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OK - everyone has got to watch this tongue-in-cheek music video called Forever Young, produced by Humanity Death Watch (itself a very funny website). It is about immortality, the Singularity, Ray Kurzweil, and has cameos by the "big three" Anti-AI spokespeople (Hawking, Gates & Musk).

 

Sthira, you are going to love this. It is without question the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time. If we can't laugh at ourselves, what's the point?

 

Note - I've pasted the lyrics below the video for curmudgeons who don't have time to watch a 4min video.  <_<

 

Enjoy!

 

--Dean

 

 

 

Produced by Humanity Death Watch
Directed by Dorian & Weston

 

Lyrics:


Mr. Kurzweil please stay for a while.
Singularity’s near, we’re only watching the clock.
Hoping for the best but expecting robots
Are they gonna kill us all or not?
Don’t let me die young I want to live forever
My body is fragile so replace it with metal.
Living as a cyborg, I’ll be on a God-trip
It’s all about transcendence.

Our bodies and computers will be as one
Superintelligence will be such fun!
Thanks to our leader we’ll always be new
with brains wired to self improve.

Forever young
I want to be forever young.
With Ray I want to live forever
Forever, and ever.
Forever young
I want to be forever young
Yes I really want to live forever
Forever young.

Some are just downers, some refuse to see
Some won’t transcend their biology.
Sooner or later they all will be gone
While my guy stays young.
It’s so hard to get old, I’d rather not
I’ll never perish with my nanobots
Me and Ray we’re enlightened ones
And we’ll evolve together.

Uploading our consciousness before death
Saved in the cloud to be born again.
So many dreams comin’ out of the blue
They all will come true!

Forever young
I want to be forever young.
With Ray I’m gonna live forever
Forever, and ever.
Forever young
I want to be forever young.
Yes I really want to live forever
Forever, and ever.
Forever young
I want to be forever young!
I’m gonna sing this song forever!

 

Written by Paul Babb
Directed by Dorian & Weston
Cinematography by Neil Lokken
Animation & Models by Weston Getto Allen
Art Assistants: Rebecca Cook, & Berenice Delfuego Suchilt
Original Song Performed by Alphaville
Parody Lyrics by Paul Babb & Dorian Electra

Starring: Dorian Electra
Featuring: Christopher Crawford & Montana Ridge

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Awesome! Silly and adorable.

 

Michel Gondrey, one the most brilliant directors ever, I would love to see produce the definitive Kurzweil doc. Gondrey's work is perfect in every way good and pure and strange.

 

He'd do amazing things with Aubrey de Grey, too. Gondrey on de Grey wouldn't make de Grey and his noble efforts seem borderline hysterical and insane like that stupid 2006(?) CR program posted around here somewhere...I hated that program :-( the stupid false "mad genius" cliche.

 

SENS should pitch to Gondrey -- imho -- a beautiful fit.

 

Gondrey's trailer for the Chomsky doc:

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Thanks Sthira,

 

I've enjoyed a number of Noam Chomsky's talks and interviews on YouTube. Have you seen the movie for which this is a trailer?

 

Here is a short video (2:44) that isn't as funny as the "Forever Young" one above, but it is nevertheless an amusing and disturbing vision of the future of mind uploading. It really makes you think about how the future might not turn out quite as rosy as techno-optimists like Ray Kurzweil suggest...

 

 

For a related commentary on the potential for a dystopian future singularity resulting from economic inequality, this is an interesting article, including mention of controversial transhumanist/libertarian presidential candidate, Zoltan Istvan, whose  semi-autobiographical sci-fi book The Transhumanist Wager I really enjoyed, and whose proposed policies seem quite reasonable to me, but whose personality and political aspirations scare me almost as much as the current Republican frontrunner's...

 

--Dean

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Sthira,

I don't know Ben Goertzel personally, but I love his work and have watched virtually all of his YouTube talks and interviews. His book, A Cosmist Manifesto, available on his website as a free PDF, emphasizes a 'telos' for the universe that involves maximizing:

  • Joy - happiness & well-being of all life and esp. sentience life
  • Growth - expansion of sentient life, both in time via life-extension and in space via colonization of the galaxy and eventually the universe, hopefully by our descendents, whatever form they may take
  • Freedom - diversity and individual self-expression

His book serves as the basis for, and a more eloquent expression of, my general perspective on the ultimate purpose of life.

--Dean

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  • 7 months later...

It would be interesting to hear what you guys think of these modern day messiah's.. What usually happens with me is I "discover" one of them and then slowly start losing respect for them over the years.

 

Like for-instance Ben Goetzel you mentioned up there.. I still like the guy, but after watching the following interview, I started questioning everything he ever said. I just cannot take him serious anymore. Statements like "We can achieve AGI in 6-8 years if we really really try" (said that a few years ago).

 

The interview:

 

And then the father of them all, Kurzweil. Same thing. At first I really liked him, but then watching him using the same Gawd damn sentences in every speech (like "Hold on to every calorie because the next hunting season may not work out so well) and his non-intelligent answers to a more complex questions. It seems to me all he's doing is selling Moore's law. He took the ideas of FM2030 and ran with it. And what about him taking 200 supplements a day to reprogram himself, or bringing a version of his father back to life in 10 years time using his father's writings and memories about him. Also his inventions are not that impressive to me. And his prediction record, which is supposed to be some ~85% accurate. I read The age of spiritual machines and I literally threw it away as garbage paper. 

 

David Sinclair? I really hate this guy. To me, he is a proper snake oil salesman. How he talks about resveratrol and mouse studies, knowing very well it does not translate to humans, and how he is trying to make it personal to earn himself a sympathy vote and sell more of his products. I remember his TED talk where he is describing how his mother died and he says something like "When I got the phone call that my mother is close to death, I immediately grabbed all the resveratrol (or was it some other chemical?) stock I had and flew to her bed side".. I mean, really? You truly and honestly did that? You believed it will do her any good? What kind of scientist says that?

So, yeah, in it for the money, and he has since switched his attention to selling another chemical I believe. Because surely one single magic chemical will do wonders for us humans.

 

Who else? 

 

I almost lost a little bit of respect even for our most beloved leader Aubrey when I saw him completely naked in one of his documentaries - I believe it was The immortalists - but then I remembered this is just who he is, a eccentric and sincere person, plus he really knows what he's talking about. So yeah, I like Aubrey.  :rolleyes:

Of course I also like Musk and Craig Venter.

 

Ok, enough rambling from me.  :ph34r:

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