Toggle light / dark theme

We Must Cut the Military and Transition to a Science-Industrial Complex

My new article for Vice Motherboard. It’s about one of the biggest ideas I believe in–the necessity to spend more money directly on science goals instead of bomb making and defense:


It just so happens that there is another way—a method that would satisfy liberals and conservatives alike. Instead of always spending more on our military, we could transition our nation and its economy into a scientific-industrial complex.

There’s compelling reason to do this beyond what meets the eye. Transhumanist technology is starting to radically change human life. Many experts expect to be able to stop aging and conquer death for human beings in the next 25 years. Others, like myself, see humans merging with machines and replacing our every organ with bionic ones.

Such a new transhuman society will require many trillions of dollars to satisfy humans ever-growing desire for physical perfection (machine or biological) in the transhumanist age. We could keep our economy humming along for decades because of it.

Whatever happens, something is going to have to give in the future regarding military profiteering. Part of this is because in the past, the military-industrial complex operated off always keeping a few million US military members ready on a moment’s notice to travel around the world and fight. But there’s almost no scenario where we would need that kind of human-power (and infrastructure to support it) anymore.

Read more

How Universal Basic Income will Transform Human Experience

On Ideapod: https://www.ideapod.com/idea/How-Universal-Basic-Income-will…24128040f8
On Change.is: http://change.is/video/how-universal-basic-income-will-trans…experience

Source: Jason Silva — IBM Insight 2015 — theCUBE — #ibminsight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VgfcfQv_TE

Remixed by: How to Create Resilience (pseudonymous wonder junkie who works for the basic income revolution)

Read more

Ben Goertzel: Transitioning to a Post-Employment, Post-Scarcity, Post-Money Economy

Full Title:
Transitioning to a Post-Employment, Post-Scarcity, Post-Money Economy in Which Collective Human and Machine Meaning Making Reigns.

Speaker:
Ben Goertzel, AGI Society, OpenCog Foundation.

December 4, 2015, Brussels.

Workshop on Offer Networks, http://onet.globalbraininstitute.org
The Global Brain Institute.
Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Read more

China wants to begin manned deep space missions

China wants to be the leading force in manned space exploration, and is exploring sending people to the far side of the moon, Mars, asteroids, and further into deep space.

Becoming the second largest economy in the world and an emerging superpower of its own, China wishes to add deep space exploration into its achievement portfolio. Besides the ongoing moon exploration, its scientists are considering going deeper into the solar system, including Mars, asteroids, and even manned deep-space mission. Liu Jizhong, director of the lunar exploration program and space engineering center, pointed out that China has to be more pioneering, tackling problems such as high speed deep space exploration, energy and power generation, space robot development, and more. He also said that China must cooperate with others as space exploration is an undertaking shared by the entire human species.

China currently intends to explore the far side of the moon, something that has never been done before. It would require a relay satellite for communication and navigation on Lagrange point, where the satellite could orbit within the combined gravitational pull of the Earth-moon system, as said by Zhang Lihua of China Spacesat Co. While China believes that robots are critical to the mission, it also believes that these trips must be manned in order to effectively leverage human decision-making. China also says they are designing footed robots to explore asteroids and better understand their material composition.

Read more