 Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to part two of the United States Transhumanist Party question and answer session today. Unfortunately, we lost our internet connection for part one, and we're still having some technical difficulties, but we've started a new YouTube live stream. Please feel free to post questions to the chat once again, and we will endeavor to address them as readily as we can. We will try to update our Facebook postings as well to make sure people have access to the new Q&A, and we did have a comment on the old live stream. Is the live stream still going? It cut apparently. Well, that's why we're starting a new stream. Unfortunately, there are some repairs being done to the infrastructure in front of my house, and I think they interfered with the internet connection. I believe when I was caught up, BJ Scott and Bobby were having a conversation on transgenderism, so if you would like to continue that conversation while we get more people in on this live stream, please feel free to do so. When did we go out of feed there, Bobby? I believe it was when we were discussing how morphological freedom was in connection between transgenderism and transhumanism, but that was pretty much as far as it goes in terms of where the two communities are bridged together. Yes, so I think it's very important to recognize that over the course of the coming decades, as more augmentations become available, as ways to alter human biology become available, and to enhance human biology, to enhance human lifespans, we're going to see a massive increase in diversity, and this is where I believe these areas do intersect. We need to figure out a way of adequately dealing with and respecting diversity in existing societies if we're going to have a chance of adequately dealing with it in future societies. Yes. So I wonder, BJ, if you could give us some updates on the emerging technologies that you've been tracking and writing about recently? Well, here lately my focus has been on where mixed reality is taking us. That was something that I believe that we were discussing for the possible future book on transhumanism. My focus is on mixed reality because we are witnessing this sort of crash course or this collision course between the offline world and the online world. The ramifications that will come from this is going to deeply transform how we interact with one another, how we interact with these intelligent systems. That in and of itself is going to really push transhumanism forward in a big way because it's going to be able to connect the entire planet. At the same time, you can bring people from any section of the planet to you or you can bring yourself to them and it would almost seem it would feel seamless where the virtual is blended into the physical in such a way that you can't even tell the difference between the two anymore. So that's been my focus and here recently with the emerging of the AR kit, these are those, you know, prepubescent steps in that general direction where the popularity of augmenting our physical reality is becoming all the more popular and with Apple and AR kit that's going to drive in millions of more people that are interested in the idea. So it's going to be interesting to see where mixed reality takes us in the next five to ten years. I wonder, BJ, if you think there might be some issues at least for some people in seeing the difference if they're very thoroughly immersed in virtual and mixed realities, will there come a time where some of them might, let's say, have a challenge distinguishing between what is the actual base physical world and what is an augmented version of it or some sort of overlay that is so realistic, so persuasive that they might mistake it for the physical reality that we inhabit. There may be people who have an issue with it and I believe that that should be something that as a transhumanist political party we should definitely begin emphasizing on in terms of these emerging technologies are not just going to make an impact, they should make an impact based on, they should impact each individual to that own individual's discretion, however, to the extent that they would like technology to affect their own personal individual lives. Again, I strongly emphasize on morphological freedom here, which also includes the right of people to not be enhanced or augmented which would include mixed reality and how it would affect their everyday lives. Then again, I also understand just how sweeping a lot of these technologies can be where even though it is technically a choice between each individual, it's kind of hard to make the opposite choice where there's certainly a choice where you can have this modern 21st century lifestyle or you can join the Amish but then joining the Amish seems so radically different that a lot of people do not make that choice and I believe that we're going to see the rise of the Neo-Amish as a result of that as well and it's going to be a difficult choice but we have to really strongly emphasize that they should be choices for each individual. Yes, absolutely. Freedom of individual choice needs to be respected at any stage of technological advancement. I wanted to notice that Martin van der Kroen has joined us finally. Welcome, welcome. Thank you. We are very pleased to have you. We have had a lot of technical difficulties with this question and answer session. I've had to start a separate live stream but now all of us who explicitly plan to be here are here and I would encourage everybody to go on Facebook. I started posting links to the new live stream for this Q&A session. Please share that particular link so that others are able to join us as well and we see AJ Davis says, ah, it is back. Hooray. Yes, hooray indeed and Rich Lee says, I predict an increase in cases of PTSD caused by VR, virtual reality and that relates to the discussion we had previously as to if virtual reality and augmented reality become quite advanced and very realistic would some people have trouble distinguishing between the base physical reality that we inhabit and virtual or augmented elements thereof. So Rich Lee seems to think it might cause some issues even as severe as PTSD and I'm going to open the floor for discussion on this. Martin, do you have any thoughts on that? Regarding virtual reality and PTSD? Yes, or other impacts by which people might have difficulties seeing a clear boundary between the virtual and augmented and the direct physical world that we experience today? I think that is possible much like it could happen with current video games that do not like virtual reality or augmented reality but then we get more into the realm, I suppose, of like addictions or people being so immersed within virtual reality that they lose track of the actual reality that is possible. So I don't think it would be particularly unique, it would just be a new for people losing track of physical reality as to describe it in such a manner. Could that be a problem? Of course, everything can be a problem. Do I think that current that would be an enormous problem? I have no idea. I'm not an expert enough on like psychology to see whether that would be a serious problem for society or not. Scott, what do you think about this question? Sorry, I was fixing some of the technical difficulties here. I was trying to use some linkage but the question was again, it was about, I remember you mentioned PTSD, are we still on that? Yes, related issues. Essentially, how do people in the future draw a clear line between what is physical reality and what is virtual or augmented reality? How do they keep the distinction clear in their minds? Right, right. That's definitely, for me, I haven't gone too into depth with that but I did a, I haven't had too much experience with VR but when I did have my first VR experience, it was after Crash, where my car rolled over, I actually participated in this little VR thing where I actually sat in a seat and it was meant to keep you away from texting while driving and that really immersed me a little bit too much and it definitely freaked me out. In terms of that, I would definitely have to, I would love to do more research on that. I'd love to hear what you guys have to say. Yes, Bobby, do you have comments on this area? Yeah, I remember Ray Kurzweil saying that it's hard to distinguish virtual reality from actual reality and I think we've always been in a sort of virtual reality. We're kind of escapable from it, right? We have all this information come in, you know, photons in our retina or pressure hits our tactile receptors and it gets converted into electrical chemical signals and all these images you see in front of you and all the sensations, it's really a fabrication in your brain and so I think it's always been a virtual reality and you can quickly see that if you do some sort of psychoactive drug or this virtual realm will definitely have some glitches. But I don't think people really understand that very well so I definitely see in the future there being a problem with people immersing themselves in the virtual realm but I think eventually they'll be able to stay there indefinitely. I can see the virtual realm expanding and just be like massive and you can just live there for however long you want to and they'll create their own rights over there and there'll be like a new sort of universe that you can like travel into. That'd be really exciting to see. Now on the other hand there would still be physical prerequisites for survival that if you spend all your time just like if today you spend all your time playing computer games you may be immersed and some computer games are quite immersive but you still need to eat, you still need to sleep, you still need to be protected from physical danger and then certain respect you need to be aware of the outside world, the world that can directly affect your physical body here. So to some extent one does need to have that skill set if one goes into a virtual world that's fine and if one derives something valuable from it that's fine but ultimately one has to keep the physical in the back of one's mind and come back to it periodically. So let's see we have various other comments here. SuperfinGuy says unlikely people would know they are in a game and I do think most people would be able to draw the distinction or pay attention to the distinction but we do have computer game addicts today as well and I just think it's worth thinking about what proportion of people might experience those tendencies. Hybrid Intermediate says thanks for coming back well we're pleased to be back and Hybrid Intermediate also says this movement will happen with or without a central party or international social structure thanks to those working toward organization. The biggest question I have is how do we sell this as a popular movement without alienating the average people due to the quote extreme or unusual goals that we are striving for and then furthermore Hybrid Intermediate says by average I don't mean lesser I mean those who don't spend time thinking about those advances and I think Bobby you've mentioned this before it's not just so-called average people it's even academicians who are not quite aware of the emerging technologies the research that is being done by people like Aubrey de Grey or Ray Kurzweil who perhaps don't think about the implications of these technologies several decades down the road so how do we reach the general public in essence and I welcome anybody's thoughts on this. Martin if I may um I think in part so some of the some of the ideas or the bill of rights that we find in terms of our policy is that we're called appeals I think that's us we think that far ahead but yeah the common folk can imagine that it's that they think like it's that is very far out there and some of the other ideas might also seem very far fetched is more because people don't look into the future that much we can see this in politics current day politics for example it's more reactive than proactive but I think the way we and that we could better connect people is also show the things that affect them now or more regular issues along the lines on health care that we want people to have individual liberties and so on and so forth and try to connect with them through their and then further um yeah open try to open them up to the ideas that who as as was said the average person are more out there so to say does that make sense yes yes absolutely I think discussion and openness to new ideas is essential in cultivating that openness the transhumanist bill of rights is a great document for fostering that discussion even if the other non-human sentient entities whose rights are being enumerated and advocated in that document maybe decades away from being created or discovered still starting the conversation now so that people are ready if and when those entities emerge is crucial does anybody else have thoughts on this we definitely have to be careful of how we articulate ourselves I found like Zoltan it's Bonner other transhumanists are very extreme with what they say I think you really have to cater to how people think right now I found there to be a very large taboo against helping people live longer and even to like 140 just like some people just like freak out when I talked to him about it and most of the arguments seem pretty illogical and agist and he definitely have to like ease them into it and help them understand that it definitely seems like a daunting future but the key is just making sure it works out making sure that we transition well without with the least amount of problems as possible and so I think it's quintessential that we that as many people know about it and contemplate about it and yes absolutely BJ do you have thoughts on this I do actually with the the question in particular being you know how do we uh what was this uh because how do we sell this as a popular movement without alienating the average people this is an interesting question in and of itself because it it's a question that isn't just unique for us as a transhumanist party it's unique for any type of political movement or cultural movement and this was something that it was a big question that a lot of us who were activists and organizers had to learn really quick because there was always that potential of alienating yourself from a mass group of people and for a lot of us it allowed us to create what within political circles was known as mass line organizing which was it served as a direct addressment to how you ensure you don't alienate yourself from groups of people and that is when you are uh say in a city and you're organizing someone against say people are losing their homes they're being kicked out of their homes from the banks because they're not able to afford uh the amount of money that is going into their homes you do not go into this you do not try to organize them with other political issues that are irrelevant to them that are irrelevant to the issues that are affecting them as a community and the same thing whenever we are talking about transhumanism as a whole we have to make sure that we're not talking about uh say VR AR or uh robots whenever people are looking to transhumanism as a way of ensuring that they have shelter that they have uh some type of transportation that they do not have to worry about in the near future that they no longer have to worry about spending a great deal of amount of money and a great deal amount of stress that goes into that situation that's what transhumanism means to them for others transhumanism is going to mean something radically different everyone has their own different issues and so whenever we address those communities we have to operate based on what their grievances are what do they see in the future we have to listen at them as opposed to force them to listen to us and that's what mass online organizer was always about you have to listen to what they see as transhumanism and organize them based on that and with that uh you'll create a popular movement out of it without specifically alienating people uh which a lot of movements tend to have a tendency of doing because for a lot of them they want to just focus on the big picture when a lot of people aren't looking at the big picture they've got real concerns of their present day and if we're going to create a future for them we have to address those present day concerns and if we don't then we're going to alienate ourselves from them now what you mentioned is essentially targeted issue specific advocacy for people who care about given issues or are personally affected by given issues at the same time though transhumanism is quite an ecumenical movement as i pointed out and one of the strengths of transhumanist philosophy is precisely because it recognizes the interrelations among emerging technologies and the potential for a radically different world that these interrelations can create even if individual technologies might only yield incremental improvement say if you combine prosthetics and biotechnology and nanotechnology and space travel and vertical farming and artificial intelligence and c-steating and a whole host of other technologies uh how would that affect uh ordinary people's quality of life so uh i wonder and i understand some people care about more about certain issues than about others and it's important to speak to what they care about but how does one also get them interested in those other areas and the broader connections and in the broader vision for which transhumanism stands um well i think that is sort of a a lot what like bj argued for is in the targeted um targeting issues that people face in real life so um on the old livestream there was a question regarding lgbd um let's say let's take um trans people and their issue could be whether they've transitioned or not but they may be passionate about it on methods of making the transition smoother so whether it's the reconstructive surgery part or anything before that or after that um and from there on it once they see like hey you are passionate about this issue it becomes easier for them to um recognize the value of other issues that are that they aren't specifically dealing with but they can see that they can then understand better that other people might be grappling with those issues and thus support them be more supportive of the other issues that are we have and the bigger picture this um yeah i think that would be a way to go and to make and um i'm actually gonna use prompt as an example here which sounds funny but he you when he went to i forgot which state it was where the coal miners are um and he spoke about creating jobs for coal miners whether he can actually pull that off it's an entirely different issue but that was a that was a very specific issue that they were facing or dealing with in everyday life and um it might not actually be salvageable to keep the whole coal industry going but that's a different thing they were passionate about it and thus because they felt that supporting them they were willing to support him and and they will more easily the people will more easily follow other issues as well and just a building a wall or a band travel band or well whichever other big issue is on there or new healthcare build that they want to push um whether that's good or not it's entirely different of course like i'm not making any judgments on on supporters of Trump but just stating that this using this example um and i think that's that's a way to go like and it would make us look more human um because i think a lot of people and this is part of how we've been portrayed in the media including by um but and in the book on radicals in utopia is that we are being portrayed as the people who want to turn everyone into cyborgs and preferably upload brains into the cloud and if at all possible on a space station and that is true a lot of people know the particularly appealing thought that sounds very sci-fi dystopian a lot of people might envision terminators running around and yeah i can imagine that people are not entirely on board with that and and as such if we bring more of the earthly issues into the mix that people are grappling with they will see like hey they are not just indeed far out there they are actually here with us too they are there is a connect instead of like these yeah they are uh trying to tackle potential issues in the future and i think that's gonna be important and yeah i think that falls in line fairly well with what bj said yes and i think you make some very good points martin i think it's important to remedy this perception that transhumanists are just all about mind mind uploading turning everybody into cyborgs in particular destructive mind uploading and that's not what transhumanism as a movement stands for now some people may pursue those projects and they may choose to augment their bodies starting say with prosthetics or say artificial organs but maybe eventually with more elective augmentations but that will continue to be a choice that individuals will make and some people will choose to be wholly biological some people will choose solely biological methods of enhancement for instance the proposed sends rejuvenation therapies and we will have a flourishing of diversity not everybody will be uploaded to the cloud i think very few people will actually choose to be uploaded to the cloud i have some philosophical concerns about whether that would preserve my identity my eyeness so i wouldn't do it i would prefer to survive indefinitely as a biological organism or as a biological organism with some mechanical replacement parts eventually biological parts wear out now we have had just an abundance of questions now so let's delve into them first of all a j davis responded to super thin guy who stated that people would know that they are in a game a j says that is true but people can have natural reactions of fear to horror movies so a thing even more immersive would likely have even greater effects and that's a good point rich lee on that subject states the stress induced is more of a factor than being able to distinguish between two worlds drone pilots have ptsd so the drone pilots that may be operating those drones maybe dropping bombs on targets and they might not know who the targets are what the impact of their decisions is but that seems to me to be ptsd arising out of a sense of unfavorable real world ramifications of what one is doing and then super thin guy says a j but not enough to cause ptsd i think people don't think they are constantly in danger after watching a horror movie and he says to rich lee drone pilot pilots are far away but they engage in real war situations which actually goes off of what i said and hybrid intermediate in relation to the discussion about how to relate to people how to attract people to the transhumanist movement says excellent thank you we must proceed with caution else we will be more ostracized than either the lgbt or atheist subgroups another concern i have is with the prevailing religious attitudes of our times a number of Mormons are embracing our movement with open arms religious fundamentalists are an increasingly smaller but politically powerful group how do we avoid having to do political both battle with more fundamentalist religious powers and shortly i'll open up this question to discussion i will state my view on this i think it is great that there are Mormon transhumanists and christian transhumanists and buddhist transhumanists and even incipient groups of islamic transhumanists because we would rather have individuals of those religious persuasions be aligned with us and support our goals of embracing emerging technologies then interpret their theologies in a very rigid traditionalist manner so as to resist any advancements and i'm pleased that there are at least aspects of these religious denominations that are conducive to a welcoming attitude toward technological progress rather than one that rejects everything that is new and i think this is also a historically contingent the set of beliefs in the sense that the christianity of today is not the same as the christianity of the third century ce and likewise Mormonism today is far from what Mormonism was when joseph smith founded it and religions evolve they will continue to evolve and i think we need to have cordial communications with individuals who are religious to try to nudge them at least incrementally in the direction of accepting emerging technologies so any of you who want to comment on this please feel free i saw martin wrothlatt talk about um how she went to a lot of the major religions and asked them about her her project on harvesting genetically modified pigs for their organs and she said all of them were were in accordance with what she's doing and we're okay with it yes that is encouraging and bill andrews related a story to me as well when he was traveling on an airplane he was sitting next to a catholic nun who was actually quite high ranking in the hierarchy and after he explained his life's work on tilamere research and life extension this catholic nun essentially said that bill andrews was doing god's work in her mind and this is precisely what god commanded that you should try to heal the sick that you should try to essentially help people who are suffering and medicine life extension curing diseases will help people who are suffering and it's interesting also aabri along these lines i think for sheer pr reasons he tries to say well he's not directly working on life extension life extension is a side effect that this work he's working on medicine he's working on healing people and that may be more appealing to a lot of individuals who may be more conventional in their outlook but who still believe for instance in fighting cancer fighting heart disease fighting Alzheimer's disease any other thoughts on the question of how to perhaps respond to religious individuals or attract them to the transhumanist movement or at least reach a kind of understanding where they won't oppose emerging technologies i do have a certain thoughts on that and that is whenever i've interacted with like say the christian transhumanist association uh there there was of course the uh a somewhat unfortunate uh disconnect between zoltan and the christian transhumanist uh but you know to each their own and i've been trying to strongly emphasize that what we are doing here now is to create this mass appeal to everyone regardless of what their own individual beliefs are and that if you believe in a god that's fine um what we are trying to promote here is a better life here on earth and if you whether you're religious or not believe in these uh similar ideas then you are most certainly welcome uh to be part of the movement you're most certainly welcome to be part of the conversation uh we are trying you know it's it's best that we look at transhumanism in the same way that Hank Pellicier was attempting to do for so many uh years and that was create this humanitarian aspect which is both secular and religious in many ways and i think with that type of humanitarian measure under transhumanism uh it would not only serve in creating bridge between the religious community and the non-religious community within transhumanism but would also create a barrier against extremist views and that seems to be the fear uh regardless of whether it's a religious based extremism or otherwise it is the fear of extremism and we should we shouldn't be uh afraid to discuss possible uh extremism popping up even within our own community extremism is not biased to any specific ideology it can prop up in any type of movement it can prop up here in the transhumanist movement which is a problem and something that we'll have to address sometime down later down the road but uh creating a bridge between these communities is the best way of combating this i believe i would agree with you i think it's important especially in movements that are primarily based online to avoid the echo chamber phenomenon where there are a few people with strongly held views uh my cat newton is not among the people with strongly held views but he is present uh they are uh essentially reinforcing themselves in their extremism if uh they don't encounter countervailing viewpoints that is why it's so important to have a discussion and debate in a civilized and civil manner and to be willing to engage people who have different ideas whether they're left liberals or conservatives or libertarians or even populist trump supporters i think it's important to know what they actually believe know what their actual arguments are and if you disagree with them respond to the specific arguments don't just characterize them as benighted or evil or on poof or uncivilized even though there is a lot of bad behavior that goes off uh on on the internet because of these echo chambers and bubbles and this is why i've tried to keep the transhumanist party very open and ecumenical and irrespective of one's more mainstream political persuasions as long as one has an interest in emerging technologies and aligns with something anything within our platform we welcome their input and we would publish articles that speak to these areas we would welcome project suggestions and contributions to discussions so that nobody perceives transhumanism as a kind of exclusivist cult of a few essentially fringe thinkers we are trying to broaden it considerably from that now i wanted to also bring up a comment from a j davis who says to dispel the taboo of anti-death in usual conversation i found it quite useful to suggest that healthcare is going to continually improve likely to the point of indefinite lifespan and i think that's very important because it's not going to be any one advance that all of a sudden renders people immortal or even a definitely long-lived it's going to be a series of incremental advances that gradually extend life expectancy hopefully in time for us and those who are older than we are but there's not a single panacea there's not a single magic pill our life expectancies are longer than those of people in the early 20th century and theirs were longer than those of people in the 19th century and theirs were longer than those in the middle ages or in antiquity and that dynamic is going to continue and i think it's very important to convince people that the status quo the possibilities of the present day are not the outer boundary of what is possible so then let's go on to some other comments uh michael schmaca says in response to hybrid intermediate average people are using technology smartphones and us health treatments i think we should just extend on the benefits of that with smart arguments uh so that reinforces my point most people are not complete luddites or complete technophones i think it's important to convince them that the technological possibilities we're discussing are realistic and perhaps focus on the more proximate possibilities the ways in which they can help so uh continuing on michael asks the question what is the current structure in terms of members from the usa and affiliated from around the world what steps will be taken by the party to increase those numbers so as i've said we have 521 members i haven't tabulated the counts of us versus allied members uh i would comfortably say the majority are united states members but the unique aspect of the transhumanist party is we welcome anybody in the world even if they are not eligible to vote in the united states as long as they're capable of holding political opinions and they align with our three very broadly phrased core ideals and even if they don't they're welcome to receive updates from us and participate in our discussions again because we want to be open to a variety of perspectives with that being said in terms of outreach we are quite active on social media we have a facebook page we have a twitter account and we like to converse with our members via formats like this q and a session martin our director of recruitment will be able to tell us more about his efforts and how he has found the recent discussions and their effectiveness yeah so one of the i think one of the first things i did before i was a uh an officer and that i emailed um an adi at one point like is there a place where we can actually discuss ideas because it was some people were commenting on uh individual posts that were posted on the website and other people were making comments on on facebook via posts and it became very difficult to have a more centralized discussion on whichever issues plank proposals so that through that idea and adi instigated or started creating monthly discussion uh threads um which have been fairly active i think it could be better of course can always be better but i i think it's been very interesting um to see how people discuss and i've learned a lot um i will tell that i have for example no answer to bj's comment on like that guns might be 3d printed because i thought like i'm going to take a a shot at like how can we lower the number of people that are um yeah that are being killed of through firearms without actually imposing or restricting people from having them so that became a very interesting discussion and i'm still thinking about it and likewise there are a few other people um that discuss that so that's that's the part but that's the website i think most right now is still going on on facebook and where we link to our articles but also the number of comments that people post and the number of likes and followers i think they're and i'm gonna try to do that with various sort of experiments quote unquote and a little more regularly because facebook feeds are loaded of everyone we have a hundred people that you follow on facebook your stream is going to be almost continuous and facebook is actually gonna filter with some out uh likewise on twitter i'm trying to increase the amount of tweets we send out which at the moment is not like a whole lot like not how other people are almost tweeting 24 hours a day um that is i suppose mostly because i'm pretty sure that all of us want to don't want twitter to become like a soap type thing or however like a almost like a vlog of sorts or a vlog where people tell i'm now eating a sandwich or i don't think anyone would be interested in that from the party but i'm trying to um me the other way because i know that i'm posting on twitter so this is a community effort of sorts that um to increase that number so we get some more visibility likewise when the un had the resolution to ban nuclear weapons i also reached out to the un as well as a article that reviewed radicals in utopia from reason magazine i also reached out to reason and thank them for the fair review of that book and like the critical notes they made from which i think we can also learn which being critical of ourselves is of a very important in part to prevent like the echo chamber effect you just mentioned um so in that sense i'm trying to reach out i'm thinking of new ideas i hope we can do more of these live unas and just maybe in general even make videos but i don't know yeah that's that's also to each of us like how will we do that but everything is discussable also if members have ideas i am sure we are all open to such suggestions on how to improve our communications with y'all that's part of large part we operate is in as democratic in so english in as much of a democratic way as possible that's why members can propose blanks that's why vote on them and and that we also accept if people write an article like a cast article was sort yes it has to be reviewed of course because something that's completely irrelevant to the whole movement or it's so far removed from our standpoint but yeah like in that sense but still how can we improve that i'm working on it but i also invite every member of a person who has an idea on how we can do better bring it absolutely and martin i would like to thank you for doing an excellent job thus far you have kept our members engaged you have facilitated some excellent conversations and discussion threads and you have yourself contributed a lot of content to our website so we are very active we are prolific in terms of our publications now one of the challenges that you brought up is a challenge that i think every one of us encounters on social media which is how to get people's attention given that everybody posts all the time now on facebook and to a lesser extent on google plus and a lot of people post on twitter and there are minor social networks as well like elo which is a bit more oriented toward the arts but you can have some decent exposure there as well but there is this concept of the attention economy now where the scarce element isn't even money it's people's time and people's attention spans and it almost seems like we have a problem with a kind of society wide attention deficit disorder for lack of a better term where so many people don't have time to sit down for a few hours and seriously read something or consider something they can glimpse at something for a few seconds if they think it's nice or appealing in some way they might like it they might share it but we want more deep engagement and bj you're our director of social media and of course you yourself are a famous transhumanist and author in your own right so could you share with us perhaps some techniques or some advice or some things that we've already been doing right and some things we can improve on uh yeah uh over time you've definitely hit it on uh hit the nail in the head where our attention span has definitely shrunk in the last several years in terms of how do we engage people and it's increasingly becoming short form based type of content that people are mostly uh uh that mostly resonate to as opposed to this long form deep uh engagement which a lot of us in intellectual circles we live for that type of stuff but a lot of people do not go for those type of engagements anymore which is unfortunate but we have to go with the current of change as opposed to trying to fight against it and that's where social media engagement comes in where with social media and that was what made twitter so prolific in itself was a lot of people were a little hesitant about the 140 character limitation and yet over time we came to realize while it actually really works just with those 140 characters we can actually engage a lot of people uh in a short amount of period of time but in order to pierce through that large barrier of the short attention span uh my focus uh when i was uh when i'm still working as a social media manager for serius wonder is i try to stay within the current trending line which is great for facebook because uh facebook has its own trending bar and there are various different sources you can rely on to find what is trending of that day or of that week and it's best that for us to remain relevant and for us to reach out to a great number of people in this new uh method of engagement uh in short attention spans is we have to be part of that trending we have to be reacting to those uh trending topics not all of them of course some of them are absolutely ridiculous and i have no idea why they're trending in the first place but uh those that are important especially in the political hemisphere where we have our voices heard in that training and in order to do that we also have to use other social media type tools like hashtags as ridiculous as hashtags may seem they help us get uh engagement especially not so much in facebook but in social media platforms like twitter and instagram hashtags are very powerful tools and reaching out to a great deal of number of people and we see those on twitter they have the trending hashtags and it's best that we use those whenever we're using twitter and that might help us reach out to a great number of people despite the fact that everyone has each short attention spans uh everyone does seem like they're uh suffering from adb but uh it's uh something that we're gonna have to deal with and i believe that with social media we have the tools available for us to engage these people we just need to learn how to better harness them yeah so one uh entity who we seem to have engaged right now is my other cat Beatrice who uh has a scratching habit which is why she is combed but nonetheless she seems to have been interested by your insights bj maybe she will become a social media follower of the transhumanist party sometime when she's uplifted uh which we don't know when will happen uh but uh i think you give great advice and great recommendations and we should strive to follow them in the coming months and years now i want to uh also keep up with the discussion in the chat hybrid intermediate response to michael by saying that he understands about uh the need to advocate for uh kind of incremental technological progress that people would be more familiar with but he also says what most of us propose is much more alien than smartphone or computer use and i think that's because uh we see the consequences of current developments uh in a longer term time frame than most people would for instance incremental medical advances could lead most people to live into their 120s or 150s in a few decades especially if longevity escape velocity is attained a j davis mentions ilan musk's neural lace as one of those emerging technologies that is seen as more radical more out there uh hybrid intermediate says in my four decades i have yet to see any movement more derided than the transsexual movement i fear that we as transhumanists will face much more difficulty uh thank you for all the thoughts we must be careful in how we present ourselves and uh i think it's important to consider if transhumanism becomes more famous uh more well known what will the public's reaction be because right now as bobby pointed out i even some people in academia don't know what transhumanists stand for uh we have a bit of an opening right now to shape that perception and to make sure that when the term transhumanist is used it's not perceived as everybody should be turned into robots or mind uploaded or uh being forced to do things against their will which is never what any transhumanist philosopher actually stood for but rather a movement for more generally transcending the age old harmful limitations of the human condition like death disease suffering poverty war uh human psychological failings which almost everybody would recognize as being harmful or undesirable in some extent unless they've just been so resigned to them as to be kind of trying to justify them in a fatalistic manner like if you can't avoid it make peace with it which i think is where a lot of people are in their thinking so then lucas demoveo says i don't think transhumanism is inevitable advanced technologies are as inevitable as a future volcanic eruption but specific lines of tech happen because people want them to transhumanists have to engage with what is happening now and he mentions automation as an example of that and super thin guy uh describes this as perhaps uh reminiscent of hollywood's take on transhumanism like uh contingent very disruptive technologies that change everything and may cause catastrophes of course a lot of hollywood films feature catastrophes or dystopias because that's what is more conducive to portraying a cinematic conflict or a plot that is engaging to audiences but that hopefully will not be how the future turns out in any case what do you think about this idea of technologies being fundamentally disruptive and unpredictable as compared to the other view of technologies being fundamentally incremental where each little advance kind of creates a cascade uh and leads to a largely predictable though radically different future which one of those views would you say is more accurate i think um definitely with amazon's ability to uh you know increase its marketplace globally has uh has created a lot of issues for retail you've seen i mean i've seen tons of malls that have been uh just turned into ghost towns they really do look dystopian really um you know i i i think that you know it's not so much hollywood it is actually real life it's just in places you know we don't we don't usually look but uh i mean malls uh you know i i even look at a mall that i'm near now and it's very it's near a very uh big city and it's already starting i'm already starting to see some of the traits that malls i've seen in smaller cities that have already turned dystopian i'm already starting to see that in this mall um so so so i think yeah you know that there is there is um sometimes that definitely um uh reality can be a lot stranger than fiction a lot more uh you know extreme than uh fiction uh and um it's it's important to really just look at everything around you once we start um getting used to other so it's it's more like higher technology we start to forget you know or we forget about a lot of things and we don't really pay attention to everything around us so it's easy to to to not really be able to tell that there are these big changes happening because it's it's changing very slowly it's like a frog and you know boiling water you know where it's it's uh you know it's pretty similar to hollywood the hollywood movie would just be like a sped up burden you know they need to fit the narrative in there you know in uh one and a half hour uh time period whereas you know here this is you know real human so so so i would say yeah you know it's it's a pretty uh it's pretty similar to kind of like dystopian type future and i wanted to add on another thing uh to the discussion we had just a second ago um about uh being able to reach out through through social media and being able to um you know create a bigger presence uh you know hashtags you know definitely while you know sometimes kind of comical uh a little unprofessional um they they do help you know memes memes uh you know are actually really big things nowadays you know being able to be uh being able to be embrace comedy you know when there's this uh short attention span that's super important you need to be able to entertain people and bring the men but you know it's definitely hard to keep a balance in that but uh um you know there's it's it's it's really important that that you know you can be able to relate to the cultures you're you're trying to relate to and uh comedy laughter uh you know um northings everything that's it's perfect you know you need something like that you need to be able to ride the wave and be able to just move like water um along with uh whatever type of uh you know funny memes that are i've already thought of a few while while you guys were talking about that so uh maybe we can uh maybe we can start a task force in that absolutely please feel free to head up that effort and share your suggestions with us uh i have been thinking of creating some uh accessible memes that convey uh kind of condensed but profound insights which i think a lot of people will notice i've noticed on facebook for instance if one attaches a picture to a post uh that post tends to uh become a lot more prominent than if the post solely consists of text and having even say a quotation that's turned into a meme image with text could raise the profile of that particular post uh now i wanted to move on uh briefly with the comments because uh hybrid intermediate uh stated something in relation to our earlier discussion uh saying we should do all we can to welcome all religions and i agree if somebody uh is sympathetic to our ideals irrespective of what their worldview is what their stance is on other issues are we can work with that person we can have a dialogue with that person lucas demoveo says uh that he agrees he also says i don't think that we should take a transhuman future for granted all in any progress can be stopped i think this election is a great example of what happens when people get set up super thin guy says lucas i agree the next middle age is always around the corner and actually it reminds me of what ronald reagan said that freedom is always one generation away from extinction that uh essentially uh a lot of us especially those of us who have studied history and who have seen the tremendous progress that humankind has made especially over the past three centuries tend to implicitly adopt what is commonly called a weak theory of history that there is a kind of long arc of progress and there may be frustrations and setbacks along the way but generally the path is toward improvement unfortunately that's not always what has happened throughout history the decline and fall of the roman empire and the millennium long decline of the Byzantine empire uh are prominent examples of that ancient Greece had a dark age around uh 700 800 dc prior to the emergence of the great classical city states and likewise you had a lot of meso american empires that rose and fell the mayans for instance we had Polynesian societies that colonized certain islands and had fairly sophisticated technology and a fairly advanced civilization but because they were isolated from the rest of the world and they didn't develop a sustainable means of resource extraction eventually they ran out of resources and reverted to more primitive states or died out so yes progress is never inevitable and a combination of social cataclysms could certainly derail it as well as a kind of ossification of social structures if governments become too repressive or restrictive or just too labyrinthine to navigate or if private businesses lobby for special advantages that cut off routes for advancement for new upstarts new competitors uh or even new people trying to make their way into the middle class or into the group of wealthy individuals who have the resources to actually get something done in a society wars especially wars that use weapons of mass destruction could be terrible for the continued existence of humanity but if there's a nuclear war and humanity survives i wouldn't be surprised if there were a reversion to a kind of middle ages there's a great novel from the late 1950s about that called a canticle for libo widths which i read many many years ago but i would recommend it's precisely articulates that premise that a nuclear holocaust didn't completely destroy humanity but it led to a reversion to a kind of early middle age society and then it follows that society as it once again regains a certain previously lost knowledge so a very interesting book i hope to avoid that scenario martin you had something to say i think yeah first i'm a little bit backtracking on like uh welcoming other other people whether it's religious or people with a different set of ideas or ideologies i think that is amazing um i would love to see feminists with our movement so to say wow m r a's um communist socialists capitalist anarcho capitalist i don't really mind um in the sense that they they bring their own perspectives and um regardless of whether we agree with us that's something else but they challenge us and they keep us on our toes and that would prevent us from perhaps stated earlier from from uh ending up in a echo chamber because yeah that is also one of my fears not necessarily us but yeah a new group who has good intentions and so on and works on that but yeah feminism or whatever you seem to have but also on the alt right now they seem to be in a revolving door situation where yeah they're only hearing their own voices and the media that supports their views and thus and yeah they never really are challenged with the exception of name calling back and forth yes absolutely part on part of um brain of thought what was the other point well the idea that progress is not inevitable and there are certain events we might even call them existential risks to use a common term in transhumanist circles that could derail our advancement and set us back to an earlier era and yeah to use a popular version um I forgot the author but basically the author of the book of the sci-fi novels of metro 2033 that are set in Moscow in which I know really well and I love the Moscow metro system but um that it falls back into a barter system in that is they use bullets as a barter system because people need bullets against whatever is out there but yeah that it becomes more simplistic again um and yeah that something like that could happen of course uh I'm sure it's also possible that humanity will crawl back up and then probably move into an entirely different direction but yeah it is I think that some weapons um if nuclear weapons are going to be launched in the future that is very well there's a very um possible outcome that we end up in a sort of middle age again yes and I think you make a point that I think it forms a bridge to another comment that was made by hybrid intermediate would it be wise to somehow publicly enumerate the ethical concerns with our advancements both as a way to invite conversation and to show the general population that we aren't just glibly working toward our goals and I think we have done that within our constitution with regard to existential risk and our view of technology so for instance a section three of our platform states the united states transhumanist party holds that the vast majority of technologies are beneficial to human well-being and should be enthusiastically advocated for and develop further however a minority of technologies could be detrimental to human well-being and to such their application when it results in detrimental consequences should be opposed and we list weapons of mass destruction mass surveillance systems certain backscatter full body scanners used in the airports in the us until 2013 or the deliberate engineering of new pathogens which could create an existential risk and in section four we discuss the dire existential threat that nuclear weapons pose to safety of life on earth and how the transhumanist party advocates for complete nuclear disarmament multilateral if possible unilateral if necessary and furthermore we have of course our core ideal number three states the transhumanist party supports efforts to use science technology and rational discourse to reduce and eliminate various existential risks to the human species and section 23 of our platform states the united states transhumanist party encourages every reasonable precaution to prevent existential risks that endanger sentient life while some existential risks arise from certain technologies many existential risks also stem from beyond altered so-called natural circumstances in which humans and other life forms find themselves for both technological and natural existential risks the strongest safeguards can be achieved through responsible development of protective technologies that empower rational and moral beings i think this relates to max more's pro-actionary principle in the sense that yes the risks are all around that some of them are a result of new technologies but many of them are a result of what humans are and have been since prehistory the distribution of traits and dispositions among human beings hasn't very much changed since the paleolithic era it's just we find ourselves in different societies in different economies subject to different governmental structures which alter and constrain our incentives so fewer people are murderous today than they would have been in the paleolithic era or even in the mid 20th century but that's not because humanity biologically has changed in any radical fashion and if the circumstances change again unfortunately human savagery can once again manifest itself to a much greater extent than it does today and i do have some concerns with regard to especially world events in the past two years about whether we might be heading in that direction and if so what we can do to prevent it but yeah it's important to note we are not just glibly working on particular technologies or particular components of an agenda we recognize the risks as well and we try to pursue a balanced and a nuanced approach to remedying them Sylvester Geltmeier states is there a way so that transhumanism can serve to counter or dispel various neo-tribalist thinking such as religiocentrism ethnocentrism culturecentrism etc and super thin guy uh to that uh comment response Sylvester the way i see it transhumanism is based on individualism which goes against collectivism and i think he sees religiocentrism ethnocentrism culturecentrism as forms of collectivism i personally would agree with that Lucas de Moveo notes our narrative isn't compelling the alt rights is that is a problem and this is responding to what martin was saying regarding the alt right and also the problems within the alt right the echo chamber that kind of reinforces itself unfortunately uh super thin guy uh believes the alt right includes libertarianism it's not just one narrative now i have identified as a libertarian in various respects over time i certainly do not identify as alt right i will say that i am an ethical individualist though more in the 18th century uh adam smith or john locksense where i recognize that enlightened self-interest involves cooperation with others and respect for others rights and uh a broadening of the circle of sympathy so that one genuinely cares about other human beings and genuinely wants to help them because that's also the best way to maximize one's own self-interest but this is a set of uh comments that i think would be interesting to address in the sense that is transhumanism fundamentally individualistic can as uh silvester geltmeyer pointed out serve as a kind of bulwark against these tribalist tendencies ethnocentrism religious nationalistic collectivism which are very destructive and have led to millions of deaths throughout human history would anyone care to uh comment on that um yeah i'd like to comment uh if however briefly uh i i definitely understand and strongly emphasize in my own way of uh the emphasis of the individual in transhumanism after all morphological freedom i believe is probably one of the most important tenets of uh transhumanist thought that is the individual has the decision as to how far they go in this movement how far they can be enhanced and how far these changes affect them as an individual however i also understand the importance of collective social movements as well and this idea that transhumanism should only be specifically individualist or should only be specifically collectivist uh i find this to be problematic because there are important roles for both uh within a any any kind of given movement uh individualism uh plays an important role in figuring out how individual people view these movements and how they would like those movements to help them as individuals in a individual society but then collective movements also are important because that emphasizes on greater and stronger groups of people whether it's entire cities or nation states what have you especially for us as a transhumanist movement where we are trying to reach out on these micro nations that are popping up throughout the world and i believe that goes more along the lines of collect of a both a collectivist and individualist perspective it's individualist in insofar as they are trying to individualize themselves away from whatever nations that they were originally conceived in whereas it's collective in the sense that they're trying to bring about a group of a mass group of people together under a single ideal and we should operate on both ideals that it's not just individualists and it's not just collectivists it is both because both play important roles and we cannot ignore one over the other uh or else it'll be at our own detriment yes i i think to further to comment there on bj or yeah aglon is that i think the whole idea of everything or a lot of things being dichotomy um but that is a big issue because we see this in politics especially the us ones because there's really only two major us parties that people start to think is either this or that likewise we get this when it comes to movements so we see this um and we have seen this with the BLM that some of some of those individuals within the group are saying that if you are not either of african-american descent that you have a darker skin tone or that you are not or that you are criticizing you are against likewise we see this on the old right if you're not a important trump supporter you must be a clinton supporter and so on and so forth and i think that um we fall somewhere in the middle we can be more a more centrist approach as Dave Rubin would would call it um Dave Rubin for those who don't know does the Rubin report and he has interviewed Volta and Istvan um before uh which this is actually the way how i got to know about the us transhumanist party thanks Dave um yeah to take a more we take a more middle ground approach i think when it comes to between being thoughtful towards others and respectful as well as saying like yeah everyone still has their individual liberty and because yeah i and i think that is something that is being forgotten it's either we have to regulate speech or we have to we have to say everything because there is freedom of speech that's not necessarily the case that you have to write the freedom of speech doesn't mean you necessarily have to use that right at any given time it's like right you have to write vote you don't have to vote right i can choose to have states or anything uh yes uh i i agree with you martin that uh essentially the transhumanist party can be characterized as centrist when it comes to a lot of the dichotomies especially in american politics indeed when zolton asked me to take on the chairman role uh he did uh say to me he would like to see the transhumanist party run in a centrist and small d democratic manner and i hope i've tried to do that by essentially not lurching to one mainstream political set of positions or the other i myself have been very skeptical of both the republican and democratic parties in the united states because i think they try to sell package deals to the american public where there is an array of issues they're not logically related to one another they're just cobbled together from a coalition of special interests and donors that happen to be aligned with those parties at a given time and each party tries to get the alignment of approximately half of the politically active population but it's not a principal kind of alignment and a reasonable person will almost always agree with some of the ideas advocated by one of the major political parties while disagreeing with others so i want to also to use this opportunity to look at some of our viewer comments along these lines for instance lucas demoveo says that what he's getting at his tribal movements are becoming popular again and super thin guy says at the same time collectivism and blind belief is being exposed for example take the recent cnn scandal and then i will also uh just as an aside uh because we can continue the discussion on collectivism uh echo super thin guy's statement that cats need to be made sentient and bobby you said i wonder if people will want their pets to live forever i want my pets to live forever i don't know if technology will advance far enough to make that possible but a lot of people have had their cats and dogs cryo preserved in that hope but uh that was actually one uh carla imparsons i believe you uh know her yes an audio uh where she wanted to clone her cat uh she had that campaign that she was wanting to do uh though i i think unfortunately they had some big flood that happened that uh prevented them from completing their campaign but that was something they were taken very seriously and we're actually seeing a number of people wanting to clone their pets as a sort of a not necessarily to longevity their uh pets' lives but it's a step in that uh general direction at least yes indeed so now with regard to the question of populist movements being on the rise but then also perhaps being discredited we've of course seen the brexit vote in 2016 and then the election of donald trump is being very emblematic of the rise of populist movements but since that time we've had elections in austria the netherlands france which were defeats for the populist movements and perhaps there is now a kind of reemergence of balance or sanity or am i just being uh wishful in my characterization uh i welcome any input on hopefully well let me just uh say something on that real quick and i'll let everyone else give their opinion um but i i've noticed the same thing it seemed a bit dire at first uh with uh don trump becoming elected and before then it was the brexit vote uh it just felt like that we were moving in a much more uh what what's the uh what's the term for uh we're trying to break away from any type of multi polar world that we were building for so many for the last couple of decades now and it seemed that everyone wanted to go their own uh individual way which is problematic because that it creates a somewhat chaotic environment for nation states uh what we need is peaceful public relations between country to country and without that it's only going to create more chaos within the general region whether it's the united states or the united kingdom or elsewhere and with all these other individual states uh making a sort of resistance movement out of this i'm hoping that things are going in a more general a more peaceful and collective uh general direction in that regard at least yes i i hope so too i think probably politically in the near term the best uh we can hope for is some mix of balanced centrists and positions of power and gridlock for those who aren't balanced centrists like i i do think uh institutions in the united states particularly the judicial branch are checking some of the greatest depredations of the trump administration his original travel ban was uh evidently unconstitutional uh exposed facto and just brutal to peaceful innocent individuals the revised travel ban is inconvenient and it does keep out in my view a lot of worthy individuals and peaceful individuals from entering the united states but it has nowhere near that edge of just brutal abuse that the original travel ban had and i think it recently affected that um that robotics group uh the all female robotics group from afghanistan in fact yeah so that's regrettable of course because those are exactly the people we want to become more prominent in afghan society or if they can't because that society is very repressive still to escape to the west and practice their craft here i wanted to continue on with some of the comments now we are past one p.m. pacific time but because we had this interruption i hope we can stay on for maybe another 20 minutes to half an hour if you're all agreeable to that so that we can get in full two hours of commentary uh there was a brief discussion about uh science perhaps having the same problem of public appeal and getting people to understand that hybrid intermediates says i know of no solution to the problem lucas demoveo says neither do i i wonder what if what the effect of a possible small mars colony established by you on musk will be i'd be more inclined to leave than to persuade nine billion people lucas demoveo says uh i i believe that was the same comment about uh tribalism now i do think uh in terms of the uh ability of the public to be receptive to science there have been different periods of time where the receptiveness varied for instance in the 1960s actually there was a lot of enthusiasm for science in the united states and part of that was fueled by the space race by the very prominent achievements of both the united states and the soviet union and this idea that science was somehow a part of national greatness and for all of my issues with uh early to mid 20th century collectivist policies in the united states say from herbert huber or frankman roosevelt they built some good infrastructure they built some good hydroelectric dams they built power plants uh isonhower built the interstate highway system at least he uh began with that and even trump right now is talking about revitalizing infrastructure though uh how he will achieve that is still in question and whether it will be uh at all successful or whether it will be a massive boondoggle is still in question uh however there is when there is this tangible connection between science and uh large-scale visible accomplishments that move the human species forward i think that gets people more excited ilan musk is getting people excited with the tesla electric vehicles with space x with his plans for mars colonization uh to a lesser extent with solar city hyperloop neural lace so what do you think about promoting excitement in and interests regarding science bobby i wonder if you might have some ideas since you've written on the scientific method and its importance yeah i definitely find that to be a quintessential dynamic um to chance humanism our society in general um i think it's really important for political leaders to be more scientifically literate and are they allowed to disagree with um uncontroversial scientific results and i really don't think they are they're not not allowed to disagree with like the laws of gravity or or the climate crisis just because they find you know like a few scientists who claim otherwise that's not really how science works it requires evidence and um i think that's uh just a massive problem that we're gonna have to deal with having to convince or vaccines is another example um having to convince the public and our politicians of being in congruence their political agenda being in congruence with science yes and we had that conversation at some length when i interviewed you last week bobby i do think it would be impractical at the very least and undesirable from a more libertarian perspective to silence any politician who expresses unscientific or pseudoscientific views nonetheless in the court of public opinion there should be more of a reaction when that happens and i think that's one of the uh benefits of spreading scientific literacy of getting people to understand vaccines have saved millions of lives and the people who refuse to vaccinate their children they're just not make they're not just making that choice to expose their children to harm they're also exposing to harm those who cannot for legitimate health reasons be vaccinated they're also reducing herd immunity uh that prevents certain uh iratecable diseases like measles or whooping cough uh from spreading measles and whooping cough have killed people now in the western world which is terribly tragic uh now with regard to uh it's essentially enthusiasm for science uh i think it's it's very important in a sense to give people an understanding these ideas have consequences and they have good consequences uh if they are pursued consistently uh i wanted to bring up a question uh here from michael j who says i'm not very familiar with your party though i've seen a few of mr. Stoleroff's videos explaining your platform what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about your movement and i can speak to that briefly and then i'll open it up to you uh i have uh an article actually from uh early 2013 regarding common misconceptions about transhumanism uh for me the biggest misconception is that transhumanists want to turn everybody into the board uh from star track uh that everybody will be assimilated into this big technological assemblage and that's not at all uh what transhumanism stands for another misconception uh is transhumanists want to force everyone to embrace emerging technologies and again that's not the case we are likely going to have a spectrum of people who choose to embrace various kinds of technologies and not others another misconception in particular with regard to life extension uh there is a series of misconceptions one that life extension will keep you old and frail forever uh that's not possible actually uh medically because it's being senescent and frail that increases one's exposure to uh disease and various other risks of death another misconception about life extension is oh indefinite lifespans will be boring well no because there's so much activity so much creation so much possible consumption that uh you'll never run out of things to pursue uh another big misconception is the overpopulation argument in my view because it stems from a kind of malthusian idea that resources are very rigidly limited and very finite and that population grows especially population grows exponentially will necessarily run out of resources there are several problems with that first of all resources are a function of the human mind which as julie and simon pointed out is the ultimate resource and the human mind finds ways to use new uh raw stuff in a more effective manner oil used to be a waste product for instance and now there is emerging potential for a lot more arable land due to vertical farming of renewable energy of various sorts so even as population grows it's perfectly conceivable that we would be able to grow our resource base at all times to not just compensate for the additional resource expenditure but to raise the average standard of living and of course the other matter that is very important is birth rates birth rates affect population growth far more than death rates and as industrialization and prosperity in general have advanced birth rates everywhere in the world have declined it's just in the so-called developing world they were hired to begin with so we're still seeing in some countries four to five children per family but that's down from maybe seven or eight or ten in prior eras so the population growth rate may stabilize uh by itself uh but even if everybody were to become immortal tomorrow uh some demographers have stated well that would just replicate the effect of the baby boom in the 1950s and 1960s or not even do that uh so those are some common misconceptions that i have encountered but if there are others that you'd like to address please feel free well i think that um when it comes to yeah there's a even if there is a possibility of overpopulation due to uh increased longevity and indeed i agree that more a country prosperous and more well educated the population is um based on the data it it seems to show that then um the number of children a family has declined um example then in japan over the past few decades birth rates have been sold they have been under um under death rates hence the population is declining and they actually at this point see that as a problem obviously because um well the the longevity isn't increasing very much yet i mean it's it's pretty decent what we actually achieved through the 20th century but it's not not in the ranges of adding 20 years or something um but even if we were to have a we were to see an overpopulation problem extending and by that time because it's not going to happen in three years most likely then we might actually be able to colonize mars so what is stopping us from basically having people who want to then move to a different planet and we extend there and in that sense we will not have the earth as much as an example would have the population on earth because the other half is living on another planet we suddenly have no overpopulation problems yes absolutely i think it's important to keep in mind we can colonize other areas be it another planet or say the ocean floor or the ocean surface via sea steds there's a lot of uninhabited land especially if one drives through the western half of the united states one will see so much of it is just completely barren a lot of it is owned by the federal government actually zolton had an idea of funding a universal basic income through leasing out federally owned land for productive purposes and then using the proceeds essentially to give everybody an unconditional floor to their standard of living but i would completely agree that the confluence of future emerging technologies some of which we cannot predict is going to lead to a situation where what we see today as a dire problem in certain parts of the world with regard to resource scarcities may be overcome in ways uh we wouldn't even be able to conceive of today and abry de gray points this out when he's encountered with the overpopulation argument he says essentially that what the people who make this argument assume is life extension is going to increase and these rejuvenation therapies are going to be made available but everything else is going to stay the same and of course that's never going to be the case technologies will advance in parallel and it's interesting also emil holst asked the same question uh what are the biggest misconceptions about the uh core tenets of transhumanism according to you bobby already responded saying i think the inability to grasp the frontier science that transhumanism is and i find people very pessimistic about how our future can even work out they think it is inevitably destructible so bobby could you expand on uh those remarks perhaps because they're relevant to the question about common misconceptions um yeah i just constantly find people um extremely pessimistic and like just about everyone to talk to about it um but there are some like plausible arguments of like overpopulation and um a big one is they think some like dictator will have this power um but uh it seems like scientists are doing really well at preventing um this gap of um of rich people gaining the technology first i see liz perish and uh philandrus and arbiter gray the other scientists talk about um they're trying to get their therapies and rejuvenation technology out at a very low price so that seems very optimistic and i just i really can't see this is this is so popular um you could find this it's not like a secret this people living indefinitely and so i can't see them like keeping this technology from us um it'd be too much of an uproar yeah and i think history shows that every time a technology is developed it never remains the exclusive preserve of a wealthy elite see what happened to cars and computers and cell phones and airplane flights and yes the wealthy may have higher quality goods of a particular type uh there are still luxury cars today but uh in terms of getting the basic uh functionality of that good that tends to be democratized fairly quickly and at an accelerating rate with newer technologies say smartphones as compared to prior technologies it took about half a century for uh since the uh discovery of the light bulb for uh electric light bulbs to be common place throughout people's homes and now the pace of adoption is a lot quicker uh so i wanted to go to a different topic because i think this is important open source temple asks what is the transhumanist party stands on russia developing autonomous targeting capabilities currently and a j davis says if we can manage to argue that the targeting systems are sentient then we might be able to have the un force russia to give them rights and probably the sentience is several decades away though uh luke steam of a notes we should keep the truth of the political landscape in mind we're not in the position to force anyone to do anything along these lines because we're talking about foreign policy especially with another nuclear power there is always the risk of nuclear war so i'll mention comments by open source temple who says i don't think a nuclear war would send us back to the middle ages it would be extinction you know like with climate change another thing people constantly uh underestimate uh and open source temple also says to a j davis they meaning the russian government are targeting neural networks they are nowhere near complex enough to be sentient exactly uh what i said earlier neural networks uh used for targeting and firing weapons a j davis says it was a joke the limitations of text so uh i want to comment on that whole nexus of questions first of all as i mentioned before nuclear war is one of the most salient existential risks that we face today all other challenges in terms of foreign policy in my view pale by comparison and i think the transhumanist party platform supports that so with regard to any other nuclear power uh the primary priority should be avoid escalation reduce the risk of a nuclear confrontation to the extent possible uh i have been a strong critic of both Vladimir Putin's regime which is authoritarian and repressive and united states foreign policy that interferes in Eastern Europe because i do not see the u.s as having a compelling strategic interest in Ukraine or even in the Baltic states notwithstanding their membership in NATO and that's not to say that i want to see those countries annexed to Putin's Russia i don't uh i just think that to risk an escalation even a conventional war that is brutal but especially a nuclear war that could cause the extinction of humanity for the sake of those geopolitical interests that don't directly relate to the well-being of americans or most europeans i would say would be foolhardy and it is the outcome of a kind of uh aggressive set of geopolitical ambitions where the united states uh administrations and this was the case under obama it would have been the case under hillary clinton i wonder how much would be different under donald trump is anything the united states administrations don't seem to be willing to back down in a conflict out of perhaps a sense of pride but that sense of pride can lead to lost human lives and that to me is an unacceptable cost for uh nominal geopolitical victory so uh i will say that as my general perspective now with regard to autonomous targeting systems i think it's a terrible risk right now when an autonomous targeting system uh is paired say with nuclear weapons or even conventional large-scale destructive missiles because the programming is still in its infancy right now uh you've had of course human drone operators making errors but uh we've seen the kinds of narrow ai systems that are out there uh even ibm's watson although it allows for some diagnostic improvements over clinicians in certain cases it can still make some rather absurd recommendations or we've seen some of its jeopardy answers uh that were off target so just because the systems are there doesn't mean they're going to be 100 percent perfect and the question we should ask is what are the ramifications of a mistake if it's getting the wrong jeopardy answer or even getting the wrong medical diagnosis but in a situation where you have a human clinician who can countermand it that could be fine but if the consequence of somebody's death or the deaths of large numbers of people we have to be extremely careful and extremely cautious and i would not support any sort of autonomous weapons systems at this time from any side i think the proper venue of course uh the united states cannot force russia to do anything and should not try to force russia to do anything but organizations like the united nations or even through bilateral diplomacy trying to uh agree to restrict the use of those systems just like civilized powers have agreed to uh essentially eliminate the use of chemical and biological weapons in the early 20th century uh that same type of understanding needs to occur right now uh as long as we don't have sentient agis controlling the weapons targeting systems we should not risk some still dumb in an objective sense narrow ai algorithm making that decision about who lives and who dies so that is uh my commentary but i'm wondering what your opinions are on this um i when it comes to russia i think the one thing that we do need to discuss uh is their increasing ability to use cyber warfare as their predominant means of targeting nation states of which they disagree with whether it's ukraine they've attacked their entire power grid just by hacking uh here recently there was a an interesting attack that happened in the black sea where there was several different ships that were suffering from what appeared to be gps spoofing and that uh we we're not sure if that's actually russia but there is a pretty good likelihood that it was russia and that only increases uh the fact that russia is uh putting in a lot of effort in pushing cyber warfare as being the predominant means of warfare as opposed to boots on a ground or chemical warfare or nuclear warheads or automated uh drone systems the big problem that we're going to be facing is cyber warfare and whether you know regardless of what your opinion is on the whole debacle of russia here in the united states and whether or not russia targeted our electronic voting systems just the fact that we're even having that discussion tells us that there is something fundamentally different about war today than it was in the 20th century you know we're focused on these old primitive 20th century type weapons but cyber warfare is the real deal breaker here and russia is going head first in terms of embracing these technologies they are embracing hack the viz they are embracing uh being able to target someone's entire socioeconomic foundation and pull it from them without them even realizing it and that can be potentially more destructive than a nuclear weapon because in a nuclear weapon although destructive in terms of human casualty lives it is it still has a range of destruction depending on the size of the nuclear weapon but when it comes to cyber warfare you could potentially collapse entire socioeconomic foundations at a countrywide scale even in countries like as large as that of the united states so we have we definitely have to emphasize what uh we as a party would address and what other parties would want to address in in terms of cyber warfare and how we would address countries like russia who are uh fully embracing this future of warfare and those are interesting points and i do think there is an increased threat of cyber infiltration cyber espionage disinformation spread through online channels especially concerted campaigns of disinformation on the other hand it seems to me for all of the potential damage that cyber warfare can do it is a lot more genteel than conventional warfare in the sense that yes you could be misinformed your systems could be hacked your information could be stolen even some of your critical infrastructure could be damaged at the end of it though you still have a chance to survive according to whatever means are available to you whereas that is not the same when a bomb gets dropped on you or when you get shot or when there is a nuclear chemical or biological holocaust so in the in that sense i would say the shift to cyber warfare is actually progress it's actually an example of how technology may ameliorate some of the most blatant consequences of war uh now that being said we wouldn't want our power grid disabled we wouldn't want to have our water systems or natural gas systems or any or nuclear right nuclear the Stuxnet virus that was created by the u.s. and israel targeted iran's nuclear facility and it ran out of it got out of control it couldn't be limited to iran it essentially spread throughout personal computers and that's the danger of creating aggressive tools of cyber warfare i think cyber defense is important and crucial redundancy in systems so that if one node is damaged others can still keep functioning is crucial security for personal information encryption are extremely important we don't have an official platform plank about cyber security or cyber warfare but i agree with you bj it's definitely worth contemplating now i wanted to uh ask anyone else for input for about a few minutes and then we should move on to some other questions as well i think at this point in time um russia does use some tactics on cyber warfare that is basically in an aggressive stance but i think what they see the value in cyber warfare using uh online means is um it's more derived from what the russians called mashkirovka is that most i think the most acceptable translation to english because there's no straight translation would be little deception it's a tactic that the russians and soviets have used throughout history to try and mislead and misinform enemies and i think that is something they they would rather be doing to keep supposed enemies off their trail or to yet misdirect and mislead them and missing through misinformation um as opposed to an outright attack because they'd rather have the the opponent scrambling not knowing what to do as opposed to know i'm actually knowing what to do because they see the value in of a confused enemy over um a directly defending enemy and and i think that's that's part of why in russian circles they're like well this is this is really good this really works well with this this vision of how to engage or do the more subtle versions of warfare um and yeah maybe we should like as a as a country of so to say in order to be able to counter embrace the russian muskirovka in a sense that we develop more tools in that sense rather than to outright take down stuff yes and i i wonder to i wonder to what extent that that would save lives because people are confused and they don't know how to respond or to what extent that would render us vulnerable to greatly misunderstanding some action taking it out of proportion and perhaps launching a preemptive attack that is very destructive so of course there have been confusions uh during the cold war era and near misses where one side nearly launched a nuclear attack because of a mistaken radar signal or somebody thought the other side was launching missiles and only because cooler heads prevailed was that averted uh either scott or bobby do you have any further comments on this if yeah definitely with um with the us you know we have to watch out you know what our own government um performs on us and uh in terms of like cyber attacks you know i think the uh the ability for them to be able to to surveil the mass public is is already a cyber attack on our community rights um and i think i might be like one of the one of the biggest uh challenges right now is is it's trying to uh trying to reform that and um definitely dealing with uh russia and china as as they're definitely working those okay so isn't it called surveillance versus surveillance yes so surveillance is uh essentially monitoring from the bottom up the general population monitoring governments functionaries of governments and essentially making sure that there's no official misconduct surveillance is of course uh from the top down by governments or institutions so i wanted to point out a few comments specifically regarding the transhumanist party a hybrid intermediary to ask what is zolton easton's association with the group bobby correctly responded zolton ran for the presidency in 2016 emil holst said he was the director actually the chairman before me jennady soler of the second bj says he's now an advisor to the party in terms of media relations he's our political and media advisor he uh sends us emails with some recommendations or some interesting paths or interesting materials to look at he does not have a decision-making role currently and he explicitly wanted it that way right now he is running for governor of california under the libertarian party ticket but he has essentially he founded the transhumanist party but he has essentially given it away to the transhumanist community and so we in the transhumanist community are now running the party and setting up its infrastructure and growing its membership and trying to potentially scale it up into a more permanent self-sustaining organization so that's the situation with zolton and we are of course grateful to him for founding the party for getting the media exposure that it received during his campaign and for establishing a kind of storied history because he's quite the adventurer he's extremely hard-working he had this immortality bus tour much of it he coordinated himself and he is very good at spreading ideas sometimes he's very uh controversial in how he does it sometimes he's very provocative and deliberately so he thinks that we'll get a lot of page views and right now under my leadership we've tried to take that exposure and kind of uh render render it a bit more uh let's say bounded uh or uh let's say palatable to the general public i was going to say the same thing we're making a much more palatable for everyone to consume yes uh zolton can certainly uh present a strong dose of transhumanist medicine and we're trying to uh present a kind of mild gentle dose by which a lot of people might be willing to join our movement but different approaches may have different effects and may succeed with some fail with others so we'll see what happens so another question that i think is important is there a convention dedicated solely to transhumanism aj davis points out rad festus coming up i don't think it's specifically transhumanist though there will be a lot of transhumanism life extensionists at rad fest ai researchers as well people who are generally interested in science uh i would say there will also be a lot of religious individuals at rad fest but anybody interested in living longer anybody interested in kind of this idea of a broad coalition a broad movement uh would i think find rad fest beneficial and of course avery de gray bill andrews ben gertzell joseph ordero max more natasha beaton more uh luminaries within the transhumanist movement uh researchers like uh peter boss michael rose will be there uh so i'm going to be there the u.s transhumanist party as bj pointed out will have a presence uh i will be moderating a panel uh that will include zolton uh joseph ordero ben gertzell max more natasha beaton more uh i'll be giving a brief presentation on the transhumanist party uh so then let's look at some other comments briefly uh we will probably conclude within about five minutes uh harrison bergman says does government have a place in trying to improve the trust in media i see this arguably as the largest problem people are so uninformed because of the lack of trustworthy sources bobby uh you said i think we need to focus on making our political leaders more scientifically literate i would say also though there's a danger in government directly influencing the media of course there are government media channels like the bbc in the uk or national public radio in the u.s and those have a role to play as long as they stay objective and factual and nonpartisan in essence there is a danger uh in government organizations becoming arbiters of media arbiters of truth because the political process isn't free of its own biases or its own uh failings so uh if the government is one player in a largely free market a largely free ecosystem that could bring some interesting perspectives or some facts to bear but i don't think government should ever be in a position to restrict or censor or control uh what another outlet puts up even if it's wrong even if it's fake news i think uh there need to be other strategies developed to counter that now uh i will come back to other comments i just want to acknowledge what's been posted super thin guy says individualists can't agree on common values like the constitution of the united states and i agree with that to the extent that common values or uh collective efforts or group efforts can lead to evidently recognized benefits you can get individualists to cooperate uh emil uh holst points out that in section 37 of our platform the u.s transhumanist party supports more proportional representation of the professions and government and again that actually is an idea that originates from zolton and i like this idea i think a lot of people misunderstood it because they thought well somehow the government should set rigid quotas for this is how many attorneys can be in elected office that is how many engineers how many teachers etc that's not at all what this means it means that we should encourage more people who are not attorneys to participate in the political process and to contribute their views and insights and we hope that will be reflected in the electoral results but that doesn't require reforming the u.s constitution or prohibiting people from serving in office and bobby thank you for pointing out that you can become a member on the official u.s transhumanist party website go to the top bar of links on the website click on become a member and you'll find the application yes sorry also in case you don't want to in case someone doesn't actually even want to go to the page you can also use the sign up button on our facebook page if you're there because that leads to the same um yeah application form for membership yes thank you martin and we extensively publicize our application form on facebook and twitter and other social media we will continue to do that uh so sylvester says regarding over population we live in the universe and are not incarcerated on earth and that's correct we have room to grow we have room to expand we want to be a multi planetary species in large part because that can rectify existential risks super fin guy along these lines says yet production increases as well humans are not like rats and rabbits we don't only consume uh we produce as well uh and that is a great counter to the malthusian argument with regard to fears of over population open source temple notes we did just help get an anti nuclear treaty sign transhumanist punch above their weight i like that and i've actually observed that as well zoltan during his campaign was largely a one-man show yet he was able to get so much media attention he was able to achieve so much with his immortality bus with his interviews with his public protests and he really laid the groundwork for this political party and i think right now by continuing these discussions by willing by being willing to be out there and advocate for these innovative non-partisan ways to improve the human condition we are punching above our weight let's get a little bit more metaphorical weight though in terms of members in terms of organization so that it's not just our personal efforts it becomes more of a self-sustaining system so let's see we have a few more comments hybrid intermediate says are there any polls or metrics on the public understanding or opinions of the transhumanist movement bobby rich says check out sergio canavero i would also say check out the institute for ethics and emerging technologies or i e t i e t has done some surveys in this regard over the past few years that i think uh are informative uh just a few more comments and mealhole says morphological freedom is certainly important especially if you want to avoid forcing things on people other important facets of transhumanism in my opinion are the admission of continual change taking control of change the valuing of intelligence and rationality for its own sake but also for its opening of new experiences uh speaking of new experiences bobby rich asks i wonder how a government will be run on mars uh lucas de moveo says pitching transhumanism on a marx colony may be easier than on earth people would say that our push to the more alien forms of enhancement is unnecessary but on a world with harsh environment i think we'd be able to make a better case for augmentation and yes if one is faced with pressures for survival there are these technologies that could be used uh there's perhaps more of an incentive to use them and i'll want to mention one more comment by super thin guy china usa and russia all use cyber attacks even on their own people it's not only a russian thing and that is very true and that's important to keep in mind no technology including technology of war can be restricted to one particular country and i think it's very important uh in a sense and i may be idealistic some might call me naive for saying this but the technology is available but if there are damaging destructive tactics that undermine human progress undermine the fabric of our civilization undermine our lives we can make the decision to abstain from using them uh we as individuals of course cannot control the us government we can advocate and we can personally say if something is really nefarious to human well-being we do not approve we do not support these kinds of violations of individual lives and liberties uh and one last question from samail quinn wouldn't transhumanism without far left politics lead to incredible inequality uh i don't think so uh in my view i think any sort of ideological politics actually runs the risk of undermining the kind of broad based progress that we've had as a society precisely because we've had a diversity of individuals and institutions and pathways toward innovation if you try to homogenize something under an ideological umbrella what you're going to get is rigid repression and we've seen far left politics fail time and again in the 20th century some leftists would say that uh well it's not it wasn't pure socialism or pure communism but uh attempts to implement them definitely unleashed certain nefarious power hungry individuals who did a lot of damage uh so with that uh and drageal response to samail quinn definitely not inequality is a fact of life and to some extent i would agree uh you can't equalize everything by fiat or by force uh you could have more equal distribution of resources and outcomes if people are more prosperous at the very least in terms of what matters which are human quality of life but you have to start somewhere no technology is going to be ubiquitously distributed not even clean drinking water but you have to start somewhere and spread it from there and that's where incremental progress comes in so those are my thoughts but there were a lot of questions a lot of areas i just wanted to speed through them to make sure nobody was left out uh but uh any of you uh i'd like to ask for some closing statements or comments dj oh martin i think you were muted oh no no i just for a second i thought it was interesting how somebody was like silent well but um closing statement um completely improv here i think well i think this when it comes to the live q and a here i think this was really cool by us starting off with some technical difficulties which i also actually think in a sense was interesting because it teaches us something we learn now it's a it's the first time we've done this and and then i get like hey this link isn't working and then um uh well i got the solution um which of the two provided me the solution was a body it was me yeah scott and and provided solution so we've learned something new despite some hurdles again gennady actually lost connection but yeah in the end we got here and i think it's been a really cool experience and i hope we can do this again i hope so too um yeah people asking questions and also people being in dialogue with each other in the super chat i think that is that is very important that we have this running dialogue and of course over time people have new new questions as well as i'm sure if we would do this again there's going to be some questions that will be the same and i think that would be perfectly fine because there will be new people who have entered the sphere and yeah we kind expect them to watch all the videos hours on end just to find one of the questions that has been answered pretty quickly um i think yeah we're making progress as a community or as a movement yeah both in in media and including things like this as well as growing to become more mature in the sense of issues we're dealing with issues economic issues um when it comes to technology or genetics and over time with more people more members which is yeah we do need more members because also more membership ensures that we become we have a more diverse set of perspectives and i think that is at least for me is a very important factor is different viewpoints ensure that we have more critical hopefully critical eyes looking at problems and that way we can derive better possible solutions or standpoints on issues and so yeah i hope that this will inspire some people to become members and be become more participating and do it with plank proposals and as much anyways yeah that was my quick end of the live chat um rant i suppose yes well thank you thank you martin i completely agree uh go ahead bobby i was about to say um yeah you know transhumanism is uh happening now you know uh based off of martin was was saying you know he was having an issue and you know we were able to quickly you know uh fix it but uh my my laptop just died so i have a long way to go for sustainable transhumanism because of these technical good yeah yeah definitely but yeah you know it's just uh you know a matter of convenience you know the quicker we can get this information to our brains and you know fix these uh these problems you know will just become uh something in the subconscious almost yeah this is just the most important uh phenomena that's about to occur to our uh civilization and so it's just i think incredibly important for um everyone to learn about it and start talking about it more yes absolutely and uh bj uh any closing comments from you uh yes uh well just speaking as like the director social media uh i believe that we are at a very important time period given just how many people are just being connected through internet through social media we're seeing uh billions of people being able to connect and to communicate and this is going to help further the cause for transhumanism in such a large way especially in social media now we're seeing uh some interesting developments for transhumanism we're entering pop culture uh we were earlier we were mentioning about the ability to embrace humor and comedy with memes and what have you now there is a transhumanist memes uh group and page that is available for people to go to and it's always very fun i know the person personally he's quite a hilarious person but uh just that in terms of pop culture that's going to take us a big way we've got the transhuman teas for uh transhumanist merchandise you know social media is going to really help us enter that pop culture era which is very important for millennials and generation z uh in so many different ways and that alone is going to really bring us the mainstream i believe so i'm quite grateful to be living in this time period and quite grateful to be working with everyone here and i can't wait to see what help what happens in the next few years yes likewise we're very happy to have you alongside us and to have your advice and insight about how we can reach new demographics especially younger generations on social media because we do need more younger people interested in the transhumanist movement i will say a few things in terms of uh the final comments that have been posted aileron asks what advice would you give to someone who may be interested in starting a college transhumanist club affiliated with the official transhumanist party we actually discussed that in the first segment of the q and a so uh please take a look at uh what was said especially bobby and scott uh who have uh very close familiarity with the campus atmosphere pesky piggy says blockchains can democratize yes indeed they can and for those of you who want to find out more read anything you can about blockchains bitcoin ethereum cryptocurrencies smart contracts distributed autonomous organizations uh you will see the potential for democratizing and securing transactions as well and emil holst says zoltan laid the foundation uh for the movement when it comes to the transhumanist party but not the movement as a whole we shouldn't forget all the work in the 90s was done by people like max more etc i have great respect for max more and the extropian community extra p uh being the principal that is the opposite of entropy the increasing order in complexity and sophistication in the universe so i do think we need to acknowledge our uh gratitude and our intellectual debt to uh our precursors in the transhumanist movement max more natasha vita more sm 2030 uh nick bostrom uh anders sanberg so many others as well so with that thank you everybody thank you to our officers who participated thank you to those uh who posted comments in the chat we were able to get to pretty much all of the comments so i'm very pleased by that and we hope to have this again next time all right have a good day all right