Improve your performance with energy drinks

I've started to do something I once swore I'd never do: I'm hittin' the energy drinks.

I realize it's not the healthiest habit in the world, but this stuff works. And it's solved my afternoon drowsiness problem -- a time of day when I desperately need to be sharp and alert.

You've likely seen these products on store shelves and advertised as sports or health drinks. Popular brands include Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster and Amp energy drinks. They typically come in 250ml and 500ml varieties, but you can also get them as shots, such as the 5 Hour Energy Drink.

I'm actually quite amazed at how well these drinks work. As someone who routinely looks for an enhancement edge, I have to admit that energy drinks deliver. The beneficial effects that these beverages induce aren't just placebo; a growing body of clinical evidence supports the claim that energy drinks have a positive impact on both physiological and psychological performance.

So, if you're looking to improve your alertness and mental acuity when you need it, you may want to consider energy drinks. Just make sure you don't over do it.

Positive and negative effects of energy drinks

Energy drinks, which are typically laden with caffeine, taurine, ginseng and guarana, can improve mental and cognitive performance as well as increase subjective alertness. I can certainly vouch for these effects; after one drink I almost immediately feel the drowsiness dissipate. My mood is given a bit of a lift and I can re-focus on the task at hand.

Clearly, the benefits of these drinks can be applied across many different areas. For those who spend a lot of time behind the wheel, for example, these beverages can improve driving performance in the form of reduced lane drifting and increased reaction times.

Physically, they can increase upper body muscle endurance, which, in addition to an apparent 'energy boost' (which I think is actually just subjective clarity and mild euphoria) has contributed to its prevalent use in gym culture.

The effects of taurine in particular is fascinating. It's an organic acid that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and is responsible for a wide array of physiological phenomena including inhibitory neurotransmission, membrane stabilization and the prevention of oxidative stress induced by exercise. Taurine also acts as an antioxidant and protects against toxicity of various substances (such as lead and cadmium).

On the negative side, excess consumption can induce mild to moderate euphoria (which may or may not be a bad thing) that is primarily caused by the stimulant properties of caffeine and sugar. Energy drinks can also cause agitation, anxiety, irritability and insomnia. Energy drinks have been linked with reports of nausea, abnormal heart rhythms and emergency room visits.

There have even been deaths attributed to energy drinks, but these cases have typically involved severe over-use and are complicated by other factors.

Growing popularity of energy drinks

I have been very strict about my usage. I limit myself to one 250ml sugar free drink per day. It gets me through the afternoon and it has a positive impact on my productivity.

And I'm not alone. It has become very common for students to consume energy drinks to increase their concentration as they study throughout the night, leading some to suggest that energy drinks are the coffee of a new generation.

Usage is through the roof. According to a 2008 report by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1.5 billion cans of Red Bull were sold in the United States in 2004. Consumption in Canada is comparable and it is a growing trend for 18-to 24-year-olds.

And this market segment is broadening as younger children are beginning to consume these drinks before engaging in physical activity (it doesn't help that the manufacturers are targeting young people, including the Cocaine Energy Drink). Unfortunately, this isn't such a good idea; energy drinks don't hydrate the body efficiently because they have too much sugar, while the caffeine doesn't necessarily improve physical performance. In fact, high quantities can increase the risks of fatigue and dehydration.

Moderation and common sense

My advice is to minimize usage and only use it for specific applications. And don't get into the habit of mixing it with alcohol (or drugs) as the combined effects will work over-time to dehydrate your body. Worse, you'll likely end up drinking more because you feel so good and alert.

Like any good thing in life, moderation is the key. Avoid energy drinks altogether if you can. For me, it's solved a problem and I haven't noticed any detrimental side effects. I'll continue to consume these drinks until I feel they're no longer serving a purpose or they start to impact negatively on my health.

And in the meantime I'll enjoy these drinks and the benefits that they bring.

Andy Clark: Supersizing the Mind

There's a new book by Andy Clark worth checking out: Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension. This will be of interest to readers of this blog in that it's a discussion of the so-called "extended mind."

Description:

When historian Charles Weiner found pages of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's notes, he saw it as a "record" of Feynman's work. Feynman himself, however, insisted that the notes were not a record but the work itself. In Supersizing the Mind , Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain-bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.

Be sure to read Jerry Fodor's review from the London Review of Books and David Chalmer's comments.

Singularity University launched to considerable debate

Earlier last week, renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil and Xprize founder Peter Diamandis officially announced the launching of The Singularity University. As KurzweilAI noted, "With the support of NASA, Google and a broad range of technology thought leaders and entrepreneurs, a new university will launch in Silicon Valley this summer with the goal of preparing the next generation of leaders to address 'humanity's grand challenges.'"

As part of the launch, Kurzweil released this promo video:


SU will feature a number of prominent futurists and intellectuals, including the IEET's very own Ben Goertzel (who is also on the Board for Humanity+) and Aubrey de Grey.

The launch of SU has kindled considerable debate about their offering, mission and purpose. I've compiled some highlights:

Jamais Cascio of the IEET and Open the Future: "Flunking Out":

For an institution that claims to be "preparing humanity for accelerating technological change," it sure seems to be spending a lot more time talking about nifty gadgets than about the connection between technology and society.

To put it another way: this is all about the symptoms of "accelerating technological change," and almost nothing about the consequences.

For a trade show or a business workshop, that's fine. For something calling itself a university, it's amazingly short-sighted. Given the nature of the subject matter, that's especially ironic/tragic.

Bob Mottram of The Streeb-Greebling Diaries: "The Singularity University: where's the beef?":

So, if there is to be a Singularity University you would expect them to be doing...research, boldly going where other universities can't or won't, right?

Wrong!

The description of what the Singularity University will be doing, as described in their FAQ, looks very disappointing and I tried in vain to locate information on any particular research which they'll be doing.

Brian Wang of Next Big Future: "Debating Singularity Education Programs":

This site has noted that the term "University" has some getting their expectations messed up. By examining the program and its stated model, International Space University, we can see that is a crash program and startup bootcamp with team projects.

Alvin Brigis: Memebox/Future Bogger: "Asocial Singularitarianism - Breeding an Incomplete View of Convergent Accelerating Change":

By taking the emphasis off of social acceleration, dynamics and punctuated change, the HTAE [Hard-Tech Attribution Error] increases the tendency for inaccurate and/or incomplete forecasting. Sure, it's still very important to spread the word about accelerating technological change, but I think we've now been provided with enough data (massively valuable social networks, rise of the prosumer, the impact of abstractions on intelligence, Reed's Law, etc) to recognize the importance of social intelligence and dynamics in the equation. By not giving these threads their due, we fail to develop the most comprehensive view of what is going on (which hurts our collective intelligence, behavior and economics).

If the goal of SU is to focus on "the exponential growth of information technology and how it can solve the major problems of the world", as Kurzweil summarizes in the promotional video...then the curriculum as currently presented will 1) fail to bring in minds from explosive social fields, 2) attract non-critical tech-Singularity devotees, and ultimately 3) fail to provide a comprehensive picture of acceleration.

What do you think?
________________

As an interesting aside, David Orban (who is involved with SU) writes:

It hasn’t been reported by the numerous articles covering the announcement of the Singularity University, but Ray confirmed to me, and it is rather important, that all the lectures, and the course materials that are going to be developed and delivered at its sessions are going to be made available online under a liberal license. This is going to be equivalent to or more liberal than the license applied to the Open Courseware Consortium’s content, of which famously MIT’s courses are also a part. This means that all the materials of the Singularity University are going to be published under Creative Commons Attribution license!

What is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness?

One of my readers recently made the comment on my recent protopanpsychism re-post: "...it is not clear what the evolutionary advantage is of subjective states and therefore how they evolved."

To answer the question I will borrow a quote from neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman:

The evolutionary advantage is quite clear. Consciousness allows you the capacity to plan. Let's take a lioness ready to attack an antelope. She crouches down. She sees the prey. She's forming an image of the size of the prey and its speed, and of course, she's planning a jump. Now suppose I have two animals: one like our lioness, has that thing we call consciousness; the other only gets the signals. It's just about dusk, and all of a sudden the wind shifts and there's a whooshing sound of the sort a tiger might make when moving through the green grass, and the conscious animal runs like hell but the other one doesn't. Well, guess why? Because the animal that's conscious has integrated the image of a tiger. The ability to consider alternative images in an explicit way is definitely evolutionarily advantageous.

From Homo sapiens to Homo evolutis

At TED 2009, Juan Enriquez talked about the new human species emerging before our eyes. Thanks to an array of biological advances and our growing aptitude in robotics, we now find ourselves in the early days of the deliberate creation of what he called a new species.

Awesome that Enriquez would talk about this topic at TED, but I think the 'Homo evolutis' meme is rather regrettable and vague. Sounds like a neologism for the sake of a propagating a neologism. I'm a little more comfortable talking about transhumanism, self-guided evolution, post-Darwinianism, post-biology and posthumans.

Comments from my Twittersphere:

• "Discrimination between old school passive & tech-enabled active speciation. Rich. But is it truly speciation?"
• "Enriquez doesn't get it. Our bodies are irrelevant (in evo terms), and already have been for centuries. About knowledge now."

More.

Transhumanists given opportunity to answer critics on The Global Spiral

In June of 2008, The Gobal Spiral published a special issue about transhumanism. This edition was guest edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, and included articles by Tirosh-Samuelson, Don Ihde, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Katherine Hayles, Andrew Pickering, and Ted Peters.

The project was part of a larger investigation of the merits and implications of transhumanism. It was funded by the Metanexus Institute and administered by Arizona State University (ASU). In addition, significant amounts of Templeton Foundation money supported the development of two lecture series that were highly critical of transhumanism, followed by an ASU two-day workshop in April 2008. The Global Spiral special issue was largely based on this workshop.

Regrettably, no self-described transhumanists or thinkers otherwise associated with the futurist movement were flown to Arizona at any stage, or otherwise invited to take part. Subsequently, the events were very much a matter of intellectuals largely hostile to the transhumanist movement coming together to examine it from the outside.

This oversight (if that's what it can be called) has recently been rectified (to a certain degree). A number of leading transhumanist thinkers were invited to contribute to a special Global Spiral issue which the transhumanists have been allowed to answer their critics.

The special edition looks like this:

• Nick Bostrom: “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity”
• Max More: “True Transhumanism”
• Aubrey de Grey: Aubrey de Grey’s Declaration
• Natasha Vita-More: Bringing Arts/Sciences and Design Into the Discussion of Transhumanism
• Russell Blackford: Trite Truths About Technology: A Reply to Ted Peters
  Sky Marsen: Conceptualizing Future Identities
• Michael LaTorra Transhumanism: Threat or Menace? A Response to Andrew Pickering
• Mark Walker: Ship of Fools: Why Transhumanism is the Best Bet to Prevent the Extinction of Civilization
• Amara Graps: Reproductive Choices: The Promising Landscape of Assisted Reproductive Technology
• Martine Rothblatt: From Mind Loading to Mind Cloning – Gene to Meme to Beme: A Perspective on the Nature of Humanity

Congratulations to all the contributors!

New theory may explain why radio SETI has failed

It's been nearly 50 years since scientists first started scanning the heavens for radio signals that would indicate the presence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. And in all those 50 years we haven't heard so much as a peep. The apparent failure of radio SETI thus far has provided much of the fuel that now powers the Fermi Paradox, the observation that we haven't encountered signs of ETI's when we probably should have by now.

But a new theory may explain part of the problem and why radio SETI has so far proved fruitless. Reginald Smith from the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester argues that there is a limit to how far a radio signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. If true, this could have interesting ramifications for radio SETI and our expectations for the project.

In his article, "Broadcasting but not receiving: density dependence considerations for SETI signals,"Smith applies his idea to the Drake Equation and derives a minimum density of civilizations below which contact is improbable within a given volume of space. The calculation depends on factors such as the lifetime of a civilization and the distance that it might be possible to communicate via radio signals. His thesis has produced some interesting scenarios.

"Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years, ten times longer than Earth has been broadcasting, and has a signal horizon of 1,000 light-years, you need a minimum of over 300 communicating civilization in the galactic neighborhood to reach a minimum density," writes Smith.

Consequently, if there are less than 300 advanced civilizations in our galaxy, the chances are that they’ll never notice each other. And a figure of N being less than 300 is not out of the question given recent insights into cosmology, astrobiology and the rise of the Rare Earth Hypothesis.

Smith's theory has led some to suggest that the Fermi Paradox has been solved. But their thinking here is flawed.

Our (apparent) inability to detect radio signals does not wipe away other means for extraterrestrial communication (quantum communication schemes, Bracewell probes) or detection (Dysonian SETI, interstellar calling cards, etc.), nor does it answer the issue as to why the Galaxy hasn't been colonized by now (i.e. self-replicating Von Neuman colonization probes).

So, while Smith's theory may explain the failure of radio SETI, it doesn't erase the problem of the Great Silence.

Protopanpsychism and the consciousness conundrum, or why we shouldn't assume uploads - A SentDev Classic

Despite grandiose and cocksure proclamations to the contrary, consciousness is still a hard problem in science. Aside from (currently) untestable theories and philosophical musings, how matter organizes itself such that it is capable of experiencing subjectivity and qualia is an utter mystery.

Compounding the problem is the widespread tendency to interchangbily use the terms intelligence and consciousness. While related, these terms describe two very different phenomena. My calculator and computer are examples of intelligence. My ability to use language and deductive reasoning to help me write this article are other examples of intelligence. But my ability to subjectively experience the phenomenon known as 'sweetness,' or to sense the colour red, or the feeling I get as time passes, are endowments brought about by my conscious awareness.

There are arguably two major philosophical approaches to the issue of consciousness -- they are 'philosophical' because we still don't possess the requisite scientific vernacular to address its true underpinnings. These proto-scientific approaches are known as dualism and emergence.

The first and most traditional argument is the idea of vitalism or dualism. This perspective suggests that the essence of consciousness lies outside the brain, perhaps as some ethereal soul or spirit. Consequently, its proponents suggest that consciousness lies outside knowable science.

Cartesian dualism fits within this category of thinking – the notion that the only thing that can truly be known is the presence of personal subjectivity and that everything external to that may be a fabrication or hallucination (see Descarte’s Meditations on First Philosophy and his ‘Evil Daemon’ argument). While existentially interesting (or is that disturbing?), Descartes’s argument violates Popperian notions of testability and smacks of Gnosticism and radical skepticism (these are fascinating topics in their own right that lie outside the scope of this discussion, and can include such conundrums as the brain-in-the-vat and simulation problems).

The other broad approach to the issue of consciousness is emergence theory, the idea that self-awareness and qualia can arise from complex computational dynamics in the brain. The critical assumption here is that mind’s architecture is largely computational, but that consciousness emerges through the concert of myriad neuronal interactions. In this sense, consciousness is an epiphenomenon or metaphenomenon of the brain's machinations.

This approach to cognition is clearly essential, but it is not sufficient. Indeed, the mind almost certainly utilizes its computational or functionalist aspects, most of which go completely unnoticed by the conscious agent at the top of the processing hierarchy. Today’s computers, which have inspired comparisons to the brain, crunch numbers but are in no way self-reflexive about their work; consequently, they can partly account for human intelligence, but make relatively poor models as approximations or metaphors for consciousness engines.

At the same time, it almost seems like a cop-out to suggest that increased complexity in such systems will result in consciousness, which is, qualitatively speaking, a horse of a different colour.

Now, I wouldn’t want to dismiss emergence theory outright. There’s something very satisfying about this idea, particularly considering how this might have come about through natural selection. It may very well turn out that that emergence does in fact account for consciousness.

That said about dualism and emergence, there is a third, albeit controversial, perspective that should be considered: panprotopsychism. This is the notion that essential features or precursors of consciousness are fundamental components of reality which are accessed by brain processes. In philosophy, panpsychism is the view that all parts of matter involve mind. Neuroscientist Stuart Hameroff, a proponent of this view, argues that consciousness is related to a fundamental, irreducible component of physical reality, akin to phenomenon like mass, spin or charge. According to this view, the basis of consciousness can be found in an additional fundamental force of nature not unlike gravity or electromagnetism. This would be something like an elementary (self)-sentience or awareness. As Hameroff notes, "these components just are."

Panpsychism has a long a varied history. Back during the time of the Greeks, philosophers like Democritus contended that a basic and fundamental form of consciousness was a quality of all matter – what they called 'atomism.' Later, Baruch Spinoza would argue along similar lines -- that atoms and their subatomic components have subjective, mental attributes.

Relatedly, Buddhist atomists like Dharmakirti argued that the only thing that exists are Buddhist atoms (described as being point-sized, durationless, and made of energy) and states of consciousness. Similarly, Gottfried Leibniz and A. N. Whitehead believed that systems ordinarily considered to be physical were constructed in some sense from more basic mental entities – what are now referred to in process philosophy as 'Whitehead occasions.'

Bertrand Russell put forth the idea of "neutral monism," which described a common underlying entity, neither physical nor mental, that gave rise to both. Bishop Berkeley suggested that consciousness creates reality and that consciousness is "all there is." Berkeley's famous dictum was "Esse est percipi" ("To be is to be perceived").

Theoretical physicist John A. Wheeler has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe, and David Chalmers has proposed a double-aspect theory in which information has both physical and experiential aspects.

While these ideas vary, they do explore the interplay between what is regarded as reality and consciousness. Whitehead in particular saw the universe not as being comprised of 'things' but of 'events.' In this sense reality is a kind of process where consciousness emerges from temporal chains of occasions.

If this sounds somewhat analogous to what quantum mechanics tells us, you’re not far off the mark. A number of thinkers have picked up on Whitehead’s idea as it relates to quantum physics, including Abner Shimony and Roger Penrose. This has lead to the development of what is known as quantum consciousness theory, which postulates the idea that consciousness is indelibly tied to quantum processes – that the brain is essentially a quantum computer utilized by an observer to “decohere” quantum superposition. Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have constructed a theory in which human consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubules.

Penrose’s ideas have been met with much scorn, not least of which for his assertion that there are non-computational or non-algorithmic aspects to consciousness. This suggestion has lead thinkers like Hameroff and Penrose to conclude that mature AI as it is typically presumed (i.e. that it is also endowed with artificial consciousness) is a pipe-dream.

If they’re right, however, this poses a significant problem for those who believe that uploading (or mind transfer) awaits humanity in the future -- the opinion that consciousness is not substrate dependant, and that a fully sapient agent can exist as an uploaded being in a supercomputer. Many transhumanist expectations, from radical life extension to Jupiter Brains, are dependant on this assumption.

But what if consciousness is in fact substrate specific and can only be experienced in the analog arena? What if there is no digital or algorithmic equivalent to consciousness like Penrose suggests? Having consciousness arise in a classical Von Neumann architecture may be as impossible as splitting the atom in a virtual environment by using ones and zeros.

As possible consolation, however, the fact of the matter is that under the Penrose/Hameroff premise, the brain is a quantum computer – which if quantum theorists like David Deutsch have their way, will eventually come to fruition. If a quantum computer comprised of biological matter could arise through autonomous evolutionary processes, then I would have to think that intelligences like our own will eventually come to figure it out. If this is the case, then it may be possible to engineer subjectivity outside of our grey matter. Quantum computers could also be useful for running simulations of quantum mechanics, an idea that goes back to Richard Feynman; he observed that there is no known algorithm for simulating quantum systems on a classical computer and suggested to study the use of a quantum computer for this purpose. One has to wonder if the same logic applies to the potential for quantum computers to run consciousness simulations.

Given the extreme computational power and speed of quantum computers, I can’t even become to fathom what a conscious agent would do within such an architecture.

All bets are off once a conscious superintelligence starts to engage in selective decoherence.

References:

Stuart Hameroff: "Consciousness, Whitehead and quantum computation in the brain: Panprotopsychism meets the physics of fundamental spacetime geometry"
John Holbo: "Fragments of Parallax"
Wikipedia

This article originally appeared on Sentient Developments on October 25, 2006.

Para-athletes 'closing the gap' with sports technologies

The latest issue of Sports Technology (subscription required) spotlights recent developments that seek to close the gap between able-bodied athletes and para-athletes, with two published articles highlighting running prostheses.

The first article, entitled "Biomechanics of double transtibial amputee sprinting using dedicated sprinting prostheses" compares the sprinting mechanics data of able-bodied sprinters with that of a double transtibial amputee by examining the overall kinetics and the kinetics at the joints – while sprinting at maximum speed.

In this article, the authors conclude that the carbon blade used by the amputee sprinter has a significant advantage in both energy storage and return in fast sprinting, in comparison to the healthy human ankle joint. The blade allows the disabled sprinter to deliver the same level of performance as an able-bodied athlete – but at a lower metabolic cost.

If true, this discovery will have implications for those runners like Oscar Pistorius who hope to compete against able-bodied athletes.

The second article, "Lower Extremity Leg Amputation: an advantage in running?" describes the clinical view of fitting an amputee with a prosthetic leg.

The paper provides a general overview on prosthesis technology. It highlights the challenges and disadvantages of a prosthetic fitting – including the difficulties in selection, fitting and the alignment adaptation of the socket; as well as other issues such as the compensatory strategies of the amputee.

Savulescu, Bostrom and de Grey: Why we need a war on aging

Philosophers Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom, along with gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, have declared a war on aging. At the recent 2009 World Economic Forum, these thinkers presented 3 primary arguments to make their case:

1. There is no normal human life span, or if there is, it was very short.

Life-expectancy for the ancient Romans was about 23 years; today the average life-expectancy in the world is close to 64 years. For the past 150 years, best-performance life-expectancy has increased at a very steady rate of 3 months per year.

2. Aging is the biggest cause of death and misery in humanity.

Approximately 100,000 people die each day from age-related causes; about 150,000 people die each day in total. Cardiovascular disease (strongly age-related) is emerging as the biggest cause of death in the developing world.

3. Progress is possible

The goal should be to extend the healthy and productive lifespan, not to just keep people alive longer on respirators or in nursing homes. This is embodied in the concept not of life span but “health span.” The easiest way to do this is to prolong healthy life and not attempt to compress morbidity.

The authors state that the more we understand the biochemical processes involved in senescence the more we find that they look like disease processes:

The accumulation of lysosomal aggregates and amyloid plaques, extracellular protein-protein cross-linking, nuclear and mitochondrial mutations, cell atrophy, cell senescence, and cell loss without replacement: these processes may all be implicated in both pathology and senescence. At the level of genetics and biochemistry, there simply does not seem to be any meaningful distinction between "processes predisposing to or constituting disease" and "normal aging".

Moreover, they argue that ethical objections to radical life extension can be addressed. "Of course extending healthy lifespan might create various problems and challenges," says Savulescu, "But for any possible problem that might arise, one question that we must not fail to ask ourselves is: 'Is this problem so bad that it is worth sacrificing up to 100,000 lives per day to avoid having to solve it?" If the answer is obviously no, then we should look for solutions.'"

The authors address two objections in particular:

1. Obligations to Future Generations

There is an argument out there which suggests we have an obligation to die and turn the world over to the next generation. How long each generation should live raises deep questions about intergenerational relations, quality of life and burden of care. However, there's no reason to believe that healthy and vibrant aged people can still be economically productive, self supporting and providers of knowledge, experience and care for younger generations. The answers are not clear, especially when life extension is coupled with life enhancement.

"At any rate," says Savulescu, "since few of us believe there is a positive moral obligation to have children, that is to create future people, the obligation to create new generations must be weak."

2. Loss of Meaning

There is little empirical evidence to support the suggestion that longer good lives lose meaning. Research shows that life satisfaction remains relatively stable into old age. One survey of 60,000 adults from 40 nations discovered a slight upward trend in life satisfaction from the 20s to the 80s in age. And with the advent of human enhancement– enhancement of cognitive powers, physical abilities and control of mood – this is likely to be even less of a problem.

The authors conclude by noting, "Our goal should be more, much more, longer and better life. We need a war on aging."

More.

Molecular visualizations of DNA

This is an amazing CGI visualization of how DNA works. It also serves as proof-of-concept for molecular nanotechnology. It shows animations of DNA coiling, replication, transcription and translation. It was created by Drew Berry of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

Be sure to watch the sequence on genetic transcription (around the mid-way point) -- it'll blow your mind.

Via io9.

When 8 is more than enough: It's time for some meaningful regulation

Like a lot of people last week, I was shocked to find out that Nadya Suleman, the mother of the octuplets born last week in Los Angeles, already has 6 children -- all between the ages of 2 and 7.

And that she is a single mother who has already filed for bankruptcy, and that she is a self-described "professional student" who lives off education grants and parental money.

And that she has a psychological condition which compels her to keep wanting to have more babies.

Now, I'm a huge advocate of reproductive freedoms and equal access to repro-tech, but something clearly failed to happen here. In this case, the fertility clinic that performed the procedure failed to exercise both restraint and common sense. They also showed a complete disregard for guidelines -- a strong indication that, while regulation exists for repro-tech procedures, it's not being enforced strongly enough. This needs to change.

Questionable practices

First off, it sounds like Suleman should have failed the screening test. Prospective parents must undergo an evaluation of their psychological and sociological circumstances before qualifying for IVF treatment. According to R. Dale McClure, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, an investigation had started into the case, but that: "Concerns for confidentiality preclude us from making any additional comments at this time."

Would it be unfair of me to interpret this as an acknowledgment that their investigation failed to raise the necessary warning flags? Or that they lacked the resolve to act on them?

Again, I don't mean to bemoan the desire of some parents to have large families, but it appears that there were extenuating circumstances in this case that would should have precluded the mother from having more babies, namely her questionable mental state and motives for wanting to have more children.

This is more than just an issue of procreative liberty -- it's also a quality of life issue for those children being introduced into the world.

Given that Suleman passed the screening test, it would appear that the assessment criteria and investigative processes should be overhauled

Second, the fertility clinic implanted (at least) 8 viable embryos. Most (responsible) clinics will only implant a pair of embryos to reduce risk (both to mother and children). And this is made all the more troubling considering that Suleman has already delivered twins; the fertility clinic knew she had a predisposition for multiple births, yet they didn't adjust their treatment accordingly.

By implanting 8 embryos in a mother predisposed to multiple births, they put her health at risk and they significantly increased the likelihood of her introducing a multiplicity of babies into a family that was already over-extended.

According to Michael Tucker of the Georgia Reproductive Clinic, Atlanta, clinics are policed by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which frowns upon implanting more than two or three embryos at a time. "It is remarkable," says Tucker, "that any practitioner would undertake such a practice."

Well, it would only have been remarkable if the ASRM had the teeth to enforce their policies. If the Suleman case is any indication, their reach and influence is insufficient.

Regulation is only regulation if it is enforced

Looking at this case one gets the feeling that some fertility clinics look upon their patients as nothing more than customers. Given the nature of their work, however, this attitude will simply not do.

A lassez-faire approach to repro-tech won't work to protect the interests of those hoping to use these technologies and to protect those lives that are created as a result. I agree that regulation should be very liberal and accommodating to a diverse set of interests, but complete de-regulation would be both dangerous and facile.

But establishing regulations and guidelines is one thing, enforcing it is quite another.

In some cases, this one included, it would be perfectly reasonable for the state to intervene and deny access, or at the very least compel clinics to follow a strict set of guidelines to prevent this sort of thing from happening. It's time to empower groups like the ASRM -- particularly now as new reproductive technologies are emerging quickly. This way, fertility clinics will be compelled to follow the rules and be held accountable for their actions.

It's clear that this has to happen. Clinics won't regulate themselves.

But why should we have expected them to? They're not the ones who now have to raise these children.

Illuminated clothes

Each one of Lumigram’s Lumitop fiber optic tops is powered by a compact battery pack connected to a bright LED light source.


Via Technabob.

Anissimov on the benefits of mind uploading

Transhumanist and Accelerating Future blogger Michael Anissimov has posted a thought-provoking article about universal mind uploading and the potential benefits it may bring.

Mind uploading, sometimes called whole brain emulation, refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind to a substrate different from a biological brain, such as a detailed computer simulation of an individual human brain. Given the (likely) functionalist nature of the human brain, and given steady advances across a number of scientific disciplines, mind transfer may eventualy become reality; this is not just idle fantasy.

And as Anissimov notes, even if this technology doesn't arrive for a hundred years, it's still something worth speculating about and working towards; the ramifications would be, quite obviously, profound for the human species.

Indeed, as Anissimov notes, there are at least 7 benefits to mind uploading:

1. Massive economic growth
2. Intelligence enhancements
3. Greater subjective well-being
4. Complete environmental recovery
5. Escape from direct governance by the laws of physics
6. Closer connections with other human beings
7. Indefinite lifespans

Mind uploading, which may or may not be possible, would clearly represent an existential gamechanger. As Anissimov concludes,

From a utilitarian perspective, it practically blows everything else away besides global risk mitigation, as the number of new minds leading worthwhile lives that could be created using the technology would be astronomical. The number of digital minds we could create using the matter on Earth alone would likely be over a quadrillion, more than 10,000 people for every star in the 400 billion star Milky Way. We could make a “Galactic Civilization”, right here on Earth in the late 21st or 22nd century. I can scarcely imagine such a thing, but I can imagine that we’ll be guffawing heartily as how unambitious most human goals were in the year 2009.

Read the entire article.

Come on ride Toronto's atheist bus!

This is the ad that is currently appearing on some Toronto buses.

Congratulations go out to the Toronto Transhumanist Association's very own Justin Trottier for helping to make it happen.

According to the group's website:

This campaign was created as a rebuttal to the multitude of religious advertisements on city buses, subways, and roadsides. When taking a ride on the TTC here in Toronto it is not uncommon to sit down and look up only to realize someone has posted an advert of a bible quote. Usually something that tries preaching about a God whom supposedly sent his son to save us, somehow inferring that all of us need to be saved or we’re going to hell. The CABC (Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign) wants to advertise inspiring and thought provoking ads that let transit riders know that it’s OK not to believe in a God and that you do not need to be ’saved’. We want to encourage people to look at the facts and evidence before making decisions throughout life, especially when it comes to religion.

Rethinking IQ: The rise of 'rational intelligence'

Our conceptions of intelligence certainly aren't what they used to be -- and they're continuing to evolve. Prior to the advent of computers it was thought that number crunching and pure logic was the penultimate measure of intelligence. But after the invention of the calculator, which could suddenly do math thousands of times better than we ever could, we were forced to shift our definitions of intelligence to other seemingly more intractable cognitive functions.

These days a number of psychologists have gone even further by de-emphasizing the importance of IQ tests altogether. Instead, they talk about "supracognitive" characteristics -- theories about emotional and social intelligence, which weigh interpersonal skills and the ability to empathize. These cognitive abilities are now typically placed alongside other 'harder' measures of intelligence.

Now add to this list what Keith E. Stanovich calls 'rational intelligence.' Stanovich, author of What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, believes that the concept of intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, fails to capture key aspects of mental ability.

That said, he doesn't discount the tests' credibility: "Readers might well expect me to say that IQ tests do not measure anything important, or that there are many kinds of intelligence, or that all people are intelligent in their own way," he writes.

Rather, Stanovich suggests that IQ tests should be adjusted to focus on valuable qualities and capacities that are highly relevant to our daily lives. He argues that IQ tests would be far more effective if they took into account not only mental "brightness" but also rationality — including such abilities as "judicious decision making, efficient behavioral regulation, sensible goal prioritization ... [and] the proper calibration of evidence."

Stanovich believes that our conceptions of intelligence are confused and that we've conflated the whole idea of "smarts." IQ tests, he argues, do not measure the rationality required to abstain from dumb decisions. But in practical life, we define intelligence more broadly and look out for these kinds of rational weaknesses: "Blatantly irrational acts committed by people of obvious intelligence ... shock and surprise us and call out for explanation."

And as long as we continue to worship IQ tests that do not assess rational thought processes, warns Stanovich, we will continue to misjudge our own and others' cognitive abilities.

More.

Self-assembling and shape shifting modular robot

A robot developed by roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania is comprised of modules that can recognize each other. This video shows how the modules reassemble themselves after the robot has been kicked apart.

But this is just the beginning.

DARPA programme manager Mitch Zakin is pursuing what he calls "programmable matter" -- so-called "mesoscale" mini-machines, a millimetre to a centimetre in size, that can arrange themselves to form whatever shape is desired.

Initially, he expects the outcome to be devices the size of small Lego pieces, but as the technology improves the modules and the machines could be scaled down even further.

Just how much further?

Ultimately, says Zakin, you could tell a sack of "smart sand" what to do, and the grains would assemble themselves into a hammer, a wrench or even a morphing robotic aircraft.

"It's making machines more like materials, and materials more like machines," says Daniela Rus, a robotics researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Read more.

Celebrating 150 years of Charles Darwin

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. This piece was put together by the boys at Mondolithic Studios and used on the cover of Le Scienze Magazine in Italy and on the table of contents of the US Edition of Scientific American magazine.

What a fitting and dignified portrait of this literary and scientific giant.

PETA's banned Superbowl ad

'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad

PETA's ad—which features a bevy of beauties who are powerless to resist the temptation of veggie love—was deemed too hot for the Super Bowl. NBC rejected the video because of concerns over "rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin," a woman "screwing herself with broccoli," and more! Read NBC's complete list of concerns.

As the green LA girl notes, "Continuing its long tradition of objectifying women to promote going vegan, PETA proudly brags that its ad showing mostly naked women rubbing themselves with veggies got banned by the Superbowl."

Most parents not quite ready to have 'designer babies' -- but demand exists

A new study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center indicates that consumers are more interested in using genetic technologies to screen for life threatening diseases than in using the technologies to screen offspring for enhanced traits.

Specifically, consumers appear ready to use biotechnologies to test for life altering and threatening medical conditions like mental retardation, blindness, deafness, cancer, heart disease, dwarfism and shortened lifespan from death by 5 years of age -- but what they're not interested in is prenatal genetic testing to screen for traits like tall stature, superior athletic ability and superior intelligence.

"Our research has discovered that although the media portrays a desire for 'designer babies', this does not appear to be true among consumers of genetic testing services," said Feighanne Hathaway, a certified genetic counselor at the NYU Cancer Institute.

Some demand is still demand

Indeed, one way of reading these results is to conclude that most people today are not in favor or ready to screen their offspring for enhanced traits. But that's not the entire story, nor is it a justification for failing to develop these technologies or denying prospective parents access to them. What these survey results indicate is that there is some demand for these sorts of interventions, just in small doses.

Let's look at the results of this report a bit more closely. The majority of respondents (52.2%) indicated that there were no conditions for which genetic testing should never be offered. What this tells me is that more than half of respondents are receptive to using genetic technologies for assisted reproduction in some form. That's significant and telling.

In addition, a minority of respondents indicated that they would like to use genetic testing for enhancements such as athletic ability (10%) or superior intelligence (12.6%). While these figures may seem small, they seem less so when considering the entire population. In a country like the United States, where there are about 4 million babies born each year, and assuming that these respondents would use these technologies to screen for higher intelligence, that would represent about 400,000 births per year. That's more babies born each year than through IVF.

We have to be careful when assessing the results of these kinds of surveys. When it comes to ensuring equal and fair access to medical technologies, it's not like voting for the president. Having control over one's reproductive processes is a very important thing -- even if 90% of the population has no intention of using it for themselves. It's important to remain respectful and responsive to any kind of demand for reproductive technologies.

Not the norm. Yet.

The authors of the report noted that, "it seems unlikely that the 'Age of Designer Babies' is near at-hand." While majority consumer buy-in doesn't appear imminent, that doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

As the authors of the report noted, respondents may have been following their own personal values or belief systems when assessing choices for genetic tests. Consequently, genetic counselors may want to develop a policy statement about new genetic tests that are becoming available and the ethical concerns regarding prenatal testing for life altering conditions.

Yes, but these policy statements will have to carefully and fairly worded. An anti-enhancement bias is most certainly embedded in our society. It's very likely that many of the respondents were answering the survey in accordance to their social conditioning and what they thought was expected of them from an 'ethical' perspective.

It's very safe, for example, to state that you're willing to use genetic technologies to screen for cancer and heart disease. But it's not socially correct to say that you'd like to screen for intelligence. I'm sure many pencils wavered above that survey question for a while as the cognitive dissonance kicked in.

Wait a minute, isn't intelligence a good thing?....

Indeed, the genetic counselors' policy statement better be clear on a number of things -- like explaining how people with higher intelligence are more likely to experience educational and occupational success and lower rates of morbidity and mortality. Smarter people live longer. It would seem, therefore, that ensuring higher rates of intelligence should be a priority and considered en par with the prevention of diseases.

And a similar thing can be said for athletic and physical endowments. Enhanced kinesthetic wiring and and a body type suited to athletics are strong indicators of both health and attractiveness. Like high intelligence, these are good things, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.

What we're talking about here is endowing our children with all the tools we can give them so that they may live an enriched, open-ended and fulfilling life. By denying them these benefits we are closing doors and potentially reducing the quality of their lives.

As for the Langone Medical Center report, I'm actually quite encouraged by their findings. Not only is there a great willingness to use genetic technologies to assist in reproduction, but there is growing awareness about it. The debate is happening and people are thinking and talking about the issues.

This is a very necessary step for the normalization of these important and life-improving technologies.