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Our Media-Driven Epistemological Breakdown – Article by Bill Frezza

Our Media-Driven Epistemological Breakdown – Article by Bill Frezza

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The New Renaissance HatBill Frezza
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How do we know what we know? Philosophers have pondered this question from time immemorial. Julian Jaynes, in his classic book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, speculates that before the development of modern human consciousness, people believed they were informed by voices in their heads. Today, an alarming number of people are responding to voices on the Internet in similarly uncritical fashion.

As Jesuit scholar John Culkin pointed out in his seminal 1967 Saturday Review article, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan,” “We shape our tools and, thereafter, they shape us.” Examining history through this lens, one can identify seven great epochs in mankind’s intellectual and social evolution.  Each is characterized by the way a new technology changed not only how we think about the world, but our actual thought processes. These are:

1) Spoken language, which first led to the primacy of mythology;

2) Written language, which bequeathed to us holy books and the world’s great religions;

3) The printing press, which spread literacy to the elites who went on to birth the nation state, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the U.S. Constitution;

4) The telegraph, which transformed pamphlets and broadsheets into modern newspapers, whose agenda-setting influence goaded America to “Remember the Maine” and become an imperialist power;

5) Radio, which placed broadcast propaganda at the service of central planners, progressives, and tyrants;

6) Television, which propelled the rising tide of the counterculture, environmentalism, and globalism; and

7) The Internet, a nascent global memory machine that puts the Library of Alexandria to shame, yet fits in everyone’s pocket.

Reason’s primacy is a fragile thing.

At each transition, the older environment and way of thinking does not disappear. Rather, it adopts an extreme defensive crouch as it attempts to retain power over men’s minds. It is the transition from the Age of Television to the Age of the Internet that concerns us here, as it serves up an often-toxic brew of advocacy and click-bait journalism competing to feed the masses an avalanche of unverifiable information, often immune to factual or logical refutation.

Rational epistemology holds that reason is the chief test and source of knowledge, and that each of us is not just capable of practicing it, but is responsible for doing so. Reason flowered when the Enlightenment overturned the ancient wisdom of holy books, undermining the authority of clerics and the divine right of kings. Wherever reason is widely practiced and healthy skepticism is socially accepted, error becomes self-correcting (rather than self-amplifying, as under a system based on superstition), as new propositions are tested, while old propositions get reexamined as new facts come to light.

So now that the voices have returned to our heads, we are inadequately prepared to defend against them.

Yet, reason’s primacy is a fragile thing. As increasingly potent electronic media confer influence on new voices, formerly-dominant media and governing elites fight a rearguard action to regain their status as ultimate arbiters of knowledge and what matters. Goebbels proved that a lie repeated loudly and frequently in a culture that punished skepticism became accepted as truth. We all know how that turned out.

Revulsion at the carnage of the Second World War crested with the counterculture revolution driven by the first TV generation. By the time the dust settled, its thought leaders had grabbed control of the academy, reshaping it along postmodern lines that included an assault on language that critics dubbed political correctness. This was intentionally designed to constrain what people can think by restraining what they can say. The intention may have been to avert a repeat of the horrors of the 20th century, but the result was to strip much of the educated populace of the mental tools needed to ferret out error.

So now that the voices have returned to our heads, we are inadequately prepared to defend against them. Digitally streamed into every nook and cranny of our ubiquitously connected lives, these voices are filtered by our own self-reinforcing preferences and prejudices, becoming our own in the process. The result is an ongoing series of meme-driven culture wars where the shouting only gets louder on all sides.

So we come back to the question: How do we know what we know?

What causes crime? Is autism linked to vaccines? Should GMOs be banned? Is global warming “settled science”? These are more than factual questions. Responses to them signal identification with an array of ever more finely differentiated identity groups set at each other’s throats. For those who wish to divide and rule, that’s the whole point.

In a cruel irony, this global outbreak of media-induced public schizophrenia has even empowered jihadists bent on taking the world back to the 10th century using the idea-spreading tools of the Internet to challenge a Western Civilization rapidly losing its mojo.

So we come back to the question: How do we know what we know? At the present time, we don’t. And therein lies the problem.

Bill Frezza

Bill Frezza is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the host of RealClear Radio Hour.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

How Networks Topple Scientific Dogmas – Article by Max Borders

How Networks Topple Scientific Dogmas – Article by Max Borders

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The New Renaissance HatMax Borders
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The Peer-to-Peer Republic of Science

Science is undergoing a wrenching evolutionary change.

In fact, most of what we consider to be carried out in the name of science is dubious at best, flat wrong at worst. It appears we’re putting too much faith in science — particularly the kind of science that relies on reproducibility.

In a University of Virginia meta-study, half of 100 psychology study results could not be reproduced.

Experts making social science prognostications turned out to be mostly wrong, according to political science writer Philip Tetlock’s decades-long review of expert forecasts.

But there is perhaps no more egregious example of bad expert advice than in the area of health and nutrition. As I wrote last year for Voice & Exit:

For most of our lives, we’ve been taught some variation on the food pyramid. The advice? Eat mostly breads and cereals, then fruits and vegetables, and very little fat and protein. Do so and you’ll be thinner and healthier. Animal fat and butter were considered unhealthy. Certain carbohydrate-rich foods were good for you as long as they were whole grain. Most of us anchored our understanding about food to that idea.

“Measures used to lower the plasma lipids in patients with hyperlipidemia will lead to reductions in new events of coronary heart disease,” said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1971. (“How Networks Bring Down Experts (The Paleo Example),” March 12, 2015)

The so-called “lipid theory” had the support of the US surgeon general. Doctors everywhere fell in line behind the advice. Saturated fats like butter and bacon became public enemy number one. People flocked to the supermarket to buy up “heart healthy” margarines. And yet, Americans were getting fatter.

But early in the 21st century something interesting happened: people began to go against the grain (no pun) and they started talking about their small experiments eating saturated fat. By 2010, the lipid hypothesis — not to mention the USDA food pyramid — was dead. Forty years of nutrition orthodoxy had been upended. Now the experts are joining the chorus from the rear.

The Problem Goes Deeper

But the problem doesn’t just affect the soft sciences, according to science writer Ron Bailey:

The Stanford statistician John Ioannidis sounded the alarm about our science crisis 10 years ago. “Most published research findings are false,” Ioannidis boldly declared in a seminal 2005 PLOS Medicine article. What’s worse, he found that in most fields of research, including biomedicine, genetics, and epidemiology, the research community has been terrible at weeding out the shoddy work largely due to perfunctory peer review and a paucity of attempts at experimental replication.

Richard Horton of the Lancet writes, “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” And according Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman, writing in Vox,

Another review found that researchers at Amgen were unable to reproduce 89 percent of landmark cancer research findings for potential drug targets. (The problem even inspired a satirical publication called the Journal of Irreproducible Results.)

Contrast the progress of science in these areas with that of applied sciences such as computer science and engineering, where more market feedback mechanisms are in place. It’s the difference between Moore’s Law and Murphy’s Law.

So what’s happening?

Science’s Evolution

Three major catalysts are responsible for the current upheaval in the sciences. First, a few intrepid experts have started looking around to see whether studies in their respective fields are holding up. Second, competition among scientists to grab headlines is becoming more intense. Third, informal networks of checkers — “amateurs” — have started questioning expert opinion and talking to each other. And the real action is in this third catalyst, creating as it does a kind of evolutionary fitness landscape for scientific claims.

In other words, for the first time, the cost of checking science is going down as the price of being wrong is going up.

Now, let’s be clear. Experts don’t like having their expertise checked and rechecked, because their dogmas get called into question. When dogmas are challenged, fame, funding, and cushy jobs are at stake. Most will fight tooth and nail to stay on the gravy train, which can translate into coming under the sway of certain biases. It could mean they’re more likely to cherry-pick their data, exaggerate their results, or ignore counterexamples. Far more rarely, it can mean they’re motivated to engage in outright fraud.

Method and Madness

Not all of the fault for scientific error lies with scientists, per se. Some of it lies with methodologies and assumptions most of us have taken for granted for years. Social and research scientists have far too much faith in data aggregation, a process that can drop the important circumstances of time and place. Many researchers make inappropriate inferences and predictions based on a narrow band of observed data points that are plucked from wider phenomena in a complex system. And, of course, scientists are notoriously good at getting statistics to paint a picture that looks like their pet theories.

Some sciences even have their own holy scriptures, like psychology’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. These guidelines, when married with government funding, lobbyist influence, or insurance payouts, can protect incomes but corrupt practice.

But perhaps the most significant methodological problem with science is overreliance on the peer-review process. Peer review can perpetuate groupthink, the cartelization of knowledge, and the compounding of biases.

The Problem with Expert Opinion

The problem with expert opinion is that it is often cloistered and restrictive. When science starts to seem like a walled system built around a small group of elites (many of whom are only sharing ideas with each other) — hubris can take hold. No amount of training or smarts can keep up with an expansive network of people who have a bigger stake in finding the truth than in shoring up the walls of a guild or cartel.

It’s true that to some degree, we have to rely on experts and scientists. It’s a perfectly natural part of specialization and division of labor that some people will know more about some things than you, and that you are likely to need their help at some point. (I try to stay away from accounting, and I am probably not very good at brain surgery, either.) But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t question authority, even when the authority knows more about their field than we do.

The Power of Networks

But when you get an army of networked people — sometimes amateurs — thinking, talking, tinkering, and toying with ideas — you can hasten a proverbial paradigm shift. And this is exactly what we are seeing.

It’s becoming harder for experts to count on the vagaries and denseness of their disciplines to keep their power. But it’s in cross-disciplinary pollination of the network that so many different good ideas can sprout and be tested.

The best thing that can happen to science is that it opens itself up to everyone, even people who are not credentialed experts. Then, let the checkers start to talk to each other. Leaders, influencers, and force-multipliers will emerge. You might think of them as communications hubs or bigger nodes in a network. Some will be cranks and hacks. But the best will emerge, and the cranks will be worked out of the system in time.

The network might include a million amateurs willing to give a pair of eyes or a different perspective. Most in this army of experimenters get results and share their experiences with others in the network. What follows is a wisdom-of-crowds phenomenon. Millions of people not only share results, but challenge the orthodoxy.

How Networks Contribute to the Republic of Science

In his legendary 1962 essay, “The Republic of Science,” scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi wrote the following passage. It beautifully illustrates the problems of science and of society, and it explains how they will be solved in the peer-to-peer age:

Imagine that we are given the pieces of a very large jigsaw puzzle, and suppose that for some reason it is important that our giant puzzle be put together in the shortest possible time. We would naturally try to speed this up by engaging a number of helpers; the question is in what manner these could be best employed.

Polanyi says you could progress through multiple parallel-but-individual processes. But the way to cooperate more effectively

is to let them work on putting the puzzle together in sight of the others so that every time a piece of it is fitted in by one helper, all the others will immediately watch out for the next step that becomes possible in consequence. Under this system, each helper will act on his own initiative, by responding to the latest achievements of the others, and the completion of their joint task will be greatly accelerated. We have here in a nutshell the way in which a series of independent initiatives are organized to a joint achievement by mutually adjusting themselves at every successive stage to the situation created by all the others who are acting likewise.

Just imagine if Polanyi had lived to see the Internet.

This is the Republic of Science. This is how smart people with different interests and skill sets can help put together life’s great puzzles.

In the Republic of Science, there is certainly room for experts. But they are hubs among nodes. And in this network, leadership is earned not by sitting atop an institutional hierarchy with the plumage of a postdoc, but by contributing, experimenting, communicating, and learning with the rest of a larger hive mind. This is science in the peer-to-peer age.

Max Borders is Director of Idea Accounts and Creative Development for Emergent Order. He was previously the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also cofounder of the event experience Voice & Exit.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

“A Morte é um Erro” – Portuguese Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Eric Pedro Alvaro – Post by G. Stolyarov II

“A Morte é um Erro” – Portuguese Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Eric Pedro Alvaro – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
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A free PDF version of A Morte é um Erro – the Portuguese translation of Death is Wrong – is now available for download from The Rational Argumentator. You can obtain your copy here and may spread it to Portuguese-speaking audiences as widely as you wish.

A Morte é um Erro was generously translated into Portuguese by Eric Pedro Alvaro.

Death_is_Wrong_Portuguese_CoverPaperback copies of A Morte é um Erro can be purchased in the following venues:

Createspace

Amazon

Kindle copies of A Morte é um Erro can be purchased on Amazon for $0.99.

***

Se você já se perguntou, “Por que as pessoas morrem?” então este livro é para você. A resposta é que não, a morte não é necessária, inevitável ou boa. Na verdade, a morte é um erro. A morte é uma inimiga de todos nós, que deve ser combatida com ciência, medicina e tecnologia. Este livro lhe apresenta os maiores, mais desafiantes e mais revolucionários movimentos para prolongar radicalmente o tempo de vida humano, para que você então simplesmente não precise morrer.

Você aprenderá sobre algumas plantas e animais com um tempo de vida incrivelmente longo, sobre recentes descobertas científicas em relação a ampliação do tempo de vida em humanos, e sobre simples e poderosos argumentos que podem refutar as comuns desculpas para a morte. Se você alguma vez já pensou que a morte é injusta e que ela deve ser derrotada, você não está sozinho. Leia este livro, e se torne parte desta importante busca na história da humanidade.

Este livro foi escrito pelo filósofo e futurólogo Gennady Stolyarov II e ilustrado pela artista Wendy Stolyarov. Com o intuito de lhe mostrar que, não importa quem é você e o que você pode fazer, sempre há uma forma de ajudar humanidade em sua batalha contra morte.

No, “Big Data” Can’t Predict the Future – Article by Per Bylund

No, “Big Data” Can’t Predict the Future – Article by Per Bylund

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The New Renaissance HatPer Bylund
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With Google’s dominance in the online search engine market we entered the Age of Free. Indeed, services offered online are nowadays expected to be offered at no cost. Which, of course, does not mean that there is no cost to it, only that the consumer doesn’t pay it. Early attempts financed the services with ads, but we soon saw a move toward making the consumer the product. Today, free and unfree services alike compete for “users” and then make money off the data they collect.

Data has always been used, but what’s new for our time is the very low (or even zero) marginal cost for collecting and analyzing huge amounts of data. The concept of “Big Data” is taking over and is predicted to be “the future” of business.

There’s a problem here, and it is the over-reliance on the Law of Large Numbers in social forecasting. Statistical probabilities for events may mathematically converge to the mean, but is it applicable in the real world? The answer is most definitely yes in the natural sciences. Repeated controlled experiments will weed out erroneous explanations or causes to phenomena, at least assuming we’re good enough at separating and controlling those causes.

What about the social sciences? In this age of scientism, as Hayek called it, we’re told “Big Data” will completely transform production, logistics, and sales. The reason for this is that vendors can better target customers and even foresee what they might want next. Amazon.com does this on their web site in crude form, where they make suggestions based on your purchase history and what others with similar purchase histories have searched for. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

There is some regularity to our interests and behavior. All of us are, after all, human beings — and we’re formed in certain cultures. So one American with interests x, y, and z may have other interests similar to another American who also has an interest in x, y, and z.

Human Behavior Is Unpredictable
But similarity is not the same thing as prediction. Amazon.com’s suggestions or the highly annoying ads following you around web sites are useful methods for sellers because they can somewhat accurately identify what not to offer. Exclusion of very low-probability interests increases the probability for suggesting something that the person behind the eyeballs focusing on the computer screen may be interested in.

To use as prediction, however, exclusion of almost-zero probability events is far from sufficient. Indeed, prediction requires that we are able to accurately exclude all but one or a couple highly probable outcomes. And we have to be able to rely on that these predictions turn out to be true. Otherwise we’re just playing games, and so we’re making guesses. Sure, they’re educated guesses (because we’ve excluded the impossible and almost-impossible), but they’re still games and guesses.

Where Big Data Fails
Speaking of guesses, Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which powers the Windows digital assistant Cortana among other things, has produced a prediction engine with the purpose of predicting sports and other results. They rely on very advanced algorithms and huge amounts of collected data.

Amazingly, they did very well initially and predicted the outcomes of the World Cup perfectly. So maybe we can use Big Data to get a glimpse of the future?

No, not so. The Bing teams are learning a lesson only Austrians and, more specifically, Misesian praxeologists, seem to be alone in grasping: that there are no constants in human action, and therefore that predictions of social phenomena are impossible. Pattern predictions, as Hayek called them, may not be impossible, but predictions of exact magnitudes are. For instance, we can rely on economic law (such as “demand curves slope downward”) to estimate an outcome such as “the price will be lower than it otherwise would have been,” but we can’t say exactly what that price will be.

When it comes to sports, reality shows and other competitions between individuals or teams, the story is exactly the same. The team with a better track record doesn’t always win. Why? They have objectively performed better than the other team, perhaps exclusively so, but this doesn’t say anything about the future. We’re not here referring to the philosophical doubt as in “will the sun shine tomorrow?” (maybe something changes completely the sun’s ability to shine during the night).

The Social Sciences Are Different
In the social sciences we’re dealing with complex phenomena. Action and, especially, its outcome is the result of a complex system of social interaction, psychology, and much more. Are the players in both teams as motivated and focused as they were before? Did anything in their personal lives affect their mindsets or psyches? How do the players within their teams and players in other teams react on each other before and during the game? A team with a poor track record can upset a team with an objectively better track record; this happens all the time. Sometimes for the sole reason that the better team underestimates the worse team, or because the underdog feels no pressure to perform and therefore plays less defensively.

Bing’s prediction engine struggles with this, just as we would predict. As Windows Central reported recently, the prediction engine had its “worst week yet” picking only four of fourteen winners in the NFL. Overall, its track record was approximately two-thirds right and one-third wrong (95–53). It’s definitely better than tossing a coin, but pretty far from actually predicting the results.

In other words, if you’re placing bets you may want to use the Bing prediction engine. That is, unless you have the type of tacit, implicit understanding of what’s going on that the engine is missing. Maybe you can beat it, or maybe not. In either case, you cannot count on coming out a victor each and every time.

The reason for this is that the outcome simply cannot be predicted perfectly — or even close to it. Even the players themselves cannot predict who’ll win a game, but they may have inside information about whether their own team seems motivated and focused. It is not a perfect method, however, and it certainly cannot be scientific.

Even with Big Data there’s no predicting of social events — there’s only guessing. Yes, guessing with access to huge amounts of data is easier, at least if the data is reliable and relevant. But a good guess is not the same thing as a prediction; it is still a guess, and it can be wrong. Winning every time requires luck.

Per L. Bylund, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Records-Johnston Professor of Free Enterprise in the School of Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University. Visit his website at PerBylund.com.

This article was originally published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided full credit is given.

“Ex Machina” Movie Review – Article by Edward Hudgins

“Ex Machina” Movie Review – Article by Edward Hudgins

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The New Renaissance HatEdward Hudgins
July 3, 2015
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ex-machina-review-objectivism

How will we know if an artificial intelligence actually attains a human level of consciousness?

As work in robotics and merging man and machine accelerates, we can expect more movies on this theme. Some, like Transcendence, will be dystopian warnings of potential dangers. Others, like Ex Machina, elicit serious thought about what it is to be human. Combining a good story and good acting, Ex Machina should interest technophiles and humanists alike.

The Turing Test

The film opens on Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) , a 27-year-old programmer at uber-search engine company Blue Book, who wins a lottery to spend a week at the isolated mountain home of the company’s reclusive genius creator, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). But the hard-drinking, eccentric Nathan tells Caleb that they’re not only going to hang out and get drunk.

He has created an android AI named Ava (Alicia Vikander) with a mostly woman-like, but part robot-like, appearance. The woman part is quite attractive. Nathan wants Caleb to spend the week administering the Turing Test to determine whether the AI shows intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. Normally this test is administered so the tester cannot see whether he’s dealing with a human and or machine. The test consists of exchanges of questions and answers, and is usually done in some written form. Since Caleb already knows Ava is an AI, he really needs to be convinced in his daily sessions with her, reviewed each evening with Nathan, that Nathan has created, in essence, a sentient, self-conscious human. It’s a high bar.

Android sexual attraction

Ava is kept locked in a room where her behavior can be monitored 24/7. Caleb talks to her through a glass, and at first he asks standard questions any good techie would ask to determine if she is human or machine. But soon Ava is showing a clear attraction to Caleb. The feeling is mutual.

In another session Ava is turning the tables. She wants to know about Caleb and be his friend. But during one of the temporary power outages that seems to plague Nathan’s house, when the monitoring devices are off, Ava tells Caleb that Nathan is not his friend and not to trust him. When the power comes back on, Ava reverts to chatting about getting to know Caleb.

In another session, when Ava reveals she’s never allowed out of the room, Caleb asks where she would choose to go if she could leave. She says to a busy traffic intersection. To people watch! Curiosity about humanity!

Ava then asks Caleb to close his eyes and she puts on a dress and wig to cover her robot parts. She looks fully human. She says she’d wear this if they went on a date. Nathan later explains that he gave Ava gender since no human is without one. That is part of human consciousness. Nathan also explains that he did not program her specifically to like Caleb. And he explains that she is fully sexually functional.

A human form of awareness

In another session Caleb tells Ava what she certainly suspects, that he is testing her. To communicate what he’s looking for, he offers the “Mary in a Black and White Room” thought experiment. Mary has always lived in a room with no colors. All views of the outside world are through black and white monitors. But she understands everything about the physics of color and about how the human eyes and brain process color. But does she really “know” or “understand” color—the “qualia”—until she walks outside and actually sees the blue sky?

Is Ava’s imitation of the human level of consciousness or awareness analogous to Mary’s consciousness or awareness of color when in the black and white room, purely theoretical? Is Ava simply a machine, a non-conscious automaton running a program by which she mimics human emotions and traits?

Ava is concerned with what will happen if she does not pass the Turing test. Nathan later tells Caleb that he thinks the AI after Ava will be the one he’s aiming for. And what will happen to Ava? The program will be downloaded and the memories erased. Caleb understands that this means Ava’s death.

Who’s testing whom?

During a blackout, this one of Nathan in a drunken stupor, Caleb borrows Nathan’s passcard to access closed rooms, and he discovers some disturbing truths about what proceeded Ava and led to her creation.

In the next session, during a power outage, Ava and Caleb plan an escape from the facility. They plan to get Nathan drunk, change the lock codes on the doors, and get out at the next power outage.

But has Nathan caught on? On the day Caleb is scheduled to leave he tells Nathan that Ava has passed the Turing Test. But Nathan asks whether Caleb thinks Ava is just pretending to like Caleb in order to escape. If so, this would show human intelligence and would mean that Ava indeed has passed the test.

But who is testing and manipulating whom and to what end? The story takes a dramatic, shocking turn as the audience finds out who sees through whose lies and deceptions. Does Mary ever escape from the black and white room? Is Ava really conscious like a human?

What it means to be human

In this fascinating film, writer/director Alex Garland explores what it is to be human in terms of basic drives and desires. There is the desire to know, understand, and experience. There is the desire to love and be loved. There is the desire to be free to choose. And there is the love of life.

But to be human is also to be aware that others might block one from pursuing human goals, that others can be cruel, and they can lie and deceive. There is the recognition that one might need to use the same behavior in order to be human.

If thinkers like Singularity theorist Ray Kurzweil are right, AIs might be passing the Turing Test within a few decades. But even if they don’t, humans will more and more rely on technologies that could enhance our minds and capacities and extend our lives. As we do so, it will be even more important that we keep in mind what it is to be human and what is best about being human. Ex Machina will not only provide you with an entertaining evening at the movies; it will also help you use that very human capacity, the imagination, to prepare your mind to meet these challenges.

Dr. Edward Hudgins directs advocacy and is a senior scholar for The Atlas Society, the center for Objectivism in Washington, D.C.

Copyright, The Atlas Society. For more information, please visit www.atlassociety.org.

“La mort, c’est mal!” – French Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Philippe Castonguay – Post by G. Stolyarov II

“La mort, c’est mal!” – French Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Philippe Castonguay – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
May 16, 2015
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La mort, c’est mal! – the French translation of Death is Wrong – is now available for download from The Rational Argumentator. You can obtain your free PDF copy here and may spread it to French-speaking audiences as widely as you wish.

La mort, c’est mal! was generously translated into French by Philippe Castonguay.

Death_is_Wrong_French_CoverPaperback copies of La mort, c’est mal! can be purchased in the following venues:

Createspace – $9.48

Amazon – $9.48

Kindle copies of La mort, c’est mal! can be purchased on Amazon for $0.99.

***

Si vous avez déjà demandé « pourquoi les gens doivent-ils mourir? » alors ce livre est pour vous. La vérité est que non, la mort n’est ni bonne, ni nécessaire, ni inévitable. En fait, la mort, c’est mal! La mort est notre ennemie à tous et toutes et doit être combattue par la médecine, la science et la technologie. Ce livre vous introduit au plus grand défi de notre espèce, à son mouvement le plus révolutionnaire; celui d’augmenter radicalement l’espérance de vie humaine pour que vous n’ayez plus à mourir, du tout.

Vous trouverez dans ce livre des plantes et des animaux à la longévité spectaculaire, des découvertes scientifiques récentes pavant le chemin vers l’augmentation de la durée des vies humaines, ainsi que de simples, mais puissants arguments pour affronter ceux en faveur de la mort. Si vous avez déjà pensé que la mort était injuste et qu’elle devrait être vaincue, sachez que vous n’êtes pas seul. Lisez ce livre et prenez part à la plus importante quête de l’histoire de l’humanité.

Ce livre a été écrit par le philosophe et futuriste Gennady Stolyarov II et illustré par l’artiste Wendy Stolyarov. Ici, il vous sera démontré que, peu importe qui vous êtes et peu importe vos habiletés, il vous est toujours possible d’aider l’humanité dans sa lutte contre la mort.

“Death is Wrong” Reviewed by Robert W. Franson of Troynovant

“Death is Wrong” Reviewed by Robert W. Franson of Troynovant

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Read the excellent new review by science-fiction author and literary essayist Robert W. Franson of Death is Wrong. The review is published on Mr. Franson’s website Troynovant, which offers extensive literary and philosophical analysis.

Here is an excerpt: “Death is Wrong is a short book, clearly written and easy to read. I like the personal approach: it doesn’t talk down and is quite accessible. A striking concept presented quite reasonably and supported matter-of-factly. There are apt quotations from a variety of thinkers, including several of my personal heroes of modern times: Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, Friedrich Nietzsche. These people and some scenes from nature are nicely illustrated by Wendy Stolyarov. For readers who want a little more about the background concepts, there is a brief Appendix discussing the seven basic causes of senescence, such as cell loss and atrophy. There are some links for further learning. It’s a good book, entertaining and thoughtful, and certainly gives us a challenge to think about.”

“La muerte está mal” – Spanish Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Néstor Duno – Post by G. Stolyarov II

“La muerte está mal” – Spanish Translation of “Death is Wrong” – Translated by Néstor Duno – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 16, 2014
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The Spanish translation of Death is Wrong – La muerte está mal – generously translated by Néstor Duno – is now available via The Rational Argumentator, Amazon, and Createspace.

A paperback version can be obtained from Createspace for $9.13 here.

Amazon has begun to carry the paperback version for $8.67 here.

The Kindle version is available for $0.99 (the lowest price Amazon permits) here.

Also, a free PDF version is available here.

You have my permission to spread the electronic version of the book to Spanish-speaking audiences as widely as possible, with no strings attached.

“Death is Wrong” Free PDF Files Available for Download – Post by G. Stolyarov II

“Death is Wrong” Free PDF Files Available for Download – Post by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 11, 2014
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Now that my campaign to spread over 1,000 Death is Wrong books to children has succeeded, I have asked myself what I could do to spread the book and its message even further. In an effort to increase the readership of the book, I have made the Second Edition available for FREE download as a PDF file. Perhaps, in this way, the book could reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers. Thus far, PDF versions are available in English, Russian, and Spanish.

PDF URL – Death is Wrong – English Edition: http://rationalargumentator.com/Death_is_Wrong_Second_Edition_Full.pdf

PDF URL – «Смерть неправильна!» – Russian Edition (translated by Marcus Baylin): http://rationalargumentator.com/Death_is_Wrong_Russian_Edition_Full.pdf

PDF URL – La muerte está mal – Spanish Edition (translated by Néstor Duno): http://rationalargumentator.com/Death_is_Wrong_Spanish_Edition.pdf

If you have read the PDF version and enjoyed it, consider purchasing the paperback version on Amazon for yourself, a friend, or a child, and/or consider making a PayPal or cryptocurrency donation via the sidebar on The Rational Argumentator.

Death is Wrong - by Gennady Stolyarov II, Illustrated by Wendy Stolyarov

Death is Wrong – by Gennady Stolyarov II, Illustrated by Wendy Stolyarov

Click on the cover for a high-resolution image that you can download, save, and distribute.

Over 1,000 Kids Will Indeed Be Taught That Death is Wrong – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Over 1,000 Kids Will Indeed Be Taught That Death is Wrong – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 7, 2014
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At least 1,029 children in at least 14 countries will be taught that death is wrong as a result of the successful provision of Death is Wrong books to 50 longevity activists throughout the world. On August 7, 2014, the last book shipment, free for all recipients, was made, paid for by the funds raised through the Indiegogo campaign I ran in coordination with the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) from February 22 through April 23, 2014. (Read Eric Schulke’s earlier article about the success of the fundraiser and the tremendous efforts and publicity that made it possible.) While some of my critics, such as Slate’s Joelle Renstrom, preemptively proclaimed that the funds raised would fall well short of the goal, we actually not only reached the goal in time but even exceeded it – and we have already spent all the money raised on providing free books to children.

I am triumphantly proud to report that the fundraiser’s target of providing a book for every $5 raised has been strictly adhered to. In repeated postings to various social-media outlets – conducted at least once weekly – I did not stop seeking out new dedicated recipients until 1,029 books were provided. My persistence paid off, as every posting made new people aware of the book and its promise in spreading the message of indefinite longevity to children.

I have created a table displaying the numbers of books sent to longevity activists in each of 14 countries, the total cost of shipments in each country, the costs per book by country, and the total project costs.

DIW_Distribution_Summary Our Indiegogo campaign raised $5,141.00 in total. Printing and shipping the books cost slightly more than this amount – $5,259.23 – largely because international shipments are often more expensive than domestic shipments within the United States. An additional amount of $453.05 was paid in fees to Indiegogo, PayPal, and the payment processor used by Indiegogo to make transfers to my bank account. However, all of the cost overruns were covered out of my personal funds – and therefore I consider myself to have made an additional $571.28 donation to this distribution effort. This is certainly a worthwhile expenditure for facilitating the spread of life-extensionist ideas among the next generation of scientists, technologists, doctors, philosophers, and activists – people whom we will need to join us in the struggle against death, so that we might have any hope of personally achieving indefinite lifespans.

While some shipments are still en route, many of the ones that have reached their destinations have already begun to have significant impacts.

Some activists have sent us videos and pictures of children responding to Death is Wrong and its message.

Watch this brief, charming video of Aleksander Kelley interviewing his sister Hanna, who has been giving out Death is Wrong books to kids she knows. Thanks go to David J Kelley for making this possible.

Here is Hanna again, handing a book to a friend. This is a wonderful and inspiring vignette of what can happen as a result of our dedicated and persistent activism in support of indefinite life extension.

DIW_Hanna

Roen Horn of the Eternal Life Fan Club has begun a strongly publicized series of book giveaways, the first of which he captured on camera. Here is his video featuring two kids who know that death is wrong.

Accompanying Roen’s video are excellent graphics like this one.

Children_Know_That_Death_is_WrongThe books were enthusiastically received at the Church of Perpetual Life in Hollywood, FL, a science-based Transhumanist church, whose primary focus is on ending death and reversing aging. Here is a picture kindly provided by Officiator Neal VanDeRee, where he presents a copy of Death is Wrong to the music teacher Dr. Angie Cook Wong and one of her students, who sang at the service.

DIW_IMG_0687Some of the book recipients have been librarians throughout the United States. Jameson Rohrer, the Transhumanist Librarian, has connected me with fellow librarians who have placed the books in libraries near them. Here are images of Death is Wrong books on display.

DIW_Rohrer_2DIW_Rohrer_3Successes like this one and many others have been chronicled on The Rational Argumentator, on a dedicated page that I continually update, informing readers of new developments in this unprecedented distribution effort. The updates are not finished. As the remaining book shipments arrive and books are given out to children, there will be more pictures, videos, and promising news to share. Indeed, even these impacts will just be the beginning. The true effects of this effort will be seen years and decades in the future – as the young readers of the books grow up and are hopefully motivated to develop their lives and pursuits in directions that will aid us all in overcoming the greatest enemy – death. I will know that my success is complete once even one young researcher or activist informs me, “I read Death is Wrong all those years ago, and it was this book that nudged me onto the path of discovery and development toward who I am today.” We supporters of indefinite life extension still have tremendous obstacles to overcome in achieving our vision. I hope that this effort to distribute over 1,000 Death is Wrong books will erode those obstacles at least somewhat – gradually injecting the ideas of indefinite life extension into the cultural mainstream and nurturing the next generation of advocates for this most worthwhile of endeavors.

DIW_World_MapPhotograph Courtesy of Eric Schulke