Stories like this make my head hurt. Maybe I’m just not smart enough to get my head around the implications.  Or maybe the whole notion, which is apparently gaining traction among academics, is just stupid: Free will might be an illusion created by our brains, scientists might have proved. HumansContinue Reading

TECH VISIONARIES have formed a new non-profit artificial intelligence startup. The goal is to make sure the first true AI is “good”. Click here for the notes and the audio.Continue Reading

Today we discuss the drive for immortality through technology, which to us sounds like a recipe for Hell on Earth, and several stories related to Russia and its reemergence as a geopolitical force. Click here for the show notes and mp3 file.Continue Reading

SINCE ITS creation in 1958, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has grown to become the Defense Department’s most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science research and development agency. Click here for the interview with investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen about her new book The Pentagon’s Brain.Continue Reading

Transhumanist Party presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan suggests that the 85% of the world who believe in life after death are a major obstacle to attaining immortality. He feels that we “deathists” are so eager to reach our eternal reward that we will resist a technological upgrade, and that we will consider transhumanism a blasphemous desire to become gods.

Probably right on both counts.Continue Reading