the tradition of setting off disruptive explosives to celebrate certain holidays.

Loss and Avoidance is the last Black Hat drive, and it is fueled every time you see your score drop, especially when it drops sharply. You have a rational understanding that the Readiness Score is directly tied to not only your personal health- but your efficacy in advancing your goals and interests, the sharpness of your thoughts, and ability to flow seamlessly with the Tao and be in a “flow state”, and this is something not to be lost.

Another author, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal (who coincidentally has a twin sister named Jane who wrote another book on gamification!) describes in her book, The Willpower Instinct, that HRV is closely tied to willpower. Briefly, HRV reflects the power of the Autonomic Nervous System to regulate its Sympathetic and Parasympathetic subsystems. These systems can be thought of as the Yin and Yang energies of the body. While the Sympathetic is tied to the “Fight or Flight” response, our ability to actively engage our Parasympathetic system is tied to what Dr. McGonigal calls the “Pause and Plan” response. This reflects the ability of our prefrontal cortex to engage the “Shhhh” response that keeps us from uncontrollably engaging in the behaviors driven by our reptile brain, the behaviors referred to as “The Four F’s”, which are Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Mating.

This control is what allows us to avoid grabbing that second donut, avoid shooting off a frustrated email regarding another’s behavior, avoid cracking under pressure and giving up, and avoid indulging in unhealthy sexual behaviors. The prefrontal cortex enables us to “Pause and Plan”, and the power of the PFC is related to HRV.

Let’s take a look at a recent week’s HRV, the image that first inspired this post.

My HRV tends to hover around 6ms when I’m eating my average high-protein diet and getting 6-7 hours of sleep each night.

On Wednesday that week I felt like a few cold brews was just what I needed to shake off a bad mood I was feeling. Felt good for a bit, I will concede. But my ring only registered about 3.5 hours of sleep that night! I woke up and felt terrible! I thought I could just use my willpower and push through, but I felt drained and cowardly the next day, HRV at 4ms, unable to focus my energies on our common quest. Looking at my HRV that morning shocked me, and inspired this post, so some good came of it. It was at 4ms instead of 6ms, a huge drop. With my device, I had numbers to prove to myself the validity of my lapse in judgement indeed being a vice.

On the other hand, something extremely pleasing caught my eye. I had recently begun a Taoist ascetic practice where I spend Tuesdays fasting and meditating, consuming no food and doing at least one round of tranquility meditation, where one ceases all thought and allows the rich soil of the mind to lie fallow, rest, and regenerate. What a great success! While my vice had lowered my HRV by a third, my virtue had boosted the same by 50%!

While this was the shocking example that prompted me to action, the feedback I receive has been a daily occurrence, and my mood and energy reserves for any given day align closely with my “Readiness Score”. The ring activates every one of my core drives, and the data it provides me gives me insight into how the flow of my day can be mastered.

The ability to act rationally is fed continuously by daily feedback, and I am positive this is going to have some long-term benefits for my health. This is the type of thing that could be a core aspect of what Peter Attia calls “Medicine 3.0” – the new paradigm of aggressively focusing on stopping disease before it starts.

Humanity is prone to fall prey to a certain error when making daily choices that is referred to as “Hyperbolic Discounting” – this is the tendency to psychologically lessen the severity of the consequences of present behavior as regards to their actual effects far in the future – even if such consequences are drastic in nature.

Ayn Rand refers to this phenomenon as “Context-dropping”. From the Lexicon:

Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion. In regard to one’s desires, there are two major ways of context-dropping: the issues of range and of means.

A rational man sees his interests in terms of a lifetime and selects his goals accordingly. This does not mean that he has to be omniscient, infallible or clairvoyant. It means that he does not live his life short-range and does not drift like a bum pushed by the spur of the moment. It means that he does not regard any moment as cut off from the context of the rest of his life, and that he allows no conflicts or contradictions between his short-range and long-range interests. He does not become his own destroyer by pursuing a desire today which wipes out all his values tomorrow.

A rational man does not indulge in wistful longings for ends divorced from means. He does not hold a desire without knowing (or learning) and considering the means by which it is to be achieved.

While many Objectivists are extremely judgmental of others (as is, in fact, prescribed), I am of the opinion that if one wants to foment behavioral changes, that finger-wagging at the guy is just going to activate his psychological defensiveness, and put a dead-stop on any progress that could be made.

So what actually helps? Giving the person the tools they need to get feedback, reminders, reflection, and gentle guidance. This can be achieved beautifully with the subtly influential insight and guidance of a biofeedback device.

In conclusion: The Federal Government should provide a tax deduction for anybody who wants an Oura Ring. If that person improves their health even a little bit, the ring pays for itself in reduced healthcare costs, particularly for major and severe events. This is the first of several Medicine 3.0 suggestions I would like to see implemented in our healthcare system.

If any USTP member (meaning you have signed up and provided a valid email at https://transhumanist-party.org/membership/) wants an Oura Ring, reach out to me on our Discord, and I will provide a discount code from my app.

Zach Richardson is the Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Find out more about him here. 

A Transhumanist “Minimum Effective Dose” for Humanitarian Needs – Article by Zach Richardson

A Transhumanist “Minimum Effective Dose” for Humanitarian Needs – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

Editor’s Note: This article is my direct response to Mr. Arroyo’s article “The Class Struggle of Longevity“, where I argue for what I would consider a less-costly intervention to the problem of hunger raised first in Mr. Arroyo’s article. The reader is welcomed to join this important and ongoing conversation in our Discord server, which can be accessed here.
~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, April 15, 2023

In medicine, practitioners sometimes use the acronym MED, which stands for “minimum effective dose”. This is the smallest amount of a substance needed to provide a clinically significant response that is also statistically significant. Keep that term in mind for me.

In Mr. Arroyo’s paper, the number of people cited to be dying of hunger per day in his first source is 25,000, but I could not see how that source calculated this number. Checking the World Food Programme’s website, they did have some calculations, which suggested a daily number of hunger deaths between 8,000 and 19,000. [1]

This is still too many people dying of hunger, and a response is obviously urgently needed, but in contrast to Mr. Arroyo, I do not believe that shifting the world’s economy to communism from capitalism is the appropriate response. In fact, the countries which have the strongest market freedoms are not the ones that are starving.

Let’s take a look at where these hungry reside: Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, and Afghanistan.

What do these nations have in common? The inclusion of Yemen and Afghanistan tells us that it’s not an Africa problem. In fact, there are several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are not doing that badly, Botswana being a prime example, as was shown to me once in this (older) infographic. [2]

I’d like to share something with the reader called the “Index of Economic Freedom”, which ranks countries by 12 factors, which are broadly grouped into four categories [3]:

1. Rule of Law (property rights, judicial effectiveness, government integrity)

2. Government Size (tax burden, government spending, fiscal health)

3. Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom)

4. Market Openness (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom)

All countries were ranked on these 12 factors, and all countries were ranked in order, a straightforward numbered list from “best” to “worst”.

The countries at the top of this list all turned out to be countries where it is pretty nice to live, countries where people aren’t starving to death every day.

The reader may be surprised to find that the U.S. was not near the top of this list, was barely in the top septile, and was quite outclassed by the Nordic countries, which are often paradoxically paraded as socialist success stories. (The U.S. was ranked #25, while Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway were 9-12, respectively.) [4]

Where then, would we find our previously mentioned countries, the ones where the starving to death is happening? Well, out of 176 countries, Ethiopia was ranked #155, Sudan was ranked #173. Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen were so far removed from the above factors that there was not even enough data to rank them.

For this reason, in contrast to Mr. Arroyo, I would disagree that markets are the problem leading to poverty; I would suggest that they are more likely to be a solution.

But market development takes time – time that these dying people do not have, and time which we need to spend most effectively. Focusing our efforts on those smallest interventions (therefore to cause the least friction/resistance from those powers which could implement them, and also the least expensive) which would have the largest result would logically be the best course of action. What would these interventions be?

Well, in 2008, a group of Nobel-prize-winning economists were tasked with finding these “MED” approaches that would focus specifically on implementing what are referred to by the U.N. as the “SDGs”, or Sustainable Development Goals, prime among which was eradicating poverty and hunger. The question posed was: “Considering the world has finite resources, if an extra $75 billion were to be allocated for the SDGs, where would it be spent most effectively? Where would humanity get the best ‘bang for its buck’?”

These economists found an interesting solution: free vitamins. It turns out that most of these deaths of hunger were actually deaths of malnutrition, in particular Vitamin A, zinc, iodine, and iron. [5]  It’s not just a lack of calories that these victims of hunger are suffering from, it’s a lack of nutrients. More interestingly, these economists noted this simple intervention would actually have a significant return on investment (ROI): deficiencies in these vitamins and nutrients cause lack of development in the hippocampus, affecting these children’s future capacity to contribute effectively to the economy.

In more recent congregations of these economic experts, other suggestions included investment in agricultural research, and even an increase in food production (despite the global food surplus, extra is still needed to offset the  effects of climate change). They also suggest improving the economy by improving access to cell phones so these small-scale farmers have better access to markets to trade their products, and also buy cheap fertilizers, such as nitrogen, phosphate, and potash, and also significant public investment in producing local fertilizer plants, which could then sell fertilizer to farmers.

Another current solution comes again from the amazing technology of the cell phone. Reuters currently sends text messages to these small-scale farmers including growing advice, up-to-date and location-specific weather forecasts (!!), local price information, and information to access international commodities markets.

These economic interventions, some public and some private, could be considered the Minimum Effective Dose to both reduce death and improve cognitive function: two extremely Transhumanist goals – Transhumanist bang-for-your-buck.

One will note that we are gaining significant transhumanist benefits with an intervention that would cause much less friction (and is therefore more likely, and realistic) than overthrowing society, and which also carries much less risk.

Longevity and immortality are in our grasp, and it is true that the rich will first get these benefits. However, just like how in 1987’s Wall Street, even Gordon Gekko had a now-ridiculous-looking mini-TV accessible only to the ultra-wealthy, and how now even these poorest of the poor are benefiting from the rapid spread of the cell phone throughout global society, immortality technology will, too, spread to all who desire it, and if our goal is a humanitarian one, the MED is to bring markets to the countries that are starving.

Zach Richardson is the Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Find out more about him here. 

[1] Action Against Hunger et al. “Humanitarian organisations estimate one person dying of hunger every four seconds”. September 20, 2022. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/humanitarian-organisations-estimate-one-person-dying-hunger-every-four-seconds

[2] “A Story of Two Neighbors: Botswana vs. Zimbabwe, Stats”. Reddit. March 31, 2018. https://www.reddit.com/r/Floathouse/comments/88gay9/a_story_of_two_neighbors_botswana_vs_zimbabwe/

[3] “The 12 Economic Freedoms: Policies for Lasting Progress and Prosperity”. The Heritage Foundation. 2023 Index of Economic Freedom. https://www.heritage.org/index/pdf/2023/book/02_2023_IndexofEconomicFreedom_12-ECONOMIC-FREEDOMS.pdf

[4] The Heritage Foundation. 2023 Index of Economic Freedom. Country Rankings. https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

[5] Copenhagen Consensus 2008 – Results. https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/cc08_results_final_0.pdf

[6] “Third Copenhagen Consensus: Hunger and Malnutrition Assessment, Hoddinott Rosegrant Torero”. Copenhagen Consensus Center.  https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/publication/third-copenhagen-consensus-hunger-and-malnutrition-assessment-hoddinott-rosegrant

“Break the Rules” / U.S. Transhumanist Party Discussion on Artificial Intelligence & Transhumanism – July 1, 2022

“Break the Rules” / U.S. Transhumanist Party Discussion on Artificial Intelligence & Transhumanism – July 1, 2022

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Lev Polyakov
Chris Bartlett
Paul Town
Gennady Stolyarov II
Zach Richardson

This special joint stream on artificial intelligence and transhumanism originally aired on July 1, 2022, as part of an episode on the “Break the Rules” (BTR) show, and featured U.S. Transhumanist Party Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II, USTP Director of Publication Zach Richardson, entrepreneur and game developer Chris Bartlett, and writer Paul Town, and was hosted by Lev Polyakov of BTR. Topics addressed included recent advances in AI – such as image generation using programs such as DALL·E 2 – the future implications of AI for human creativity, transhumanism and the prospects for future merger of AI and human capabilities, a debate on life extension and the desirability thereof, the continuity of the self and the concept of I-ness, and the role of emotions and sensations as signaling mechanisms about the state of one’s life.

Join the Transhuman Club.

Find Chris Bartlett on Twitter.

Find Zach Richardson on Facebook.

Watch Break the Rules on YouTube.

Support Break the Rules on Patreon.

Join the Break the Rules Discord.

Lev Polyakov was a guest at the U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon of July 5, 2021.

U.S. Transhumanist Party Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II was the first person to be interviewed by Lev Polyakov and Jules Hamilton on Break the Rules in October 2018.

How Can I Live Forever?: What Does and Does Not Preserve the Self – Essay by Gennady Stolyarov II (2010)

Join the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free, no matter where you reside.

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Nonso Nolly – January 8, 2023

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Nonso Nolly – January 8, 2023

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Nonso Nolly 
Gennady Stolyarov II
Art Ramon Garcia
David Shumaker
Zach Richardson
Ben Ballweg
Jason Geringer
Dan Elton

On Sunday, January 8, 2023, the U.S. Transhumanist Party invited the young, self-taught Nigerian inventor Nonso Nolly to discuss his creations, including a Smart Stick that can help the visually impaired to navigate their surroundings, as well as his work with robots, drones, and the open-source Arduino platform.

The U.S. Transhumanist Party has featured Nonso Nolly’s Smart Stick project on its website.

2:05 – Video of Smart Stick

11:46 – Video of Arduino Projects – I

13:57 – Video of Arduino Project – II

21:32 – Nonso Nolly Explains the Smart Stick Live

49:06 – Nonso Nolly Shows His Drone and RC Car

Watch Nonso Nolly’s videos on his YouTube channel, Nolly Tech.

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From the Basics – Article by Mikhail Batin

From the Basics – Article by Mikhail Batin

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Mikhail Batin

Editor’s Note: In this essay by my friend Mikhail Batin, he explores where one should start when considering immortality. There are several factors mentioned including how a lackadaisical public not seeing the immense cost of non-advocacy is influencing the fight, how one should see there life as extending in a line toward death, with each action being pro-immortality or anti-immortality, and how pain and decrepitude can lead one to fool oneself that immortality is not desirable.

~ Zach Richardson – Director of Publication,
United States Transhumanist Party, August 2022 

I often hear from many a request, wish, or even a demand to please start talking about longevity from the very beginning – from the basics.

That’s a fair ask. From one side, I believe I have said everything on the topic, but from the other side – it’s never difficult to repeat the essentials. So, here is my viewpoint.

I postulate on the moral axiom: it is better to be alive than to be dead. It is better to be than not to be. That is no question to me.

Now I want to share a stunning fact. Fifty percent of people will not agree with this statement. Maybe even more than 50%.

Usually, I refrain from debating with people who see no point in continuing life. It is their life, and they can do with it whatever they please to do. If it were not for one BUT…

Lives of people who want to live are in the hands of people who choose death. This setup is due to politics, budgets, and the public opinion.

When someone buys a ticket to attend a sport event, they become a soccer lobbyist.  This person signals to society: ”hey, soccer is important”. A million of such signals result in constructing a stadium. The same is true of the rest in life: chewing gum, running shoes, and the like – people voice their interests, which results in a pronounced vector of public interest. The wheels of the economy are spinning, and society goes – somewhere.

If your interest is not in longevity – you go and lead others towards death.

There is no evil will in it – it happens so for the sole reason that the road to longevity goes in another direction.

We always make choices, be they private or public. If you attended a soccer game, you missed javelin throwing. If everybody went to a Cup Winners’ Cup game, nobody came to watch javelin, hammer, or shot throwing. Javelin and hammer athletes are depressed. They have a lower budget. The evolution starts working against throwing javelin, hammer, shot.

That’s exactly the reason why there is no 100-story Longevity Institute – anywhere in the world. Its bricks were used to build shopping malls, amusement parks, and other establishments.

There are 3-story aging research centers in the US, Germany, and Australia, but they have not yet discovered a cure for old age. Probably due to the fact that 97 stories are not supported by the public interest.

Why do people disagree with the idea that “it is better to be alive than to be dead”?

First of all, due to the fact that people like to argue, and this idea is too simple and evident. Maybe people think that they appear smarter when they start speculating: “well, you know, 2 plus 2 does not always equal 4”. People tend to argue with Facebook posts, in forums, with a point of view they have just heard – but they are reluctant to argue with a book. A book remains the most reputable source of knowledge. There are, of course, academic publications – however, they remain inaccessible for most people, as they require specialized background or knowledge to read. That is why we do hope that a well-written book may initiate changes in society. Das Kapital (a.k.a. Capital) is a good example.

The second obstacle on the way to accept the idea “it is better to be alive than to be dead” is a mystic, religious, esoteric picture of the world – simply put, belief in the afterlife. For religious people there is no death as non-existence. There is rather a passage, most probably to a better life. Almost everyone thinks that they are good and have a higher chance to get to heaven. Moreover, the magical creator of the Universe is expected to be kind-hearted, and it is hard to imagine that he will condemn someone to endless suffering, right?

It makes no sense to search for logic talking to people who believe in the afterlife. This very concept emerged as a response to the awareness of death. It is a kind of psychotherapy aimed at reconciling a person with thoughts about death, so that they can calmly reproduce, raise kids – without thinking of negative things and going crazy from the thought that they will die and all is in vain.

The concept of death denial makes one’s life easier, but at the same time the fight against death becomes meaningless.

Why should one postpone meeting with God?

Death is not only denied, it is also justified as care for future generations, like the belief that old people get in the way of innovations. It is a fascist position, put bluntly. In general, people spend a lot of energy wishing death to bad people (bad from their point of view). Also, if neuro-renewal advanced, people may be less set in their ways…

At some point their own grandchildren start to wait for their death to inherit their homes.

Our death is economically profitable, too. It is hard to imagine a pension fund that has collected the retirees’ money and invested it in extending their lives. What if it works out? Then the pension fund will go broke. It is not in its business model.

Note an interesting fact: Pension funds are also managed by people, and these very people would definitely benefit from getting a cure from aging – for themselves. However, the public interest gets in the way of their desire to live.

Isn’t it amazing: people have themselves given their money to those who are economically interested in their death? Well, not exactly themselves. The government did it. The government that also views the “silver tsunami” as a problem and not as an achievement. After all, the growing amount of elderly people is labeled “tsunami” and not “happiness”. Coincidence? Not really.

Changing the concept of the world order is a very energy-consuming action for the brain. And it is exactly this action that establishes the idea that “it is better to be alive than to be dead”.

It is an ethical concept to the brain: to rank everything on a scale “movement to life or to death”. Besides, the brain feels that if it accepts this seemingly innocent idea, the next step will be a suggestion to do something, which puts at danger one’s established lifestyle with its dopamine reward. No way!

Maybe this is the biggest barrier on the way to immortality: people are concentrated with endless enjoyment. Having lunch, chatting, buying something, selling something, enjoying oneself, scratching one’s back, confirming one’s social status, going to bed. We tend to do what we are used to do – and get pleasure from doing so. There is little pleasure in the fight with death. Why do we only start fighting the concept of death when it is too near to do anything about?

People are not at all indifferent to their own death and very quickly forget about all benefits of the afterlife if their life is in danger. They swim, extinguish fires, take chemotherapy, and betray – to remain alive. Very few will start saying that death is not necessarily bad, if you may die soon due to inaction.

The more time separates a person from their possible death, the less willing they are to start doing something. The value of life is discounted by the fact that “I” in future is not “I” today. It is amazing – egotism kills people. Today I am enjoying life, and tomorrow I will sort everything out.

I am not aiming at listing here all reasons why people do not agree with “it is better to be alive than to be dead”, but I will add one more.

We tend to agree with the majority view for the questions that are not important to us due to conformity. Death ideology dominates in society – and it is easier to join it, especially since the task of eliminating death does not appear reachable.

Actually, it is the only argument that has at least some rationale hint: it is highly unlikely that we will be able to substantially increase our lifespan during our own lives. As such, we must go and do what we must do, in order not to lose time. Talking about “being alive is better than dead” appears pointless and not useful.

Let me give you some arguments as to why our talk about the unacceptability of death makes sense.

In places where people are more protected against death, people die less. That is the consequence of the death-prevention mindset. More money is spent on security and medicine. Globally, death resistance leads to local victories.

There is no physical law that prohibits extending life for an indefinite period. Parts of our body are replaceable, including brain cells. I am extremely excited by the numerous medical advancements in replacing organs and tissues. I can’t wait until they manage to attach a new body to a mammal’s head. I am not only waiting for, but also promoting this research field.

Scientists have many times extended mammals’ lives. Moreover, in model animals we sometimes observe the multiplying effect of different ways to extend life.

Actually, we have not tested even 1% of ideas for how to extend peoples’ lives. We cannot say: we put in a lot of effort and have not succeeded. What we can reliably say is: we have done almost nothing, and for some reason immortality has not immediately given up its secrets.

In the above argument, that fight against death has little chances to be won and one can waste one’s time – the most important word is “to waste”. Let us discuss what is a waste of time and what is not. And what really makes sense in this world.

Imagine that while you are reading this text, a nuclear war began and everybody died. It means I wasted my time writing this text and you wasted your time reading it. All I did in my life was in vain. And all you did was in vain. All people at all times lived, loved, worked absolutely in vain. Everything will lose its sense.

Sense or meaning is a justification of existence. There will be nobody to justify.

In this context only actions against a global catastrophe make sense, other actions are a harmful waste of time.

But death of all people is equally terrible and “in vain”, regardless of the cause of death, e.g., old age. At the same time, when some people die of old age and others remain alive – their sense of existence is also alive. But! It is their sense of existence, not ours. A dead person takes their meaning of life to nowhere. It ceases to exist.

Death nullifies all human achievements. No more senses or meanings. Therefore “in vain” is a guaranteed result if you are dead. Only the eternal makes sense. The rest is burning opportunities, even the small ones.

It is important to underline once again, what is wrong with death. Everything is wrong in death; it deprives of all positives and produces nothing. Do people wish to die? Sometimes they do, first of all when a person suffers from pain. But it is a problem of pain, and does not mean that death is attractive per se. Many elderly people do not want to live. What is aging after all? It is slow death. People who experience problems with seeing, hearing, thinking, and cannot move as they used to – these people are practically dead. They do not allow themselves to want to become young, because it appears impossible.

It also happens that problems and troubles make one’s life unbearable, and they see death as a rescue, a way out. In reality it is a bad way out, as there is no way back.

Why should we extend life? What is valuable about our lives?

Everything is valuable, not only youth and beauty. The very fact of our existence is incredibly awesome. We can think and create new things.

Imagine that you are a king of kings. The difference between you and a beggar is negligibly small if compared to the difference between an alive man and a dead man. And nowadays you can easily become a king of kings in the virtual space.

A few words about mortal ideology. This is a world picture where people give little importance to death. Death is a mega event in one’s life and a very negative event, too. Many people do not notice the fact that the flow of time leads them to the grave and do not think whether they can do something about it. That is what I call mortal ideology.

From our transhumanist point of view, doing nothing against death is criminal, immoral, wild, and insane. Finding excuses to death is equal to giving a gun to a terrorist killing people.

Unfortunately, we cannot afford not to discuss the inhuman position of people who excuse death. An excuse lies even in the phrase “well, maybe there is something after death”. In reality, this should translate as “most likely there is nothing wrong with the fact that you will die”.

“Unfortunately,” because when preparing themselves for death, these people prepare others as well. Since too few tickets are sold to the match against death, nobody paid for the scouts of a star team “life extension at all costs”.

And what about overpopulation? This is no simple question that deserves a detailed answer, and I will not shrug it off by mentioning an option to populate outer space. There is a real conflict between altruism and egoism, and I will prove that altruism sometimes becomes inhuman.

To be continued…

Mikhail Batin is Chairman of the Board of the NGO “Science For Life-Extension”.

Transhumanism and Healthy Life Extension – Article by Reason

Transhumanism and Healthy Life Extension – Article by Reason

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Reason

Photo Credit: pexels.com

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“Everyone is using science and technology to enhance or to alter our body chemistry in order to stay healthy and be more in control of our lives. We are all transhumanists to varying degrees.”
― Newton Lee

Editor’s Note: Transhumanism as a cultural movement is closely tied to enthusiasm for ethical, responsible, and rapid technological progress. Progress in science and technology brings greater choice to individuals and adds new options for improving the human condition. In this article, the author gives a detailed breakdown of transhumanism and life extension. 

~ Urhefe Ogheneyoma Victor, Assistant to the  Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, March 2022

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What is transhumanism, and how is it relevant to longevity science and the work of extending the healthy human lifespan? Read on for a short overview: transhumanism in a nutshell.

Transhumanism is a cultural movement and philosophy of action that builds upon humanism, so we should look at humanism first of all. Humanism is an influential, time-honored philosophy that argues for rationality and certain fundamental human rights, freedoms, and responsibilities. Humanist thinkers have for centuries discussed and advocated the existence of humane societies, human cultures built on reason and free inquiry. In terms of addressing everyday life, humanist philosophy attempts to answer questions like “How should we behave toward one another?” or “What is the best way to live within the constraints imposed on us by the human condition?” In essence, humanist thinkers across the ages tell us this:

We’re all in the same boat here: by all means work towards your dreams, but be nice to your neighbor and don’t tread on anyone’s toes.

Like humanism, transhumanism is a philosophy of life and human action: an evolving, much-debated collection of ideas about society, goals, and the best way to live. Transhumanism extends the foundation of humanism by embracing technological progress for the purpose of overcoming the limitations and suffering inherent in the present human condition. Transhumanism is, fundamentally, the idea that humanity can, and should, strive to overcome naturally existing limits in order to attain greater individual choice and capabilities – physically, mentally, and socially. Transhumanist thinkers tell us this:

Humanism is a good start. But while being nice and not treading on toes, the dreams we work towards can include a fleet of better boats for all of us.

As you might imagine, transhumanism as a cultural movement is closely tied to enthusiasm for ethical, responsible, and rapid technological progress. Progress in science and technology brings greater choice to individuals and adds new options for improving the human condition. This is really nothing new: we humans have been pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps for millennia: fire, farming, steam, bicycles, antibiotics, vaccines, modern dentistry, cell phones, and so forth. Each new invention, and the science that enabled it, allows us to overcome a limitation or a cause of suffering. We can fly where we couldn’t before, we can survive diseases that once killed or crippled us, and we can engage in ten thousand new types of entertaining or challenging activities that once upon a time didn’t even exist.

Transhumanists take this common-sense view of technological progress and look ahead to a future in which far greater and more beneficial advances are possible: modern science and technology can lead to radical improvements in the human condition, and so should be used to this end. If today we enjoy our newfound ability to communicate cheaply across vast distances, for example, then tomorrow we might enjoy the benefits of longevity science, organ regeneration, and aging reversal. These and many other transformative changes that might be produced by new biotechnologies are very plausible, foreseen by scientists around the world, and we should welcome their advent.

Given the emphasis that transhumanist thought places on progress and overcoming the limitations that make life difficult or cause suffering, it is only natural that transhumanists should support longevity science, rejuvenation medicine, and other forms of advanced biotechnology. Aging and age-related disease take a terrible toll on us all, yet may plausibly be slowed or reversed in the decades ahead. Transhumanism and advocacy for longer, healthier lives have gone hand-in-hand for many writers since the 1980s – and even earlier, before transhumanism acquired its present name. At that time, few people took life extension research seriously and it was very much in the fringe, both in academia and the medical research community.

Most influential transhumanist thinkers have at one time or another written on the subject of extending life through biotechnology, and many have done so extensively. When you read about applied aging research, progress in understanding the genetics of human longevity, and progress towards medicine that can extend the healthy human lifespan, remember that transhumanists have been advocating greater awareness of – and funding for – this promising field of research for a good many years.

Reason is the founder and writer of Fight Aging!, a leading voice in the rejuvenation biotechnology and patient advocacy communities for more than fifteen years. He is also co-founder and CEO of Repair Biotechnologies, a biotech startup working towards the reversal of atherosclerosis, and has presented at numerous industry conferences, including Undoing Aging and Ending Age-Related Diseases.

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

The Cyborg’s Request – at the Chairman’s Behest – Article by Zach Richardson

The Cyborg’s Request – at the Chairman’s Behest – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party urges our members and any other interested persons with medical knowledge to help our Director of Publication, Zach Richardson, one of our most active and dedicated Officers, in his fight for life. Zach is awaiting the opportunity to receive a heart transplant, as the infrastructure supporting the artificial heart that he was previously provided has unfortunately become dangerous to him due to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. Without an imminent heart transplant, Zach has months to live, and thus he needs to qualify for a transplant quickly. Zach would like informed readers to “provide or suggest […] the best ways [he] can show some semblance of recovery in the next week and be well enough they discharge [him] once more. That would allow [him] to get to Chicago and hopefully get listed.” After reading the background that Zach has thoroughly shared regarding the recent unfortunate developments in his situation, please see the last section entitled “How the Transhumanist Community Can Help” to understand what Zach is particularly seeking input on. Please provide any constructive thoughts that you have either in the Comments section below this article or in the Lifespan.io Discord server to which Zach refers readers in this article. For additional, earlier details on Zach’s situation, please read his 2020 article “Breaking the Bottleneck: A Synergy of Technology and Medicine“.

~Gennady Stolyarov II, Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party, February 13, 2022

I have found myself obstructed in my ability to serve the community, obstructed in my ability to work for our cause, and obstructed in my ability to set any decisive plans.

Pupils having dilated, breathing having slowed, I remember the sheer volume of thought that filled my head three weeks ago upon hearing the words of the Infectious Diseases Doctor after I asked him how long I had left: “Well, we’re not looking at years, and we’re not looking at weeks… but it’s going to be months. We’ve probably got months.”

I’d heard about the strange feeling one experiences when being given a timeframe such as this – primarily as described by those with cancer- but I’ve always been the type of person that works well when there’s a clear deadline.

The literalness of that last word has had an extremely focusing effect.

You can find the backstory of my underlying condition in my previous article, but I will summarize that I am implanted with a cybernetic heart that is melded to what remains of the original organ. The device is called an LVAD, a Left Ventricular Assist Device. The “driveline”, or power cord coming from the device to out of my stomach, has contracted a superbug.

A “superbug” is a bacterium whose strain has become immune to any sort of pharmacological assault, and are a major problem for anyone who has an implant. This can include pacemakers, artificial knees, hip replacement, LVADs, and several others.

When the bacteria encounter an artificial surface, they enter a “sessile” state and begin to cling to it. Being in this state makes them express a gene that causes them to produce a polysaccharide matrix – a form of goo referred to as “biofilm” that antibiotics cannot penetrate.

Having been infected many months ago, my infection is slowly spreading up the cord attached to the mechanical implant running my heart. The biofilm has so far been resistant to doxycycline, cephalexin, Bactrim DS, vancomycin and now daptomycin, which I have been infusing into my arm every day.

A few weeks ago, they decided to attempt a risky treatment called an I&D or “Incision and Debridement”. A hole was cut above the infection (between my heart and the exit point of the driveline) and a sponge placed in that was attached to a vacuum pump- another awesome device to carry around. I was tooled out cyborg-wise. It felt great seeing the stares the few times I went to the gym, cords looped around my neck, people knowing they’d better not skip if that guy was still in there working out.

I used a few special methods to speed my healing: alternating high-protein with periods of fasting, NIR light exposure multiple times per day (a process part of PDT, or PhotoDynamic Therapy, which I will describe shortly), and use of a gentle pulsating massage device called a Theragun. Each time they exchanged the sponge and resealed the wound, the nurses remarked how quickly the wound was healing, and seemed amazed. After just a couple of weeks, I was advised that I should switch to care for my wound myself.

Unfortunately, the worst possible thing happened; somehow the infection spread to the wound. It was as if a forest fire spreading towards a city had been halted by firefighters, only to have a new fire spring up even closer to the city.

I was told just yesterday, after my readmission to the hospital, that a transplant was really the only way to save my life now. Exchanging my mechanical device for a fresh and clean new device was not a feasible solution, because the infection would linger in my body, and would just cling to the new device, putting me right back in the same spot. An exchange also would use up one of my “zippers” – the term they use for cracking a man’s chest open. You only get so many.

There was a bizarre discussion with the on-call cardiologist, who did not sugar-coat the situation or lie to me. He told me the plan was to support me with various powerful antibiotics which would do nothing but delay my situation (A “Status 4” on the transplant list, where I had been for three years now with my trusty device), wait until I got sick enough that I had to be permanently hospitalized (A “Status 3”), then became so sick I needed to be moved to the Intensive Care Unit (“Status 2”) where the real action would begin.

Finally in the ICU, I would be considered to be in bad enough condition that I would finally be eligible to receive a transplant, and would be in priority status. I would be hooked to many wondrous devices that would keep me alive until a suitable heart could be found. Being of Type O blood, this could take quite some time. Perhaps months. Perhaps too long.

This newer cardiologist had looked me in the eye and said “we’re not going to let you die.” Which was the first time I had heard such a thing. Others had been more reserved. I take it that it is still up in the air, but that live or die, I will be spending a considerable amount of time in a non-productive state. Resting in this passive period of my life is what will give me the chance to earn another active period. In Taoism we refer to this as “action through inaction”.

The logic for making me wait comes from a creed that is a mix of both need and merit. Those with more need who are in a more critical condition will receive a heart before I do. Those who previously have shown themselves to be non-meritorious, either by smoking cigarettes (off the list for a year the first time, permanently for the second time) or by not disciplining themselves to maintain a healthy weight, or by not coming to appointments, are removed from the list.

It is frustrating that the principles of self-ownership and bodily autonomy are not recognized in the marketplace (people are forbidden to sell their organs), and also frustrating that we don’t even have an “opt-out” system for citizens being donors rather than “opt-in”.

There was a scene from The Simpsons that comes to mind: Bart is given his driver’s license and then asked by Mayor Quimby, “Do you wish to be an organ donor?” to which Bart replies, “No way! I don’t want my guts touching some sick guy!”. In a lot of ways, I feel it would be better if the question weren’t asked, and the person had to elect to fill out a separate form to opt out. Better still if the organs could be immediately put on the market, with all proceeds going to the relatives or any other designated beneficiary.

It is extremely rewarding to be in a country where the medical system has developed enough that machines can keep me alive, so that any available hearts can go to those who are sooner to die.

Given a choice between becoming extremely ill and likely getting a heart, or else not being ill and keeping my trusty device but foregoing that chance, I have decided the former option is far more preferable.

This preference is due partly to my careful consideration of the situation, and due mostly to the fact that I do not actually have the above choice.

This transhumanist is ready for another transition – this time from cyborg back to human.

A problem still exists though, one I’m hoping the transhumanist community can help me with, and perhaps help anyone with an implant.

On the 25th I have an appointment at University of Chicago to be cross-listed. This means I would be able to receive a heart from the Chicago area, not just the Indianapolis area. While I would have to drive to Chicago every week thereafter to get medical care, that is a small price to pay to receive the gift of a heart.

The U of C has the shortest transplant wait-list in the country. I am not sure how much of that is due to the excellence of their program, and how much is due to the amount of deaths in that area.

I am scheduled to see their Director of Mechanical Circulatory Support. A man that guides and leads the creation of cyborgs like me! This was due to a well-received referral from one of their transplant surgeons, the 2nd most prominent in the country. It turns out he plays poker with my mother’s psychiatrist.

Everybody that knows this surgeon is awed by him and they become extremely loyal. While extremely kind and clever, he is an extremely dominant man and everything has to be perfect for his operations, and everybody knows this. He is the man who implanted the device that served me faithfully and reliably for three years now, before he moved to Chicago. I am the only patient he has given his personal phone number to, which was four years ago. I have sent him eight text messages since then, five in 2018, and three in 2022.

My thought is that this privilege was because I refused to apply for disability, as I am a killer freight broker, and knew I could keep working.

I told my second job’s boss this and he said “Makes sense. Perfectionists appreciate work ethic.” That made me smile.

So I am in exactly the situation I need to be in. The situation where it is possible to transition back to a fully-human state.

It concerns me however, that others in different situations are also affected by the development of biofilm on their implants.

Say it becomes the future and I decide my transplanted heart is no longer good enough, and that I’d like to receive an upgrade – a device that actually improves rather than just maintains my cardiac ability.

Will I and others then face the same situation? One nick in the skin and your device begins to coat with this insufferable goo? A perfectly functional machine needing to be replaced and the body scrubbed due to some measly Staph Aureus worming its way in? Some miserable germ disrupting the life of one trying to cultivate immortality?

We can do better than that.

How the Transhumanist Community Can Help 

I have a request and a challenge for the Transhumanist Community.

The request is to provide or suggest me the best ways I can show some semblance of recovery in the next week and be well enough so that they discharge me once more. That would allow me to get to Chicago and hopefully get listed.

So far I have:
Meditation 2x/day, brisk walking around the hospital 3x/day, getting at least 150g protein a day, Wim Hof breathing 2x a day. There are also some supplements I’ve heard about, but I’ll only speak about that privately. Please email me any thoughts (scm.zachr@gmail.com).

The challenge is fighting biofilm. Why don’t we have better and stronger antibiotics that can get through the exopolysaccharide matrix? Can we promote more development of these antibiotics by big biotech? How can we get more arcane treatments that have shown clinical in-vitro significance (particularly PDT) used in more human trials? Are there any novel uses for phage therapy, where an engineered virus is used to kill off the bacteria?

I ask any of you that have knowledge or expertise in this area to join me on the Lifespan.io Discord server and discuss these things. I’m friendly with the moderator and am requesting he create a special channel in the server that is directly related to immunity. We are smart enough to beat these pests.

授我仙药，神皇所造。教我服食，还精补脑。寿同金石，永世难老

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

Why Joe Rogan Should Not Be Deplatformed – Article by Zach Richardson

Why Joe Rogan Should Not Be Deplatformed – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party publishes this perspective from our Director of Publication, Zach Richardson, on the importance of respecting the free speech of Joe Rogan, which is consistent with our strong support for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, Zach Richardson previously published an article, refuting some commonly circulated anti-vaccination fallacies, entitled “Pasteurizing the Conclusions of an Anti-Vaxxer“. Here Mr. Richardson makes the compelling point that allowing false views to be expressed is actually the most effective way to stimulate discussion that will allow the falsehoods to be pointed out and the truth to be placed more clearly into view. 

~Gennady Stolyarov II, Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party, February 12, 2022

Here is the open letter that lays out the concerns about Joe Rogan.

Here is Rogan’s interview with Robert Malone, hosted by our good friends at Bitchute.

Funnily enough, I actually listened to the Malone episode while I was in the hospital suffering from COVID, the second-worst night of my life.

Up until that point I didn’t really care. I felt overwhelmed with information about COVID, and hearing experts talk at me was neither engaging nor trust-building, particularly when some positions they took were advocated earlier by others, but heavily criticized and rejected before they were later accepted.

Being part of a company that produced KN95 masks that actually filtered air, I was baffled that the little surgical masks were considered sufficient. The masks we created were airtight, and all air passed through a KN95 filter which could be changed daily and cost less than a dime.

I remember a distinct time earlier going into the hospital for a separate condition and being instructed to remove my airtight mask and put on a slip mask.

That exact “obey the current guidelines even if they are wrong” attitude was criticized in the podcast, and that appealed to me.

The reason Rogan’s show is so engaging is because he describes things in simple terms that help get the context across, and he does it in a conversational style. I think it’s dumb to criticize him for this, like how in the letter they attack him for calling the vaccine “gene therapy” when he was just referencing how it used mRNA. I can’t know for sure, but I’ll bet if you asked him if it was directly editing genes he would have said “No.”

Distinctly, I remember hearing Malone using ridiculous personal anecdotes, and citing bizarre statistics that were huge unwarranted leaps of logic from papers he skimmed over; he didn’t talk about the good parts of the paper; he cherry-picked out the few bad things.

Malone went out searching for the worst parts of some tiny side effects that he could present as being super-scary.

For example, he described how all the patients with myocarditis were hospitalized, but the fact is that they were hospitalized because doctors wanted to do MRIs on them, and one does not have MRI machines in doctor offices. Totally misleading!

Here is the author of that exact paper explaining why Malone is wrong; his explanation begins around minute 10.

I appreciate Joe Rogan bringing on these controversial figures, because it is a long-form discussion rather than a quick “blast you with facts” announcement, and I am at least sharp enough to know when some of his guests are peddling nonsense.

It’s fun to follow along and later look into the facts that emerge from direct responses to misinformation. The truth is that those facts would not proliferate without the misinformation first appearing. Here is an example:

“Joe Rogan interview with Peter McCullough contains multiple false and unsubstantiated claims about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines” – from Health Feedback.

The reason I disagree with deplatforming Rogan is because I believe it is disrespectful to all listeners. I feel that it is disrespectful to assume that others are too stupid to do their own research in response to bizarre claims.

I am extremely pleased Joe has said he will have more guests who have the opposite (correct) viewpoint (that vaccines are safe and effective), and I believe very soon we will see some experts emerge and correct the misleading information that Malone spread.

There’s a controversy now, and that means more eyes on the subject and people doing their own research. It’s a beautiful symphony of yin and yang energy.

Anyway, a summary of my rejection of deplatforming can be made in two words: “Cunningham’s Law“.

 

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Zach Richardson, Jason Geringer, and Ben Ballweg –July 25, 2021

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Zach Richardson, Jason Geringer, and Ben Ballweg –July 25, 2021

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Jason Geringer
Ben Ballweg
Zach Richardson
Gennady Stolyarov II
David Shumaker
Art Ramon Garcia, Jr.
Alexandria Black

The U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Zach Richardson, Jason Geringer, and Ben Ballweg of July 25, 2021, is now available for viewing on Odysee here.

On Sunday, July 25, 2021, at 4 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time, the U.S. Transhumanist Party invited its new Officers, Zach Richardson (Director of Publication), Jason Geringer (Legislative Director), and Ben Ballweg (Director of Longevity Outreach), to discuss some of their ideas, planned initiatives, and perspectives on the current condition of the transhumanist movement. The discussion focused on improving the internal functions of the U.S. Transhumanist Party, attracting volunteers, and raising the visibility of transhumanist projects and causes. An interactive discussion transpired about ways to bolster the publication and legislative-tracking activities of the USTP. The conversation also extended to subjects of general interest to transhumanists, futurists, and those seeking to learn about the transhumanist movement.

Read about Zach Richardson here.
Read about Jason Geringer here.
Read about Ben Ballweg here.

Join the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free, no matter where you reside.

NOTE: Even though the U.S. Transhumanist Party is staunchly pro-vaccine and expressed such views during the Virtual Enlightenment Salon, YouTube algorithmically censored the video, most likely with no serious human involvement, and algorithmically rejected our appeal as well. The U.S. Transhumanist Party strongly condemns such censorship but also sees an opportunity here by encouraging people to watch and spread this video for the purpose of overcoming arbitrary barriers put forth by unintelligent and unaccountable algorithms.

Ben Ballweg, U.S. Transhumanist Party Director of Longevity Outreach
Ageism, Wageism, and Transhumanism – Part III – Article by Zach Richardson

Ageism, Wageism, and Transhumanism – Part III – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

Stereotypes lose their power when the world is found to be more complex than the stereotype would suggest. When we learn that individuals do not fit the group stereotype, then it begins to fall apart.

– Ed Koch

Author’s Note: There is an acronym thrown around on the legal advice subreddit that has the unfortunate name IANAL, which stands for “I am not a lawyer.” That acronym applies here. Nothing I say in these essays should be considered as anything other than the speculations of a layman.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, December 2021

The first case we should survey was a successful suit filed by the EEOC. It is important to note that it was filed by a group of employees, rather than an individual.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Hutchinson Sealing Systems, Inc.

In this case, Hutchinson dismissed in November/December 2008 three employees (ages 62, 51, and 48) who received the lowest scores on a new updated project engineer rating system they had implemented to assess performance with their engineers. In March 2009 they let go another engineer aged 55.

The problem was that, under the previous rating system, the first group of engineers would not have been laid off, and the March employee would inversely have been the highest-rated project engineer. Those four employees were the oldest employees in the company.

I did some digging on various public records sites and could not find an answer to the question I am most burningly curious about: what were the differences between the two rating systems?

The preponderance of the evidence in this case makes it seem clear this was age-related discrimination.

Hutchinson appeared to be clearing the way for a new round of younger hires, and had changed their system so they had a pretense for letting go their most elderly employees.

Let’s consider this situation, however, from the company’s perspective and assume a similar set of circumstances as that at my previous organization. Imagine that, yes, these employees were the oldest, but aging-related cognitive decline (ARCD) was severely impacting their performance and leading them to just become “bodies in the shop” that were drawing a paycheck but not contributing.

How could this be, when a change to the rating system immediately let go of all of the oldest employees? The previous rating system, after all, had them quite highly rated.

Consider the following possibility:

What if two of the criteria used in the prior assessment system were:

  1. Number of projects completed
  2. Time spent working at the company (seniority)

If those were two of the criteria, and they were highly weighted, then an employee who had just been around a very long time and already done a lot could “rest on their laurels” and comfortably enjoy a very high assessment while underperforming on current projects.

Perhaps that exact reason was why Hutchinson decided to change their rating system. Their senior employees were suffering from ARCD and not producing results. They were on the payroll and doing lackluster work but were still assessed very highly.

Imagine that from the company’s start, they tasked some poor manager to implement a rating system to judge performance, and he picked the two above criteria to add just because they were two of the first that came to mind. They used the same old system for a decade without problems – until many of their staff hired at the same time all hit the age where they began suffering from ARCD.

Of course, this is only a possibility. It is equally plausible that a culture of bias and prejudice existed and only the appearance and mannerisms of the employees in question were judged to determine them as less capable, and the new system was created not as an improvement on a poorly-thought-out performance evaluation tool that no longer measured performance, but simply as a device to eliminate those employees they didn’t like.

According to the current law, the employees (note the plural; individuals do not seem to have the same luxury, as in Gross vs. FBL Financial) do not have to prove that they were fired because of their age, the employer has to prove that they did NOT fire them because of their age. In the next essay we’ll examine the case where this important precedent was established.

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

Ageism, Wageism, and Transhumanism – Part II – Article by Zach Richardson

Ageism, Wageism, and Transhumanism – Part II – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

For Life is just an employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.”

– Jessie B. Rittenhouse

Author’s Note: There is an acronym thrown around on the legal advice subreddit that has the unfortunate name IANAL, which stands for “I am not a lawyer.” That acronym applies here. Nothing I say in these essays should be considered as anything other than the speculations of a layman.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, December 2021

The “Larry” character from this series’ introductory essay is based on a personal anecdotal work experience. Larry’s function in that organization was “order entry”. He was a steady worker and could reliably enter 20-25 orders per hour into our management system. Larry was not quite as fast as Roger, but he could keep up nicely and did his share… at first. Each year passed, and he got a little bit slower at clicking around, at keeping track of the volume of data needed for each entry and at maintaining accuracy.

Roger, on the other hand, was a speed demon. 40 orders per hour was not uncommon, and he seemed laser-focused at work. He was the better of the two, and everyone knew it. Both he and Larry had been with the company since the beginning.

COVID-19 rolled around, and our industry suffered a massive drop in revenue; our clients were manufacturing plants who were all temporarily ceasing operations. It was time for layoffs, and Larry was let go due to lack of performance. Everyone knew it was because he was getting slow and forgetful. Everyone knew it was because he was too old.

The company was lucky because they had a good standard by which they could measure the two on, and clearly demonstrate a decline in performance. They had metrics on employee workflow going back several years.

The fact that these metrics had been around since the beginning and were unchanging was key in the company’s realization that it was legally defensible to lay off Larry.

They could show a decline in performance and say:

“Age had nothing to do with it! We don’t know why he was getting worse at his job, but he just was, and our metrics showed it, so we were unfortunately forced to let him go.”

Metrics, metrics, metrics.

The key defense against any claim of ageism was enabled this last decade by how ridiculously easy it has become to collect and store data. Metrics can be set as targets that are just out of reach or are only being met by 70% of your workforce, and then managers can fire those they don’t like, while retaining those they do.

Consider speed limits on our highways; probably half of all drivers break the limits, but only a handful of them are pulled over and ticketed.

Metrics allowed large companies to fire disparately since the mid-2000s, and the ease of data collection via company-owned devices is enabling small companies to do the same.

This is not good, but it is also not bad. It is not fair, but it is also not unfair. It is just business.

So, how does a company proceed with removing an unwanted elderly worker without getting tied up in a lawsuit?

Well, there’s an art to it, and in the next few essays I’ll explain a few of the key concrete particulars by looking at successfully and unsuccessfully litigated examples in case law.

** I am not a lawyer, and nothing in this series of essays should be taken as legal advice**

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

Ageism, Wageism, and Transhumanism – Part I – Article by Zach Richardson

Ageism, Wageism, and Transhumanism – Part I – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.

– Madeleine L’Engle

Author’s Note: Madeleine is mostly correct, but at a certain point people will begin to be affected by Age-Related Cognitive Decline (ARCD). It is our job as Transhumanists to continue to push that point to later and later ages, until we can finally eliminate it entirely, and preserve perfect memories of every occurrence.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, December 2021

In a recent “Progress, Potential and Possibilities” interview with Dr. Jean C. Accius, PhD of AARP, a series of data analyses collectively called “The Longevity Economy Outlook” was discussed. A few interesting statistics were presented:

  1. In the U.S there are 10,000 people turning 65 each and every day.
  2. Two-thirds of older Americans have seen or experienced age-related workplace discrimination.
  3. 90% of older Americans support strengthening age discrimination law.

Age discrimination was defined as being passed up for a promotion, being let go, or hearing negative remarks related to their age.

For item two above, I take issue with the wording they used; in my opinion it should read “…have seen or experienced what they believed to be age-related workplace discrimination.” The source population was a poll of employees, the population that would be discriminated against. They didn’t poll an equal number of employers, the ones who would be doing the discriminating.

In any situation where alleged discrimination occurs, the allegedly discriminated against (employee) is going to believe discrimination took place, and the alleged discriminator is going to believe that they were not discriminating. Taking a poll of all those (employees, a population composed entirely of those discriminated against) and asking them if they thought discrimination took place, is not going to produce very valuable insight. The poll would have turned out quite differently if only employers were asked.

Imagine polling a group of ABC Corp workers and asking, “Do you think ABC Corp has a high-enough salary for its employees?” and then presenting the findings as “Four fifths of all Americans are underpaid.”

It should be plainly obvious that no sane employer would ever say “Oh yeah, Larry? I fired him because he was old.” They will instead always find an alternative reason to let him go, even if the auxiliary reason is still fundamentally tied to age-related factors, Age-Related Cognitive Decline (ARCD) in particular.

The law was intended to protect a vulnerable population, but it seems that there is an easy loophole that would allow an employer to continue to discriminate.

In this series of essays, I will be exploring how our current legal structure defines and enforces protections for the elderly, be briefly surveying some research confirming the existence of ARCD, be analyzing a successfully-litigated case study of age discrimination and be speculate about how future technologies may impact both future law and future ARCD prevention efforts.

Our current legal structure lacks some clarity on how discrimination is interpreted in hiring/firing situations. Here is the relevant section from the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA):

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

(a) Employer practices

It shall be unlawful for an employer-

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s age;

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s age; or

(3) to reduce the wage rate of any employee in order to comply with this chapter.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

So how does our corporate culture adapt itself to the legal ramifications of this act? In the next essay, we’ll talk a little bit more about Larry, and I’ll tell you why some companies can now easily get away with getting rid of him while others cannot.

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

The Transhumanist Declaration – What We Value

The Transhumanist Declaration – What We Value

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World Transhumanist Association

There are a few people who move past bias, but the moment a group transitions into herd mentality, then anyone capable of overcoming their own bias is faced with everyone else’s.

-Kyrtin Atreides

Editor’s Note: The Transhumanist Declaration was crafted by several Transhumanist organizations in 1998 and updated in 2009. It is an excellent introduction to who we are and what we believe. The human mind naturally makes some systematic errors in calculation that need to be willfully overcome by the direction of one’s conscious thought. Successful policy both in self-management and in governance needs to be “long-range”.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, December 2021

1. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.

2. We believe that humanity’s potential is still mostly unrealized. There are possible scenarios that lead to wonderful and exceedingly worthwhile enhanced human conditions.

3. We recognize that humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress.

4. Research effort needs to be invested into understanding these prospects. We need to carefully deliberate how best to reduce risks and expedite beneficial applications. We also need forums where people can constructively discuss what should be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.

5. Reduction of existential risks, and development of means for the preservation of life and health, the alleviation of grave suffering, and the improvement of human foresight and wisdom should be pursued as urgent priorities, and heavily funded.

6. Policy making ought to be guided by responsible and inclusive moral vision, taking seriously both opportunities and risks, respecting autonomy and individual rights, and showing solidarity with and concern for the interests and dignity of all people around the globe. We must also consider our moral responsibilities towards generations that will exist in the future.

7. We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise.

8. We favour allowing individuals wide personal choice over how they enable their lives. This includes use of techniques that may be developed to assist memory, concentration, and mental energy; life extension therapies; reproductive choice technologies; cryonics procedures; and many other possible human modification and enhancement technologies.

Crass Transit – Editorial by Zach Richardson

Crass Transit – Editorial by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

Life expectancy is a statistical phenomenon. You could still be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow.

-Ray Kurzweil

Author’s Note: I have a sharp opinion on this topic that should not be taken to be any sort of official position of the USTP.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, December 2021

It truly baffles me that Congress has decided to allocate such a large sum in the recent infrastructure bill towards local mass-transit systems. How is it not seen that ridesharing trumps mass-transit in every possible way (except in SOME cases, price)? Transhumanist policy means ruthlessly advocating usage of our public funds be based on sound reasoning and judgment. As the necessity of congregating in centralized office buildings becomes both unnecessary (due to remote work) and dangerous (due to COVID and any other unforeseen pandemics), mass transit needs to be phased out in favor of ridesharing.

Ridesharing is:

1. More environmentally friendly: Buses take a huge amount of fuel and are often running at only partial capacity. This is an issue all transhumanists should consider, as the climate situation is becoming more urgent.

2. Safer: not having to walk to and from a stopping point means less time in the open, which may or may not be a concern in larger cities. You are also less susceptible to the spread of disease when not congregating in one large, enclosed space with dozens of others.

3. Faster: no frequent stops to let more passengers on/off the vehicle.

4. More convenient: You can summon a vehicle when you are ready to go, instead of having to build a schedule around when the mass-transit system is operating. Most vehicles spend 95% of their time parked anyway.

5. Point-to-Point: No going out of your way and taking odd connecting lines between different systems that take you out of the route. This is an era where technology needs to serve us, not vice-versa, and that means direct connections. Leave hub-and-spoke to airlines (until we have personal jets)

There used to be a concept called “creative destruction” in the economy, wherein a dying industry was allowed to let die, and we need to revitalize this principle. Imagine how bizarre it would seem to be subsidizing telegram delivery services in 2021. Well, allocating public funds for (now) inefficient methods of transportation is just as bizarre.

The sudden plunge in ridership during the pandemic led, of course, to calls for “emergency” funding – for example, in the American Public Transport Association’s July 2021 policy brief. Why was Blackberry not granted emergency funding when sales of its eponymous device declined? Because of the lack of “emergency” funding for that company (despite facing the same consequences of lack of revenue, layoffs, etc.), it was forced to restructure its organization and transform into a successful cybersecurity company, providing a service that is extremely critical to a Transhumanist future. Public transit should have to do the same.

We should not be mired down with hokey ideals of helping the underprivileged when a better system exists for those of any amount of means. Perhaps not making the underprivileged transit experience an hour-long ride in uncomfortable conditions 5 days per week could be a good start. If funding is needed to continue to support that population segment, let it be redirected from less technologically and logistically sound programs to more forward-thinking ones. We could cut the funding for buses and rather than food stamps have “transportation stamps” – a QR code that would give the recipients a hefty discount.

The people of the city deserve this.

Zach Richardson is the Director of Publication of the U.S. Transhumanist Party.

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Otto Siegel – October 30, 2021

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Otto Siegel – October 30, 2021

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Otto Siegel
Gennady Stolyarov II
David Shumaker
Art Ramon Garcia, Jr.
Jason Geringer
Ben Ballweg
Zach Richardson

On Sunday, October 31, 2021, at 4 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time, the U.S. Transhumanist Party invited Otto Siegel, M.Ed., MCC, to discuss the new field of Longevity Coaching to prepare people for an era of greatly extended lifespans. He provided an overview of Longevity Coaching, what it involves, what it can achieve, and how people can avail themselves of it. The discussion also focused on the cultivation of genius and how to discover aspects of genius in every individual. Watch the video recording of this Virtual Enlightenment Salon here.

Otto Siegel, M.Ed., MCC, shared his insights as a coach in maximizing genius and longevity with 18 years of experience. Key themes of the discussion included 1) how to stay healthy in all ways, 2) how contagious longevity can be when its adherents are having fun, 3) how play can be used to solve challenges and strengthen good habits, 4) focusing on our humanness and vulnerability to get skeptics to consider the merits of our beliefs, and 5) the importance of connecting with others in one’s longevity goals. To learn more, visit https://www.geniuscoaching.com.

Find out more about Longevity Coaching here and here.

Otto Siegel is a nationally known expert on genius and innovation and co-author, with Susanna Lange, of Yes, You Are a Genius, Whether You Know It or Not: Claiming the Extraordinary Life You Were Born to Live. After teaching Biology and Chemistry to high-school students in Munich, Germany, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, for 17 years, he discovered a deeper passion for learning and education and started his company Genius Coaching in 2002 in Scottsdale, AZ. He studied Behavioral Science with Nobel Laureate Prof. Dr. Konrad Lorenz in Munich, Germany, and holds a Master’s Degree in education and professional coaching.

Join the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free, no matter where you reside.

15-Day Exposure Period on Policy Proposals on Investigations and Emergency Declarations

15-Day Exposure Period on Policy Proposals on Investigations and Emergency Declarations

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The U.S. Transhumanist Party hereby opens a 15-day public exposure period on the proposals submitted by R. Nicholas Starr and Zach Richardson concerning investigations and emergency actions. The proposals are presented below, followed by initial feedback from USTP leadership. The public exposure period is intended to last until 12:01 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time on November 1, 2021.

During the exposure period, please post your comments on this thread. If you post comments intended to be considered in voting and/or amending any of these planks in any other electronic medium, please note that you thereby give your consent to have your comments reproduced with attribution or linked within this discussion thread, in order to direct members’ attention and consideration to them.

Given the nature of the proposals and depending on the input received regarding them, the U.S. Transhumanist Party reserves the right to put forward for a vote of the members either (1) the entirety of each proposal, (2) portions of each proposal, (3) some of the proposals but not others, or (4) none of the proposals. Also, the U.S. Transhumanist Party reserves the right to determine which document(s) of the U.S. Transhumanist Party, if any, would be open to amendment to include any of the contents of these proposals.

Proposals by R. Nicholas Starr

The following policy proposals seek to limit the power of USTP leadership during events of investigations and emergencies. I request these items are put to vote as soon as possible, after providing an appropriate exposure period for members to discuss, add, remove, or change things.

Proposal RNS-1. Guidelines for Investigations

As a data-driven political organization the United States Transhumanist Party (USTP), and its leadership acting on behalf of the USTP, must remain neutral in its official capacity during outside investigations into past, present, or future members until said investigations are complete and all facts are known and presented to USTP members. The USTP should also refrain from attempts to influence ongoing investigations or public perception while an investigation is taking place. Public statements of facts and acknowledgement of the situation is permissible, but statements must not stray into speculation. Once an investigation is complete the USTP can issue statements based solely on the facts and analysis thereof. This does NOT restrict an individual, regardless of their position in the USTP, from speaking out on an issue in their personal capacity, nor does it restrict a person from providing criticism of such personal statements in their own personal capacity.

The USTP can conduct its own investigations into matters affecting members on a case by case basis, as determined by a vote of the membership, and under the following limitations. Investigators must be impartial with no personal or professional connection to any of the parties involved in the investigation (accusers, the accused, or other individuals of interest sought for questioning in the investigation). Professional connections include but aren’t limited to current or former employees, advisors, board members, and interns for the person or organization under investigation as well as direct competitors of any party under investigation (you can’t investigate your competition). If an impartial investigator cannot be obtained, either from inside or outside our membership, then the investigation must be abandoned.

Internal investigations should not be intended to replace outside investigations and should be limited to how the incident under investigation impacts operation of the USTP. Consequences sought after the conclusion of the investigation shall be limited to administrative action available within the USTP. The USTP does not have the power to require action or consequences be made by outside organizations.

The purpose of the internal investigation shall be made known to the members with a summary of alleged offenses and what questions the investigation seeks to answer. This must be done in a professional manner, excluding personal opinion and potential bias.

Proposal RNS-2. Definitions and Restrictions on Emergency Actions

United States Transhumanist Party (USTP) leaders shall have the limited ability to declare, and act on, emergencies on behalf of its members. Such a declaration shall have no bearing on, or interfere with, applicable federal, state, and local laws.

When declaring an emergency the USTP leadership must publicly announce what the emergency is, why waiting to act would cause immediate increased harm, and the intended course of action sought by the USTP. This course of action must not deviate from, or spread beyond, the scope of the incident. Meaning any intended action must be clearly and directly related to the emergency.

An emergency shall be defined as an unexpected and immediate threat or active instance of the following, pending member further recommendations and approval by membership vote:

  • Threat to life or public safety (threats to life extension shall NOT be included unless the emergency threatens an individual placed in preservation prior to the emergency, such as cryogenics)
  • Natural disaster
  • Humanitarian crisis
  • Credible acts of violence
  • Direct malicious attack, physical or digital, of USTP property
  • Theft of USTP funds from an official account totaling over X% of the last known balance and more than $X. (Amounts to be decided based on current and future potential needs before vote)

It shall not include:

  • Personal scandal
  • Delays in research
  • Matters of outside businesses or organizations

An emergency can only be declared in cases where delayed action would clearly cause increased harm based on the available evidence. If the emergency action is to take longer than 14 days, then it requires further approval by a vote of the membership.

Feedback on R. Nicholas Starr’s Proposals by USTP Leadership

The USTP Leadership offers a point-by-point analysis of Mr. Starr’s proposals below.

Proposal RNS-1. “As a data-driven political organization the United States Transhumanist Party (USTP), and its leadership acting on behalf of the USTP, must remain neutral in its official capacity during outside investigations into past, present, or future members until said investigations are complete and all facts are known and presented to USTP members.”

USTP Leadership Response: This appears to provide a blanket power to any “outside investigation”, however motivated and by whomever conducted. Just because an outside investigation is being conducted does not guarantee the objective or impartial nature of the investigator, particularly if the investigator is retained by a party with a preconceived interest in the outcome of the investigation. If the USTP leadership is unable to point out instances of obvious bias when they exist, this hampers objectivity and the search for truth. Moreover, if the rest of the world is free to comment and speculate on the subject of the investigation while the USTP’s ability to respond is muzzled, the USTP would necessarily be placed at a disadvantage relative to those who have no compunctions about making unsubstantiated claims.

Proposal RNS-1. “The USTP should also refrain from attempts to influence ongoing investigations or public perception while an investigation is taking place.”

USTP Leadership Response: Public perception often can be influenced far more rapidly than an official investigation can be conducted or concluded. The unfortunate truth is, in a social-media-dominated age, the court of public opinion has the power to affect an individual’s fate without utilizing any reasonable standard of evidence or waiting for the facts to come out. Sometimes the damage to a person’s reputation from unsubstantiated allegations in the court of public opinion can be immense. Without voices of reason being ready to counter unsubstantiated, character-assassinating allegations right away, good people’s future prospects may be damaged or destroyed because unscrupulous voices are the only ones which are allowed to be heard.

Proposal RNS-1. “Public statements of facts and acknowledgement of the situation is permissible, but statements must not stray into speculation.”

USTP Leadership Response: The USTP does not favor unsubstantiated speculation, either, but must remain free to point out when others engage in such speculation and when such others accuse without evidence.

Proposal RNS-1. “Once an investigation is complete the USTP can issue statements based solely on the facts and analysis thereof. ”

USTP Leadership Response:  Again, this places too much power into the hands of an outside investigator, often appointed by entities with no affiliation or connection with the USTP, to determine what constitutes “facts and analysis” that are within the permissible realm of discussion. An outside investigator can easily present a selective, skewed, or biased portrayal, and the USTP should not relinquish its ability to inquire into and comment on facts and analytical interpretations that, for whatever reason, an outside investigator did not include in a public-facing report.

Proposal RNS-1. “ This does NOT restrict an individual, regardless of their position in the USTP, from speaking out on an issue in their personal capacity, nor does it restrict a person from providing criticism of such personal statements in their own personal capacity.”

USTP Leadership Response:  The USTP leadership agrees with the principle behind the statement above.

Proposal RNS-1. “The USTP can conduct its own investigations into matters affecting members on a case by case basis, as determined by a vote of the membership, and under the following limitations.”

USTP Leadership Response: Requiring a vote of the members before conducting an internal investigation may have several undesirable consequences. First, if there is an action whose damaging effect is swiftly forthcoming, then the procedural steps required for a vote to be conducted may well come about much later than the damage has already been done. Second, it is often possible to investigate certain matters discreetly without damage to the reputation of the person(s) being investigated. Once a pending investigation is publicly announced and put to a vote of the members, the members are placed in the position of (1) knowing that there is an alleged transgression or set of transgressions, and (2) deciding whether a given person or persons is sufficiently likely to be guilty of that alleged transgression or set of transgressions so as to be investigated. This in itself can damage the reputation of the person(s) being investigated, even if the investigation ultimately clears them of any wrongdoing. Having at least a preliminary private process of examining any actions within the USTP would be beneficial in enabling the vast majority of potential issues to be identified and resolved without such reputational damage, and any issues brought before the members would be of such an egregious nature that private means did not suffice to resolve them.

Proposal RNS-1. “Investigators must be impartial with no personal or professional connection to any of the parties involved in the investigation (accusers, the accused, or other individuals of interest sought for questioning in the investigation). Professional connections include but aren’t limited to current or former employees, advisors, board members, and interns for the person or organization under investigation as well as direct competitors of any party under investigation (you can’t investigate your competition). If an impartial investigator cannot be obtained, either from inside or outside our membership, then the investigation must be abandoned.”

USTP Leadership Response: The transhumanist community is small enough, and collaborations on projects by transhumanists are frequent enough, that it is difficult to find any person in the community who does not have a personal or professional connection of some sort with most others in the community. The proposal above also describes the possibility of an outside investigator; however, the outside investigator would likely need to be paid, and the USTP is an organization with extremely limited resources. Furthermore, the limitations above would create de facto immunity for someone who develops such extensive personal and/or professional connections that anyone who could possibly competently investigate that person would be precluded from doing so because of such connections.

Proposal RNS-1. “Internal investigations should not be intended to replace outside investigations and should be limited to how the incident under investigation impacts operation of the USTP. Consequences sought after the conclusion of the investigation shall be limited to administrative action available within the USTP.”

USTP Leadership Response: The USTP already has a process for actions to be taken in response to violations of our Guidelines for Community Conduct. That process does not require an independent investigation, which generally would be too time-consuming to address the most typical kinds of violations, which are at once blatant, public, and quick to have their effects. Thus, if the only consequences are any “administrative action available within the USTP”, then the internal investigation becomes an unnecessary instrument. 

Proposal RNS-1. “The USTP does not have the power to require action or consequences be made by outside organizations.”

USTP Leadership Response: While the USTP, as a practical matter, indeed cannot require another organization to take an action, the USTP does have the ability to express an opinion regarding the actions taken by any other organization and whether or not such actions align with the values and goals of the USTP, as well as whether or not such actions are beneficial to the transhumanist movement or are meritorious more generally. As an organization with definite views and definite outlooks on a large number of issues, projects, and people, the USTP is surely within its rights to express its points of view and, when needed, urge that certain courses of action be taken by other organizations and individuals. The USTP does not have the power to compel those courses of action, but expressing silence on matters that are likely to influence the future of the transhumanist movement is not advisable if by speaking out the USTP is able to make a difference in shaping public opinion.

Proposal RNS-1. “The purpose of the internal investigation shall be made known to the members with a summary of alleged offenses and what questions the investigation seeks to answer. This must be done in a professional manner, excluding personal opinion and potential bias.”

USTP Leadership Response:  Again, doing this may actually create unduly unfavorable impressions of the person(s) being investigated before the investigation is complete. There could be many conceivable cases in which, if an investigation is undertaken, those being investigated would actually prefer that the investigation be done privately and discreetly, at least as an initial approach.

***

Proposal RNS-2. “When declaring an emergency the USTP leadership must publicly announce what the emergency is, why waiting to act would cause immediate increased harm, and the intended course of action sought by the USTP. ”

USTP Leadership Response: The USTP leadership does not oppose the practice of making such a public announcement and will endeavor to do so in the future.

Proposal RNS-2. “This course of action must not deviate from, or spread beyond, the scope of the incident. Meaning any intended action must be clearly and directly related to the emergency.”

USTP Leadership Response: It would seem to be common sense that actions to address an emergency should be related to that emergency. However, there are circumstances where it may be a matter of interpretation whether a particular action is “clearly and directly related to the emergency” or somehow “deviates from” or “spreads beyond” it. If questioned on a particular action, the USTP leadership should be able to provide an explanation of its relationship to the emergency, and that explanation should be given deference unless it is completely nonsensical by any reasonable person’s interpretation.

Proposal RNS-2. “An emergency shall be defined as an unexpected and immediate threat or active instance of the following, pending member further recommendations and approval by membership vote […]”

USTP Leadership Response: The process of arranging a member vote is generally too logistically intense and time-consuming to be feasibly undertaken in cases of a genuine emergency, where swift action is required. It is possible to take a member poll after the fact of a particular major action, to determine whether or not the active portion of the membership agrees with the action that was taken. This was done, for instance, in response to the U.S. Transhumanist Party Statement of Support for Aubrey de Grey, where a member poll shows, as of October 16, 2021, 42 of the 58 members voting (72.4%) expressing agreement with the statement, 10 (17.2%) expressing disagreement, and 6 (10.3%) expressing no opinion or a neutral position. However, in a genuine emergency, such member polling should be done only when there is sufficient reprieve from the pressing need to respond to events that the poll could be accommodated without compromising the ability to actually address the emergency.

Proposal RNS-2. “Threat to life or public safety (threats to life extension shall NOT be included unless the emergency threatens an individual placed in preservation prior to the emergency, such as cryogenics)“.

USTP Leadership Response: Threats to the future and reputation of the life-extension movement and the prospect of attaining radical life extension within our lifetimes should indeed be considered grounds for declaring an emergency, particularly when such threats pertain to the possible derailment of the life-extension cause through hostile characterizations within the court of public opinion. The USTP leadership reminds members that the immutable Core Ideal 1 of the USTP is that “The Transhumanist Party supports significant life extension achieved through the progress of science and technology.” Any act, behavior, allegation, or decision which threatens the fulfillment of Core Ideal 1 and where the USTP has even a possibility of averting the threat through a swift and decisive response, should indeed be subject to potential treatment as an emergency.

Proposal RNS-2.

“Natural disaster
Humanitarian crisis
Credible acts of violence
Direct malicious attack, physical or digital, of USTP property”

USTP Leadership Response: The USTP leadership agrees that these would be valid reasons to declare an emergency.

Proposal RNS-2. “Theft of USTP funds from an official account totaling over X% of the last known balance and more than $X. (Amounts to be decided based on current and future potential needs before vote)”

USTP Leadership Response: The USTP does not currently hold an official account for funds, so this is not a situation that can arise at this time. However, in the future, if any theft were undertaken, this would be grounds for declaring an emergency if necessary. It is not clear why a threshold for doing so is proposed here, as any misappropriation of funds should be able to be dealt with swiftly and effectively.

Proposal RNS-2. “It shall not include:

  • Personal scandal
  • Delays in research
  • Matters of outside businesses or organizations“

USTP Leadership Response: The USTP leadership considers these exclusions to essentially negate any power to declare an emergency. Manufactured personal scandal is one of the easiest tactics to use in today’s cultural and social-media environment in order to damage a person’s career, livelihood, and reputation, without having sufficient evidence to do so within the criteria of any formal legal system. Tying the USTP leadership’s hands in such situations only lends additional power to those who would seek to deploy such a reprehensible tactic with impunity. Delays in research that affects life extension could be a matter of life or death for many transhumanists, and also contravene Core Ideal 1 of the U.S. Transhumanist Party; the USTP leadership should have the authority to endeavor to overcome such delays through all efficacious means, particularly by shaping public opinion if the roadblocks to the research’s continuation are cultural and attitudinal. Furthermore, if “outside businesses or organizations” engage in conduct that materially affects the future of the transhumanist movement, including public perception of transhumanism and life extension, then removing the ability of the USTP to comment on such conduct would simply remove the USTP from the ability to influence such public perception, leaving such influence solely to others, including those hostile to our movement. The USTP leadership does not understand why our organization should intentionally handicap itself when our movement’s detractors intend to do no such thing and have only escalated their attacks as the movement has been reaching various milestones of success.

Proposal RNS-2. “An emergency can only be declared in cases where delayed action would clearly cause increased harm based on the available evidence. If the emergency action is to take longer than 14 days, then it requires further approval by a vote of the membership.”

USTP Leadership Response: Again, criteria such as “clearly cause increased harm based on the available evidence” would be subject to interpretation, and a member who disagrees with the USTP leadership’s judgment as to what is likely to cause harm may then invoke such a clause to assert a veto power over USTP leadership’s actions. The 14-day threshold for a membership vote is unreasonably short, as most membership votes have historically taken longer than 14 days if one considers the prior exposure period alone, but the vote itself should also be open for a reasonably long amount of time to give any member who wishes to vote the opportunity to do so. If this is followed in the circumstances of an emergency, chances are that the rapid events, to which the USTP would need to respond, would have already taken their toll in the form of the undesirable consequences that may occur in the absence of USTP action.  Furthermore, the timing of the resolution of the emergency is contingent on a variety of external events and decisions over which the USTP leadership has no control; however, the USTP leadership can anticipate and has previously experienced situations where pressing situation can last far beyond 14 days, if, for instance, there is a standoff among the individuals and external organizations involved, or if the publication of information related to the matter in question is expected to be spread out over a longer time period (even as social-media commentary on the same matter and its consideration within the court of public opinion continue unabated). 

Proposal by Zach Richardson

Proposal ZR-1.

Proposal in Support of Decisive Executive Action in Times of Emergency:

When executive action is required in the face of a serious threat, the Chairman must have the authority to act decisively.

This proposal reasserts the Chairman’s authority to act decisively in defense of individuals, groups, or organizations by expressing the delegated support of the Party for the individual, group, or organization under assault.  The Chairman retains the authority to advocate for those individuals, groups, or organizations whose goals align with those of the Party. The Chairman is not required to seek the approval of a majority of the party membership to act on behalf of the party, nor does he have to provide justification for his support.

The authority of the Chairman to act on behalf of the party is not intended to supersede the authority of the Party to determine the Party’s position on a particular issue, nor is it intended to diminish the responsibility of the Party to take a position on a particular issue.

The Chairman will retain the authority to act on behalf of the Party, at his or her own discretion, to advocate on behalf of the Party and its members in the event of an emergency, defined as any event that may significantly impact the realization of the goals of the Party as outlined in the Platform.

The Party will seek to continuously empower the Chairman to act on behalf of its members by codifying his/her authority to do so in a manner that is consistent with the principles and standards of the Party, and is consistent with the existing authority of the Party to advocate on behalf of its members as a whole.

The Chairman is empowered to act as the Party’s representative, and to make statements on behalf of the Party, to the media and the public, to advocate on behalf of any individual, group or organization that supports the Party and its Platform, its members and the Party’s philosophy, goals and objectives, to promote the Party’s agenda, candidates and policies, and to respond to attacks on the Party, or on its members, allies or affiliates.

The Chairman has the ability to designate individuals and organizations as “allies” of the Party at his or her discretion, and to permit such “allies” to represent themselves to the public and the media as “allies” and “members” of the Party. Such “allies” are encouraged but not required to support the Platform.

Party members may not seek to compel the Chairman to retract any statement made on behalf of the Party or its allies, affiliates or members; nor may any Party member seek to compel the Chairman to retract any statement made on behalf of the Party or its allies, affiliates, or members by anyone who was so designated by the Chairman.

The Chairman and any of his designees shall ensure the following:

  1. The Party is adequately represented in all communications with the public and the media. In some cases, it may be appropriate to have two or more representatives from the Party speak on behalf of the Party.
  2. The Party is able to provide key information to the public and the media in a timely manner, through press releases, interviews, and particularly social media commentary.
  3. The Party is able to have a significant and positive impact on the outcome or resolution of the emergency.
  4. The Party is able to respond to attacks on the Party, or on any of its members, allies, or affiliates.

If any Party member seeks to compel the Chairman to retract any statement made on behalf of the Party, or its allies, affiliates or members, or any statement made on behalf of the Party by anyone who was designated an ally by the Chairman, the Chairman may assert that the member in question is acting in violation of the Party’s principles and its standards.

The Party pledges to empower the Chairman in a manner that is consistent with the principles and standards of the Party, and is consistent with the existing authority of the Party to advocate on behalf of its members and its Platform. The Party further pledges to make every effort to ensure that the Party, its members, and the Chairman are able to advocate for the Party and its members on a permanent and eternal basis.

It is in the interest of the Party to remain relevant, not only to the Party itself, but to the public, and it is in the spirit of that interest in which the Party empower the Chairman.

The Party therefore pledges to make a good-faith effort to ensure that the Chairman has the opportunity to respond to attacks on the Party, or on any of its members, allies, or affiliates, and finally to ensure that the Chairman is able to engage in the activities described in this proposal on a permanent and hopefully indefinite basis.

Feedback on Zach Richardson’s Proposals by USTP Leadership

The USTP leadership concurs with Proposal ZR-1 from Zach Richardson. Recent events have shown that the transhumanist movement is coming under increasing attack just as it is achieving new milestones in terms of publicity and acquisition of financial resources. We live in a make-or-break moment, not just for human civilization more generally, but for the transhumanist and life-extension movements in particular. It is essential for USTP leadership to have the authority to respond in defense of the values, people, and organizations which the USTP has always supported since its founding, even as those values, people, and organizations come under an unprecedented number of coordinated and insidious attacks. If we bind ourselves by excessive process, but our adversaries do not, then we set ourselves up to lose. If, however, we are able to act swiftly to resolve situations of emergency, this will afford more time to calmly and deliberatively approach most matters under the USTP’s purview, including the ability to organize more member votes on various matters if leadership’s attention is not continually occupied with how to address time-sensitive emergencies in the “procedurally correct” way. Our movement is under attack today, and we need to defend it today. In coming years and epochs, we will be thankful that we did.

Pasteurizing the Conclusions of an Anti-Vaxxer – Article by Zach Richardson

Pasteurizing the Conclusions of an Anti-Vaxxer – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

I had an unfortunate encounter with a friend of a U.S. Transhumanist Party member who was conducting on his page what I call an “anti-vaxxer drive-by”: shooting out some quick chart with poorly interpreted data that seemingly supports the idea that vaccines make you sick / don’t work / are Bill Gates microchips, etc.

The graphic in question was this one:

The chart in question shows a rise in infection at equal rates from those who got both vaccines, and those who did not receive a vaccine at all. The green bar shows amount of cases where no vaccine was received, and the blue bar amount of cases who again tested positive two weeks after the vaccine. What is the implied conclusion, then? The creator of this graphic wants to convey the message: “Why even get the vaccine, if the rates of infection are just as high 20 days after getting it as they are if you don’t get one at all?”

This post is about why his conclusion is wrong, why his analysis is wrong, and why his ilk are not to be trusted.

I was very lucky to find myself with several free hours of time today, as digging into this took some time. I had to type the source link into the browser a few characters at a time, since it was from an image, and the site itself was in Hebrew. I was pleased to find though, that the site did have the data available for download in a CSV format, which is easily importable into Google Sheets.

The data showed weekly stats on 9 age groups, and how many cases there were in three time periods: one to six days from vaccination, seven to thirteen days from vaccination, thirteen to twenty days from vaccination, and cases from vaccinations more than twenty days ago. This sequence is repeated for cases after dose two of the vaccine. Here is the spreadsheet:

I’ve included the last two weeks in this screenshot, and would like to direct the reader to notice a few things that should stick out sorely after a few moments’ study.

1. For the age range 0-19, the number of youths who reported cases was forty times as high as those who did not.

– Were children perhaps just 40 times as susceptible to infection? This would have been interesting for the person looking at the chart to know.

2. The age range 0-19 actually makes up one-half of the total amount of cases reported.

– Maybe it was just that those who signed up for this study all happened to be children who needed pocket money? That can’t be right…

3. For week the week of June 27 (2021-06-27), excepting the youth group for vaccine 1, not a single case was reported during the weeks 1-20 for any group. The next week never had more than five cases for an age group.

– Ah, good news! Perhaps the vaccine was super effective, if only for 20 weeks.

4. It is not reported how many people total got the vaccine who were NOT sick after 20 days.

-Perhaps the data account for all cases, and all those in the study eventually got reinfected?

There are some big problems with this chart, and the first is that this is a HUGE instance of what we call “self-selection bias”.

Unlike lab rats who have no choice in the matter, humans get to choose whether to participate in studies or not. Adults can easily choose to not report when they are sick; people had to voluntarily “select” themselves to be included in this dataset. Children have less choice. Children are in school, and vaccine testing can be conducted just the same way standardized knowledge testing is: get all the students in the same building, line them up, assign each a number, and have every single one tested. I think this is why youth aged 0-19 outnumber those aged 20-90 combined.

Even more important than that, we do not know how many people got the vaccine who did NOT get sick vs those who did not get the vaccine and did not get sick. Assuming Israel gives out 9,000 inoculations a day, the 30-39 year olds in week 07/04 could have been 248 vaccinated people infected out of tens of thousands who received the vaccine. We don’t have a way of knowing and don’t have that data.

The real plot twist though, comes after one digs into the “README” file attached to the study data right next to the CSV file. Here is the relevant excerpt Google translated:

“vaccination_without_positive_Sum – number of verified people detected per week and age group Relevant, and who did not receive any vaccine dose. It should be noted that vaccinated who received the vaccine dose The first on the same day that a positive result was obtained are included in this column.”

What does this mean? It means that the “unvaccinated” group were those who ran to the doctor after they got sick, got the vaccine themselves, and were only THEN added into the dataset. They got the vaccine too!

The charlatan that made that chart was trying to make it seem like he was comparing data from two groups in a randomized controlled trial, and concluding that the data showed you were equally as likely to get sick when taking the vaccine as not. What the data really showed is that it is very easy to test children who are stuck doing what their teachers tell them for eight hours a day, and also that when the chips are down and the unvaccinated finally do get sick, they change their mind and run to the doctor to get the vaccine anyway.

As Director of Publication for the USTP, I would like to reaffirm the Transhumanist Party’s strongly-held pro-vaccine stance. There is far too much of this junk science flying around, and I certainly can’t spend the better part of the afternoon each day playing “debunker”, but you can be sure to expect a series of pro-vaccine material to be republished under the Infinity Banner.

Zach Richardson is Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

Breaking the Bottleneck: A Synergy of Technology and Medicine – Article by Zach Richardson

Breaking the Bottleneck: A Synergy of Technology and Medicine – Article by Zach Richardson

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Zach Richardson

In March of 2019, I began to have a very strange problem. I was breathing normally, but felt like I was suffocating. The problem became much worse when lying down, but seemed to come and go arbitrarily. Some days it would be really bad, and on others I didn’t even notice it. This happened twice in a week, and I checked with a doctor. He assured me I had anxiety and gave me a prescription for some anxiolytic medicine. I couldn’t breathe, and his solution was Xanax. I stupidly trusted him.

In May 2019, I ended up in the hospital. My body was turning yellow, and my liver, kidneys, and heart were failing. The cause was idiopathic; none of the 7 specialists knew why I was having congestive heart failure. A couple of drugs were tried, but in the end the only solution they said would save my life was the implantation of a mechanical device that would help my heart pump: a Ventricular Assist Device, or VAD.

I was lucky enough to be selected as a perfect candidate for a clinical trial, partially due to being particularly young for having Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). A new version of an already cutting-edge technology would be tested on my body, and the results would be recorded for their study. The machine they implanted was called the Heartmate 3, and it saved my life.

The VAD is currently used either as “bridge” or “destination” therapy, with “bridge” meaning that it is used only temporarily until one can get a heart transplant, and “destination” meaning that one is ineligible for transplant at all, and will have the VAD for the rest of one’s life. Some of the contraindications for VAD implantation being bridge therapy include being obese or over 65 years of age. Luckily, I am not either of those two, and therefore am eligible for a transplant. However, there are two factors that are going to lead to it likely being an extremely long time before a donor heart is available. One is that I am a larger man, standing at 6 feet tall, meaning I require a larger-than-average heart. The other is that I have Type O blood, which is the hardest from the standpoint of receiving an organ donation.

This puts me in a very interesting situation, where I am a young man who may have many years still ahead of him with an implanted device. It may be 7 years from now when I get the call for transplant, or it may be tomorrow. If it happens 7 years from now, there may be therapies that will have been developed that would allow me to regrow my heart, or clone one from my stem cells, and thereby avoid having to be on a cocktail of immunosuppressants indefinitely. Unfortunately, even Athersys only has CHF treatments in the preclinical stage, which means I may have to wait a while. I intensely wish those trials weren’t being constrained like they are.

Having set significant life extension towards the very top of my hierarchy of values, I am extremely grateful that I live in a society where these technologies are available to me. I have a highly personal interest in seeing a society of scientists and biomedical engineers emerge to help develop these technologies! However, part of my situation was just me getting lucky: I had the treatment I needed approved just months before receiving it, and happened to have top-notch insurance.

One unfortunate side effect of having a centralized regulatory system is that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is only held responsible for what are known as “Type I Errors”. A Type I error is where the FDA passes an unsafe drug or treatment, leading to harm to an individual or group. Unfortunately, this means that FDA officials do not seem to care at all about “Type II Errors”, where they do not pass a life-saving treatment or drug in time to save someone’s life. The FDA is so terrified of having another Vioxx incident, that FDA officials are overly cautious in approving the use of radically innovative and breakthrough technologies. The fact that these technologies carry some risk is something of no worry to someone who is going to die if they don’t get the treatment. It is much harder to blame the FDA for being too safe than it is to blame them for being reckless.

This is why I am proud to be a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party (USTP), where science and technology are put at the forefront of American politics. The current bottleneck those like me with CHF face is regulatory hurdles. Article VI, Section VI, of the USTP Constitution states: “The United States Transhumanist Party upholds morphological freedom—the right to do with one’s physical attributes or intelligence whatever one wants so long as it does not directly harm others.” Right now what I and others with CHF would like to do is to get a stem-cell heart. We are being hindered not by direct legislation restricting morphological freedom, but by the far more pernicious hindrance of excessive regulatory burden. The treatments we want are being developed exponentially slower than they could be, because each step of the way has to adhere to draconian testing standards. This means a lot of Type II errors are being committed. We are not being told, “You cannot get this treatment.” Providers are being told, “You cannot provide this treatment.”

In my ideal world, regulatory agencies would work more like Underwriters Laboratories or Quality Assurance International. Leaving regulatory activity to the market, far from the fearmongering of producing dangerous and shoddy drugs and treatments, would instead invigorate the institutions as they would compete to certify the best products and treatments for consumers, since their names and reputations would be on the line.

I believe there needs to be a much stronger focus in regulatory institutions toward the elimination of Type II Errors, because there are a lot of sick people going untreated.

Zach Richardson is the Director of Publication for the U.S. Transhumanist Party. He is a Certified Supply Chain Professional and small-business co-owner who produced respirator-style masks to help stem the tide of COVID-19’s spread.