Substrate-independent minds

[mike]

Lab comes one step closer to building artificial human brain

An ambitious project in Switzerland was scoffed at - but researchers have just succeeded in simulating a rat's brain in silicon

In a laboratory in Switzerland, a group of neuroscientists is developing a mammalian brain - in silicon. The researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with IBM, have just completed the first phase of an ambitious project to reproduce a fully functioning brain on a supercomputer. By strange coincidence, their lab happens to lie on the same shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley dreamt up her creation, Dr Frankenstein.

In June 2005, Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project, announced his intention to build a human brain using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. "The critics were unbelievable," recalls Markram. "Everybody thought we were crazy. Even the most eminent computational neuroscientists and theoreticians said the project would fail."
Some of Markram's peers said there simply wasn't enough data available to simulate a human brain. "There is no neuroscientist on the planet that has the authority to say we don't understand enough," says Markram. "We all know a tiny slice. Nobody even knows how much we know."

Markram was not dissuaded by the negative reaction to his announcement. Two years on, he has already developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column - the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains - of a two-week-old rat, and it behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. It's something quite beautiful when you watch it pulse on the giant 3D screens the researchers have constructed.

The neocortical column is the most recently evolved part of our brain and is responsible for such things as reasoning and self-awareness. It was a quantum leap in evolution. The human brain contains a thousand times more neocortical columns than a rat's brain, but there is very little difference, biologically speaking, between a rat's brain and our own. Build one column, and you can effectively build the entire neocortex - if you have the computational power.

They scoffed at Chris Barnard too..... now only 40 odd years later thousands of heart transplants are performed every year.

 

[trainedobserver]

I always find it hilarious to see so many top end researchers with impressive credentials, be told by those with no credentials whatsoever, their research is invalid.

Do you mean to make an appeal to authority?

I see it largely as a philosophical, dare I say metaphysical question. The things science may create in the future will always be copies and not the original in form or substance. Also, it is all wrapped up in the question of what actually constitutes a human being. I contend it isn't a single organ (such as the brain) or a product of an organ (such as consciousness) but the entire organism itself.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Couple of things: science has a habit of making large leaps in short time so thesedays I think it is unwise to put limits on what we might be able to do in the very near future. Also it is often the case that science and research is quite a bit ahead of what the public is aware of!

I'm not sure where I stand on the debate over whether 'we' are just the product of chemistry and electricity and learning. I don't think there is a 'soul' per se as religion teaches but at the same time I've never heard even an attempt to really explain the human brain's consciousness and self-awareness.

I have thought for some time now that not only did consciousness evolve with us but will have elsewhere but also that consciousness had to happen. I believe that it was utterly inevitable that something would occur out of the matter and energy in the universe that can recognise the existence of the universe. It's a MUST and not only because I see no point in a universe without a conscious mind to appreciate it!

If there ends up being a big crunch and out of that another big bang (or whatever the current thinking may be), I am positive that that new universe will go on to have conscious minds evolve there to understand that it exists.
Of course this is just my thinking with zero proof. But religion has zero proof so there is no reason I can't do it too, the difference being is that I am not telling everyone that they must listen to my version of things and will be punished if they don't!

 

[mike]

I think my point speaks for itself, milage naturally varies. But for myself im inclined to accept the predictions made by experts worldwide that this is doable, over the opinions of those here who say it cant be done.
Precisely because those doing the research, seeing the positive results of their experiments, are imo in a better position to make those predictions.

For Dr Stuart Armstrong, the rise of the idea of digital immortality is due to the realisation that this time – perhaps – we actually have the key to immortality in our hands. Dr Armstrong is research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford.
"Technology is now advancing faster and faster and we understand it a lot better because we built it ourselves. So the problems that digital immortality is facing are merely engineering problems – albeit complicated and difficult ones – that could be solved within the decade if we decided to set up a scheme on the scale of the Manhattan Project."

Dr Randal A. Koene, though, is determined to take digital immortality from the pages of books like Cave's and turn it into reality. Koene is founder of the non-profit Carbon Copies Project in California, which is tasked with creating a networking community of scientists to advance digital immortality – "although I prefer to talk about substrate-independent minds, as digital immortality is too much about how long you live, not what you can do with it".

And for Koene it is very much "you", there being a "continuity of self" in the same way that "the person you are today is still the same person you were when you were age five".
"This isn't science fiction, either, this is closer to science fact," he argues

A model that replicates the functions of the human brain is feasible in 10 years according to neuroscientist Professor Henry Markram of the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. ‘I absolutely believe it is technically and biologically possible.

scientist Anders Sandberg. A member of the new transhuman movement (beyond human), Sandberg believes uploading minds and downloading them again into new bodies is a technology that's imminent

For Koene, human societies have faced these kinds of problems many times before. What matters more, he believes, is that digital immortality is the next stage of human evolution as it will "allow us as a species to have the flexibility to survive the process of natural selection that every species has to face", whether on this planet or another

"I think it very likely -in fact inevitable-that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of intelligence in the universe."​

Paul Davies -acclaimed physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist at Arizona State University."​

Im also of the opinion a copy can be superior to that which its copied from

Just because something is a copy, does not then imply its somehow inferior to the original

As you know i dont place any stock in supernatural mechanisms.
I see "us" as biological machines, the mind as a quantifiable program albiet a complex one, but not one thats beyond our eventual ability to reverse engineer and duplicate.

The transfer/copy scenario has been already discussed, but i stand by my hypothesis that its both, depending on the pov of the observer.

Again this is real research its being done

Lets start at the top and work down

In 1963, a group of scientists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio,[4] led by Robert J. White, a neurosurgeon and a professor of neurological surgery who was inspired by the work of Vladimir Demikhov, performed a highly controversial operation to transplant the head of one monkey onto another's body. The procedure was a success to some extent, with the animal being able to smell, taste, hear, and see the world around it. The operation involved cauterizing arteries and veins carefully while the head was being severed to prevent hypovolemia. Because the nerves were left entirely intact, connecting the brain to a blood supply kept it chemically alive. The animal survived for some time after the operation, even at times attempting to bite some of the staff.[5]
Other head transplants were also conducted recently in Japan in rats. Unlike the head transplants performed by Dr. White, however, these head transplants involved grafting one rat's head onto the body of another rat that kept its head. Thus, the rat ended up with two heads.[6] The scientists said that the key to successful head transplants was to use low temperatures.[7]
A human head transplant would most likely require cooling of the brain to the point where all neural activity stops. This is to prevent neurons from dying while the brain is being transplanted. Ethical considerations have thus far prevented any reported attempt by surgeons to transplant a human being's head.

Head transplant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Historically, whole-body transplants have not been feasible and were widely regarded as impossible. Today, given progress in organ transplant and human cloning research, many scientists hold that whole-body transplants are theoretically possible and likely to be feasible in the future.

In 1982 Dr. Dorothy T. Krieger, chief of endocrinology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, achieved notable success with a partial brain transplant in mice.[3] A partial brain transplant could accomplish essentially the same goal — movement of a person's "identity" from one body to another and thus qualify as a whole-body transplant no less than a full brain transplant. As Dr. Krieger demonstrated, barriers to accomplishing this feat might be much lower than transplantation of the entire brain.

Whole-body transplant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clearly then these two examples involve transfer rather than copy of the neural matrix, would the transfer of just the neural patterns rather than the platform on which they reside acheive the same result ?
For me the answer is "for all practical purposes" YES.
If the target felt a sense of personal continuity, and those interacting with it could not tell the difference then from the pov of everyone except the source, its a transfer, it feels and behaves like a transfer

Watch this again, and imagine its really happened to you, that you have just been told you are dead, and digitised.....

Watching it, do you still "feel" like you ?
Thats how it would seem from the pov of the transfered conciousness, they would experience the very same sense of continuity you do watching this video.

 

[mike]

The scientists in this say they will eventually be able to grow any organ, Blade runners replicants could become real science, and you will remember that once given "memories" these replicants felt "real".

We will need to redefine what its is to be human

 

[mike]

Upload discussion at 22:30

Some of the ideas and questions presented at the end of this one are profound

 

[mike]

No tangles! The human brain's connections turn out to be a an orderly 3D grid structure with no diagonals. 2D sheets of parallel fibers cross at right angles -- " like the warp and weft of a fabric." The first pictures from the most powerful brain scanner of its kind reveal an "astonishingly simple architecture." This diffusion spectrum image of a whole human brain came from the new Connectom scanner, part of the NIH's Human Connectome Project. Source: Van Wedeen, M.D., Martinos Center and Dept. of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School

Brain wiring a no-brainer?, March 29, 2012 News Release - National Institutes
of Health (NIH)

Wedeen and colleagues report new evidence of the brain's elegant simplicity March 30, 2012 in the journal Science. The study was funded, in part, by the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Human Connectome Project of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, and other NIH components.
“Getting a high resolution wiring diagram of our brains is a landmark in human neuroanatomy,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. “

NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research: Home Page

 

[Konrad Hartmann]

I think the real question is whether sometime in the future someone will manufacture machines programmed to act as though they are human beings who have died and will the living war with each other and these machines over the very idea?

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[mike]

I was interested to see some of the objections posted here, have already been around a long time

Nine common objections
See also: Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Having clarified the question, Turing turned to answering it: he considered the following nine common objections, which include all the major arguments against artificial intelligence raised in the years since his paper was first published.[11]

1. Theological Objection: This states that thinking is a function of man's immortal soul; therefore, a machine cannot think. "In attempting to construct such machines," wrote Turing, "we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates."
2. 'Heads in the Sand' Objection: "The consequences of machines thinking would be too dreadful. Let us hope and believe that they cannot do so." This thinking is popular among intellectual people, as they believe superiority derives from higher intelligence and the possibility of being overtaken is a threat (as machines have efficient memory capacities and processing speed, machines exceeding the learning and knowledge capabilities are highly probable). This objection is a fallacious appeal to consequences, confusing what should not be with what can or cannot be (Wardip-Fruin, 56).
3. Mathematical Objections: This objection uses mathematical theorems, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorem, to show that there are limits to what questions a computer system based on logic can answer. Turing suggests that humans are too often wrong themselves and pleased at the fallibility of a machine. (This argument would be made again by philosopher John Lucas in 1961 and physicist Roger Penrose in 1989.)[12]
4. Argument From Consciousness: This argument, suggested by Professor Geoffrey Jefferson in his 1949 Lister Oration states that "not until a machine can write a sonnet or compose a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt, and not by the chance fall of symbols, could we agree that machine equals brain."[13] Turing replies by saying that we have no way of knowing that any individual other than ourselves experiences emotions, and that therefore we should accept the test. He adds, "I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness ... ut I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question [of whether machines can think]." (This argument, that a computer can't have conscious experiences or understanding would be made in 1980 by philosopher John Searle in his Chinese Room argument. Turing's reply is now known as the "other minds reply". See also Can a machine have a mind? in the philosophy of AI.)[14]
   [*]Arguments from various disabilities. These arguments all have the form "a computer will never do X". Turing offers a selection:
   
   Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, have initiative, have a sense of humour, tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, make someone fall in love with it, learn from experience, use words properly, be the subject of its own thought, have as much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new.​
   Turing notes that "no support is usually offered for these statements," and that they depend on naive assumptions about how versatile machines may be in the future, or are "disguised forms of the argument from consciousness." He chooses to answer a few of them:
   1. Machines cannot make mistakes.He notes it's easy to program a machine to appear to make a mistake.
   2. A machine cannot be the subject of its own thought (or can't be self-aware). A program which can report on its internal states and processes, in the simple sense of a debuggerprogram, can certainly be written. Turing asserts "a machine can undoubtably be its own subject matter."
   3. A machine cannot have much diversity of behaviour. He notes that, with enough storage capacity, a computer can behave in an astronomical number of different ways.
   [*]Lady Lovelace's Objection: One of the most famous objections states that computers are incapable of originality. This is largely because, according to Ada Lovelace, machines are incapable of independent learning.
   
   The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths.​
   Turing suggests that Lovelace's objection can be reduced to the assertion that computers "can never take us by surprise" and argues that, to the contrary, computers could still surprise humans, in particular where the consequences of different facts are not immediately recognizable. Turing also argues that Lady Lovelace was hampered by the context from which she wrote, and if exposed to more contemporary scientific knowledge, it would become evident that the brain's storage is quite similar to that of a computer.
   [*]Argument from continuity in the nervous system: Modern neurological research has shown that the brain is not digital. Even though neurons fire in an all-or-nothing pulse, both the exact timing of the pulse and the probability of the pulse occurring have analog components. Turing acknowledges this, but argues that any analog system can be simulated to a reasonable degree of accuracy given enough computing power. (Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus would make this argument against "the biological assumption" in 1972.)[15]
   [*]Argument from the informality of behaviour: This argument states that any system governed by laws will be predictable and therefore not truly intelligent. Turing replies by stating that this is confusing laws of behaviour with general rules of conduct, and that if on a broad enough scale (such as is evident in man) machine behaviour would become increasingly difficult to predict. He argues that, just because we can't immediately see what the laws are, does not mean that no such laws exist. He writes "we certainly know of no circumstances under which we could say, 'we have searched enough. There are no such laws.'". (Hubert Dreyfus would argue in 1972 that human reason and problem solving was not based on formal rules, but instead relied on instincts and awareness that would never be captured in rules. More recent AI research in robotics and computational intelligence attempts to find the complex rules that govern our "informal" and unconscious skills of perception, mobility and pattern matching. See Dreyfus' critique of AI)[16]
   [*]Extra-sensory perception: In 1950, extra-sensory perception was an active area of research and Turing chooses to give ESP the benefit of the doubt, arguing that conditions could be created in which mind-reading would not affect the test

Computing Machinery and Intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Important propositions in the philosophy of AI include:

• Turing's "polite convention": If a machine acts as intelligently as a human being, then it is as intelligent as a human being.[2]
• The Dartmouth proposal: "Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."[3]
• Newell and Simon's physical symbol system hypothesis: "A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means of general intelligent action."[4]
• Searle's strong AI hypothesis: "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."[5]
• Hobbes' mechanism: "Reason is nothing but reckoning."[6]

Philosophy of artificial intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although direct brain emulation using artificial neural networks on a high-performance computing engine is a common approach,[6] there are other approaches. An alternative artificial brain implementation could be based on Holographic Neural Technology (HNeT) non linear phase coherence/decoherence principles. The analogy has been made to quantum processes through the core synaptic algorithm which has strong similarities to the QM wave equation.
EvBrain[7] is a form of evolutionary software that can evolve "brainlike" neural networks, such as the network immediately behind the retina.
Since November 2008, IBM received a $4.9 million grant from the Pentagon for research into creating intelligent computers. The Blue Brain project is being conducted with the assistance of IBM in Lausanne.[8] The project is based on the premise that it is possible to artificially link the neurons "in the computer" by placing thirty million synapses in their proper three-dimensional position.

In March 2008, Blue Brain project was progressing faster than expected: "Consciousness is just a massive amount of information being exchanged by trillions of brain cells.[9]" Some proponents of strong AI speculate that computers in connection with Blue Brain and Soul Catcher may exceed human intellectual capacity by around 2015, and that it is likely that we will be able to download the human brain at some time around 2050.[10]

There are good reasons to believe that, regardless of implementation strategy, the predictions of realising artificial brains in the near future are optimistic.

In particular brains (including the human brain) and cognition are not currently well understood, and the scale of computation required is unknown. In addition there seem to be power constraints. The brain consumes about 20W of power whereas supercomputers may use as much as 1MW or an order of 100,000 more (note: Landauer limit is 3.5x1020 op/sec/watt at room temperature).
Artificial brain thought experiment

Some critics of brain simulation [11] believe that it is simpler to create general intelligent action directly without imitating nature. Some commentators[12] have used the analogy that early attempts to construct flying machines modeled them after birds, but that modern aircraft do not look like birds. A computational argument is used in AI - What is this, where it is shown that, if we have a formal definition of general AI, the corresponding program can be found by enumerating all possible programs and then testing each of them to see whether it matches the definition. No appropriate definition currently exists.

In addition, there are ethical issues that should be resolved. The construction and sustenance of an artificial brain raises moral questions, namely regarding personhood, freedom, and death. Does a "brain in a box" constitute a person? What rights would such an entity have, under law or otherwise? Once activated, would human beings have the obligation to continue its operation? Would the shutdown of an artificial brain constitute death, sleep, unconsciousness, or some other state for which no human description exists? After all, an artificial brain is not subject to post-mortem cellular decay (and associated loss of function) as human brains are, so an artificial brain could, theoretically, resume functionality exactly as it was before it was shut down.

Artificial brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[stonehart]

I was interested to see some of the objections posted here, have already been around a long time


Computing Machinery and Intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Philosophy of artificial intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Artificial brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Man you have done your homework ... thanks for the posts


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[dannytorrance]

 

[dannytorrance]

Kurzweil still doesn’t understand the brain – Pharyngula

 

[trainedobserver]

Can you elaborate on this?

I'm looking at the extremes mind you. If at some point in the future the technology exists to essentially create artificial human beings and somehow transfer the minds of dying human beings (or living ones for that matter) into them it will create a new class. Bear in mind only the wealthiest and most privileged will be able to take advantage of these technologies in the first place so this new class will already be pre-rarefied. Whether this new group is accepted as a new class of human being will be one of the major points of contention within society. There would be the matter of legal rights for artificial humans and how they are allowed to interact with real human beings. People being what they are I see this as having the great potential to produce a major schism in society. Religion, rights, relationships, law, social interaction and every other aspect of human life and experience would have to undergo a major adjustment. Looking at history that sort of thing never goes down without a great deal of strife and upheaval.

I can see a large political gulf between those who would view these things as machines programmed to behave as though they were human and not some continuation of the living beings they were modeled after and those who feel differently and fight for equal rights for them under the law and the continuation of their rights to their artificial replacement upon death or download.

Logically it seems there would be a gradual process where this becomes more acceptable to society so that by the time a total prosthetic body/brain is commercially viable the overall mindset of society would be more likely to buy into it. Perhaps in the far future where insurance pays for your total prosthetic replacement everyone will already be programmed not to see the difference.

 

[dannytorrance]

transfer the minds

WTF are you talking about? Minds? It's a freakin organ in the body dude. It can't be transfered. Where are the memories? Where are they located? Are they what makes you human? Really? How does this Mind work? Can you break it down or do you have to rely on links like the starter of this thread does? I'm athiest and you are playing along with the deluded ramblings of a religious fanatic. That's what these transhumanist are you know. Sheesh.

 

[trainedobserver]

transfer the minds

WTF are you talking about? Minds? It's a freakin organ in the body dude. It can't be transfered. Where are the memories? Where are they located? Are they what makes you human? Really? How does this Mind work? Can you break it down or do you have to rely on links like the starter of this thread does? I'm athiest and you are playing along with the deluded ramblings of a religious fanatic. That's what these transhumanist are you know. Sheesh.

I guess I didn't make my point clear that this transfer, from my point of view at any rate, would be an illusion. That is why I say, "I can see a large political gulf between those who would view these things as machines programmed to behave as though they were human and not some continuation of the living beings they were modeled after..."

I think I've stated somewhere in this long thread that I see the mind as an emerging quality of physical brain processes that is dependent upon the physical state of the entire organism and therefore cannot be transferred like you were transplanting an organ or downloading a software program.

Yes, I'm playing along because I'm just trying to have a discussion about the different problems I see inherent in trans-humanism. If you get past the whole technological and philosophical problems (by suspending disbelief for example) you are faced with the incredible stresses such a thing would place on society itself.

I have no real emotional investment in this subject and see it largely as just an exercise in speculation so I can't see getting all wrapped around the axle about it personally.

 

[dannytorrance]

Yes, I'm playing along

But, you are encouraging a religion that is hiding behind a cover of scientific jargon with no real meaning or meat to it. For some reason when I read other post you have made you are very confrontational about woo. But, with this you play along. Illogical. Just call it what it is. This isn't high school and you don't have to be a cool kid here. The dude that started this gets a lot of praise from some people. All he really does is cut and paste. He's like the religious nuts that come over to the forum I'm a member of trying to convert people. I'm sorry but I call it like it is.

 

[trainedobserver]

But, you are encouraging a religion that is hiding behind a cover of scientific jargon with no real meaning or meat to it.

I think you are over reacting to a bunch of hypotheticals. Also, I really don't feel compelled to repeat myself endlessly or make a policy statement in every post I make in an ongoing conversation like this thread has become.

One thing people like you and I may have to face in the future Danny is a monied and motivated group of people who do believe in transhumanism. I can see where the belief that human personality and consciousness can be artificially preserved or replicated could be packaged and sold with the appropriate technological slight of hand. That's what I was talking about Danny.

One other thing to think about here is that this thread isn't about Mike or any other poster championing transhumanism, it is about the subject of transhumanism itself.

 

[dannytorrance]

He isnt' the only woo pitcher on here. You are correct about that. But, he is one of the silly ones who put a little scientfic jargon on it and others can't see that. I really don't care because their delusions will die with them. But, I see many on here that believe in aliens and ghosts and some of them make good points even if I disagree with them. But, some just post lots and lots of links and have nothing of substance to say themselves. I see where the dude named mike and another religious dude named kim went back and forth. The problem is that the so called scientific minded one was reduced to cursing and silly little cut and paste mess. The religious one just went on and on and on. Oh well, it is the paracast so I guess I'm not being logical by griping about paranormal subjects. But, the transhumanism myth is a sore spot with me. I have personal experience with someone close who was brainwashed by these type folks before she woke up. Anyway, transhumanism has been so thouroghly debunked that it's in the same catagory as Slyvia Browne and Uri Geller and the Obama birth certificate truthers as far as I'm concerned. Don't forget there are easily link after link showing the truther eveidence. that's kind of like this evidence. It's a lot of blather and no substance to it at all. Ray Kurweil and mike and all the rest will die just like the rest of humanity. I can see it now. The 2012 people on their mountain top and the transhumanist on theirs. Both scoffing at the other and both equally doomed.

 

[trainedobserver]

The reason I'm here is to have discussions about fringe topics and indulge my life long interest in UFOs and not to establish some beachhead for scientific truth in the face of irrational belief systems. If I wanted to experience the joy of doing that I'd just poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick instead.

We have to pick our battles and probably more importantly decide whether we want to have pointless unpleasant arguments or entertaining discussions here or anywhere else for that matter. Anyone who has read what I've said in the thread and other ones like it know where I stand on transhumanism. I'm just moving beyond the , "Is not!" "Is so!" argument to the "If so, you're still screwed." line of thought.

 

[Wade]

@danny

you pretty much addressed the reality of the situation on your last post so I'm not going to belabor things but to say this. While it's fine to debate with others about the reality or existence of any topic in this forum the reason why I "liked" to's post had nothing to do with my personal beliefs ( as I admitted I know next to nothing about ray kurziwell and transhumanism) but the belief in it obviously does exist as a concept and therefore had to be contended with. And contrawise there are others who like yourself thinks it's bs, which is cool. But i don't think it's a bad thing to cut and paste links and such to back up or dismiss our beliefs in some cases it's very helpful. Case in point on your earlier post you mentioned google sam harris and transhumanism. I have read a few of his things (on atheism) and find them compelling. I had no idea he spoke out on this. But in doing so I found he just wrote a book about the fallacy of free will which I also question and immediately ordered the book and I thank you very much for that. And I really mean that. Speaking for myself I have less interest in debating the existence or non-existence or something then I do being "turned on" to somebody that argues for or against those beliefs, and in that spirit I would say "link away". That is not to say your...or for that matter, anybody's opinion on this forum is of less merit than another persons just because they have a web page, or a thesis, or have written a book but there if also merit in putting out there any material that influenced your beliefs and our opinions. Again, whether we believe or don't belief in something, these are issues we have to contend with and there are people with the money, power or influence to enforce themselves on us, such as what happened to your friend. I can understand why this would be a hot topic for you and you would feel a need to stop something from snowballing, you never know where the next threat...perceived our otherwise...is coming from so by all means if you feel it's bogus speak out against it, but to bring back an old saying from high school "show your work please".
If you hadn't mentioned that sam harris thing I would have probably been reduced to googling something like " anti-transhumanism" or something like that to find some other dissenting opinions and even though I admittedly didn't try, something tells me it wouldn't have been very fruitful.