The augments are coming

Here are some articles about coming technological "improvements" to human sensory capabilities:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/11/etymotic-eb1-and-eb15-earplugs-hands-on/

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2375729,00.asp

interesting article about translation

ny times

Artificial Vision

Scientists have created higher definition eye implants to restore vision in the blind.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december7/curvable-retina-implant-121009.html

Let's subtract some H's!

The human race ought to be decimated. This result can be derived from a number of ethical theories. I've outlined a couple of them below.

• 
  Consequentialism
  

  Human beings tend to act in ways that cause pain and suffering to other beings. Think about how we buy products from Wallmart and other businesses said to abuse humans. Think about how we support governments and other groups that abuse humans. Moreover, consider the way we treat animals (or support products that involve the inhumane treatment of animals). About a third of all black males 18-25 years of age are incarcerated. About 30,000 children die per day of starvation and malnutrition. About 40% of the population of South Africa has HIV, yet we withhold drugs that could help them treat the disease while funneling our money into new baseball stadiums instead of helpful research. At least 25% of women in the united states have been sexually abused. One can rattle off statistics for pages, but you get the point: life is nasty, brutish, and short—and we make it that way.

  
  

  It isn't just the particular acts of suffering that I'm worried about. It's the fact that we're often traumatized by harsh circumstances (like rape, war and abuse), and in turn we pass it on. (Most abusers have been abused, etc.) Very rarely do we have the fortitude to avoid psychological damage in such harsh situations. It isn't clear how humans can snuff out such a insidious and inherited psychological poison.

  
  

  Clearly, the world would be a better place if, say, all of the mean and stupid people were killed off. (It would be even better if the remaining humans were somehow augmented; but not just physically and mentally, but in goodness.) So if you're interested in maximizing overall goodness in the world, the human race needs to be decimated.

  
  


• 
  Deontology
  

  There are many deontological views, and it is difficult to cover all of the most popular ones. I will limit myself to two here: retributivism and FLO theory.

  
  

  Retributivists believe that crimes deserve punishment. One type of retributivist maintains a sort of "eye for an eye" view, where punishment should be in kind with the crime. Consider (1) the evidence presented in the Consequentialism section above and (2) the fact that we ought to know better than to act as we do. We're as responsible for our actions as humans can be (it's not like we're very rational, so how can we be responsible in the Kantian sense?), so we're responsible for the death and intense suffering (often worse than death) that we cause, so most of us deserve and ought to be eliminated.

  
  

  The FLO theory states that robbing individuals of a future of value is seriously wrong. Again, the Consequentialism section above outlines a few ways in which we're very good at robbing people of futures of value. And we have plenty of reasons to believe that we will continue to do so. The most effective way to stop the problem is to eliminate the most harmful of us. If that's not convincing, consider the following. Who says we have a future of value, anyway? By the look of things in that Consequentialism section, plus upcoming problems like global warming or nuclear holocaust, it looks to me more like we have FLAss (Future Like Ass). Using the same approach as the FLO theory, the FLAss theory entails that we very much ought to eliminate the misery somehow, and the most promising way to do that is to selectively decimate the human race.

  
  


• 
  Virtue Ethics
  

  Do you care about the developing a virtuous characters as individuals and as a race? Then killing off the most stupid, vicious people is for you. After all, you're not very virtuous if you don't think that the atrocities mentioned above in the Consequentialism section are tolerable, so if you care about being virtuous, you'll want to rectify the problem in the most effective way possible: killer robots.

  
  

That's all for now. Enjoy.

Fusion Power anyone?

Dyson Spheres? No need. Let's hope this is just the beginning.

Motivation?

If your are in need of some motivation, my ascending colleagues, then click play on the video below!

Transhumanism was famously summed up as

1. The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
   
2. The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.