The BIG is a key part of the Technoprogressive platform. BIG will become increasingly relevant due to the Structural unemployment that results when machines outperform humans at more and more jobs, and as Market fundamentalism precipitates economic collapse.

A worldwide basic income, typically including income redistribution between nations, is known as a global basic income.

One of the arguments for a basic income was articulated by French economist and social philosopher Andre Gorz:

“The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet- unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact…From the point where it takes only 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 to 30,000 hours per lifetime to create an amount of wealth equal to or greater than the amount we create at the present time in 1,600 hours per year or 40,000 to 50,000 hours in a working life, we must all be able to obtain a real income equal to or higher than our current salaries in exchange for a greatly reduced quantity of work…Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: `the micro-chip revolution’. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis…”

The Basic Income Earth Network describes one of the benefits of a basic income as having a lower overall cost than that of the current means-tested social welfare benefits.

Alaska has a BIG system which provides each citizen with a share of the state’s oil revenues. The U.S. also has the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income taxpayers. In 2006, a bill from the advocacy organization USBIG to transform the credit into a partial basic income was introduced, but did not pass.

External Links:
The US Basic Income Guarantee Network

Sources:
Basic Income Guarantee and Monetary Reform
Wikipedia

Category:Encyclopedia

Zack Lynch, managing director of NeuroInsights, recommended at an AAAS workshop the term enablement as a replacement for the current buzz-word enhancement after noting that the line between therapy and enhancement is particularly faint and subjective. He believes the term enhancement is already politically charged in both its meaning and use among science policy players. He sees no hard line between therapy and enhancement; instead, there is a range of capacities already in normal distribution among the population, and enablement refers to maximizing each person’s latent potential.

Zack Lynch argues that neurotechnologies will have a more immediate effect on society than gene therapy and will face less resistance as a pathway of radical human enhancement.

Critics of the term “human enhancement” want to use more neutral language, and advance the public interest in so-called “human enhancement technologies,” and thus prefer the term “enablement” over “enhancement.” Some argue that human enhancement is a loaded term which has eugenic overtones because it may imply the improvement of human hereditary traits to attain a universally accepted norm of biological fitness (at the possible expense of human biodiversity and neurodiversity), and therefore can evoke negative reactions far beyond the specific meaning of the term.

Sources:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/projects/human_enhancement/pdfs/HESummaryReport.pdf
Wikipedia on Enablement
Wikipedia on Human Enhancement

Category:Encyclopedia

Abolitionism is inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism, but goes a step further in that it is more principally inspired by the tenets of negative utilitarianism. Some Abolitionists consider the elimination of genetic discrimination to be a vital component of Abolitionism in the larger sense: eliminating all involuntary sentient suffering, which is believed to stem from Darwinian design. Most abolitionists would be classified as negative utilitarian, believing that suffering of any kind, no matter how small, should be prevented. Philosopher David Pearce’s abolitionist manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative, serves as both an inspiration for the group’s theories and as a demonstration of how the world can convert Abolitionist philosophy into reality.

The ordinary capacity for human happiness is limited biologically as a result of natural selection. Pearce theorizes in his manifesto that use of emerging technologies, especially neuroscience, Biotechnology, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and psychopharmacology, can overcome our genetic propensity for depression and suffering. Abolitionists see depression as a physical, not mental, deficiency, that can therefore be solved just as anesthesia can prevent pain and just as medication can often make one feel better or worse. A depressed person can usually make themselves feel better only by attacking the physical root of the depression (e.g. by taking an antidepressant that changes serotonin re-uptake levels in the brain). By similarly re-engineering the brain, humans can become a new kind of being which experiences primarily happiness rather than a longing to reproduce. Some imagine that this could be accomplished through not only technology already in the pipeline, such as genetic engineering, but techniques that have not yet been realized such as mind Uploading.

Abolitionists promote the idea that emotions have a physically manipulable, not spiritual, source — and that therefore we have the ability to fundamentally change the way that humans’ brains operate and the way that humans experience life. Abolitionists believe that where biological evolution has failed to create happiness for all people, technology can take over and eventually create a new type of Posthuman which feels only happiness and never suffers involuntarily while retaining and enhancing observable functionality. The Abolitionist Society is dedicated to bringing this idea to fruition.

==Abolitionism==
The term"abolitionism,” used to describe the use of biotechnology to eliminate suffering, was first proposed by Lewis Mancini in 1986, in his articles for Medical Hypotheses Journal. Abolitionism is the use of science to maximize happiness and minimize suffering — not just in humans but in all sentient life. It is a philosophy inspired by utilitarian ethics: if happiness equals value, then the elimination of suffering or ‘maximization of value’ should be the prime objective of the human race.

Abolitionism makes no distinction among sentient creatures— all are deemed worthy of being saved from suffering by biotechnological intervention.

An ethical system that is similar to Transhumanism, Abolitionism deliberately defines its rationale and method of determining value according to a prime ethical directive with a focus on eliminating involuntary suffering, whereas transhumanism promotes a collection of values including the well-being of all sentient beings without addressing the question of whether or not involuntary suffering should eventually be eliminated.

==Founders==
David Pearce, author of “The Hedonistic Imperative” and honorary president, founded the group with Pablo Stafforini, Sean Henderson, and Jaime Savage.  The Abolitionist Society now serves as the focal point and prime community for this movement and philosophy.  Pearce maintains a network of related websites on the abolitionist movement and associated subjects. The Abolitionist Society exists as a forum and ongoing initiative to critically evaluate and apply the ideals of Abolitionism through means of a nonprofit foundation.

== Literature relating to the abolitionist project==
Responses to commonly raised objections about the abolitionist project
The Hedonistic Imperative
Buddhism and Abolitionism
Critique of Huxley’s ‘‘Brave New World”
Utopian Pharmacology: Mental Health in the Third Millennium, MDMA and Beyond

== External links ==
Abolitionist Society

Category:Encyclopedia

Bibliography

Anderson, Michael, Susan Leigh Anderson, and Chris Armen. (2006). “An Approach to Computing Ethics.” IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(4)

Boire, Richard G. (2004). “Neurocops: The Politics of Prohibitions and the Future of Enforcing Social Policy from Inside the Body.” Journal of Law and Health 19:215-257.

Bostrom, Nick & Sandberg, Anders. (2006). “Cognitive Enhancement: Methods, Ethics, Regulatory Challenges”. In the proceedings of Forbidding Science?

Bublitz, Janice C. & Merkel, R. (2009). “Autonomy and Authenticity of Enhanced Personality Traits.” Bioethics 23(6): 360-374.

Douglas, Thomas. (2008). “Moral Enhancement.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25(3):228-245.

Faust, Halley S. (2008). “Should we select for genetic moral enhancement? A thought experiment using the MoralKinder (MK+) Haplotype.” Theor Med Bioeth 29: 397-416.

Harris, John. 2010. “Moral Enhancement and Freedom.” Bioethics forthcoming

Hughes, J. (2006). “Becoming a Better Person”. Lecture at TransVision 06. Available online: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5507889330054704434

Hughes, J. (2009). “Cyborg Buddha: A Conversation with Transhumanist James Hughes.” Tricycle. Summer.
http://www.tricycle.com/interview/cyborg-buddha

Jotterand, Fabrice. (2008a). “Beyond Therapy and Enhancement: The Alteration of Human Nature”. Nanoethics: Ethics for Technologies that Converge at the Nanoscale 2:15-23.

Manders-Huits, Noëmi. (2006). “Moral responsibility and IT for human enhancement.” SAC ‘06 Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied computing.

Quigley, Muireann. (2008). “Enhancing Me, Enhancing You: Academic Enhancement as a Moral Duty.” Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 2.2 (2008): 157-16.

Persson, Ingmar and Julian Savulescu. (2008). “The Perils of Cognitive Enhancement and the Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of Humanity.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (3):162-177.

Persson, Ingmar and Julian Savulescu. (2010). “Moral Transhumanism.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy.

Persson, Ingmar and Julian Savulescu. (2011). “Unfit for the future? Human nature, scientific progress, and the need for moral enhancement.” In Enhancing Human Capabilities (pp. 486–500), ed. J. Savulescu, R. ter Meulen, and G. Kahane. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Savulescu, Julian & Sandberg, Anders. (2008). “Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals between Us.” Neuroethics 1:31-44.

Spence, Sean A. (2008). “Can pharmacology help enhance human morality?” The British Journal of Psychiatry 193: 179–180.

Verbeek, Peter-Paul. (2009). “Ambient Intelligence and Persuasive Technology: The Blurring Boundaries Between Human and Technology.” Nanoethics 3:231:242.

Walker, Mark. 2009. “Enhancing Genetic Virtue.” Politics Life Sci. 2009 Sep;28(2):27-47.
  Comment: Arnhart, Larry. (2010). “Can virtue be genetically engineered?” Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):79-81.
  Comment: Andreadis, Athena. (2010). “The tempting illusion of genetic virtue.” Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):76-8.
  Comment: Agar, Nicholas. (2010). “Enhancing genetic virtue?”  Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):73-5.
  Comment: Bucy, EP. (2010). “Reconsidering genetic virtue.”  Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):72.
  Comment: Bronstein, J. (2010). “Objecting to the Genetic Virtue Program.”  Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):85-7.
  Comment: Sprinkle, RH. (2010). “Moral suasion, installed” Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):88-9.
  Comment: Blackford, Russell. (2010). “Genetically engineered people”  Politics Life Sci. 2010 Mar;29(1):82-4.

Wright, Janet. (2008). “SuperB.” Nature 451: 498.  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7177/full/451498a.html

Category:Encyclopedia

I. J. Good first wrote of an “intelligence explosion,” suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence.

Vernor Vinge later called this event the “Technological Singularity” as an analogy between the breakdown of modern physics near a gravitational Singularity and the drastic change in society he argues would occur following an intelligence explosion. In the 1980s and 90s, Vinge popularized the Singularity in lectures, essays, and science fiction. More recently, some prominent technologists such as Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, have voiced concern over the potential dangers of Vinge’s Singularity.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that the inevitability of a Technological Singularity is implied by a long-term pattern of accelerating change that generalizes Moore’s Law to technologies predating the integrated circuit, and which he argues will continue to other technologies not yet invented.

The term ‘Singularity’ has come to be used to mean many different things to different people. Michael Anissimov has noted that given 50 different people they will likely have 50 different ideas of what the Singularity is, and that the ideas of exponential growth, radical life extension, mind uploading, the feasibility of Artificial general intelligence, and Transhuman intelligence have become conflated. Anissimov argues that the Singularity, properly defined, is only about smarter-than-human intelligence.

Accelerating change
Some Singularity proponents argue its inevitability through extrapolation of past trends, especially those pertaining to shortening gaps between improvements to technology.

Ray Kurzweil’s analysis of history concludes that technological progress follows a pattern of exponential growth, following what he calls The Law of Accelerating Returns. He generalizes Moore’s Law, which describes geometric growth in integrated semiconductor complexity, to include technologies from far before the integrated circuit.

Whenever technology approaches a barrier, Kurzweil writes, new technologies will cross it. He predicts paradigm shifts will become increasingly common, leading to “technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” Kurzweil believes that the Singularity will occur before the end of the 21st century, setting the date at 2045. His predictions differ from Vinge’s in that he predicts a gradual ascent to the Singularity, rather than Vinge’s rapidly self-improving superhuman intelligence. This leads to the conclusion that an artificial intelligence that is capable of improving on its own design is also faced with a Singularity.

IEET Links:
Hughes interviewed on Singularity and AI
Hughes on Regulating AI at the Singularity Summit
George Dvorsky’s take on the Singularity
Aubrey de Grey’s talk on Longevity and the Singularity

See also:
Singularitarianism

Sources:
The Word ‘Singularity’ Has Lost All Meaning
The Singularity is Just About Smarter than Human Intelligence
Wikipedia on the Technological Singularity

Category:Encyclopedia

While many futurists and transhumanists speculate on the possibility and nature of this technological development, Singularitarians believe it is not only possible, but desirable if, and only if, guided safely. Accordingly, some dedicate their lives to acting in ways they believe will contribute to its safe implementation.

The term “Singularitarian” was originally defined by Extropian Mark Plus in 1991 to mean “one who believes the concept of a Singularity.” This term has since been redefined to mean “Singularity activist” or “friend of the Singularity”; that is, one who acts so as to bring about the Singularity.

Ray Kurzweil, the author of the book The Singularity is Near, defines a Singularitarian as someone “who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life”.

In his 2000 essay, “Singularitarian Principles”, Eliezer Yudkowsky writes that there are four qualities that define a Singularitarian:

1. A Singularitarian believes that the Singularity is possible and desirable.
2. A Singularitarian actually ‘‘works’’ to bring about the Singularity.
3. A Singularitarian views the Singularity as an entirely secular, non-mystical process — not the culmination of any form of religious prophecy or destiny.
4. A Singularitarian believes the Singularity should benefit the entire world, and should not be a means to benefit any specific individual or group.

Whereas transhumanism is sometimes signified by the symbol H+, S^ can be used to denote Singularitarianism.

Singularitarianism is presently a small movement, although many believe a technological Singularity is possible without adopting Singularitarianism as a moral philosophy.

In June 2000 Eliezer Yudkowsky, Brian Atkins, and Sabine Atkins founded the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence to work towards the creation of self-improving Friendly AI. Singularitarians believe that reaching the Singularity swiftly and safely is the best possible way to minimize net existential risk.

With the support of NASA, Google and a broad range of technology thought leaders and entrepreneurs, Kurzweil’s Singularity University is scheduled to open in June 2009 at the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley with the goal of preparing the next generation of leaders to address the challenges of accelerating change.

Many mainstream critics ridicule the Singularity as “the Rapture for nerds,” and have dismissed Singularitarianism as a pseudoreligion of fringe science. Singularitarians point out the many differences between the idea of the Rapture and Singularitarianism.

IEET Links:
Waiting for the Great Leap…Forward?
Millennial Tendencies in Responses to Apocalyptic Threats
Libertopian Doublethink on the Singularity

Sources:
Wikipedia on Singularitarianism
Black Belt Bayesian: Rapture of the Nerds, Not

Category:Encyclopedia

Biochemical mechanisms

Two known molecular mechanisms for synaptic plasticity were researched by Eric Kandel laboratories. The first mechanism involves modification of existing synaptic proteins (typically protein kinases) resulting in altered synaptic function. The second mechanism depends on second messenger neurotransmitters regulating gene transcription and changes in the levels of key proteins at synapses. This second mechanism can be triggered by protein phosphorylation but takes longer and lasts longer, providing the mechanism for long-lasting memory storage. Long-lasting changes in the efficacy of synaptic connections (long-term potentiation, or LTP) between two neurons can involve the making and breaking of synaptic contacts.

A synapse’s strength also depends on the number of ion channels it has. Several facts suggest that neurons change the density of receptors on their postsynaptic membranes as a mechanism for changing their own excitability in response to stimuli. In a dynamic process that is maintained in equilibrium, N-methyl D-aspartate receptor (NMDA receptor) and alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor (AMPA receptor)s are added to the membrane by exocytosis and removed by endocytosis.These processes, and by extension the number of receptors on the membrane, can be altered by synaptic activity. Experiments have shown that AMPA receptors are delivered to the membrane due to repetitive NMDA receptor activation.

If the strength of a synapse is only reinforced by stimulation or weakened by its lack, a positive feedback loop will develop, causing some cells never to fire and some to fire too much. But two regulatory forms of plasticity, called scaling and metaplasticity, also exist to provide negative feedback.[5] Synaptic scaling serves to maintain the strengths of synapses relative to each other, lowering amplitudes of small excitatory postsynaptic potentials in response to continual excitation and raising them after prolonged blockage or inhibition.[5] This effect occurs gradually over hours or days, by changing the numbers of NMDA receptors at the synapse (Pérez-Otaño and Ehlers, 2005). Metaplasticity, another form of negative feedback, reduces the effects of plasticity over time. Thus, if a cell has been affected by a lot of plasticity in the past, metaplasticity makes future plasticity less effective. Since LTP and LTD (long-term depression) rely on the influx of Ca2+ through NMDA channels, metaplasticity may be due to changes in NMDA receptors, for example changes in their subunits to allow the concentration of Ca2+ in the cell to be lowered more quickly.

Sources:
Wikipedia

The brain consists of nerve cells (or “neurons”) and glial cells which are interconnected, and learning may happen through change in the strength of the connections, by adding or removing connections, and by the formation of new cells. “Plasticity” relates to learning by adding or removing connections, or adding cells.

During the 20th century, the consensus was that lower brain and neocortical areas were immutable in structure after childhood, meaning learning only happens by changing of connection strength, whereas areas related to memory formation, such as the hippocampus and dentate gyrus, where new neurons continue to be produced into adulthood, were highly plastic. This belief is being challenged by new findings, suggesting all areas of the brain are plastic even after childhood.[2] Hubel and Wiesel had demonstrated that ocular dominance columns in the lowest neocortical visual area, V1, were largely immutable after the critical period in development. Critical periods also were studied with respect to language; the resulting data suggested that sensory pathways were fixed after the critical period. However, studies determined that environmental changes could alter behavior and cognition by modifying connections between existing neurons and via neurogenesis in the hippocampus and other parts of the brain, including the cerebellum.

Decades of research have now shown that substantial changes occur in the lowest neocortical processing areas, and that these changes can profoundly alter the pattern of neuronal activation in response to experience. According to the theory of neuroplasticity, experience can actually change both the brain’s physical structure (anatomy) and functional organization (physiology) from top to bottom. Neuroscientists are presently engaged in a reconciliation of critical period studies demonstrating the immutability of the brain after development with the more recent research showing how the brain can, and does, change.

Sources:
Wikipedia

They are also sometimes thought of as a neural network or fragment of memory, sometimes using a hologram analogy to describe its action in light of results showing that memory appears not to be localized in the brain. The existence of engrams is posited by some scientific theories to explain the persistence of memory and how memories are stored in the brain. The existence of neurologically defined engrams is not significantly disputed, though their exact mechanism and location has been a focus of persistent research for many decades.
[edit] Overview

The term engram was coined by the little-known but influential memory researcher Richard Semon.

Karl S. Lashley’s search for the engram found that it could not exist in any specific part of the rat’s brain, but that memory was widely distributed throughout the cortex. One possible explanation for Lashley’s failure to locate the engram is that many types of memory (eg. visual-spatial, smell, etc.) are used in the processing of complex tasks, such as rats running mazes. The consensus view in neuroscience is that the sorts of memory involved in complex tasks are likely to be distributed among a variety of neural systems, yet certain types of knowledge may be processed and contained in specific regions of the brain.[1] Overall, the mechanisms of memory are poorly understood. Such brain parts as the cerebellum, striatum, cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala are thought to play an important role in memory. For example, the hippocampus is believed to be involved in spatial and declarative learning, as well as consolidating short term into long term memory.

In Lashley’s experiments (1929, 1950), rats were trained to run a maze. Tissue was removed from their cerebral cortices before re-introducing them to the maze, to see how their memory was affected. Increasingly, the amount of tissue removed degraded memory, but more remarkably, where the tissue was removed from made no difference.[1]

Later, Richard F. Thompson sought the engram in the cerebellum, rather than the cerebral cortex. He used classical conditioning of the eyelid response in rabbits in search of the engram. He puffed air upon the cornea of the eye and paired it with a tone. (This puff normally causes an automatic blinking response. After a number of experiences associating it with a tone, the rabbits became conditioned to blink when they heard the tone even without a puff.) The experiment monitored several brain regions, trying to locate the engram.

One region that Thompson’s group studied was the lateral interpositus nucleus (LIP). When it was deactivated chemically, the rabbits lost the conditioning; when re-activated, they responded again, demonstrating that the LIP is a key element of the engram for this response.[2]

It is important to stress that this approach, targeting the cerebellum, though successful, examines only basic, automatic responses, which almost all animals possess, especially as defense mechanisms.

Studies have shown that declarative memories move between the limbic system, deep within the brain, and the outer, cortical regions. These are distinct from the mechanisms of the more primitive cerebellum, which dominates in the blinking response and receives the input of auditory information directly. It does not need to “reach out” to other brain structures for assistance in forming some memories of simple association.

Sources:
Wikipedia