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Impacts of Indefinite Life Extension: Answers to Common Questions – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Impacts of Indefinite Life Extension: Answers to Common Questions – Video by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
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As a proponent of attaining indefinite human longevity through the progress of medical science and technology, Mr. Stolyarov is frequently asked to address key questions about the effects that indefinite life extension would have on human incentives, behaviors, and societies. Here, he offers his outlook on what some of these impacts would be.

The specific questions addressed are the following:
1. What would be the benefits of life extension?
2. What drawbacks would life extension pose?
3. Would governments ban indefinite life extension if it is achieved?

References

– “Impacts of Indefinite Life Extension: Answers to Common Questions” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
Death is Wrong – Illustrated Children’s Book by G. Stolyarov II

Impacts of Indefinite Life Extension: Answers to Common Questions – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Impacts of Indefinite Life Extension: Answers to Common Questions – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
******************************

As a proponent of attaining indefinite human longevity through the progress of medical science and technology, I am frequently asked to address key questions about the effects that indefinite life extension would have on human incentives, behaviors, and societies. Here, I offer my outlook on what some of these impacts would be.

What would be the benefits of life extension?

(1) The greatest benefit of life extension is the continued existence of the individual who remains alive. Each individual – apart from the worst criminals – has incalculable moral value and is a universe of ideas, experiences, emotions, and memories. When a person dies, that entire universe is extinguished, and, to the person who dies, everything is lost and not even a memory remains. It is as if the individual never existed at all. This is the greatest possible loss and should be averted if at all possible. The rest of us, of course, also lose the possible benefits and opportunities of interacting with that individual.

(2) People would be able to accomplish far more with longer lifespans. They could pursue multiple careers and multi-year personal projects and could reliably accumulate enough resources to sustainably enjoy life. They could develop their intellectual, physical, and relational capabilities to the fullest. Furthermore, they would exhibit longer-term orientations, since they could expect to remain to live with the consequences of decisions many decades and centuries from now. I expect that a world of longer-lived individuals would involve far less pollution, corruption, fraud, hierarchical oppression, destruction of other species, and short-term exploitation of other humans. Prudence, foresight, and pursuit of respectful, symbiotic interactions would prevail. People would tend to live in more reflective, measured, and temperate ways instead of seeking to haphazardly cram enjoyment and activity into the tiny slivers of life they have now. At the same time, they would also be more open to experimentation with new projects and ideas, since they would have more time to devote to such exploratory behaviors.

(3) Upon becoming adults, people would no longer live life in strict stages, and the normative societal expectations of “what one should do with one’s life” at a particular stage would relax considerably. If a person at age 80 is biologically indistinguishable from a person at age 20, the strict generational divides of today would dissipate, allowing a much greater diversity of human interactions. People will tend to become more tolerant and cosmopolitan, having more time to explore other ways of living and to understand those who are different from them.

(4) Technological, scientific, and economic progress would accelerate rapidly, because precious intellectual capital would not be lost to the ravages of death and disease. Longer-lived humans would be more likely to invest in projects that would materialize over the course of decades, including space travel and colonization, geo-engineering and terraforming, prevention of asteroid impacts and other natural disasters, safe nuclear disarmament and disposal of nuclear waste, and long-term preservation of the human species. The focus of most intelligent people would shift from meeting quarterly or annual business earnings goals and toward time- and resource-intensive projects that could avert existential dangers to humankind and also expand humanity’s reach, knowledge, and benevolence. The achievement of significant life extension would inspire many intelligent people to try to solve other age-old problems instead of resigning to the perception of their inevitability.

(5) Major savings to health-care systems, both private and governmental, would result if the largest expenses – which occur in the last years of life today, in the attempt to fight a losing battle against the diseases of old age – are replaced by periodic and relatively inexpensive rejuvenation and maintenance treatments to forestall the advent of biological senescence altogether. Health care could truly become about the pursuit of sustainable good health instead of a last-ditch effort against the onslaught of diseases that accompanies old age today. Furthermore, the strain on public pensions would be alleviated as advanced age would cease to be a barrier to work.

What drawbacks would life extension pose?

I do not see true drawbacks to life extension. Certainly, the world and all human societies would change significantly, and there would be some upheaval as old business models and ways of living are replaced by new ones. However, this has happened with every major technological advance in history, and in the end the benefits far outweigh any transitional costs. For the people who remain alive, the avoidance of the greatest loss of all will be well worth it, and the human capacity for adaptation and growth in the face of new circumstances is and has always been remarkable.  Furthermore, the continued presence of individuals from older generations would render this transition far more humane than any other throughout history. After all, entire generations would no longer be swept away by the ravages of time. They could persist and preserve their knowledge and experience as anchors during times of change.

Every day, approximately 150,000 people die, and approximately 100,000 of them die from causes related to senescence. If those deaths can be averted and the advent of indefinite life extension accelerated by even a few days, hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable individual universes would be preserved. This is worth paying even substantial costs in my view, but, fortunately, I think the other – economic and societal – effects that accompany life extension would be overwhelmingly positive as well.

As Death is Wrong, my illustrated children’s book on the prospects for life extension, points out, “Death is the enemy of us all, to be fought with medicine, science, and technology.” The book discusses the benefits of life extension in a language and format accessible to most children of ages 8 or older. Death is Wrong also outlines some common arguments against life extension and reasonable responses to them.  For instance, I respond to the common overpopulation argument as follows: “human population is the highest it has ever been, and most people live far longer, healthier, more prosperous lives than their ancestors did when the Earth’s population was hundreds of times smaller. Technology gives us far more food, energy, and living space than our ancestors had, and the growth in population only gives us more smart people who can create even more technologies to benefit us all. Besides, humans ought to build more settlements on land, on water, underwater, and in space. Space travel could also save the human species if the Earth were hit by a massive asteroid that could wipe out complex life. ” I respond to the boredom argument by stating that, due to human creativity and discovery, the number of possible pursuits increases far faster than the ability of any individual to pursue them. For instance, thousands more books are published every day than a single person could possibly read.

ELFC_Death_is_Wrong

Would governments ban indefinite life extension if it is achieved?

Once life-extending treatments are developed and publicly available, national governments would not be effectively able to ban them, since there will not be a single medicine or procedure that would accomplish indefinite lifespans. Rather, indefinite life extension would be achieved through a combination of treatments, beating back today’s deadliest diseases using techniques that would not be limited in their application to people who explicitly want to live longer. (For instance, people who do not harbor that particular desire but do want to get rid of cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer’s disease that may afflict them or their loved ones, would also benefit from the same treatments.) These treatments would be as embedded in the healthcare systems of the future as over-the-counter drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen are today; it would be practically impossible to ban them, and countries that did would face massive black markets or people traveling abroad to receive the same treatments.

Furthermore, genuine healthy life extension could be a great fiscal solution for many welfare states today, which are finding themselves with unsustainable burdens pertaining to old-age healthcare and pensions. The majority of health-care costs are expended to keep frail people alive a little bit longer and to fight an expensive and ultimately losing battle against the diseases of old age. The only way dramatic life extension could occur is if regular and relatively inexpensive maintenance (made inexpensive through the exponential progress of information technologies and bio/nanotechnology) prevented the decline of the body to such a stage where expensive, losing battles needed to be fought at all. Replacing the current extremely expensive end-of-life medical care with periodic rejuvenation and maintenance would be a great cost-saver and may avert a major fiscal crisis.

What concerns me is not governments banning life-extension technologies once they are developed, but rather existing political systems (and their associated politically connected established private institutions) creating barriers to the emergence of those technologies in the first place. Most of those barriers are probably inadvertent – for instance, the FDA’s approval process in the United States premised on a model of medicines and treatments that must focus on single diseases rather than the biological aging process as a whole. However, there have been influential “bioethicists”, such as Leon Kass, Daniel Callahan, and Sherwin Nuland, who have explicitly and extensively spoken and written against healthy life extension. It is important to win the contest of ideas so that public opinion does not give encouragement to the “bioconservative” bioethicists who want to use the political process to perpetuate the old cycle of life, death, and decay – where each generation must be swept away by the ravages of senescence. We must stand for life and against age-old rationalizations of our own demise.

This essay may be freely reproduced using the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike International 4.0 License, which requires that credit be given to the author, G. Stolyarov II. Find out about Mr. Stolyarov here.

Pioneers on Time’s Trail – Article by Eric Schulke

Pioneers on Time’s Trail – Article by Eric Schulke

The New Renaissance Hat
Eric Schulke
January 5, 2014
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The universe, the cities, the souls, times come and past, the big picture of it all, its fortune and fate, happenstance and chance coiling through the airwaves, weaving in and out throughout the corridors and shores and floors… We call it existence, and it’s big, really big.

History’s timeline is like a long path, and we here represent the spot on that trail that time is currently manifested as. The stars in the background are the only imprint remaining that spans history’s trail of mementos, like Dachau death marches and Choctaw trails. Even relics continue the slide as they slowly fade, mountains of their days, now chiseled away by time’s currents.

It’s all wild, legendary, mythical, incredible, and ours – each one of ours. There are worlds of complex mechanisms inside atoms, inside cells, inside creatures, inside ecosystems, on planets, in galaxies, and on and on, leaving us wondering if it really could be like an endless fractal in both directions, and desperate for a chance to know. The long, arduous labors of our prokaryotic precursors are now beginning to bud curious new transhuman fruit. Each one of us materializes on the timeline of humanity, like rickety roller coasters set up on temporary take-down stages for traveling theater, just hoping to stay on the tracks. We have conquered a planet under these circumstances. Like Alexander the Great crossing countries atop Bucephalus, we ride through the universe atop the planet Earth, trying to keep our grip on the reins while we hop from stage to stage.

Not even a percent of a percent of this territory is mapped. What does that mean for all that is outside of the speck of light we are in so far? Trillions upon trillions upon trillions of lives and scenarios are interacting and going down around us every day. You might see an ant fighting with a mutant form of a June bug and be able to contemplate their struggle, but miss the fact that this mutation will soon change the landscape of the area in profound ways. You might just dirt-bike right over the top of them without ever even contemplating that, all the while thinking about the prospects of a ranch-style house in this area and the philosophy of a progressive struggle in a capitalist climate. All this occurs while unknowns surround us. Maybe an unfathomable machine is being created on a planet whose distance we can’t conceive, illuminating answers we never dreamt possible. Maybe an amazingly complex civilization is at its height. Perhaps there are other dimensions with wonders that would blow our minds while they’re blowing our minds.

The poorest among the industrialized citizens today still have their “junky” cars, and stereos, lighters, cell phones, watches (scratch that, clocks are on cell phones now), 3 TVs with “only” 8 basic channels, “old” computers and “slow” internet connections, FDA-tested food, state-of-the-art health technology with emergency transport, malls and restaurants just down the street, the freedom to fly anywhere in the world after a few weeks’ saving, and so many other things. These are our poorest people. They are richer than the richest kings and queens of old. In the same kind of way that the poorest among us today have many times more than the richest kings and queens of centuries ago, so will the poorest of us in a post-definite lifespan world be richer than the richest Forbes List billionaire among us today.

Think of the ancient history: the richest of the kings and queens with the golden thrones, crowns, everything jewel-encrusted, exotic animals, limitless concubines, slaves, best fish tank, singing canaries, speedy buggies, salted turnips, and best open-hole bathroom that money could buy. What is that money worth to them now? Time is money, and if you don’t have any, then you’re dead broke.

Some of these ancients remain with us as mummies today. Now there’s an interesting collision of worlds. Those who could still be here, who want to be here, gave it their best shot, and are still here, now in rags begging for us to come up with a solution to bring them back to life. It was a nice try. Their notions lived on in the DNA of their progeny, working it out, better and better, building the tools and emerging today among us as cryonics, a surer form of mummification. We don’t have the cures or the salves for the mummies, but you still have a shot. You are them; you are the same people, the same blood; you are the ancients, but the future can still be theirs/yours. 1,000 BC, 2,100 AD – it’s all ancient history to the people of 45,000 AD.

We know what is going on in parts of this place we are in, but what about everywhere else? What about how it all interacts? What it all means as a whole? Do we think we can guess what is going on everywhere? We can hardly ever even guess who the culprit is in a typical television murder mystery. Can we even guess what is going on in all the buildings of one single town? Some of those points of light in the nighttime sky are entire galaxies unto themselves. Some of them are entire universes. That space between might not end.

This paper could be expanded to fill libraries with volumes on the limitless and profound, mind-blowing, unencapsulatable nature of it. No, libraries are filled with volumes on exactly that, and even those haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what it means to exist.

So here we are, pioneers on time’s trail, the precursors, surviving caravans retooling for a star trek. What does the big picture of existence have in store for us on the trail ahead?

Eric Schulke was a director at LongeCity during 2009-2013. He has also been an activist with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension and other causes for over 13 years.

Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Mr. Stolyarov’s refutation of Stephen Hawking’s statement that “philosophy is dead.”

In his 2010 book The Grand Design, cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking writes that science has displaced philosophy in the enterprise of discovering truth. While I have great respect for Hawking both in his capacities as a physicist and in his personal qualities — his advocacy of technological progress and his determination and drive to achieve in spite of his debilitating illness — the assertion that the physical sciences can wholly replace philosophy is mistaken. Not only is philosophy able to address questions outside the scope of the physical sciences, but the coherence and validity of scientific approaches itself rests on a philosophical foundation that was not always taken for granted — and still is not in many circles.

References
– “Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– “The Grand Design (book)” – Wikipedia
– “Stephen Hawking” – Wikipedia

Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Philosophy Lives – Contra Stephen Hawking – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
January 1, 2013
******************************

In his 2010 book The Grand Design, cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking writes that science has displaced philosophy in the enterprise of discovering truth. While I have great respect for Hawking both in his capacities as a physicist and in his personal qualities – his advocacy of technological progress and his determination and drive to achieve in spite of his debilitating illness – the assertion that the physical sciences can wholly replace philosophy is mistaken. Not only is philosophy able to address questions outside the scope of the physical sciences, but the coherence and validity of scientific approaches itself rests on a philosophical foundation that was not always taken for granted – and still is not in many circles.

Hawking writes, “Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time. Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

I hesitate to speculate why Hawking considers philosophy to be “dead” – but perhaps this view partly arises from frustration at the non-reality-oriented teachings of many postmodernist philosophers who still prevail in many academic and journalistic circles. Surely, those who deny the comprehensibility of reality and allege that it is entirely a societal construction do not aid in the quest for discovery and understanding of what really exists. Likewise, our knowledge cannot be enhanced by those who deny that there exist systematic and specific methods that are graspable by human reason and that can be harnessed for the purposes of discovery. It is saddening indeed that prominent philosophical figures have embraced anti-realist positions in metaphysics and anti-rational, anti-empirical positions in epistemology. Physicists, in their everyday practice, necessarily rely on external observational evidence and on logical deductions from the empirical data. In this way, and to the extent that they provide valid explanations of natural phenomena, they are surely more reality-oriented than most postmodernist philosophers. Yet philosophy does not need to be this way – and, indeed, philosophical schools of thought throughout history and in the present day are not only compatible with the scientific approach to reality, but indispensable to it.

Contrary to the pronouncements of prominent postmodernists, a venerable strain of thought – dating back to at least Aristotle and extending all the way to today’s transhumanists, Objectivists, and natural-law thinkers – holds that an objective reality exists, that it can be understood through systematic observation and reason, and that its understanding should be pursued by all of us. This is the philosophical strain responsible for the accomplishments of Classical Antiquity and the progress made during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the Information Revolution. While such philosophy is not the same as the physical sciences, the physical sciences rely on it to the extent that they embrace the approach known as the scientific method, which itself rests on philosophical premises. These premises include the existence of an external reality independent of the wishes and imagination of any observer, the existence of a definite identity of any given entity at any given time, the reliance on identical conditions producing identical outcomes, the principles of causation and non-contradiction, and the ability of human beings to systematically alter outcomes in the physical world by understanding its workings and modifying physical systems accordingly. This latter principle – that, in Francis Bacon’s words, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” – was the starting point for the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century, which inaugurated subsequent massive advances in technology, standards of living, and human understanding of the universe.  Even those scientists who do not acknowledge or explicitly reject the importance of philosophy nonetheless implicitly rely on these premises in the very conduct of their scientific work – to the extent that such work accurately describes reality. These premises are not the only ones possible – but they are the only ones that are fully right. Alternatives – including reliance on alleged supernatural revelation, wishful thinking, and unconditional deference to authority – have been tried time and again, only to result in stagnation and mental traps that prevented substantive improvements to the human condition.

But there is more. Not only are the physical sciences without a foundation if philosophy is to be ignored, but the very reason for pursuing them remains unaddressed without the branch of philosophy that focuses on what we ought to do: ethics. Contrary to those who would posit an insurmountable “is-ought” gap, ethics can indeed be derived from the facts of reality, but not solely by the tools of physics, chemistry, biology, or any others of the “hard” physical sciences. An additional element is required: the fact that we ourselves exist as rational, conscious beings, who are capable of introspection and of analysis of external data. From the physical sciences we can derive ways to sustain and improve our material well-being – sometimes our very survival. But only ethics can tell us that we ought to pursue such survival – a conclusion we reach through introspection and logical reasoning. No experiment, no test is needed to tell us that we ought to keep living. This conclusion arises as antecedent to a consistent pursuit of any action at all; to achieve any goal, we must be alive. To pursue death, the opposite of life, contradicts the very notion of acting, which has life as a prerequisite.  Once we have accepted that premise, an entire system of logical deductions follows with regard to how we ought to approach the external world – the pursuit of knowledge, interactions with others, improvement of living conditions, protection against danger. The physical sciences can provide many of the empirical data and regularities needed to assess alternative ways of living and to develop optimal solutions to human challenges. But ethics is needed to keep the goals of scientific study in mind. The goals should ultimately relate to ways to enhance human well-being. If the pursuit of human well-being – consistent with the imperative of each individual to continue living – is abandoned, then the physical sciences alone cannot provide adequate guidance. Indeed, they can be utilized to produce horrors – as the development of nuclear weapons in the 20th century exemplified. Geopolitical considerations of coercive power and nationalism were permitted to overshadow humanistic considerations of life and peace, and hundreds of thousands of innocents perished due to a massive government-sponsored science project, while the fate of human civilization hung in the balance for over four decades.

The questions cited by Hawking are indeed philosophical questions, at least in part. Aspects of these questions, while they are broadly reliant on the existence of an objective reality, do not require specific experiments to answer. Rather, like many of the everyday questions of our existence, they rely only on the ubiquitous inputs of our day-to-day experience, generalized within our minds and formulated as starting premises for a logical deductive process. The question “How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? has different answers based on the realm of focus and endeavor. Are we looking to understand the function of a mechanism, or the origin of a star? Different tools are required for each, but systematic experimentation and observation would be required in each case. This is an opening for the physical sciences and the scientific method. There are, however, ubiquitous observations about our everyday world that can be used as inputs into our decision-making – a process we engage in regularly as we navigate a room, eat a meal, engage in conversation or deliberation, or transport any object whatsoever. Simply as a byproduct of routine living, these observations provide us with ample data for a series of logical deductions and inferences which do not strictly belong to any scientific branch, even though specific parts of our world could be better understood from closer scientific observation.

The questionHow does the universe behave?actually arises in part from a philosophical presupposition that “the universe” is a single entity with any sort of coordinated behavior whatsoever. An alternative view – which I hold – is that the word “universe” is simply convenient mental shorthand for describing the totality of every single entity that exists, in lieu of actually enumerating them all. Thus, while each entity has its own definite nature, “the universe” may not have a single nature or behavior. Perhaps a more accurate framing of that question would be, “What attributes or behaviors are common to all entities that exist?” To answer that question, a combination of ubiquitous observation and scientific experimentation is required. Ubiquitous observation tells us that all entities are material, but only scientific experimentation can tell us what the “building blocks” of matter are. Philosophy alone cannot recommend any model of the atom or of subatomic particles, among multiple competing non-contradictory models. Philosophy can, however, rightly serve to check the logical coherence of any particular model and to reject erroneous interpretations of data which produce internally contradictory answers. Such rejection does not mean that the data are inaccurate, or even that a particular scientific theory cannot predict the behavior of entities – but rather that any verbal understanding of the accurate data and predictive models should also be consistent with logic, causation, and everyday human experience. At the very least, if a coherent verbal understanding is beyond our best efforts at present, philosophy should be vigilant against the promulgation of incoherent verbal understandings. It is better to leave certain scientific models as systems of mathematical equations, uncommented on, than to posit evidently false interpretations that undermine laypeople’s view of the validity of our very existence and reasoning.

After all – to return to the ethical purpose of science – one major goal of scientific inquiry is to understand and explain the world we live in and experience on a daily basis. If any scientific model is said to result in the conclusion that our world does not ‘really’ exist or that our entire experience is illusory (rather than just occasional quirks in our biology, such as those which produce optical illusions, misleading us, in an avoidable manner, under specific unusual circumstances), then it is the philosophical articulation of that model that is flawed. The model itself may be retained in another form – such as mathematical notation – that can be used to predict and study phenomena which continue to defy verbal understanding, with the hope that someday a satisfactory verbal understanding will be attained. Without this philosophic vigilance, scientific breakthroughs may be abused by charlatans for the purpose of misleading people into ruining their lives. As a prominent example of this, multiple strains of mysticism have arisen out of bad philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics – for instance, the belief, articulated in such pseudo-self-help books as The Secret, that people can mold reality with their thoughts alone and that, instead of working hard and thinking rationally, they can become immensely wealthy and cure themselves of cancer just by wanting it enough. Without a rigorous philosophical defense of reason and objective reality, either by scientists themselves or by their philosopher allies, this mystical nonsense will render scientific enterprises increasingly misunderstood by and isolated from large segments of the public, who will become increasingly superstitious, anti-intellectual, and reliant on wishful thinking.

The question “What is the nature of reality?” is a partly philosophical and partly scientific one. The philosophical dimension – metaphysics – is needed to posit that an objective, understandable reality exists at all. The scientific dimension comes into play in comprehending specific real entities, from stars to biological organisms – relying on the axioms and derivations of metaphysics for the experimental study of such entities to even make sense or promise to produce reliable results. Philosophy cannot tell you what the biological structure of a given organism is like, but it can tell you that there is one, and that praying or wishing really hard to understand it will not reveal its identity to you. Philosophy can also tell you that, in the absence of external conditions that would dramatically affect that biological structure, it will not magically change into a dramatically different structure.

The questions “Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator?” are scientific only to a point. When exploring the origin of a particular planet or star – or of life on Earth – they are perfectly amenable to experimentation and to extrapolation from historical evidence. Hence, the birth of the solar system, abiogenesis, and biological evolution are all appropriate subjects of study for the hard sciences. Moreover, scientific study can address the question of whether a particular object needed to have a creator and can, for instance, conclude that a mechanical watch needed to have a watchmaker, but no analogous maker needed to exist to bring about the structure of a complex biological organism. However, if the question arises as to whether existence itself had an origin or needed a creator, this is a matter for philosophy. Indeed, rational philosophy can point out the contradiction in the view that existence itself could ever not have existed, or that a creator outside of existence (and, by definition, non-existent at that time) could have brought existence into being.

Interestingly enough, Hawking comes to a similar conclusion – that cosmological history can be understood by a model that not include a sentient creator. I am glad that Hawking holds this view, but this specific conclusion does not require theoretical or experimental physics to validate; it simply requires a coherent understanding of terms such as “existence”, “universe”, and “creator”. Causation and non-contradiction both preclude the possibility of any ex nihilo creation. As for the question of whether there exist beings capable of vast cosmic manipulations and even the design of life forms – that is an empirical matter. Perhaps someday such beings will be discovered; perhaps someday humans will themselves become such beings through mastery of science and technology. The first steps have already been taken – for instance, with Craig Venter’s design of a synthetic living bacterium. Ethics suggests to me that this mastery of life is a worthwhile goal and that its proponents – transhumanists – should work to persuade those philosophers and laypeople who disagree.

More constructive dialogue between rational scientists and rational philosophers is in order, for the benefit of both disciplines. Philosophy can serve as a check on erroneous verbal interpretations of scientific discoveries, as well as an ethical guide for the beneficial application of those discoveries. Science can serve to provide observations and regularities which assist in the achievement of philosophically motivated goals. Furthermore, science can serve to disconfirm erroneous philosophical positions, in cases where philosophy ventures too far into specific empirical predictions which experimentation and targeted observation might falsify. To advance such fruitful interactions, it is certainly not productive to proclaim that one discipline or another is “dead”. I will be the first to admit that contemporary philosophy, especially of the kind that enjoys high academic prestige, is badly in need of reform. But such reform is only possible after widespread acknowledgment that philosophy does have a legitimate and significant role, and that it can do a much better job in fulfilling it.

Non-Apocalypse, Existential Risk, and Why Humanity Will Prevail – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Non-Apocalypse, Existential Risk, and Why Humanity Will Prevail – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Doomsday predictions are not only silly but bring about harmful ways of approaching life and the world. Mr. Stolyarov expresses his view that there will never be an end of the world, an end of humanity, or an end of civilization. While some genuine existential risks do exist, most of them are not man-made, and even the man-made risks are largely in the past.

References

– “Transhumanism and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics” – Video by G. Stolyarov II

What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology – Article by James B. Wright

What Happened Before the Big Bang? The New Philosophy of Cosmology – Article by James B. Wright

The New Renaissance Hat
James B. Wright
June 3, 2012
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In the telephone conversation between Ross Anderson, of Atlantic, and Dr. Tim Maudlin, of NYU, entitled “What Happened before the Big Bang?” I was intrigued by his statement “Physicists for almost a hundred years have been dissuaded from trying to think about fundamental questions.”, and “The asking of fundamental physical questions is just not part of the training of a physicist anymore.”  The result of this training is the furious reaction you get if you suggest to a physicist that the Big Bang is nonsense, as is the Expanding Universe.  But could not the Cosmological Redshift be caused by something other than a Doppler frequency shift?  It could, indeed, but because of the Physicists having accepted space as a pure vacuum they couldn’t find the answer.

And the answer is perfectly logical and not at all complicated.  The scientists have calculated that this space has the characteristics of permeability (µ) and permittivity (ɛ), and that these characteristics determine the speed of light (C), which in turn, determines the wavelengths (λ) of light.  So we set up a test range on the moon (which we suppose to be in a vacuum) with a light transmitter and a light receiver a mile away.  There will be N waves of light at frequency (F) traveling through that one mile of space.  Now, if we imagine that the space around the moon actually contains some sort of medium, and that that medium is becoming slowly more dense causing its µ and ɛ to increase, then C will steadily decrease, λ will gradually shorten, and N will be gradually increase.  Consequently, fewer waves will exit the one mile path than enter it, each second, and the light seen at the receiver will be lower in frequency than the light being transmitted, which is fixed, of course.  Move the receiver two miles away and a similar frequency shift will occur over the second mile, adding in a compound fashion to the first one-mile frequency shift.

So we not only have a redshift but we have a compound redshift, precisely as we observe in the Cosmological Redshift.  Our problem is now to determine what this medium can be, and how it could continually increase in density without becoming bogging down after a while?  But it certainly does change the appearance of our Universe, with the Big Bang and the Expanding Universe being discarded.  Before using the evidence at hand to answer this question it may be helpful to use a philosophy available to us to see what we may be able to find that could be useful.

In her philosophy of objective reality Ayn Rand starts it all off with the axiomatic concepts of Existence, Consciousness, and Identity.  We must exist having a consciousness with which we may identify that which exists.  Miss Rand builds her whole philosophy using these concepts, insisting on causal chains.  I use only Existence (openly) to establish a starting point in the science of Cosmology, here again insisting on causal chains.

“Existence Exists.”, as a self-evident axiom.  Our Earth, our Solar system, the Universe, all exist and have existed for the tens of billions of years that our telescopes reveal.  And, if we rule out any such thing as Creation or Annihilation, Existence must have existed for an eternity past, and will exist for a future eternity.  Similarly, it must extend outward from here to the infinite reaches of space.  It is infinite and eternal, which, of course, rules out any sort of a beginning or an end.  And, now we may re-examine the evidence without the need to make it fit into an Expanding Universe.  We will observe that the Galactic Clusters which fill this Universe in some tens of millions, can be expected to extend outward into an infinite ocean of such clusters.  Nothing new or unusual should be anticipated “out there” that’s not already found within our Universe.  And, our Observable Universe should be seen as a very adequate sample of Existence.

One more conclusion we should draw from our Universe, with its hundreds of billions of stars in more hundreds of billions of galaxies all apparently being burned up.  Unless there were mechanisms at work taking the ashes of these old galaxies and renewing them into new galaxies, we wouldn’t be here asking these questions.  We’d be down some “black hole” somewhere.  And the Galactic Clusters are those mechanisms, scattered as they are throughout the Universe and into the endless ocean of Existence.

Gravity is the universal force, a Prime Mover at work everywhere.  It builds the galactic clusters, starting with two galaxies and growing to perhaps three or four thousand galaxies, drawing in not only the galaxies themselves, but also the gaseous masses within the galaxies and the dark masses within the clusters’ outer boundaries, all moving towards the center-of-gravity for each cluster.  And as these masses are being drawn in from the surface of the cluster towards its center they undergo a continual compression until, in time, the central volume develops into a massive spiral galaxy called a Seyfert.

These masses, the ashes of the thousands of galaxies all being moved in toward the central Seyfert galaxy, causing it to eventually reach the point where its central pressure and temperature becomes critical and a nuclear explosion occurs, and after another 7.5 billion years of growth another explosion occurs, etc., etc.  These explosions expels two quasars in opposite directions, usually at escape velocity, quasars that evolve into normal galaxies (per H. Arp), only to become fuel for the galactic clusters.  This transformation must be 100% efficient, with the Universe (and Existence) appearing essentially as we see it today, for all of eternity.

Pausing at this point, it is helpful to envision these galaxy clusters as they are located in the Universe.  If the Universe has 200 billion galaxies and a galactic cluster has 4 thousand galaxies we may roughly estimate that there are about 50 million such clusters spread homogenously throughout the Universe, each doing its job of galactic renovation in its own locale.  And, of course, this mechanism will be at work throughout all of Existence.  It may also be concluded that there would be about 50 million Seyfert galaxies, one for each mature cluster.

A Gravitational Lens is the result of the formation of a Galactic Cluster.  Ideally, a Galactic Cluster is an sphere with some 4 thousand galaxies and their masses of gas and energy, all being drawn inward toward a center-of-gravity.  At the surface of the sphere one may envision wisps of the various masses, being drawn inward quite slowly.  As these masses move inward their density increases gradually until the cluster reaches the critical mass at the center of its Seyfert.  If we look back at the whole of the sphere we find that we have just described a Luneburg Lens, one that is being perpetually rebuilt as the masses are continually moving inward to the nucleus of the Seyfert.  Then as light moves into the lens from (say) a Quasar far beyond the cluster it is refracted inward to a focal point (the Observer) on the other side of the Lens.  While gravity forms the lens it is the lens that focuses (bends) the light.

But note that the light path through the mass is affected by the constant increase in the density of that mass and undergoes a redshift.  Note also that the mass in the path of the light is constantly being renewed with fresh mass coming in from outside that space as it flows towards the center of the cluster so that there isn’t the problem discussed earlier, of a build up mass.  The Cosmological Redshift remains essentially unaffected.

Attention must be paid to the energy mass that leaves the stars along with the stellar winds.  For the Sun it is reported as being 96% winds and 4% energy.  The discussion now takes up with the planets that surround our Sun that are awash in these Winds and Energy.

In high school we were told that “a moving charge generates a magnet field”, and proceeded to build a solenoid and, by passing a DC electric current (a flow of negative charge) through the turns of wire on the solenoid, made an electromagnet having the usual North and South Poles.  One ampere flowing through each of (say) one thousand turns of wire gave us 1000 ampere-turns.  We also found that this same effect could be envisioned as 1000 amperes flowing through one turn of wire, say using a sheet of copper with a cross section area equivalent to the cross-sectional area of the 1000 turns of wire.  Electrons were the “moving charge”.

Now, suppose we were to imagine the Earth as a single turn solenoid, one that was electrically charged with that charge moving (effective) as a flow around the Earth by its rotation.  We would have our Earth generating an electromagnet!  And, by using the solenoid formula we would be able to determine the size of the charge necessary to give that electromagnet it’s observed 0.4 gauss field strength and, furthermore, by noting where the North and South poles were located we could determine whether that charge was positive or negative.

It turns out that all planets have charges that are a function of their surface area and that, except for the Earth, those charges are all positive.  Knowing that our geologists had determined long ago that the Earth had undergone several pole reversals over time it seemed that the ionosphere was acting as a huge capacitor enveloping the Earth and that it intercepted the positive charge, leaving the Earth’s surface negative.  As the Earth itself rotated, not its ionosphere, the magnetic Poles would be determined by this negative charge and would be opposite that of the other planets.  Periodically a massive Solar Storm would short out this ionospheric capacitor allowing the positive charge to drop to the Earths surface and allowing its magnetic North/South poles to agree with that of the other planets.  [Note that only five of the planets (Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus) had characteristics that allowed their charges to be calculated.]

The fact that all of these planets had positive charges suggested that the Solar Wind must be the source of these charges and must itself be positive.  This, in turn, would suggest that the energy mass leaving the Sun was carrying away the negative charged, in some way, and was perhaps intrinsically negative?

So we now may have a negative energy mass leaving the stars as they burn, and a candidate for the “dark matter” of space.  It also gives us a tangible medium that allows the transmission of electro-magnetic waves (TV, Etc.), and one for a magnetic field as an electro-magnetic warp in the dark matter, as well as the dark mass we “feel” in the galactic rates of rotations.  We don’t know what this dark mass is, any more than we know what gravity is, but we do know some of what these forces do.

We now need the mathematicians and the scientists to try afresh using this new Universe, existing within Existence.  If only they would ask the questions that Tim Maudlin claims they are avoiding.

James Burton Wright writes on physics and philosophy on his blog, Cosmological Musings, utilizing a reason-based, Objectivist approach.