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Archive for the ‘geopolitics’ category: Page 18

Jul 31, 2017

Rethinking Radical Thoughts: How Transhumanists Can Fix Democracy

Posted by in categories: business, economics, geopolitics, life extension, robotics/AI, transhumanism

O n a recent evening at a start-up hub in Spitalfields, London, journalist and author Jamie Bartlett spoke to a small group of mostly under 40, mainly techie or creative professionals about his book Radicals: Outsiders Changing the World. The book, which Bartlett started to research in 2014, before Brexit and Trump, chronicles his time with a series of different radical groups, from the Psychedelic Society — who advocate the “careful use of psychedelics as a tool for awakening to the unity and interconnectedness of all things” — to Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the unabashedly far-right English Defence League, to the founder of Liberland, a libertarian nation on unclaimed land on the Serbian/Croatian border, to Zoltan Istvan, who ran as US transhumanist presidential candidate on a platform of putting an end to death. He campaigned by racing around America in a superannuated RV which he’d modified to look like a giant coffin, dubbed “the Immortality Bus.” His efforts were in vain, and illegal, as it turned out: his campaign was in breach of the US’ Federal Electoral Commission rules.

Bartlett’s book has been damned with faint praise — he has been called “surprisingly naive about politics,” and defining ‘radical’ so broadly as to make the term “meaningless.” The general consensus goes that Bartlett’s journey through the farthest-flung fringes of politics and society is entertaining and impressively dispassionate, but not altogether successful in making a clear or convincing case for radicals or radicalism. But at the talk that night Bartlett challenged what he sees as the complacent acceptance and defense of our current political and governmental systems, institutions and ideas, of the kind of technocratic centrism that prevailed throughout the global North until very recently. Perhaps they need some radical rethinking. Many of the radicals Bartlett spent time with may be flawed, crazy or wrong — literally, legally and morally — but they can also hold up mirrors and magnifying glasses to political and social trends. And sometimes, they can prophesize them…

Bartlett began the evening by saying, “If democracy were a business, it would be bankrupt.” A provocative statement, but one that he backs up. He pointed to research showing that only 30% of those born after 1980 believe that it is essential to live in a democracy. That rate drops steadily with age. A closer look at the research around peoples’ attitudes reveals widespread skepticism towards liberal institutions and a growing disaffection with political parties. Freedom House’s annual report for 2016 shows that as faith in democracy has declined so too have global freedoms — 2016 marks the “11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.” While a lot of attention has been given to violent polarization, populism and nationalism rising out of anger at demographic and economic changes, Bartlett suggests that perhaps comfort and complacency are culprits too, and he is not the only one: only last week Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh took up a similar theme.

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Jul 29, 2017

Artificial Intelligence & Robots: Economy of the Future or End of Free Markets?

Posted by in categories: business, economics, geopolitics, life extension, robotics/AI, transhumanism

Eric Shuss, Ed Hudgins, Peter Voss, Zoltan Istvan, Gennady Stolyarov; Michael Shermer (mod) discuss artificial intelligence and robots. Will these developments lead the economy of the future or end capitalism as we know it?

Gennady Stolyarov II, FSA, ACAS, MAAA, CPCU, ARe, ARC, API, AIS, AIE, AIAF, is the second Chairman in the history of the U.S. Transhumanist Party and the Chief Executive of the Nevada Transhumanist Party. Mr. Stolyarov is an actuary, independent philosophical essayist, science-fiction novelist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov regularly produces YouTube videos discussing life extension, libertarianism, and related subjects, In December 2013, Mr. Stolyarov published Death is Wrong, an ambitious children’s book on life extension illustrated by his wife Wendy Stolyarov. Death is Wrong can be found on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats, and can also be freely downloaded in PDF format in the English, Russian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages.

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Jul 15, 2017

There’s No Harm in Fantasizing About a Better Future

Posted by in categories: geopolitics, transhumanism

My work is featured in Reason today via a review on book Radicals, which opens with a controversial chapter on my transhumanist presidential run: http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/12/theres-no-harm-in-fantasizing-about-a-be #transhumanism


In Radicals Chasing Utopia, transhumanist enthusiasm gets a bad rap.

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Jul 8, 2017

Could a Robot Be President?

Posted by in categories: ethics, geopolitics, robotics/AI, transhumanism

Great story in Politico Magazine on #transhumanism and a future AI President. My direct digital democracy ideas and others are mentioned: “Istvan, for one, envisions regular national elections, in which voters would decide on the robot’s priorities and how it should come out on moral issues like abortion; the voters would then have a chance in the next election to change those choices. The initial programming of the system would no doubt be controversial, and the programmers would probably need to be elected, too. All of this would require amending the Constitution, Istvan acknowledges.”


Yes, it sounds nuts. But some techno-optimists really believe a computer could make better decisions for the country—without the drama and shortsightedness we accept from our human leaders.

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Jun 15, 2017

The New Gnosticism of the Transhumanists

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, geopolitics, life extension, neuroscience, singularity, transhumanism

New story about the recent book on #transhumanism To Be a Machine:


For the (very very quickly) upcoming Love & Death Issue, I had the chance to interview the journalist, Mark O’Connell, who is the author most recently of To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death. He also wrote that amazing piece in the New York Times Magazine a few months ago about Zoltan Istvan, the transhumanist who ran for president and drove across the country in a coffin-shaped bus. O’Connell’s new book reads like a travelogue among characters like Zoltan, futuristic types (mostly from California) that O’Connell describes with a charming blend of cynicism and aloof interest. Like an agnostic amidst a group of “true believers,” O’Connell is both repelled by and drawn in by the belief system that transhumanism proffers.

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Jun 11, 2017

Outsiders Changing the World

Posted by in categories: geopolitics, transhumanism

The Evening Standard reviews the new book Radicals whose opening chapter is about transhumanism and my 2016 presidential campaign:


With the apparent collapse of Ukip and the defeat of Marine Le Pen, perhaps those of us fretting about the decline of liberal democracy may breathe easier. Still, many established Western parties remain in decline. And we have yet to deal with the consequences of the “populist” spasms that gave us Brexit and the absurd President Trump. This is the climate that impels Jamie Bartlett, of think tank Demos, to examine some of the new “radicals”.

Radicalism is important, he believes, because it is a source of new ideas: even if liberal democracy is forced to argue with racists or anti-democratic radicals, that should help make it stronger.

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Jun 9, 2017

Startup Societies Summit: A Decentralized Governance Trade Show

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, cryptocurrencies, defense, economics, futurism, geopolitics, governance, government

Lifeboat Foundation readers are aware that the world has become progressively more chaotic. Part of the danger comes from centralized points of failure. While large institutions can bear great stress, they also cause more harm when they fail. Because there are so few pillars, if one collapses, the whole system is destroyed.

For instance, prior to the federal reserve system, bank runs we extremely common. However, since the financial system consisted of small, competing institutions, failure was confined to deficient banks. So while failure was frequent, it was less impactful and systemic. In contrast, after the establishment of the federal reserve, banks became fewer and larger. Failures, while more infrequent, were large scale catastrophes when they occurred. They affected the whole economy and had longer impact.

This is even more important in political systems, which are the foundation of how a society operates. In order to have a more robust, antifragile social order, systems must be decentralized. Rather than a monopolistic, static political order, there must be a series of decentralized experiments. While failures are inevitable, it can be localized to these small experiments rather than the whole structure.

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Jun 6, 2017

The Toronto Transhumanism Meetup Group

Posted by in categories: genetics, geopolitics, transhumanism

Join me today for this! https://www.meetup.com/transhumanism-78/events/240040904/ #transhumanism


The Transhumanist Party presidential candidate and a Libertarian candidate for California governor, Zoltan Istvan, will join Agah Bahari in a 45-minute conversation for the live recording of an episode of “NEOHUMAN with Agah Bahari” podcast, following by 30-mins of Q&A (predetermined based on prior submissions).

With his wildly popular US Presidential run as a science candidate, bestselling book The Transhumanist Wager, and powerful speeches at institutions like the World Bank, Zoltan Istvan has literally transformed transhumanism into a thriving worldwide phenomenon. He is often cited as the global leader of the radical science movement. A humanitarian activist and former journalist for National Geographic, Zoltan has been compared in major media to a young Al Gore and described as a modern-day Ayn Rand.

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Jun 3, 2017

The Henry George Program Ep. 2

Posted by in categories: economics, geopolitics, transhumanism

I finally found a copy of my radio interview at Stanford University last month discussing how I’d pay for a #basicincome by leasing out federal land (called a “Federal Land Dividend”). It’s an hour long interview with a guests asking questions: We discuss transhumanism too.


In this April 18, 2017 episode, we speak with Zoltan Istvan, who ran for President in the Transhumanist party, and is now running for California Governor as a Libertarian. He proposes a Universal Basic Income, funded by the leasing of federal lands. How does this compare to the Georgist ideal of a citizen’s dividend funded by land rents?

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Jun 2, 2017

Reaction: Trump Decision to Withdraw from Paris Accord

Posted by in categories: business, climatology, Elon Musk, environmental, geopolitics, government, policy

One of the missions of Lifeboat Foundation has always been to contemplate the protection of our fragile Spaceship-Earth and to contemplate a day when we may need to migrate from this tiny stage. Yesterday, that day may have been moved a lot closer. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday, I had a fantasy. One that I passionately hoped would become reality. Minutes before Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, I began to daydream…

  • I dreamt that Trump might listen to his top science advisors and his daughter
  • I dreamt that he might not gamble our existence on his minority opinion that humans cannot help rescue the environment.
  • I dreamt that he would recognize that clean energy jobs trump legacy coal mining
  • I dreamt that he would avoid export tariffs for failing to respect international norms
  • I dreamt that he would stop pandering to Yahoos and stand for something worthy and undeniable

No such luck! The USA has lost its Mojo—at least while it is led by a man with no grasp of science, history, morals or a global perspective. As Trump begun to speak, I was sucked into a cruel nightmare. But this nightmare is reality. It’s the reality of a buffoon representing you and me in our nation’s highest office.

Question: Time for a thought experiment. Can you guess the answer?…

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