A fascinating lecture by Newton Lee at People Without Borders in the USA, about the vision of the Transhumanist Party of California – the Californian partner of the United States. Its headquarters are located in the city of Los Angeles, and it is organized by academic leaders and leaders in the science, health and technology industry at the forefront American politics.
In the lecture, I present to us the visible future in which we will combine technology and correct thinking to extend life up to a possible state of eternal life. At the beginning of the lecture Lee asks the audience: If you were given 1000 years to live, what would you do with that time?
okay I want to introduce our first guest speaker for today really happy to have Newton Lee here Newton Lee is an author educator and futurist he was the founder of Disney online technology forum creator of AT&T Bell Labs first ever commercial artificial intelligence tool and inventor of the world's first annotated multimedia Opa see for the for the National Agricultural library Newton Lee is the chairman of the California transhumanist party education and media advisor to the u.s. transhumanist party and president of the nonprofit institution for education research and scholarship please welcome Newton Lee [Applause] make sure that stable oK you've seen the whole slide everything I know thank you so much yeah I'm so happy to be here today with all of you thank you Jim for the invitation and all of you are so energetic and so happy and so kind I just love to be here thank you so I'm the chairman of the California transhumanist party in 2016 for the u.s. presidential election was the campaign divisor so – so – so tan is fun yes yeah so ten so ten yeah that's why he I think he was here with you before yeah a great person yes any champions and long super longevity just like all of you I don't write here by now and when I was still at this the full-time as self engineer and producer I started the nonprofit institute of education research and scholarship and today the two organizations shared has come mission to create a better world created by the future of everyone and I'm happy to share with you today about transhumanist movement which goes hand-in-hand with the super longevity movement movement and together who can create a brave new world [Applause] aha there we go aha but I'm sure you have read a novel brave new world yes and it wasn't a great future at all so the the future can be dystopia or utopia and it turns out that and uh he wrote the book has he wrote the book brave new world and later many years later heroes another book called island ok and island is actually an utopia interesting isn't it so let me introduce you the idea of transhumanism in 1957 Julian Huxley who was also the first director-general of UNESCO he wrote the human species can chance self constraint sent itself in his entirety as humanity we need a name for this new belief perhaps transhumanism we serve men remaining men but transcending is himself by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature humanity will alas be consciously fulfilling his will destiny amazing isn't it it was after world war ii as we know a lot of casualties the world was in disarray a lot of suffering and what do we do what do we look forward to so you know julian has is that let's talk about transhumanism where did the word transhuman come from ah good question isn't it okay yes I like with questions that's why I like to teach I am in teaching for 25 27 years now and I like taking students because I want to motivate them to become better persons not just learning about computer science but also learning how to be you know better human beings the word transhuman came for came from Dante's Divine Comedy so in his book in his poem the paradise he wrote words may not tell of that trans human change why is that the change of the human body to immortal flesh [Applause] so so according to Dante who was the very first trans human what do you think who was the very first transhuman according to Dante yes Jesus Christ Jesus was resurrected and he took on the human not human form but the new physical form that 's immortal by the a fish of his disciples he enjoy eating so he told his disciples you're not looking at a spirit you're looking at the real physical form and that's the immortal physical form just in case and one spirit so we look at super non jeopardy you also have to look at the meaning of life because the old question is if you have one day left to live what would you do the new question facing us today is if you could live 1,000 more years what would you do with all the time the funny thing is that people used to live close to a thousand years before the big flood think about that so it's possible well when it does you know offer us this opportunity to live a thousand years what will you be doing you don't want to be stuck in a job that you don't like you don't want to be you know forced to do things you don't like for the next 999 years no way that's crazy now I wonder how many people have seen the movie in time yeah it's a great movie isn't it very transhumanists very futuristic so basically time is money we know but in this movie you actually pay for things with a lifespan you don't pay with dollars and bills you pay for life okay you want new cars sure I'm going to talk ten years of my life you want a new house I mean deduct 100 years from a lifespan so the question is what is really worth your life why is really worth your time so Holly will this is wonderful isn't it they have great ideas sometimes sometimes all the time sometimes okay I'm sure you have seen ghost in the shell' right yes exciting action-packed movie so here we have people you know getting cybernetic livers cybernetic everything so it basically we place your you know you know old and failing organs with you know mechanical organs so it can pretty much live forever so the question is okay so now you have some an etic liver so you got enhance so that you can drink more is that what you want or is it because you know we got in hand so they can help more people you so they can end up with more intelligence so they can do more research why don't you drink more okay so how many of you have read the Bible yeah quite a few you okay so King has to hire Hezekiah and now he was ill and he was you know going to die and he bad God he said look and I'm have been really good to the people serving you and I don't want to die yet so God gave him 15 moist years to live but then he became proud and arrogant okay not do as good as it used to be and then he fathered a son who became one of the worst the most evil king in Israel so you see it the problem when you have more time more money more everything sometimes it's bad for the world okay so we always have keep that in mind so for the past 5,000 5,000 years of recorded history humanity has been experiencing growing pains and as you can see on one hand we have obesity on the other hand we have starvation and both lead to diseases and death okay so one you have a lot of money the other you have no money they both lead to diseases and death it's not good so when we look at the future are we going to have a united world in peace or are we going to continue to divide the world at war are we going to have a clean environment with good health or are we going to have global warming and pollution that's getting worse and worse in many cities around the world just look at China China has been in improving economically economically speaking but the main cities are so polluted now that's not livable they're endangering the health of their own citizens we all love technologies that's why we're here your medical technologies we have scientific technologies so on one hand we have a nuclear power plants which is okay which is good okay provider you say if this is good but at the same time you have atomic bombs lots of them in fact we have drums they're actually helping people saving lives we also have germs that are going to cue people and we have 3d printers now that can actually print human organs and that's good because they can actually customize it to fit to fit you know individual patients but an honest at the same time you can print illegal handguns and go to cue people so technologies are neither good or evil but how we use technology makes a huge difference and therefore we need the transhumanist party we want to tackle all the issues in order to create a good future for us for your children for a grand grandchildren and great grandchildren okay because you know you're going to live a long time and we're going to live together as a family as Jim was talking yesterday you know extended family we are extended family here okay so basically the transhumanist party has three core ideas the number one is we support significant life extension and quality of life improvement achieved through the progress of Science and Technology and that's why I'm happy to be here because you're all you know in the super longevity movement and the transhumanist movement goes hand-in-hand with their with all of you super longevity and my fancy feet nonprofit we have a Wellness Center and we have a great group of doctors and scientists who are passionate about helping people who are passionate about giving back to the community and I'm sure you all know dr. Fahy yes great person great person it's doing amazing job and here you can see a list of things that we're supporting and human immune system new germination we also work on complementary and alternative medicine artificial intelligence biology medicine virtual reality and mental health and rehab anti-aging and cell regenerative medicine and integrative biomedicine now we are very focused right now on physical health you know we take vitamins with the pills and we do blood tests and so on but we should also look at mental health which is equally important it is really heartbreaking to learn that among Americans American teens between age 10 and 17 the suicide rate has increased up to 77 percent over a period of 10 years from 1996 to 2006 imagine that 77 percent increase in suicide and their young whole life is ahead of them why is the issue well parents are busy working right University I mean high schools and all the teachers are underpaid it's very difficult to care of all the kids there's so many things and technology comes into play because a lot of kids these days up you know so much into yeah so much into social media Facebook you know smartphone they're always looking in smartphones so what can we offer them artificial intelligence and virtual reality can offer them a place where they can express themselves we can help them with the depression help them overcome peer pressure and cyber bullies okay now let's go back to physical health for a second the good news is last year the Nobel Prize winner was awarded to two researchers who discovered that we can use immune system to fight cancer so for people who have been on cancer cells in the body we can train the immune system now t-cells to kill the cancer cells okay which is great now now you know that CDC stands for what Center for Disease Control but they actually have changed the name officially to Centers for Disease Control and Convention right they still is still CDC but prevention is that is attached to the end of the official name so it' s very important for us to prevent cancer to do that we have to improve immune system so that's one of the things that we really focus on helping now another thing is called human-machine symbiosis so why does is look we have to work together now with artificial intelligence with computer games even because as you can see in September 2011 okay we have a group of computer players they're not scientists they're not researchers they're just playing games and they play the game called Foldit which is like you know protein folding kind of things and it took them less than 10 the decipher and ace causing virus that stumped scientists for more than 15 years 15 years everybody is working on it very difficult problem to solve in less than 10 days computer players game players solve the problems for them [Applause] exciting stuff so even though my background is computer science and AI my first very first peer-reviewed publication was in a journal of computers in biology medicine and it was about expert system that I written that created with my professors on pharmacology and interactions so from day one on even though my passion is computer science I really want to use computer sciences technology to help people you know in terms of medical needs in terms of pharmacology and interactions so on so it's very exciting for you I love it so ok let's move on to core ideal number two we support an inclusive cultural societal and political atmosphere informed and animated by reason and science to foster peace prosperity and universal rights for all and to that ends my nonprofit has been working with California's we have just passed a bill last week to promote to to what it says is that when parents take the kids for medical checkup or take them to doctors okay because they're sick we need to make sure that they're not suffering from what we call a type one diabetes type one diabetes is a genetic disease not like type 2 which is can be you know you know if you eat healthy you can avoid type 2 diabetes but type 1 cannot be avoided if you your point with it okay and what happens is that a lot of times they're misdiagnosed and end up dying it's just unfortunate okay so that's why we did that the freewoman there some three of the project directors in my nonprofit so it's wonderful people I love working one to put wonderful people and you are all wonderful people and more good news the good news is we have elected more scientists to Congress and I don't have a safe way but we have also elected more women to Congress awesome we need the government to learn more about science and technology because this is right exactly this is how we can live longer through science and technology and we need to hear woman' s voice yes that's right Jim and Gandhi together right men and women male and female and children too again I don't have a slide here but there are a lot of shoot them now who are champion for climate change you know environmental protection it's just amazing so quality number three as we know that we're going to live a long time we have to make sure that we want to reduce and eliminate existential risk to human species I don't want to scare you but there's a huge massive asteroid coming our way and here's the one in two thousand two thousand seven hundred of hitting Earth on September 25th 21:35 21-year 21:35 is the round corner if we are going to live a thousand years think about that and that's bigger than Empire State Building and if they if it does hit earth it's possible that one sort of population will be eliminated we don't want that so don't panic okay we support we support the us penetrate defense teams I know it sounds like sci-fi but if they exist okay so well sometimes the government is doing good things actually they do have a defense team like NASA and other organizations looking to the future okay we have to support the scientists and researchers you know to do well basically the thing is that we need everybody should be focused okay let me put it this way why did we go to the moon because of JFK John F Kennedy he said that we need to go to the moon but why you can say that there's no code on the moon we are not going to make money by going to the moon but JFK was the leader and says let's go to the moon well I'll in fact that the Russian you know was going there now and America is in no way you know we have to go there first before what should do so so he is the same thing I understand all of us lunch super longevity transhumanism a better world a lot of times they're not they put at the back burner bad government we don't want that we need a good leader we need good leaders around the world to say that look we need to bring this up front to the world we need to talk about it we need to put money and effort into all these things and that's how we 're going to you know save ourselves from the big rock that's coming our way so if you look at the future residences which is you know licenses of course we want to live on earth on land but we may also live in oceans if global warming continues to you know accelerate we have no choice but to build houses under the ocean and of course we can live an outer outer orbit not that pleasant we may move to Mars how many of you wants to go to Mars Wow hi a number of you I was I was talking I was giving a talk at the University you know high school kids and students a few of them also wanted to go to Mars okay and of course you know there's some upload the mind to feeling clouds but that's not so important so what about people oh wow it's okay anyway I don't know what that is but we have regular human beings with the Amish we can we have genetic or engine genetically enhanced humans designer babies sideboards humanoids with AI and of course upload the minds just to give you some ideas well what I'm trying to put together is infinite diversity in infinite combination how many of you are Star Trek fans all right yes awesome Star Trek is my favorite so in this episode is there in chief no no Beauty and I basically mr. Spock says well manila Johnson mr. Spock the glory of creation is this infinite diversity and a way of differences combined to great meaning and beauty [Music] so some references in my 2016 book google it I talked a little bit about transhumanism but the big book is coming out in 2019 in a few months the code transhumanism handbook we have about almost 70 transhumanist including scientists biologists doctors scholars philosophers and and so on we put together this huge volume to talk about what transhumanism is and what is the future is like and to give you highlights so we look at it from both secular and religious point of view because we believe that religion is important too we cannot get rid of religion we also talk about artificial general intelligence super intelligence super intelligence by the way it's going to help us our intelligence has limits but super intelligence has no limits and of course we offer practical advice on Redco life extension and we talked about enough cryptocurrency how it affects the future and we talked about we look at economics economics ethics of land chupi philosophy and politics this is something interesting in my chapter 16 I called Jim I really like this quote yes Jim says the immortality of all life extension is more than just living forever it's also how we live forever what is a mindset what is our humanity with each other now enemy is not one another enemy is sickness aging and death thank you so how many of you want to join me in the transhumanist movement all of you right thank you thank you so much okay we have time for a few questions for Newton if anybody has any questions any questions about that asteroid quick question hmm how big a threat to transfer the transhumanism party is Big Pharma and the AMA because they are very powerful in Washington DC yes that's a very good question a lot of medical research some of them I have they approved some of them are not a lot of research coming out of I mean they're not officially supported by by the government or by even the industry big pharmaceutical pharmaceutical industry now what we're seeing is that the drug pricing has been going up like crazy in all their health insurance cannot even keep up they don't want to pay for expensive drugs right because they don't want to you know lose money so that's why the pecan pie is so important we really focus on preventing disease and illness because then you don't need expensive drugs okay I think that is the answer it's try to prevent things now what about people who are already sick well we want to find treatment they're affordable and that's why the Wellness Center that we have you know is to give back to the community look if it costs $10,000 we try to get it to ten dollars okay somebody subsidize the rest okay now but that's only temporary solution the permanent solution is to find ways to keep myself healthy and not getting sick any other questions I was gonna ask you could you mentioned religion yes can you talk a little bit about the role you see of religion in in a futurist society when we've cured aging mmm-hmm great good question yes religion supposedly helped us become better people unfortunately a lot of times is opposite and that's why you know we had 9/11 terrorist attacks they did it in the name of God they thought they were righteous they were killing Evo's but no you know it turns out they are they are the evil ones not us well at least one in that circumstance okay so what did we do that's less I mean I bleaching is bad no it' s same with technology nuclear power is not bad but when you use nuclear power to build atomic bombs to kill people that's bad okay so religion is good but if you use religion as an excuse to kill people to discriminate against other religions other races and culture that's bad so what do we do transhumanism is to combined to give them a way out in a sense let me tell you how we are telling people I I call myself a Christian transhumanist we are telling people that look yeah you can be a good Christian and the transhumanist you can be a good Muslim and a chance I'm honest you can be a good Buddhist and transhumanist okay so what does I mean now we have a common ground just like you want to live long time you want to live a long time you live a long time but you are a teacher you are a scientist you are I know but we have a common ground okay that's why I believe in Simon ISM giving given religion a common ground to live peacefully together and as a result create a better future a brave new world of utopia not dystopia yeah thank you it might be good idea that you let everybody know how to join the transhumanist party if they want to because it a lot of people we joined I'm already a member yes walk back and that is to know there is several of joint but some of them you want let everybody know how to join if they want to yes of course I welcome all of you to join and to become active right you guys are so active here and you need to be active we cannot just sit on sidelines and do nothing yes so the best way to join is the email me find me you can find me on LinkedIn you can go to our website Oh where's the I switch off already ok the website and Jim knows my information just email Jim and Jim yes [Applause] you can also it can also cuoco me wants to go go me you get my email okay uh and I'd love to talk to all of you the one that joined the transhumance movement yes so yes thank you noon I really enjoyed your presentation you lead or you're the head of California transhumanist party so the other states also have a head okay that's a United States on Simmons body gennadi and I work very closely with gennadi on everything okay yes the United States yes hmm and so there are other chapters I mean other you know state state organizations I'm not sure if I was on that has fun no no please don't think so so maybe I share both Arizona and California that way you can come here more often Arizona that's right yeah yeah then I've excuse to come here okay that besides we're neighbors aren't we yeah yeah hmm okay and of course you're all welcome to California to you yeah this question is so interesting so many interesting things you brought up um you talked a little bit about the depression the raise and depression and you mentioned that you guys are doing a therapy based with virtual reality yes it's just a little bit more about what that is and how that deals with that issue of course of course okay communication is lacking even within a family these days okay like somebody mentioned already people are getting lonelier even though they are more active in social media they have lots of friends on Facebook but guess what nobody would understand them because they don't even meet face to face there are this virtual you know avatars whatever so how do we have this good physical connection it's hard so but we cannot go back we cannot say you know pick I'm gonna take away your phone I'm going to stop you from going to Facebook you cannot do that so instead you have to go forward how do you go forward we give them virtual reality we can actually see people in a virtual world now what we do is that we have AI artificial intelligence agent that serve as a psychiatrist now when you go to psychiatrists sometimes some people open up but a lot of people don't because they're strangers why don't want this tell strangers strange things about my crazy ideas but when it is an AI agent you're more free because you know it's an it' s a computer it's a computer I can tell computer anything right and even stupid things I don't care ok and and we make sure that privacy isn't is enforced so no breaking disclose a secret now if you have you know depression suicidal thoughts you tell you you know artificial intelligence agent then we can come up ways to help them at least of at the first you know stage to stop them from killing themselves in the second stage we refer to physicians psychiatrists real people who you know take over the case ok and also it gives them a way to you know to like I said express themselves more freely I think that that is very powerful I know technology taken help so cool ok all right thank you so much Newton excellent [Applause]
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