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Aug 2, 2016

Drones Set to Deliver Medicine to Remote Parts of the U.S. — By Jamie Condliffe | MIT Technology Review

Posted by in categories: drones, government, policy, robotics/AI

“The White House has asked whether Zipline’s drones, pioneered in Rwanda, could fly much-needed drugs and blood to Americans.”

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Jul 31, 2016

Futurist-linked groups talking at the Mont Order

Posted by in categories: counterterrorism, futurism, governance, government, policy, terrorism

The following is a selection of points of interest to futurism and forecasts of the political future from the recent Mont Order Conference of July 2016:

STATEMENT 1: NEW SECRET WIKI CREATED

The Mont Order’s secret wiki created via PBworks holds information on the origin and literature of the Mont Order as well as our current structure, ranks and members. Members will be invited via email and will be able to contribute pages or post comments and questions on this literature. The public will not have access to it.

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Jul 16, 2016

Beware the Rise of Gerontocracy: Some Hard Lessons for Transhumanism, Not Least from Brexit

Posted by in categories: aging, biological, ethics, futurism, governance, government, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, neuroscience, policy, strategy, thought controlled, transhumanism

Transhumanists will know that the science fiction author Zoltan Istvan has unilaterally leveraged the movement into a political party contesting the 2016 US presidential election. To be sure, many transhumanists have contested Istvan’s own legitimacy, but there is no denying that he has generated enormous publicity for many key transhumanist ideas. Interestingly, his lead idea is that the state should do everything possible to uphold people’s right to live forever. Of course, he means to live forever in a healthy state, fit of mind and body. Istvan cleverly couches this policy as simply an extension of what voters already expect from medical research and welfare provision. And while he may be correct, the policy is fraught with hazards – especially if, as many transhumanists believe, we are on the verge of revealing the secrets to biological immortality.

In June, Istvan and I debated this matter at Brain Bar Budapest. Let me say, for the record, that I think that we are sufficiently close to this prospect that it is not too early to discuss its political and economic implications.

Two months before my encounter with Istvan, I was on a panel at the Edinburgh Science Festival with the great theorist of radical life extension Aubrey de Grey, where he declared that people who live indefinitely will seem like renovated vintage cars. Whatever else, he is suggesting that they would be frozen in time. He may actually be right about this. But is such a state desirable, given that throughout history radical change has been facilitated generational change? Specifically, two simple facts make the young open to doing things differently: The young have no memory of past practices working to anyone else’s benefit, and they have not had the time to invest in those practices to reap their benefits. Whatever good is to be found in the past is hearsay, as far as the young are concerned, which they are being asked to trust as they enter a world that they know is bound to change.

Questions have been already raised about whether tomorrow’s Methuselahs will wish to procreate at all, given the time available to them to realize dreams that in the past would have been transferred to their offspring. After all, as human life expectancy has increased 50% over the past century, the birth rate has correspondingly dropped. One can only imagine what will happen once ageing can be arrested, if not outright reversed!

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Jul 11, 2016

3 Reasons You Are Living in the Matrix / How to Make a Red Pill

Posted by in categories: complex systems, disruptive technology, education, governance, government, philosophy, physics, policy, rants, science, scientific freedom

Appearances have always played a much more important part than reality in history, where the unreal is always of greater moment than the real.“
–Gustav LeBon, The Crowd (1895)

I’ve gotten no substantive response to my last post on vaccine safety– neither in the comments, nor the TruthSift diagram, nor anywhere else, nor have the papers I submitted to two medical journals… but I have gotten emails telling me I’m delusional and suggesting I seek psychiatric attention. And this of course is integral to the explanation of how such delusions as vaccine safety persist so widely when it is so demonstrably a delusion: the majority who believe the majority must be right because its the majority are emotionally unwilling to confront the evidence. They assume the experts have done that, and they rely on the experts. But the experts assume other experts have been there. Ask your Pediatrician if he’s personally read Bishop et al and formulated an opinion on vaccine aluminum. Neither has the National Academy, except perhaps their members have and decided, perhaps tacitly, not to review the subject. Their decision not to review the animal literature was not tacit, they said they explicitly decided to omit it, although elsewhere they say they couldn’t find human evidence that addressed the issues. So everybody is trusting somebody else, and nobody has picked up the ball. And can you blame them? Because when I pick up the ball, what I receive in return is hate mail and people’s scorn. The emotional response cuts off any possible inspection of the logic.

On most questions where a majority with authority is facing a minority of dissenters or skeptics, the majority is delusional.
In other words, you are living in the matrix; much of what you and people believe is fundamentlaly wrong.

Reason 1, as above, is that the majority forms its view by circular reasoning, and rejects any attempt at logical discussion without considering it seriously, so it is prone to delusion.
Once the crowd concluded vaccines are safe and effective, for example, the question of whether the aluminum is damaging can apparently no longer be raised (even as more gets added to vaccines). And when I or others try to raise it, we are scorned and hated, and ineffectual in changing the opinion supported by circular reasoning. When new research papers appear that call it into question, they are ignored, neither cited in the safety surveys nor influencing medical practice in any way. This paragraph is all simple reporting of what has repeatedly happened.

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Jul 9, 2016

NASA and space policy are missing from the 2016 Democratic Party platform

Posted by in categories: policy, space

Although this article doesn’t mention this; I am more concern about the clean up and protection of space from environmental damage from space junk like malfunction equipment left in space and the future of mining in space by China and others. I believe NASA and others need to perform some serious work in presenting cause & effect findings to the public so that everyone is aware what we could expect from the result of mining, etc.


However the Democrats weigh in on D.C. statehood and closing Guantanamo.

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Jul 6, 2016

Singularity Hypotheses

Posted by in categories: climatology, economics, education, health, policy, robotics/AI, singularity, sustainability

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer great promise for creating new and innovative products, growing the economy, and advancing national priorities in areas such as education, mental and physical health, addressing climate change, and more. Like any transformative technology, however, AI carries risks and presents complex policy challenges along a number of different fronts. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is interested in developing a view of AI across all sectors for the purpose of recommending directions for research and determining challenges and opportunities in this field. The views of the American people, including stakeholders such as consumers, academic and industry researchers, private companies, and charitable foundations, are important to inform an understanding of current and future needs for AI in diverse fields. The purpose of this RFI is to solicit feedback on overarching questions in AI, including AI research and the tools, technologies, and training that are needed to answer these questions.

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Jun 28, 2016

The Top Ten Reasons I Believe Vaccine Safety Is an Epic Mass Delusion

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, ethics, existential risks, government, health, life extension, policy, rants, science, scientific freedom

Its painful to bear views that make many think I’m an imbicile and dislike me. So please, if anybody has a rational argument why any of this is wrong, I beg to be enlightened. I’ve set up a diagram for the purpose that will support you to add your criticism exactly where it is pertinent. https://tssciencecollaboration.com/graphtree/Are%20Vaccines%20Safe/406/4083

(1) The National Academy’s Reviews Of Vaccine Safety
The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has provided several multi-hundred page surveys studying the safety of vaccines, but rather than reassuring, these itemize some iatrogenic conditions being caused, and pronounce the scientific literature inadequate to say whether most others are. The 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Review[1] looked at 146 vaccine-condition pairs for causality, reporting:

  • 14 for which the evidence is said to convincingly support causality, the vaccine is causing the condition.
  • 4 where the evidence is said to favor acceptance.
  • 5 where the evidence is said to favor rejection, including MMR causing autism.
  • 123 where the evidence is said insufficient to evaluate.

The 2003 IOM Review on multiple vaccines said[2]:
“The committee was unable to address the concern that repeated exposure of a susceptible child to multiple immunizations over the developmental period may also produce atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that could lead to severe disability or death (Fisher, 2001). There are no epidemiological studies that address this.”
and:
“the committee concludes that the epidemiological and clinical evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between multiple immunization and an increased risk of allergic disease, particularly asthma.”

  • None of the IOM Safety Reviews[1][2][3][4] addressed the aluminum (for example whether the aluminum is causing autism), or mentioned contaminants, or discussed animal models although they had concluded as just quoted there is generally no epidemiological or clinical data worth preferring.

(2) The Aluminum.
Alum was added to vaccines back in the 1920’s, with no test of parenteral toxicity until recently[5], because it prods the immature immune system out of its normal operating range.[6] Maybe they figured aluminum is common in the environment, but injection bypasses half a dozen evolved sequential filters that normally keep it out of circulatory flow during development. Vaccines put hundreds of times as much aluminum into infants’ blood as they would otherwise get, and in an unnatural form that is hard for the body to remove.[7][8 (cfsec 4.2)][9]. The published empirical results indicate its highly toxic.

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Jun 22, 2016

White House issues report on President Obama’s impact on science and tech

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, education, mathematics, policy, science

In 2009, President Obama pledged to “restore science to its rightful place.” He said, “We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science.”

Today, the White House released an Impact Report listing 100 things that Obama has made happen with the support of many people across research, policy, education, and, yes, maker culture. Here’s the full Impact Report. A few examples from the list:

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Jun 16, 2016

Media Reports: Xinjiang Residents Must Present DNA To Obtain Passports

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, internet, policy, privacy, terrorism

Biometrics using DNA along with other recognition technology brings additional identity protection; however, is it just me or are others understanding the risk with our DNA and other bio info being online given the existing weak infrastructure and under pinning technology. Without a QC secured internet and infrastructure; I would hesitate having my bio/ DNA information online for hackers and terrorists.

Once your identity with the DNA is online; it will be extremely hard to do a reset button on your identity because things like an id number such as a US Social Security number, etc. can be changed; but DNA identity is not that achievable even with CRISPR.


The official Yili Daily reported that from the first of June, residents of the Yili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in China’s far northwest must present the police with DNA samples, fingerprints, voice prints and a “three-dimensional image” when applying for travel documents.

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Jun 14, 2016

Russian Hypersonic Glider Weapons Would Easily Penetrate U.S. Defenses, Says Expert

Posted by in categories: military, policy

The world is in the midst of a new arms race, one designed to deliver hypersonic glider weapons — both conventional and nuclear — to one’s adversaries at lightning speed. The U.S. is leading the race at this point, but Russia and China are going to great lengths to make sure that they develop their own boost-glide technology.


Today, the U.S., Russia and China are developing a new class of hypersonic ballistic glider weapons, which within a decade, may render most of the world’s nuclear arsenals vulnerable to lightning-fast penetration and attack.

Although boost-glide [or hyperglide vehicles (HGVs)] weapons would be launched by ballistic missiles and reach hypersonic speeds of at least Mach 5 or more, they would remain maneuverable and largely untrackable after the initial boost phase of their flight. And unlike an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), an HGV’s aerodynamics enables it to generate enough “lift” to potentially glide over distances approaching ten thousand kilometers. All before hitting their targets with accuracies down to a few meters.

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