Yes, this is one of those cool “ooo, look at the stats with nice visuals and excellent music.” (Fatboy Slim rocks) But it’s a great example that we must adapt, and we must adapt at a faster rate than ever before. Everyone is going to suffer from being “too old” or “not up to date” - which is very similar to being within the proximity of a black hole - time slows, and we can’t perceive changes.

Time isn’t slowing or speeding with the Singularity/Posthuman Rise/Rapture of the Nerd - we’re just unable to adapt to the rate of change.

We’re knowingly obsolete.

And that’s ok.

Recently, Grinding.be posted a response to a Daily Galaxy’s longevity articles’ counterpoint by Bioethicist Leon Kass, and the cultural barriers he’s creating to longevity.

A quote that guts me is “the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual.” I’ve heard these words before from my mother of all people, who is smart but has no social agenda such as Kass and his ilk. I’d love to live to a thousand to see what humans become and how they change. I am overwelmed with what humans have done in our past and wonder what we’re going to be like. My mother doesn’t share that interest - she wants to die happy, healthy and secure. A “good, long run” as they call it today. Granted, the medical discoveries in 20 years may not be enough to trans-humanize her, but she’s dying on the cusp.

The major problem with Kass’ words is “blessing for every human individual.” I’m fairly certain that many boys dying from bullet wounds, parentless in Sierra Leone do not share that belief. Whereas, ironically, the suicidal religious people we’re encountering throughout the world feel extremely blessed.

Setting the blessing aside, I have to ask - “what is Kass’ goal?” Kass and people like Kass have some sort of entrenched meme that locks them into thinking breeding-is-good and redemptive-death-is-good. But living intellectually free is bad. Kass’ is creating a cultural barrier, or perhaps simply participating in a cultural barrier, that restricts change. Through capitalism, such barriers cause high risk-vs-reward mechanisms, but in this case, I believe the rewards is much more than money and resources.

Kass’ approach is an inhibitor of wide-spread use of life-extension, and those who have the resources to circumvent the obstacles Kass and ilk propose will cause a have/havenot split.

Now, you can almost argue that there’s the root of human races in our current world: homo sapiens capitalis (Western people with long lives and surmounting technology and culture) and homo sapiens restrictis (a population restricted to geography by infrastructure and warfare).

Right now, it doesn’t take much to cross over - in fact, those who reason/strive/risk it out, leave their community to societies more tolerant and stable. Those left behind without the resources are stuck in worn-torn areas (Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone). But even that risk adds Darwinistic competition to the human race.

If homo sapiens capitalis develops a technology that creates such life extension, and Kass-ites can prevent just enough access, the race will split.

And compete for resources.

That’s a little foreboding. However, the alternative is that if individuals were allowed to choose their evolutionary paths, if they could decide which of their genetic and memetic views would procreate. What’s strange, if you think about it, is that Kass is choosing. It’s just he’s fighting to prevent our right to choose as well.

The first thing I stumbled over on Wednesday was the reporting of how dumb is Sarah Palin. “That’s not just dumb, but Palin Dumb” is a phrase needs to enter into the memespace to inoculate the state from her brand of fundamental belief makes right politics. A lot of the reading included she was the reason “why McCain failed” to take the office: writing that I believe proves journalists don’t understand democracy. Registered voters who actually voted chose the president. McCain didn’t fail as much as didn’t appeal to the needs of a few million people.

Obama is a political centrist and a powerful symbol. A major down-the-line centrist and I feel bad for all the people who think that free health care is around the corner.

Many people have avoided me this week, which is sad. One of the reasons I stay away from leadership positions is my tendency to rub people’s nose in it. It’s a telling fault that I’m trying hard to both overcome and build bridges. Some could even call me a bully, and they wouldn’t be wrong. So, I’ve tried hard to shut up about it.

My biggest concern was that I’ve always believed in the dream of America, where anyone could become the president, or lead, or achieve what they want as long as they don’t harm anyone. And one the other side, all my life, I’ve seen the Republicans abuse power - Nixon and Watergate, the indictments against Ronald Reagan’s cabinets, the first Gulf war against Saddam Hussein, the current, sitting President. Maybe my eyes have been blind to Clinton and Carter, but I don’t see anything their presidencies’ which make me fear my government. And over every president during my life, only Obama will have my seal of approval.

But now, the power of the masses have begun to speak. Gay people voted overwhelmingly for a black president, but black people didn’t appear to return the love. In fact, I’d say that black people fucked the gay man over in a raping that’s sad. Worse, the people who I do self-identify, atheists, also had a decidingly male contingent that voted down gay marriage. One word: asshats!

I’m pretty close to a James Hughes’ Upwinger: everyone deserves rights in abundance, and they need to be celebrated and supported to a fault. Gay people deserve every dream black people have. It’s simply sad they don’t.

The first thing I stumbled over on Wednesday was the reporting of how dumb is Sarah Palin. “That’s not just dumb, but Palin Dumb” is a phrase needs to enter into the memespace to inoculate the state from her brand of fundamental belief makes right politics. A lot of the reading included she was the reason “why McCain failed” to take the office: writing that I believe proves journalists don’t understand democracy. Registered voters who actually voted chose the president. McCain didn’t fail as much as didn’t appeal to the needs of a few million people.

Obama is a political centrist and a powerful symbol. A major down-the-line centrist and I feel bad for all the people who think that free health care is around the corner.

Many people have avoided me this week, which is sad. One of the reasons I stay away from leadership positions is my tendency to rub people’s nose in it. It’s a telling fault that I’m trying hard to both overcome and build bridges. Some could even call me a bully, and they wouldn’t be wrong. So, I’ve tried hard to shut up about it.

My biggest concern was that I’ve always believed in the dream of America, where anyone could become the president, or lead, or achieve what they want as long as they don’t harm anyone. And one the other side, all my life, I’ve seen the Republicans abuse power - Nixon and Watergate, the indictments against Ronald Reagan’s cabinets, the first Gulf war against Saddam Hussein, the current, sitting President. Maybe my eyes have been blind to Clinton and Carter, but I don’t see anything their presidencies’ which make me fear my government. And over every president during my life, only Obama will have my seal of approval.

But now, the power of the masses have begun to speak. Gay people voted overwhelmingly for a black president, but black people didn’t appear to return the love. In fact, I’d say that black people fucked the gay man over in a raping that’s sad. Worse, the people who I do self-identify, atheists, also had a decidingly male contingent that voted down gay marriage. One word: asshats!

I’m pretty close to a James Hughes’ Upwinger: everyone deserves rights in abundance, and they need to be celebrated and supported to a fault. Gay people deserve every dream black people have. It’s simply sad they don’t.

Apparently, there’s a bunch of Christians praying to a golden bull so the economy will turn around.

“With, without.
And who will deny its what the fightings all about?”
-Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Us and Them

So Bill Maher’s Religulous put me in the tailspin that I expected it would. We have roughly 1.5 to 2 billion people fighting over the existence of 14 million. One side believes they need to die, the other believes they need to overcome… and then there’s confusion with the temple of the mount and wailing wall. Frankly, I don’t get it, but I do understand history, and George Santayana - “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

One of the core tenants about Religulous isn’t about the stupidity of religious people (yes, I call it stupidity), but the need to confront these people, like a psychiatrist guides a patient to confront their issues. I wonder how many psychologists and councilors go home after a long day’s work and think, “What a bunch of stupid fucking ‘tards?”

I was chatting with a good friend about why other terrorists don’t get on planes, land in the US and start blowing themselves up. I believe its because once you get to the US, it’s a completely different Earth than the rest of the world. Yeah, we’re imperialistic assholes that have a penchant for bombing brown people.

NPR’s All in the Media today ran a piece on how cable news is fracturing the need to be unbiased. We’ve known for a long time that Fox is an unbiased source, but the reason why people watch it is because it wont challenge their “views” - it’s never going to show a soldier crying as his face gets shot off. We listen to the music we like most. We watch the shows we like the most. We subscribe to the earthly world view that makes us comfortable.

The difference between faith and rationalism is that faith requires you to lie to yourself and hope for the best. Rationalism forces you to prepare, and sometimes causes nihilism which is an emotional land of hopelessness. JMS has an important saying here, but there’s something I use to address hope in a life of reason.

Human’s evolved on this planet for 200,000 years and have roughly 50,000 years of culture. While atheism has been around on and off for thousands of years, it’s rarely been a political movement, and when it’s been included as a tenant of politics, well, how do YOU summarize Soviet Russia and Soviet China? Not the most enlightend of societies.

And slowly, atheists are fighting to gain hold of people’s hearts and minds, but… I wonder if it’s worth it? Once you reject your dominant culture, you’re very likely to not want to join groups again without a healthy skepticism. So, not only do we have to move extreme believers to less irrational, but we also have to move the less irrational to the skeptic, and the skeptics to the active atheistic culture.

The Bright movement is one way for “conciousness awareness” - and it’s doing a very good job at it, but it’s not going to be enough. There’s literally billions of monotheists out there which can’t, won’t or are not allowed to go to the-Brights.net, let’s alone access to the internet.

Plus, there’s the last issue: no one likes being told that their big, invisible buddy is a myth. When you do, you risk death, anger, and other stupid responses. Very few atheists I know have the missionary spirit in them: “Sir, have you heard the good word about Darwin?” seems that it just wont work, does it?

(To be continued)

Not From Concentrate has a few words about the Rabbit… gotta love it! Please click through and browse a good comic site.

Once again posted to Reddit and a few others, Richard Dawkins’ reply to “What if you’re wrong?” never seems to quite satisfy how I’d respond to the same question. Here’s his response, which is polite and respectful.

The core of his point is that 1) no one has a monopoly on fiction and 2) people live and die everyday without any one god.

My response would be a little less subdued. If the world basically stopped believing in silly gods tomorrow and I was wrong - we’d wouldn’t care because we simply stopped believing and we’d have no way to reintroduce the religion meme back into our society - why? because we stopped believing. We’d have other issues, such as the destruction of hope, but at least that pesky religious nut-baggage would be gone.

However, if we passed the same logic to say, “Everyone is now X religion” - belief would very much be alive, and as a living entities usually can’t tell one belief from another, and they tend to fight over who’s belief is right, even though they have no proof to justify their claims. The world would be inundated with more genocide than before because the belief structure allows for Machiavellian “End-justifies-the-means” attitudes to pervade.

The whole concept of ethnic cleansing, purity programs, “kill them all and let [the deity of the week] sort them out” is all based on faulty belief structures.

Believing in friends, physics or yourself - those things which are proven to be true - is a virtue. Belief in things because someone or something told you so is not, and the end of that dark path is horrible indeed.

I applaud the Olympic committee’s decision to allow Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, to compete for the Olympics. Slashdot has generously already provided all the pros and cons - documenting all the fears and expectations that will come of this decision of allowing Pistorius to compete.

Our bodies are not the end of our existence - they are the beginning and while we’ve received the fortunate benefits of evolutionary drive - Pistorius is an example of how and in what way we’re going to change ourselves - engineer ourselves - to become more of what we want to be.

Cries of unfair treatment exist on both sides of this call - one side says he’s a runner and should be allowed to compete, the other point out he’s not completely human. It’s a phenomenon of introducing change into the status quo.

Pistorius’ appendages are no different when you see obese or old people on electric go-carts, or when others perform wheelchair races. We must move forward, and moving forward requires people like Pistorius to not accept his body as a limitation, Olympic members to make decisions like the one above, and for all of us people to accept those who either by accident or design set themselves so far apart.

We are phenomenal minds and we should be allowed to live phenomenal ways.