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A black hole, at least in our current understanding, is characterized by having “no hair,” that is, it is so simple that it can be completely described by just three parameters, its mass, its spin and its electric charge. Even though it may have formed out of a complex mix of matter and energy, all other details are lost when the black hole forms. Its powerful gravitational field creates a surrounding surface, a “horizon,” and anything that crosses that horizon (even light) cannot escape. Hence the singularity appears black, and any details about the infalling material are also lost and digested into the three knowable parameters.

Astronomers are able to measure the masses of black holes in a relatively straightforward way: watching how matter moves in their vicinity (including other black holes), affected by the gravitational field. The charges of black holes are thought to be insignificant since positive and negative infalling charges are typically comparable in number. The spins of are more difficult to determine, and both rely on interpreting the X-ray emission from the hot inner edge of the accretion disk around the black hole. One method models the shape of the X-ray continuum, and it relies on good estimates of the mass, distance, and viewing angle. The other models the X-ray spectrum, including observed atomic emission lines that are often seen in reflection from the hot gas. It does not depend on knowing as many other parameters. The two methods have in general yielded comparable results.

CfA astronomer James Steiner and his colleagues reanalyzed seven sets of spectra obtained by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer of an outburst from a stellar-mass black hole in our galaxy called 4U1543-47. Previous attempts to estimate the spin of the object using the continuum method resulted in disagreements between papers that were considerably larger than the formal uncertainties (the papers assumed a mass of 9.4 solar-masses and a distance of 24.7 thousand light-years). Using careful refitting of the spectra and updated modeling algorithms, the scientists report a spin intermediate in size to the previous ones, moderate in magnitude, and established at a 90% confidence level. Since there have been only a few dozen well confirmed black hole spins measured to date, the new result is an important addition.

Autonomous weapons present some unique challenges to regulation. They can’t be observed and quantified in quite the same way as, say, a 1.5-megaton nuclear warhead. Just what constitutes autonomy, and how much of it should be allowed? How do you distinguish an adversary’s remotely piloted drone from one equipped with Terminator software? Unless security analysts can find satisfactory answers to these questions and China, Russia, and the US can decide on mutually agreeable limits, the march of automation will continue. And whichever way the major powers lead, the rest of the world will inevitably follow.


Military scholars warn of a “battlefield singularity,” a point at which humans can no longer keep up with the pace of conflict.

Circa 2019 o,.0.


How did the universe evolve from a point of singularity, known as the Big Bang, into a massive structure whose boundaries seem limitless? New clues and insight into the evolution of the universe have recently been provided by an international team of physicists, who performed the most detailed large-scale simulation of the universe to date.

The researchers made their own universe in a box — a cube of space spanning more than 230 million light-years across. Previous cosmological simulations were either very detailed but spanned a small volume or less detailed across large volumes. The new simulation, known as TNG50, managed to combine the best of two worlds, producing a large-scale replica of the cosmos while, at the same time, allowing for unprecedented computational resolution.

The level of detail is incredible, matching what was once only possible to do in simulations of individual galaxies. TNG50, in fact, tracks 20 billion particles representing dark matter, stars, cosmic gas, magnetic fields, and supermassive black holes.

Circa 2010 what someday we could use crispr to develop a biology singularity to find the epigenetics to evolve at lightning speed.


If you’re a sci-fi reader, you are probably familiar with the idea of the “technological singularity”. For the uninitiated, the Singularity is the idea that computational power is increasing so rapidly that soon there will be genuine artificial intelligence that will far surpass humans. Essentially, once you have smarter-than-human computers, they will drive their own advancement and we will no longer be able to comprehend the technology.

We can debate whether the singularity will or will not happen, and what the consequences might be, for a long time, but that’s not the point of this post. This post was inspired by the final chapter in Denialism by Michael Specter. In that chapter, Specter talks about the rapid advancement in biotechnology. Specifically, he points to the rapid increase in computational power and the resulting rapid increase in the speed of genome processing.

You might like this interview I did with futurist writer Nikola Danaylov, who runs the Singularity Weblog and wrote ‘Conversations with the Future: 21 Visions for the 21st century’, on how advances in AI could utterly transform human society and the health of the global transhumanist movement.

I’m trying to grow my futurism YouTube channel (transhumanism, AI, space colonisation etr) so if this is of interest to you I’d be very grateful for any subscribers.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnVLqMgLDwO-aSk5YcYo1dA


I interview Nikola Danaylov (@singularityblog), founder of the Singularity Weblog and author of Conversations with the Future: 21 Visions for the 21st Century. We discuss advances in AI, the singularity, whether western political leaders appreciate how fast technology is evolving and the global transhumanist movement.

You can buy Danaylov’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N4QF7GU/ref=as_li_qf_sp…5f50cf0e90

https://facebook.com/LongevityFB https://instagram.com/longevityyy/ https://twitter.com/Longevityyyyy https://linkedin.com/company/longevityy/

- Please also subscribe and hit the notification bell and click “all” on these YouTube channels:

https://youtube.com/channel/UCAvRKtQNLKkAX0pOKUTOuzw
https://youtube.com/user/BrentAltonNally
https://youtube.com/user/EternalLifeFan
https://youtube.com/user/MaxSam16
https://youtube.com/user/LifespanIO/videos

SHOW NOTES WITH TIME STAMPS:

:00 CHANNEL TRAILER
:22 Gene The Chromosome intro
:14 José interview begins. Follow José Cordeiro on social media: https://facebook.com/josecordeiro2045 https://linkedin.com/in/josecordeiro/ https://twitter.com/cordeiro https://instagram.com/josecordeiro2019/ https://youtube.com/channel/UCnf2guj8tjfigS3w2UV51Qg
:55 https://raadfest.com/ Watch 2019 RAADFest Roundup https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGjySL94COVSO3hcnpZq-jCcgnUQIaALQ
:14 BUY LA MUERTE DE LA MUERTE (THE DEATH OF DEATH)
:20 Transhumanist’s 3 core beliefs
:22 Law of Accelerating Returns
:45 José believes we will cure human aging in the next 2–3 decades
:31 quantum computers
:33 Ray Kurzweil
:02 Longevity Escape Velocity
:56 The Singularity is Nearer
:46 the world is improving overall thanks to science and technology
:35 overpopulation fallacy
:14 Idiocracy
:53 Zero to One
:10 human aging and death is the biggest problem for humanity
:45 José plans to be biologically younger than 30 by 2040–2045
:02 How to convince religious people to believe in science and biorejuvenation
:44 everything is “impossible” until it becomes possible
:44 Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
:20 José is not afraid of Artificial Intelligence. José is afraid of human stupidity.
:00:20 Brent Nally & Vladimir Trufanov are co-founders of https://levscience.com Watch to learn more https://youtube.com/watch?v=iSGJs4_Qkd8&t=1266s
:01:15 Watch Brent’s interviews with Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov https://youtube.com/watch?v=w5csqq8RAqY & https://youtube.com/watch?v=G5IiEuXHvk8
:02:40 José shares what he believes causes human aging and the best treatments for aging
:09:04 Watch Brent’s interviews with Dr. Aubrey de Grey https://youtube.com/watch?v=TquJyz7tGfk&t=226s & https://youtube.com/watch?v=RWRa6kVKv8o
:11:30 Dr. David Sinclair
:12:01 non-aging related risks for human death
:13:08 Watch Transhumania cryonics video https://youtube.com/watch?v=8arbOJpDTMw
:22:30 We wish everyone incredible health and a long life!
:23:26 first ~3 minutes of Idiocracy https://youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E
:25:55 Gennady Stolyarov II
:30:10 THE LIFE OF LIFE
:32:05 there are many biologically immortal species
:33:02 telomerase gene therapy
:37:38 Viva la Revolución!

Gerd Leonhard discussion regarding Humanism and Transhumanism.


This is an excerpt from my latest digital conference, April 23, 2020, “Humanist vs Transhumanist” featuring Calum Chace and me.

My Futures Agency colleague and fellow futurist Calum Chace disagree with me on many of my core messages on topics such as the singularity, (trans)-humanism, artificial intelligence and what I call ‘man+machine futures’.

I n his article on “Posthuman Subjectivity and Singularity in the Nature-Culture Continuum” (2020) Hyun-Shik Jun examines Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman subjectivity through the post-structuralist and philosophical perspectives of Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. Whereas the technocratic paradigm seems to have eradicated the subject, Braidotti attempts to reinscribe the subject in current posthuman cultural, political and social landscapes. Jun is sympathetic to Braidotti’s work and aims to illuminate posthuman subjectivity as a dialectical and transversal phenomenon.

Braidotti “holds the nature-culture continuum as the starting point for her theory, seeking to distance herself from the social constructivist approach which, she claims, is constrained by a dualistic understanding of the world and hence an opposition between nature and culture” (Jun 2020, 1). Jun thinks that Braidotti’s posthuman nature-culture continuum is in the right direction but lacks a sufficient dialectic in understanding subjectivity more coherently. Hence he looks to the Hegelian trajectory, one which does not see a dialectical reconciliation of opposites but a dialectical paradox, a sublation of contradictions between similarity and difference, yielding to an open-ended process of being without origin or closure.

Relying on Derrida’s notion of différance and Agamben’s signator, Jun states that “the posthuman subject should be understood as the deferred subject” ; that is, the subject who never arrives at final subjectivity because engagement between nature and culture is a constant, indefinite and dialectical movement. Hence the posthuman subject is “neither the centered self-conscious being nor the decentered unconscious automaton of modernity. The posthuman subject emerges with a sort of ontological fold or gap wherein nature and culture meet”.