Category Archives: Transhuman

Its one of the most important questions you could ever ask a friend or loved one. Heres why you should know these six words.

Six words could hold the key to guiding someone out of the irrational, impulsive mental state that puts them at dangerously high risk of taking their own life.

People considering suicide generally lose their ability to rationalise, and see the act as a short sharp solution to their pain, clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist Dr Roy Sugarman told news.com.au.

To help pull them away from such a state, asking one specific question could be critical, particularly if the person has expressed feeling as though nothing they do makes a difference.

Asking someone, what is important to you now? could be crucial to their survival, Dr Sugarman said.

Its saying, whatever is going to make a difference, where you feel that what you do does make a difference, Ill do it with you and Ill help you, he said.

The biggest driver is going to be this avoidance of thinking nothing I do makes a difference so I might as well avoid the pain by creating a very short sharp solution to the pain.

People in the grips of such a dire mental state have got there most likely as a result of a collapse in their values and meaningful aspects of their life, Dr Sugarman said.

So when youre asking the question, its in the here and now, and finding out who or what is critical to them at that moment in time, he said.

Mental health and suicide are not easy subjects to talk about, but news.com.au wants you to know youre Not Alone. News.com.aus Not Alone will raise awareness about these issues and provide you with the resources needed to reach out for help.

What to do after asking the question

After getting an answer, Dr Sugarman recommended staying with the person and beginning the process of helping them problem solve, step by step.

Make it manageable and give them a sense that what they do now makes a difference, he said.

Stay with them and help them plan. Help them solve problems.

If we can get people to not look at the big picture, and instead look at things that make a big difference like smaller micro goals, you start to get some movement and progress.

Dr Sugarman stressed that while posing the question may help, it was more important that a warm relationship was maintained over an extended period of time.

Its like anything else, to avoid a terrible event, youve got to maintain your relationship with a person. Its not about weaving some amazing web of speech. Your best chance of keeping someone alive is a warm relationship, he said.

The thing about suicide is that you cant use a rational speech to help a person who has got there by being irrational. The inspiring speech is not going to address the fact that at this stage, there is cognitive depletion. Theyre not going to respond to rationalisation.

Phone app to prevent suicide

Dr Sugarman is the co-founder of suicide prevention app Be A Looper developed alongside Transhuman Inc CEO Amanda Johnstone.

The app, released in 2017, allows users to rate areas of their mental health daily and share their score with four other people they trust.

Ms Johnstone worked closely with RUOK? in the development of the app, and used the same framework, called ALEC, in digitising it as an efficient and practical support tool.

The concept of Be A Looper was largely an extension of Ms Johnstones previous efforts to support her friends. For years she set alarms on their phones and requested they send her an emoji indicating their mental health every day at 4pm.

Ms Johnstone, who was named CEO magazines 2020 Start-up Executive of the Year, independently supported dozens of people for about 12 years before adapting her idea into an app.

I knew that system worked really well and that people would do it, she told news.com.au.

Were all on our phones so often with Instagram and everything, if theres one swipe each day that will make us more connected, it can save lives.

Countless users have contacted Ms Johnstone sharing instances of how an alert from the app which notifies others if someone records a low rating has saved theirs or a loved ones life.

Dr Sugarman said it was no surprise the app had been so effective in preventing suicide, given it harnessed already familiar concepts of swiping and using the 1-10 rating system.

It works because you establish as a routine the sharing of how you feel, so if you are a person who needs to use it, it gets you into the habit of expressing yourself as a number to four other people, he said.

Its very simple, concrete and non verbal, and you will be able to express how you feel when your logic has escaped you and youre a bundle of hot mess an emotions.

The app can be downloaded for free via the Apple app store.

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The critical question you need to ask someone if they express a desire to take their own life - NEWS.com.au

Two years ago, in October 2018, Forbes contributor Neil Sahota, a United Nations artificial intelligence adviser and UC Irvine professor, warned that transhumanism is fast approachinglikely faster than you think.1 In the past few years, there has been considerable discussion around the idea we are slowly merging with our technology, that we are becoming transhuman, with updated abilities, including enhanced intelligence, strength, and awareness, Sahota writes.

The goal of the transhumanist movement, or Human 2.0, is to transcend biology into technology. Or, as Dr. Carrie Madej explains in the video above, to meld human biology with technology and artificial intelligence.

Two visible proponents of transhumanism are Ray Kurzweil (director of engineering at Google since 2012) and Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink).

According to Madej, right now, today, we may be standing at the literal crossroads of transhumanism, thanks to the fast approaching release of one or more mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Many of theCOVID-19 vaccines currently being fast-trackedare not conventional vaccines. Their design is aimed at manipulating your very biology, and therefore have the potential to alter the biology of the entire human race.

Conventional vaccines train your body to recognize and respond to the proteins of a particular virus by injecting a small amount of the actual viral protein into your body, thereby triggering an immune response and the development of antibodies.

This is not what happens with an mRNA vaccine. The theory behind these vaccines is that when you inject the mRNA into your cells, it will stimulate your cells to manufacture their own viral protein.2The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine will be the first of its kind. No mRNA vaccine has ever been licensed before. And, to add insult to injury, theyre forgoing all animal safety testing.

Madej reviews some of the background of certain individuals participating in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine, which include Moderna co-founder Derrick Rossi, a Harvard researcher who successfully reprogrammed stem cells using modified RNA, thus changing the function of the stem cells. Moderna was founded on this concept of being able to modify human biological function through genetic engineering, Madej says.

As mentioned, the mRNA vaccines are designed to instruct your cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the glycoprotein that attaches to the ACE2 receptor of the cell. This is the first stage of the two-stage process viruses use to gain entry into cells.

The idea is that by creating the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, your immune system will mount a response to it and begin producing antibodies to the virus. However, as reported by The Vaccine Reaction, researchers have pointed out potential weaknesses:3

According to researchers at University of Pennsylvania and Duke University, mRNA vaccines have potential safety issues, including local and systemic inflammation and stimulation of auto-reactive antibodies and autoimmunity, as well as development of edema (swelling) and blood clots.4

Systemic inflammation, auto-reactive antibodies and autoimmune problems are not insignificant concerns. In fact, these are in large part why previous attempts to create a coronavirus vaccine have ALL failed.

Over the past 20 years, coronavirus vaccine research has been plagued by one consistent adverse outcome in particular, namely paradoxical immune enhancement. This is caused by the fact that coronaviruses produce two different types of antibodiesneutralizing antibodies5that fight the infection, and binding antibodies6(also known as nonneutralizing antibodies) that cannot prevent viral infection.

Incapable of preventing viral infection, binding antibodies can instead trigger paradoxical immune enhancement. What that means is that it looks good until you get the disease, and then it makes the disease far worse than it would have been otherwise. As detailed in myinterview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in one coronavirus vaccine trial using ferrets, all the vaccinated animals died when exposed to the actual virus.

According to Madej, animal studies have also found the type of mRNA technology introduced with this vaccine can increase the risk of cancer and mutagenesis (gene mutations).

Madej goes on to discuss how this mRNA vaccine is going to be administered. Rather than a conventional injection, the vaccine will be administered using a microneedle platform. Not only can it be mass produced quickly, but it can also be administered by anyone. Its as simple at attaching an adhesive bandage to your arm.

The adhesive side of the bandage has rows of tiny microneedles and a hydrogel base that contains luciferase enzyme and the vaccine itself. Because of their tiny size, the microneedles are said to be nearly painless when pressed into the skin.

The idea is that the microneedles will puncture the skin, delivering the modified synthetic RNA into the nucleus of your cells. RNA is essentially coding material that your body uses. In this case, as mentioned, the instructions are to produce the SARS-CoV-2 viral protein.

The problem with all of this, Madej notes, is that theyre using a process called transfection a process used to create genetically modified organisms. She points out that research has confirmedGMO foods are not as healthy as conventional unmodified foods. The question is, might we also become less healthy? Vaccine manufacturers have stated that this will not alter our DNA, our genome, Madej says.

I say that is not true. Because if we use this process to make a genetically modified organism, why would it not do the same thing to a human? I dont know why theyre saying that.

If you look at the definition of transfection, it will tell you that it can be a temporary change in the cell. And I think that is what the vaccine manufacturers are banking on.

Or, its a possibility for it to become stable, to be taken up into the genome, and to be so stable that it will start replicating when the genome replicates. Meaning it is now a permanent part of your genome. Thats a chance that were taking. It could be temporary, or it could be permanent.

Naturally, we wont find out the truth about whether the vaccine causes a temporary or permanent change for many years after the experimental vaccine is introduced, and thats an important piece of information.

Why? Because synthetic genes can be patented. So, if inserting a synthetic RNA ends up creating permanent changes in the genome, humans will contain patentable genes. What will that mean for us, seeing how patents have owners, and owners have patent rights?

Another part of the delivery system that raises its own set of questions is the use of the enzyme luciferase, which has bioluminescent qualities. While invisible under normal conditions, using a cellphone app or special device, you will be able to see a glowing vaccination mark.

As described in the journal RSC Advances7in 2015, luciferase gene-loaded quantum dots can efficiently deliver genes into cells. The abstract discusses their use as self-illuminating probes for hepatoma imaging, but the fact that quantum dots can deliver genetic material is interesting in itself.

The hydrogel, meanwhile, is a DARPA invention that involves nanotechnology and nanobots. This bioelectronic interface is part of how the vaccination mark will be able to connect to your smartphone, Madej says, providing information about blood sugar, heart rate and any number of other biological data.

It has the potential to see almost anything that goes on in your body, Madej says. This will have immediate ramifications for our privacy, yet no one has yet addressed where this information will be going. Who will collect and have access to all this data? Who will be responsible for protecting it? How will it be used?

Also, if your cellphone can receive information from your body, what information can your body receive from it, or other sources? Could transmissions affect our mood? Our behavior? Our physical function? Our thoughts or memories?

In his Forbes article,8Sahota quotes Kurzweils book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, in which Kurzweil states:

The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots.

If Madej turns out to be correct, and the mRNA vaccine ushers in the ability to alter not only our genes but also opens the door for nanotechnology-driven interfacing between our bodies and programmable technology, arent we in fact stepping over the line into transhuman territory?

The Truthstream Media video above discusses the larger issues of transhumanism and the race to merge man with machine and artificial intelligence. There are even ongoing attempts to upload the human mind into the cloud, ultimately creating a form of digital hive mind where everyone communicates via Wi-Fi telepathy. This, despite the fact we still do not fully understand what the mind actually is, or where its located.

Another transhumanist that has recently brought us to a brand-new precipice is Elon Musk, with his latest venture, Neuralink, described in the video presentation given in late August, above. Neuralink is a transcranial implant that uses direct current stimulation. For now, the device is aimed at helping people with brain or spinal injuries.

Ultimately, the goal is to merge the human brain with computers. I have strong reservations about this. Theres tremendous room for unintended psychological and psychiatric consequences. In an interview that I did with psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin that has not yet been published, he discussed his concerns with this technology, saying:

Whats interesting to me is that while Musk is so brilliant, hes stupid about the brain. Thats probably because the neurosurgeons and psychiatrists he consults are stupid about the brain. I mean theyre just stupid.

He wants to put in multiple threadlike electrodes into the brain, into webs of neurons, and put in low voltage stimulation. This is insane. The brain cant tolerate this. He hopes to [be able to] communicate but theres not going to be any communication.

The brain isnt going to talk to these electrodes. Thats not how the brain works. The brain talks to itself. Its not going to talk to Elon Musk [or anyone else] and hes going to disrupt the brain talking to itself. Its a terrible thing to do.

I wish somebody who knows Elon Musk would say, You ought to talk to Peter Breggin. He says your consultants are stupid. Hes already planning to try to get FDA approval for some neurological disorders and thatll be the beginning of the onslaught.

Getting back to the mRNA vaccines, time will tell just how hazardous they end up being. Clearly, if the changes end up being permanent, the chance of long-term side effects is much greater than if they end up being temporary.

In a worst-case scenario, whatever changes occur could even be generational. The problem is these issues wont be readily apparent any time soon. In my view, this vaccine could easily turn into a global catastrophe the likes of which weve never experienced before.

We really should not be quick to dismiss the idea that these vaccines may cause permanent genetic changes, because we now have proof that even conventional vaccines have the ability to do that, and they dont involve the insertion of synthetic RNA.

After the H1N1 swine flu of 2009, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (a fast-tracked vaccine used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked9to childhood narcolepsy, which abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.10 11

Children and teens in Finland,12the U.K.13and Sweden14were among the hardest hit. Further analyses discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine as well, although the link wasnt as obvious as that in children and adolescents.15

A 2019 study16reported finding a novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival.

They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.

In addition to that, theres the research17showing that the H1N1 swine flu vaccine was one of five inactivated vaccines that increased overall mortality, especially among girls. A swine flu article Iwrote 11 years ago, in 2009, turned out to have a rather prophetic warning at the end:

The swine flu vaccine has not been tested for safety or efficacy, but we DO know it will contain harmful additives. The choice, to me, is obvious. And in the future, anytime a new pandemic appears and officials urge you to rush out and get a shot, please remember this article and ask yourself if its really you who stands to benefit from their advice.

We can also learn from the swine flu fiasco of 1976, detailed in this 1979 60 Minutesepisode. Fearing a repeat of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the government propaganda machine cranked into action, 60 Minutessays, telling all Americans to get vaccinated.

According to 60 Minutes, 46 million Americans were vaccinated against the swine flu at that time. Over the next few years, thousands of Americans filed vaccine damage claims with the federal government.18As reported by Smithsonian Magazine in 2017:19

In the spring of 1976, it looked like that years flu was the real thing. Spoiler alert: it wasnt, and rushed response led to a medical debacle that hasnt gone away.

Some of the American publics hesitance to embrace vaccinesthe flu vaccine in particularcan be attributed to the long-lasting effects of a failed 1976 campaign to mass-vaccinate the public against a strain of the swine flu virus, writes Rebecca Kreston for Discover.

This government-led campaign was widely viewed as a debacle and put an irreparable dent in future public health initiative, as well as negatively influenced the publics perception of both the flu and the flu shot in this country.

A 1981 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office to Sen. John Durkin, D-N.H., reads, in part:20

Before the swine flu program there were comparatively few vaccine-related claims made against the Government. Since 1963, Public Health Service records showed that only 27 non-swine flu claims were filed.

However, as of December 31, 1979, we found that 3,839 claims and 988 lawsuits had been filed against the Government alleging injury, death, or other damage resulting from the 45 million swine flu immunizations given under the program.

A Justice official told us that as of October 2, 1980, 3,965 claims and 1,384 lawsuits had been filed. Of the 3,965 claims filed, the Justice official said 316 claims had been settled for about $12.3 million

The devastating side effects of the Pandemrix vaccine should be instructive. No one anticipated a flu vaccine to have genetic consequences, yet it did. Now theyre proposing injecting mRNA to make every single cell in your body produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

It seems outright foolish not to assume there will be significant consequences.

This article was reprinted with the authors permission. It was originally published on Dr. Mercolas website atwww.mercola.com.

References:

1 Forbes October 1, 2018.2 Horizon Magazine April 1, 2020.3 The Vaccine Reaction May 25, 2020.4 Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2018; 17: 261-279.5 Science Direct Neutralizing Antibody.6 Science Direct Binding Antibody.7 RSC Advances 2015; 37.8 See Footnote 1.9 Eurosurveillance June 30, 2011; 16(26).10 European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control September 20, 2012.11 CIDRAP January 30, 2013.12 PLoS One. 2012;7(3):e33536.13 BMJ 2013;346:f794.14 See Footnote 9.15 See Footnote 11.16 EBioMedicine. 2019 Feb; 40: 595604.17 Science News DK December 27, 2019.18 GAO.gov, Report to US Senator Durkin, January 14, 1981 (PDF).19 Smithsonian Magazine February 6, 2017.20 See Footnote 18.

1918 Spanish flu pandemic, 60 Minutes, ACE2 receptor, Carrie Madej, COVID-19, DARPA, Derrick Rossi, Elon Musk, Forbes, Google, Human 2.0, John Durkin, Joseph Mercola, Jr., luciferase, Moderna, mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, Neil Sahota, Neuralink, Pandemrix, Ray Kurzweil, RNA, Robert F. Kennedy, RSC Advances, SARS-CoV-2, Smithsonian Magazine, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, The Vaccine Reaction, transhumanist movement

Note: This commentary provides referenced information and perspective on a topic related to vaccine science, policy, law or ethicsbeing discussed in public forums and by U.S. lawmakers. The websites of theU.S. Department of Health and Human Services(DHHS) provide information and perspective of federal agencies responsible for vaccine research, development, regulation and policymaking.

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Will New COVID Vaccine Make You Transhuman? - The Vaccine ...

As gene-based mRNA vaccines from Moderna are being designed and tested at warp speeds to fight Covid-19, this is also bringing the debate over transhumanism into the forefront.

Transhumanism is a type of futurist philosophy aimed at transforming the human species by means of biotechnologies. Transhumanists see disease, aging and death as undesirable and unnecessary, and aim to transform human beings into post-human species with greater capacities than those of present human beings.

The philosophy is based on secular humanism and sees human nature as an evolutionary work-in-progress with room for improvement and enhancement. However, it is more radical in that it promotes not only traditional means of improving human nature such as education and cultural refinement, but also direct application of medicine and technology to overcome basic biological limits.

Transhumanists give special attention to genetic engineering, robotics, molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, and the Covid-19 pandemic is providing gene-based vaccines a chance to break through into the global health market.

Moderna and gene-editing

Currently there are various companies such as Inovio, Moderna and CanSino Biologics that are testing mRNA and DNA vaccines to counter SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS CoV-2) which causes Covid-19, but Moderna is the front runner that recently nabbed $472 million from U.S. governments Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop the vaccine. This is in addition to the $483 million it had already received back in April, bringing its total funding to $955 million.

With U.S. government funding at nearly $1 billion for one company, Moderna may be too big to fail. However, this is perplexing for a company that has never produced a single vaccine. According to a CNN report, Moderna was only established in 2010, has never brought a product to market, nor gotten any of its nine or so vaccine candidates approved for use by the FDA.

However, it has been a long-term Pentagon contractor for biodefense, working closely with Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) on gene-editing and mRNA therapeutics. DARPA is focused on developing emerging disruptive technologies to maintain a competitive edge over adversaries, including many transhuman projects such as genetic engineering and soldier enhancement via robotics.

In the case of Moderna and mRNA therapeutics, DNA vaccines is considered a new paradigm that would disrupt the pharmaceutical industry. Its vision is to harness a new technology that synthesizes messenger RNA, or mRNAwhich is an instruction manual in every living cell for creating proteinto prompt the human body to make its own medicine.

So instead of injecting a piece of virus into a person to stimulate the immune system, the synthesized genes would be shot into the body whereby the genes are edited, deleted, added, to re-engineer human DNA to resist the disease. If successful, scientists hope DNA vaccines could be a transformative treatment for heart disease, metabolic and genetic diseases, kidney failure and even cancer. Moreover, it could be an effective form of biodefense to protect the population against biological warfare, which is also the mandate for DARPA and BARDA.

Transhumanism and hybrids

Indeed, DARPA is also developing other forms of human enhancement in addition to gene editing. Already scientists are merging robotics with the human body in brain-to-computer interface (BCI), wherein individuals with physical injuries can regain their functions, and soldiers become smarter and more powerful through the fusing of their brain with machines.

In a way, the Pentagon is now building real iron man similar to the American superhero based on the Marvel Comics character. Soldiers in exoskeleton suits are physically more powerful than those without, while other soldiers with bionic limbs perform better than adversaries with human limbs. When one adds artificial intelligence with BCI, the sky is the limit for an army of these genetically modified and robotically enhanced humanoids.

But U.S. is not the only country engaged in human enhancement and transhumanism, as Russia and China are also in hot pursuit with exoskeletons, vaccines and brain implants. As this competition gains traction, one wonders what the future of their militaries may look like as human beings are steadily integrated with machines to become armies of iron man.

Here the Book of Daniel may lend some insights. In interpreting King Nebuchadnezzars dream of an image with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay, Daniel revealed the parts as the sequence of world empires, with the feet of iron and clay being the last.

King Nebuchadnezzars dream manDaniel 2

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In Daniel 2:43 it is written, as you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay, that seems to describe a hybrid of man (clay) mixed with machine (iron). And as transhumanism and biotech gain momentum, armies of hybrid humans of iron and clay may be a real possibility in a not too distant future world.

Dr. Christina Lin is a US-based foreign policy analyst specializing in China-Mediterranean relations. She has extensive US government experience working on national security issues and was a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) research consultant for Jane's Information Group.

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Gene-editing, Moderna, and transhumanism | Christina Lin ...

Forked Tongue ioerror/Flickr Why have one tongue when you can have two? Traci Joy Burleigh (not shown here) is a 38-year-old professional piercer in San Francisco who says "tongue bifurcation" is typically done in a piercing shop under sterile conditions.

But Dr. Jon Perlman,a prominent Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who has been practicing for 25 years and has turned down requests for procedures he found disturbing, says that the tongue "is a very functional part of the human body affecting speech and eating. I think anyone who wants this should undergo psychological evaluation to explain such a strong drive to stand-out from the norm, and I consider myself a fairly open minded individual."

But doctors say subdermal implants, like the ridges above his eyes, can be risky business. "Hopefully all of this is being done under the most sterile conditions," says Dr. David Bank, director of The Center for Dermatology, Cosmetic, and Laser Surgery in New York. Anytime the skin is opened up, he tells CBS News, there is the potential for infection - and the risk is heightened when a permanent foreign object is introduced.

Of all of these procedures, doctors say the implants pose the greatest risk. Anytime a foreign object is placed in the body, infection is a real possibility.

As he wrote on his blog, "Admittedly it just looks like a growth/deformity and some strange spots, but I just love it".

Ophthalmologists don't love it as much. Last year, the State of Oklahoma made it illegal to color the sclera - the whites of the eyes - with strong support from the Oklahoma Academy of Ophthalmology.

The rest is here:
13 Most Extreme Body Modifications - CBS News

Sajid Asbat Khandaker and Sourodip Paul, students of Master of Science in Applied Economics at Brac University, clinched the championship title of Cambridge Intervarsity (IV) 2021 Courtesy

The team came out victorious from a total of 124 teams

A debating team from Brac University has recently become the first-ever Bangladeshi team to clinch the championship title of Cambridge Intervarsity (IV) 2021, one of the worlds most competitive and prestigious debate tournaments, organized by the Cambridge Union.

The Brac University team consisting of two students came out victorious from a total of 124 teams this year. Participating teams included teams from institution like Harvard University, the University of Oxford, London School of Economics, Cornell University, Princeton University and Imperial College London.

Sajid Asbat Khandaker and Sourodip Paul, students of Master of Science in Applied Economics at Brac University clinched this title in the finals on November 14.

The other three teams in the finals were Imperial College London (UK), McGill University (Canada) and Ateneo de Manila University (The Philippines).

Sajid Asbat Khandaker was also adjudged the best English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speaker and fourth best speaker overall. Sourodip Paul was the second best ESL speaker and eighth best speaker overall.

In the finals, the Brac University team opposed transhumanism, which is a movement that endorses the study and creation of technologies to modify the body to surpass natural limits of human abilities.

The debating format was of British parliamentary system where four teams participated, two representing the government and two representing the opposition.

The Brac University duo navigated through five qualification and three knockout (quarters, semis and finals) rounds. In these rounds, they encountered motions on different topics including Latin American geopolitics, European Union, healthcare policy and electoral politics.

The duo has been debating together since 2017 in tournaments across the world including in Mexico, South Africa, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Naturally it feels surreal to accomplish something that has never been done before - but we hope that this is only the beginning of many more ground breaking achievements to come, said Sajid Asbat Khandaker in his initial reaction.

I owe a lot of the skills and knowledge to this activity that always demands the best from the participants. It has helped me become a critical thinker. The activity has given me the confidence to be able to go up to a podium and give a great speech, said Sourodip Paul.

Sajid and I plan to participate in more global tournaments representing Brac University on the global stage, he added.

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Brac University team wins Cambridge Intervarsity debate tournament - Dhaka Tribune

Transhumanism is a futuristic religion that exalts technology as the highest power. The movements goal is to merge man with machine. Their wildest prophecies seem ridiculous at first, until you consider the dizzying advances in bionics, robotics, neuroprosthetics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering.

Prominent figures gathered at the TransVision 2021 conference in Madrid over the weekend. Listening to the proceedings online, I heard a broad range of totalizing schemes. There were no Luddites or Amish onstage, but of course, Spain is a long haul for a horse-and-buggy. Besides, no unvaccinated person can legally cross the Spanish border.

Transhumanists hold that the human condition of ignorance, loneliness, sadness, disease, old age, and death can be transcended through improved gadgetry. Many believe tribalism will also be eliminated perhaps through brain implants but this elite clique tends to be so convicted, legacy humans will have no say in the matter.

Their radical ideas are hardly marginal. Transhuman values have been implicitly embraced by the worlds wealthiest technologists. Consider Bill Gates pushing universal jabs, Jeff Bezoss quest for life extension, Elon Musks proposed brain implants, Mark Zuckerbergs forays into the Metaverse, and Eric Schmidts plans for an American technocracy racing against China.

If Big Tech is the established church, transhumanists are Desert Fathers in the wilderness.

Naturally, the dominant tone at TransVision was set by hardcore transhumanists: Max and Natasha More, Jos Cordeiro, David Wood, Jerome Glenn, Phillipe van Nedervelde, Ben Goertzel, Aubrey de Grey, Bill Faloon, and even in his absence, Ray Kurzweil, a top R&D director at Google and founder of Singularity University. Each proponent has a unique angle, but they converge on a shared mythos.

Allowing for variation, transhumanists confess there is no God but the future Computer God. They believe neuroprosthetics will allow communion with this artificial deity. They believe robot companions should be normalized. They believe longevity tech will confer approximate immortality. They believe virtual reality provides a life worth living. Above all, they believe the Singularity is near.

According to the Cult of the Singularity and its prophet, Ray Kurzweil, well see artificial general intelligence by 2029. Unlike narrow algorithms performing specific tasks, AGI will be robust cognition enacted by neural networks, far faster than any human brain.

By 2045 (or 2049), we will hit the Singularity when artificial superintelligence surpasses human intellect to the point we cannot comprehend its output. Purely organic humans will be left in the smart dust. Our only chance for long-term survival is to fuse our minds and bodies with the All-Powerful Machine to become a new posthuman species.

Therefore, our meaning in life is to make sure the future Computer God is benevolent, while we still have time. (In most cases, benevolent is synonymous with lefty globalist.) Todays machine learning systems are prompted by programmers, then trained with our language and behavior via mass data extraction.

As computers advance to superintelligence, the story goes, their output will tilt toward humanitys moral compass. Eventually, this digital deity may colonize distant galaxies turning all usable matter into computerized mind so our actions today might determine the fate of the entire universe.

Im reminded of the subterranean mutants who worshiped the atom bomb in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Many mammals use tools to survive, but even a chimp knows better than to raise up a stick and call it God.

Back on Earth, the early phase of this scheme is far from heaven. Just as the TV kept Americans pacified and glued to their couches, the digital revolution has profound demoralizing and dehumanizing effects.

To their credit, TransVision invited a handful of critics to ring alarm bells. The ethicist Sara Lumbreras discussed the devastating impact of smartphones and social media on attention span, memory, and self-control. If you can just Google the information, why does it matter? she asked. Because remembering things is the only way that we can use that information for critical thinking and for creative thinking.

Both transhumanists and Luddites see 24/7 reliance on smartphones as an early phase of our symbiosis with machines. For all the convenience gained, many schoolteachers worry that the shift to digital platforms is making kids antisocial and functionally illiterate. An entire generation is being lost to self-pleasure.

Oxford philosopher Anders Sandberg discussed a 1954 experiment in neuroprosthetics. Using electro-stimulation, the scientist James Olds discovered the pleasure center in a rats brain. He wired up numerous rats, enabling them to stimulate themselves by pressing a lever. These rodent wireheads ceased to do anything besides push the lever. One by one, they died with smiles on their faces.

Video games and corporate opioids find us in a similar predicament. Even in the Victorian era, Sandberg explained, intellectuals wondered if humans were already becoming parasites on machines. They connected that to discoveries in biology that parasites quite often seem to be simplified forms of older species [and they thought] we might become some kind of barnacle sitting on the technological infrastructure, slowly losing our brains.

Hence, the Wireheading Myth the narrative that civilization could collapse due to techno-hedonism. Sandberg insisted that while this story isnt completely untrue, it isnt inevitable either. Building real happiness is a really complex thing, but we know we can make it increase.

In conclusion, he wondered, Can we use the transhuman ambition to say I want to be way happier, I want entire societies to be happier. I want my artificial intelligences to go for the true and daimonic good?

Sandberg is an optimist, but not without reservations. He has contemplated the dangers of artificial superintelligence rigorously. This digital entity would be entirely unpredictable to mere human minds, and perhaps uncontrollable. In a real sense, advanced AI is comparable to the development of thermonuclear warheads.

A humorous hypothetical is an AI system that makes paperclips. What if it goes haywire and turns everything on Earth into paperclips, including us? More realistically, what if an advanced AI is programmed to solve climate change, then arrives at the straightforward conclusion that humans must be exterminated?

Sandberg takes these existential risks seriously, but in the end, hes ready to go for it.

The term transhumanism evokes such revulsion, normal people immediately recoil. So the alpha-dog transhumanist Max More a leading figure at Alcor cryonics lab urged the audience to abandon loaded words like immortality in favor of life extension. Meanwhile, 184 deceased customers lay frozen at his facility, some $200,000 in the hole, waiting to be resurrected.

We mortals have more pressing concerns. Discussing the displacement of actual people by robots and artificial intelligence, Jerome Glenn of the Millennium Project was emphatic that artists, media moguls, and entertainers should psychologically prepare the public to accept economic obsolescence.

The loudest alarm was sounded by tech ethicist Nell Watson, an Apple consultant and chairwoman at IEEE. The global health crises are being used as an excuse for greater authoritarianism, she said, shocking everyone awake. [T]his could end up as a Trojan Horse for some kind of social credit-style monitoring system.

Today, its immunity therapies, Watson warned, but in 10 or 15 years, it might be people who reject some kind of brain-computer interface or a financial technology thats linked to biometrics. She worried that transhumanists might become scapegoats for oppressive policies they are not responsible for.

In response, Anders Sandberg took to Twitter to defend vaccine mandates in the workplace. The conference proceeded apace.

As a broad ideology, transhumanism is as relevant for the 21st century as communism was for the 20th century. In the mid-1800s, Karl Marx and his crew were mere socialist intellectuals. By 1923, the Bolsheviks had taken over Russia. By 1949, Mao had taken over China. In our age of all-pervasive technology, entire societies are revolutionized before anyone can grasp the change.

The futurists who gathered in Madrid last weekend along with those preaching technocracy at the World Economic Forum are laying the intellectual groundwork for a fully digitized social order. Today, its the Fourth Industrial Revolution a global paradigm of total transformation embraced by Microsoft, Alibaba, Sony, General Motors, Mozilla, and Salesforce, among many others. Tomorrow, the faithful proclaim, it will be artificial superintelligence, brain implants, and unstoppable killer drones.

The labels dont matter. To the extent that Silicon Valley, the Chinese tech sector, and various quirky start-ups converge on the central goal to merge human beings with digital devices you could say transhumanism is already a ruling ideology. One has only to look past this text and focus on the glowing screen to see their fantasies are becoming reality.

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Transhumanists Gather In Spain To Plan Global Transformation - The Federalist