Conscious exotica + Machinocene+ Glowing bacteria affected by Wi-Fi

[C C]

Conscious exotica
https://aeon.co/essays/beyond-humans-wha...-out-there

INTRO: From algorithms to aliens, could humans ever understand minds that are radically unlike our own?

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Now it’s time to prepare for the Machinocene
https://aeon.co/ideas/now-it-s-time-to-p...achinocene

EXCERPT: [...] AI has now reached a point where it’s immensely useful for many tasks.[...] One way or another, then, we are going to be sharing the planet with a lot of non-biological intelligence. Whatever it brings, we humans face this future together. We have an obvious common interest in getting it right. And we need to nail it the first time round. entirely finishing us off, we’re not going to be coming this way again. [...] Our grandchildren, or their grandchildren, are likely to be living in a different era, perhaps more Machinocene than Anthropocene....

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'Glow-in-the-dark' bacteria is affected by the electric (not magnetic) field of microwaves emitted by mobile/Wi-Fi
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...145605.htm

RELEASE: Technology advancement has revolutionized the way in which we live with radio frequency and microwave-based technologies constantly emerging and evolving to meet our modern, urbanised environment.

The question soon poses itself as to what implications these transmissions are having on our health. Communication, travel and the treatment of life threatening conditions such as cancer and heart disease all rely on the use of a variety of radio frequencies and microwaves from radar to thermal ablation.

Researchers funded by the Swansea University led National Research Network (NRN) in Advanced Engineering and Materials, have brought this issue to the table once more, with their most recent breakthrough being published in Applied Physics Letters addressing the risk these technologies pose at the molecular level of our biological make up.

Dr Catrin F Williams of Cardiff University, who led the team, said: "In order to tackle this important issue, we are adopting a 'bottom-up' approach. In the first instance, we want to understand what interactions are occurring at the sub-cellular or molecular level. We will then increase the complexity in order to understand what is happening on a whole-human level, i.e. whether these interactions lead to therapeutic (treatment) or destructive (disease) outcomes." ‌

The team initially carried out research into understanding these biological concerns using a bioluminescent marine bacterium, Vibrio fisheri.

Using this particular bacterium they were able to investigate the effect that microwaves would have on light emission from this organism using pulsed electromagnetic fields.

Having separated both the electric and magnetic fields, by using a resonant microwave cavity, the results showed the bacteria giving repeated responses and recovery to irradiation.

This result proved significant, highlighting the direct interaction a living organism has with a microwave electric field, such as those generated in mobile phone technology.

As it stands there is a clear variant in current safety standards for human exposure to electromagnetic fields across the world, with many governments only considering the thermal effects of EMFs to be a danger despite the growing evidence supporting the link between non-thermal mechanisms of EMFs and the consequential impact it has to our health.

Although in its early stages of research, their result is driving Dr Williams and her team to now further their findings with the use of this hybrid experimental system to discover the effect these microwaves could have upon other biological systems such as living tissue, mammalian cells in culture as well as on the components of purified cells.

"With billions of people worldwide in possession of a mobile phone it is within the public interest to pursue all available avenues of investigation into both the thermal and non-thermal effects of EMFs," added Dr Williams.

"Possible therapeutic outcomes include fine-tuning of microwave thermal ablation procedures, which are well established for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias and cancers."‌

Now collaborations with health organisations such as the Welsh Heart Research Institute could prove vital to further the understanding and consequences modern living could be posing to our vital organs even down to the societal effect it could pose on child development through the exposure to wireless technologies.

Dr Williams said: "We are still in the early stages of this project; therefore it is not possible to say for sure whether any of our observed effects translate to an in vivo human scenario. However, the next step for our research is to use the experimental set-up described in the paper to investigate the effects of microwave fields on live human heart cells by collaborating with Dr Christopher George at the Welsh Heart Research Institute."

Although there is still no evidence within the general population to demonstrate the true impact this interaction is having, Dr Williams and her team are a step closer to exposing the effects microwave electromagnetic fields have to our health.

Used in everyday items from our Wi-Fi to our phones the question no longer looks at the possible magnetic field dangers but directly to the transmissions from those everyday objects that we so seemingly depend upon.

[Carol]

Now it’s time to prepare for the Machinocene

I would have loved to have had better information before voting this year. I sincerely hope AI will do better than our media has to keep us informed. At the moment our democracy is looking very reckless, but I do not know of a better system. Except perhaps citizens could be better educated before they are of voting age?

I think there are vitally important questions. "How do the gods resolve their differences", and "to whom does God give his authority"? Do we want to give AI god-like powers? It is one thing to have a machine that provides with more information than ever before possible and quite another to give that machine decision-making powers over our lives.

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Conscious exotica

This link seems to assume humans can understand the consciousness of other humans and this just isn't so. There is no way we can think as people did 6000 years ago, or even 600 years ago. The east and west have fundamentally different logic systems and this makes it very hard for one to understand the other. Our consciousness is shaped by so many things from our biology to our language and cultures. There is research indicating some of our consciousness is carried in our genes and other research indicates some of our consciousness might be carried in our cells, especially in large organs such as our hearts.

Our consciousness is shaped by education, and in the US the technological purpose of education creates a very different consciousness than was created before 1958 when liberal education dominated. Like our brains don't just automatically think logically. They must be trained how to compute information and how we train them will get different results. I do not think today's education is adequately preparing the young for their future.

Consciousness is such a fascinating subject. Comparing biological consciousness with IA is great fun, isn't it?

[C C]

I think there are vitally important questions. "How do the gods resolve their differences", and "to whom does God give his authority"? Do we want to give AI god-like powers? It is one thing to have a machine that provides with more information than ever before possible and quite another to give that machine decision-making powers over our lives.

Militant atheist Richard Dawkins has even granted the possibility of god-like beings with a natural, incremental genesis. Past religious systems have likewise featured theogonies of how their gods came about. In some contexts the issues raised might even render it irrelevant whether they're products of future technology or the fictional magic of ancients.

But Western civilization -- since its transition to Abrahamic monotheism -- has largely outputted apologetic literature concerned with a deity that lacks an origin or provenance. Thus there's arguably much less past exploration than what there could have been into what's contained in the concept of gods that have an inception or beginning. That might have had a jump on today should we only now be acquiring any serious interest in the concerns of the engineered / evolved species of deities.

Did Richard Dawkins Just Endorse Alien Gods?

ALSO:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/sci...wkins.html

EXCERPT: [...] After two hours of conversation, Professor Dawkins walks far afield. He talks of the possibility that we might co-evolve with computers, a silicon destiny. And he’s intrigued by the playful, even soul-stirring writings of Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist.

In one essay, Professor Dyson casts millions of speculative years into the future. Our galaxy is dying and humans have evolved into something like bolts of superpowerful intelligent and moral energy.

Doesn’t that description sound an awful lot like God?

“Certainly,” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s highly plausible that in the universe there are God-like creatures.”

He raises his hand, just in case a reader thinks he’s gone around a religious bend. “It’s very important to understand that these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific progression of incremental evolution.”

Could they be immortal? The professor shrugs.

“Probably not.” He smiles and adds, “But I wouldn’t want to be too dogmatic about that.”