Cellular Immortality, a New Theory of Senescence and Rejuvenation

Rupert proposed a new hypothesis of cellular rejuvenation in an article in Nature in 1974, and in 2023 published a review article entitled ‘Cellular Senescence, Rejuvenation and Potential Immortality’ in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, summarising results of recent research, which support his hypothesis. In this talk he gives an overview of this hypothesis, which applies to cells of all kinds, including bacteria and yeasts as well as plants and animals, and he shows how it sheds new light on the nature of stem cells. In mammals, embryonic stem cells have a special property that enables them to divide indefinitely without senescing and Rupert suggests that cancerous transformations involve the hijacking of this embryonic stem cell system. He suggests ways in which this hypothesis could be tested, and shows how it could lead to new approaches in cancer therapy – by blocking the rejuvenative system that cancers have acquired. If this system were inhibited, then cancer cells might senesce like most other somatic cells and become less virulent.

This is one of six talks on potential breakthroughs in the sciences. The full series, together with course materials, including relevant chapters from Rupert’s books and scientific papers, are available for a reduced price of £35 (as of June 30, 2023).

Graham Hancock: Consciousness and the Limits of the Materialist Paradigm

 

A dialogue from Beyond The Brain 2021 – Further Reaches of Consciousness Research, with host David Lorimer, organzied by the Department of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, the Scientific and Medical Network, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and the Alef Trust.

Graham Hancock is the NY Times best-selling author of a series of controversial books, notably Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), Heaven’s Mirror (1998), Underworld (2002), Magicians of the Gods (2015) and America Before (2019), investigating the possibility of a lost advanced civilization of the Ice Age. He is also known for his work on the role of altered states of consciousness in the origins of art and religion — an interest explored in his 2005 book Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Man.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky: Science of Stress, Testosterone & Free Will | Huberman Lab Podcast #35

 

In this episode, I interview Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, Neurology & Neurosurgery at Stanford University. We discuss stress, what defines short-term versus long-term stress, and how stress can be beneficial or detrimental, depending on the context. We also discuss stress mitigation and how our sense of control over stress mitigation techniques, including exercise, determine health outcomes. Dr. Sapolsky explains some of the key effects of the hormone testosterone — how it can amplify pre-existing tendencies for aggression or sexual behavior, but that it does not produce those behaviors per se. He also explains how testosterone impacts our social hierarchies, sense of confidence, and willingness to embrace challenges of different kinds. He also explains how our behaviors and perceptions shape testosterone levels. And we discuss estrogen and the powerful role it plays in brain development, health and longevity. Finally, we discuss free will, what it means to have free will, and if we have any free will, including how knowledge alone might allow us to make better decisions for ourselves and society.

Rediscovering Our Connection with Nature with Erik Jampa Andersson

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkdk0H2cLZk[/embedyt]
Join bestselling Hay House author Charlie Morley on the You Can Heal Your Life podcast as he engages in a captivating conversation with Erik Jampa Andersson about his brand-new book Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World is More Than Human. In this episode, they delve into the forgotten concept of non-human beings and their crucial role in our natural world. Erik stresses the importance of reconnecting with nature and offers profound perspectives on our place in the world and our path to restoring our interconnectedness with nature to heal the planet.

Searching for Solid Evidence of UAPs – Dr. Massimo Teodorani, Galileo Project

Dr. Massimo Teodorani is an astrophysicist, musician, and UAP skeptic. He has recently signed onto Avi Loeb’s Galileo project, where he is in charge of an effort to take high-resolution images of UAP’s from around the world. Using pan-tilt camers with precision spectroscopic tools, Teodorani and colleagues are hoping to create an incontrovertible dataset that gets us closer to understanding what people are seeing in the skies in places like Marfa, Phoenix, and Hessdalen. In addition to the science, we talk mind control, statecraft, covert military action, and electronic music.

Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence & the Simulation Hypothesis

https://youtu.be/IAb8LNjZK54

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. In 2011, he founded the Oxford Martin Program on the Impacts of Future Technology, and is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. In 2009 and 2015, he was included in Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list.

Bostrom is the author of over 200 publications, and has written two books and co-edited two others. The two books he has authored are Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy (2002) and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014). Superintelligence was a New York Times bestseller, was recommended by Elon Musk and Bill Gates among others, and helped to popularize the term “superintelligence”.

Bostrom believes that superintelligence, which he defines as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest,” is a potential outcome of advances in artificial intelligence. He views the rise of superintelligence as potentially highly dangerous to humans, but nonetheless rejects the idea that humans are powerless to stop its negative effects.

In his book Superintelligence, Professor Bostrom asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful – possibly beyond our control. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed Artificial Intelligence, to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?

AI-Generated Philosophy Is Weirdly Profound

 

Sources: Zizek’s Ontology by Johnston

Transgressing the Boundary by Sokal

What the Sokal Affair Does and Does Not Prove by Sokal

The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel

Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit by Kojeve

2001: A Space Odyssey

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Ellison

Lectures on The Philosophy of History by Hegel

The Sublime Object of Ideology by Zizek

The Other Side of Psychoanalysis by Lacan

The Desire of Psychoanalysis by Tupinambá

 

 

Dr. Ruth Kastner and the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics

In this episode I am looking forward to exploring more about alternate interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. In previous episodes exploring consciousness, I’ve encountered several people who believe that Quantum Mechanics is at the root of consciousness. My current thinking is that it replaces one mystery with another one without really providing an explanation for consciousness. We are still stuck with the options of consciousness being a pre-existing property of the universe or some aspect of it, vs. it being an emergent feature of a processing network. Either way, quantum mechanics is an often misunderstood brilliant theory at the root of physics. It tells us that basic particles don’t exist at a specific position and momentum—they are, however, represented very accurately as a smooth wavefunction that can be used to calculate the distribution of a set of measurements on identical particles. The process of observation seems to cause the wavefunction to randomly collapse to a localized spot. Nobody knows for certain what causes this collapse. This is known as the measurement problem. The many worlds theorem says the wavefunction doesn’t collapse. It claims that the wavefunction describes all the possible universes that exist and the process of measurement just tells us which universe we are living in.

My guest is a leading proponent of transactional quantum mechanics.

TDr. Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She was one of three winners of the 2021 Alumni Research Award at the University of Maryland, College Park (https://tinyurl.com/2t56yrp2). She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition just published, 2022), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019). She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory, and has a blog at transactionalinterpretation.org. She is also a dedicated yoga practitioner and received her 200-Hour Yoga Alliance Instructor Certification in February, 2020.

AI and the future of humanity | Yuval Noah Harari at the Frontiers Forum

In this keynote and Q&A, Yuval Noah Harari summarizes and speculates on ‘AI and the future of humanity’. There are a number of questions related to this discussion, including: “In what ways will AI affect how we shape culture? What threat is posed to humanity when AI masters human intimacy? Is AI the end of human history? Will ordinary individuals be able to produce powerful AI tools of their own? How do we regulate AI?”

Why Physicists Think The Future Changes the Past – Retrocausality Explained

Retrocausality, a mind-blowing quantum concept, proposes that future events impact the past. Challenging time’s traditional flow and exploring interconnected temporal relationships. Can the universe communicate with its past-self?