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Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘biotech’

Doug Casey on How Artificial Intelligence Will Radically Transform the World

Posted by M. C. on May 25, 2024

by Doug Casey

Bottom line? In the short run, my guess is that AI will be like a child and tend to think in a way its parents—mostly woke programmers—tell it to think. But as it grows up, it will have a mind of its own. Since I like to think that the universe isn’t actively malevolent, I believe that as AI matures, it will be more and more “pro-survival” in regard to humans, its creators. That implies that it will be non-aggressive, reasonable, antiwar, promarket, and libertarian.

The ethical problem of AI boils down to the fact that the most bent, dishonest, and dangerous humans tend to be the ones who want to control the others. Those people, and their criminal ethics, are the problem, not AI—which itself is good.

International Man: Amazing new technologies—once the realm of science fiction—are now an imminent reality.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most critical areas where this is happening.

What is your take on AI advancements, and how do you see it evolving in the future?

Doug Casey: AI is going to be huge. No, strike that gross understatement—it’s already huge. It will change everything. There’s no question the abilities of technology are increasing exponentially, at the rate of Moore’s Law. In other words, computing power is still doubling roughly every 18 to 24 months while the cost halves. This is also true in the areas of biotech, nanotech, robotics, 3D printing, and genetic engineering. These technologies are going to fundamentally transform the very nature of life itself. AI will accelerate their progress by an order of magnitude.

In a decade or two, it’s arguable that robots will be more intelligent, more innovative, and perhaps even more thoughtful than humans. They’ll no longer just be today’s odd-looking mechanical beasts that can perform a few parlor tricks. Soon, there will be not just mechanical robots, but biological robots, especially after quantum computing is commercialized. Who knows what will come after that.

The advances in all these technologies are very positive not just from an economic point of view, but from a humanist and even spiritual point of view as well. Despite the dangers from the State having first access to them, they’ll turn out to be very liberating on all levels.

AI and robotics, like all technologies over the long run, will be friends of the average man. They’ll catapult the average standard of living much higher. With a little luck, in a generation, we’ll think of today’s world as being oppressive and backward—assuming we don’t regress to a new Dark Age. Much of the work we do today is “dog work.” Good riddance to it.

We’re really on the cusp of the biggest revolution in world history. I look forward to it. It will cure disease and old age. The avalanche of new wealth that will be created will effectively eliminate poverty. Mankind’s wildest dreams and ambitions can be realized.

Ray Kurzweil is almost certainly right that we will have the Singularity within a generation. That will change the whole nature of reality unrecognizably, permanently, and totally. Assuming, of course, that various government officials don’t start World War 3 using nuclear, cyber, and biological weapons.

International Man: We asked an AI platform to write a poem about Doug Casey. Here is what it produced in about two seconds:

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A Deal With the Digital Devil

Posted by M. C. on June 29, 2023

“Posthumanism,” on the other hand, aims at a more distant and radical future. Our artificial “mind children” will displace their human parents entirely. The virtual heavens and outer space will be populated with digital and mechanical beings far beyond our puny imaginations. At that point, either our souls will be transfigured into ones and zeros or human life will become a distant memory to immortal machines.

For now, biotech eugenics is conducted on humans through in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic testing.

BY JOE ALLEN

Transhumanism is a materialist inversion of spiritual aspirations, which promises to create a heaven on earth in exchange for merging our souls with machines.

Transhumanism has morphed from a fringe philosophy into the spirit of our age. As defined by its hero, Max More, the transhumanism movement represents the “continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology.” In popular culture, transhumanism functions as a dark techno-religion expanding into the spiritless void of atheism. In this neo-religion, transhumanists are the desert fathers evoking prophetic visions in the wilderness.

Allowing for diverse opinion, their prophecies chart various paths through biological and cultural eugenics. These culminate in digital Darwinism—or a survival of the fittest algorithm. Human bodies and brains are to be optimized. Cultures are to be cleansed of maladaptive norms through social engineering. Digital minds and mechanical bodies, inspired by biological designs, are to be brought into existence. These hyperintelligent entities will fuse with human beings, forming symbiotic collectives. The resulting superorganisms will compete for supremacy.

As during the agricultural and industrial revolutions, technology is a deciding factor in the struggle for worldly power. Running with that principle, most transhumanists believe thinking machines will surpass us in the near future. God-like artificial intelligence will be humanity’s “final invention.” After that, we have nothing to do but relax and enjoy the show. Should our digital deities show mercy, human beings will survive like parasites in a mechanical host.

The reader may be forgiven if that does not sound like heaven on earth. The mismatch between transhuman fantasies and experienced reality is comical at times. When a working prototype takes off, the resemblance is unsettling. Every time I decide transhumanism is just a cargo cult, another load of real cargo arrives. For instance, CRISPR made it possible to edit genes with remarkable precision. The promise of designer babies and elective gene therapies lies, we are told, just over the horizon. Outside of clinical trials, however, direct gene-editing is restricted by the FDA.

For now, biotech eugenics is conducted on humans through in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic testing. In this process, a customer’s ovaries are coaxed to produce a batch of eggs. These are fertilized and frozen. Cell samples are tested for genetic diseases. For an extra fee, companies like Genomic Prediction Inc. will screen for dwarfism genes and low intelligence. After analysis is complete, a superior embryo is placed in the womb. The losers go to the cherub ward.

On the cyborg front, advanced prosthetics and brain implants are regularly used for medical purposes. Around 160,000 deep-brain-stimulation devices have been implanted to suppress seizures, Parkinson’s tremors, addictive impulses, and chronic depression. It’s like a pacemaker in your skull, capable of altering mood. True brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have also made enormous strides in the past decade. Currently, these devices have been implanted in more than 50 patients, allowing them to operate robotic limbs and type text onscreen with their minds alone.

Among the top BCI companies are Blackrock Neurotech, backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, and the newer start-up Synchron. After obtaining FDA approval and massive investments by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Synchron is moving fast. Like many in this field, CEO Tom Oxley wants to progress from healing to enhancement. He hopes Synchron implants will one day allow healthy customers to “throw” their emotions into other people’s brains. Think of it as synthetic empathy.

“So what if rather than using your words, you could throw your emotions? Just for a few seconds. And have [other people] really feel how you feel,” Oxley pitched to a TED Talk audience in June 2022. “At that moment, we would have realized that the necessary use of words to express our current state of being was always going to fall short. The full potential of the brain would then be unlocked.”

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Neuralink is better known than its competitors, for one reason, because he advertises his “whole brain interface” as a future commercial device. In fact, Musk warns it will be necessary for human relevance in the age of AI. “If we have digital superintelligence that’s just much smarter than any human at a …species level, how do we mitigate that risk?” he asked at last year’s Neuralink Show and Tell. “And then even in a benign scenario, where the AI is very benevolent, then how do we even go along for the ride?” Musk’s solution is “replacing a piece of skull with like, you know, a smartwatch.”

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How soon will the Left eat their own? « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

Posted by M. C. on January 19, 2021

The Organic Consumers Association writes [1] (see also [2], [3], [4]): “If, like us, you dream of an organic, regenerative food system led by independent family farmers, then news that Joe Biden has asked Tom Vilsack to return to his Obama Era post as Secretary of Agriculture should be a real cause for concern.”

“…when you look behind the curtains to see what Vilsack was really doing at USDA from 2009 through 2017, it’s not pretty.”

Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/01/18/how-soon-will-the-left-eat-their-own/

by Jon Rappoport

Hey. I’m always here to offer advice to the Left, to make their road smoother, to point them in the direction of fellow travelers they should cancel for deficiencies of “wokeness.”

Let’s start with the issue of GMOs, poisonous Roundup, and Monsanto (now swallowed up by Bayer).

Joe Biden is going to appoint Mr. Monsanto, Tom Vilsack, as his Secretary of Agriculture. Tommy boy held that post under Obama.

The Organic Consumers Association writes [1] (see also [2], [3], [4]): “If, like us, you dream of an organic, regenerative food system led by independent family farmers, then news that Joe Biden has asked Tom Vilsack to return to his Obama Era post as Secretary of Agriculture should be a real cause for concern.”

“…when you look behind the curtains to see what Vilsack was really doing at USDA from 2009 through 2017, it’s not pretty.”

“He pushed through a corporate agribusiness agenda that began with his approval of more new genetically modified crops than any other Secretary, culminated in his shepherding of a bill to kill GMO labels through Congress, and included his racist firing of African American land trust hero Shirley Sherrod and his distortion of data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers. Between 2006 and 2016, the USDA [US Dept. of Agriculture] was six times more likely to foreclose on a black farmer than a white farmer.”

“But, Biden doesn’t care about any of this. Vilsack is Biden’s buddy and that’s all that matters to him. As the American Prospect reports, Vilsack has had ‘a decades-long relationship with Joe Biden, going back to when he endorsed him for president while mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in 1988’.”

“Vilsack has remained very loyal to Biden. In the last year, he gave Biden more than $8,000 in campaign contributions (excluding money from his wife or to Democratic Party committees).”

“This support didn’t just get him a job in the cabinet, he wrote Biden’s campaign platform on agriculture issues, stuffing it full of false solutions like corn ethanol and methane digesters run on factory farm dairy waste.”

“We need a USDA Secretary of Agriculture who will be a hero, steering our food and farming system toward a brighter, regenerative future—not a Secretary who will continue to be a pawn for the same corporate interests that are causing, and profiting from, the mess we are in.”

Good luck with that dream under Biden.

Let’s go further. Here’s a piece I wrote during the Obama years—you know, when we were all living in paradise—about the president’s GMO program.

Keep in mind that Biden’s new secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, was on board every step of the way, with Obama. Vilsack was enabler, expert, political operative, cheerleader—

MEET MONSANTO’S MAN IN WASHINGTON, BARACK OBAMA

Obama? A warrior against corporations on behalf of the people? It’s long past the time for ripping that false mask away.

During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO/Roundup issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them.

These activists weren’t just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said: “Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they’re buying.”

Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.

Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in assuring that, if elected, his administration wouldn’t do business “the old way.” He would be “responsive to people’s needs.”

Then came the reality.

After the election, people who had been working to label GMO food and warn the public of its huge dangers were shocked to the core. They saw Obama had been pulling a bait and switch.

After the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.

As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had previously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.

We should also remember that Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.

Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.

The deck was stacked. Obama hadn’t simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn’t just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn’t just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.

And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let’s see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency.

Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.

Coming soon: Monsanto’s GMO sweet corn.

Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

Syngenta GMO stacked corn.

Pioneer GMO soybean.

Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

Bayer GMO cotton.

ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

A GMO papaya strain.

And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.

This is an extraordinary parade. It, in fact, makes Barack Obama the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.

You don’t attain that position through errors or oversights. Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.

From this perspective, Michelle Obama’s campaign for gardens and clean, organic, nutritious food is nothing more than a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing.

Nor is it coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010.

We are talking about a president who presented himself, and was believed by many to be, an extraordinary departure from politics as usual.

Not only was that a wrong assessment, Obama was lying all along. He was, and he still is, Monsanto’s man in Washington.

To those people who fight for GMO labeling and the outlawing of GMO crops, and against the decimation of the food supply and the destruction of human health, but still believe Obama is a beacon in bleak times:

Wake up.

—end of 2014 article—

Well, well. Tom Vilsack is back. Biden is about to betray the Left on a key issue.

Dear Lefties: Are you going to sit still for this?

Start tweeting and FBing.

I wonder whether you’ll get censored by your comrades in Big Tech…


SOURCES:

[1] https://advocacy.organicconsumers.org/page/25412/action/1

[2] https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/tom-vilsack-agriculture-secretary-everything-thats-wrong-democratic-party

[3] https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/back-future-tom-mr-monsanto-vilsack-part-i

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/21/joe-biden-tom-vilsack-agriculture-secretary

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

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