RSS
As I’ve mentioned before, I went to UCLA MBA school in the early 1980s with a guy named Martin Rothblatt *, who now tops the list of highest paid “women” CEOs in America under the name Martine Rothblatt. He was a space exploration aficionado who went on to found Sirius satellite radio.
Now New York magazine has perhaps more than you care to know about the executive whom Howard Stern calls Martine Luther Queen.
One thing that’s pretty clear is that part of the ongoing World War T irruption stems from science fiction fans like Rothblatt and Larry/Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) who are into sci-fi ideologies like transhumanism that reject any limits on the superior individual’s aspirations, even limits like sex and death:
And these days Martine sees herself less as transgender and more as what is known as transhumanist, a particular kind of futurist who believes that technology can liberate humans from the limits of their biology—including infertility, cancer, and disease, but also, incredibly, death. Now, in her spare time, when she’s not running a $5 billion company, or flying her new helicopter up and down the East Coast, or attending to her large family and three dogs, she’s tinkering with ways that technology might push back that ultimate limit. She believes in a foreseeable future in which the beloved dead will live again as robots, reanimated by sophisticated artificial-intelligence programs that will be as cheap and accessible to every person as iTunes. …
It is here that Martine and Bina have chosen to establish a major outpost of Terasem, their organization devoted to achieving immortality and “cyber-consciousness” through cryogenics and AI.
You can see the roots of these kind of ideas in old sci-fi novels, like Heinlein’s. Scientology is one offshoot of sci-fi, and this kind of thing is another.
* Reading more about him, I’m pretty sure now that Martin was my super-smart and super-arrogant teammate in our Marketing Strategy competition at b-school, the one who insisted one week upon doing all the decision-making himself in our game because he was so much smarter than we were. (And … he did do better by himself than the four of us did as a team. But then he announced it was too much work for him because he was getting two degrees at once, JD and MBA, unlike us MBA-only slackers, so we’d have to muddle along.)
I don’t have proof but everything matches up: I was a standout student in my MBA program, but this guy was way out beyond me in brainpower. And he was a JD-MBA, and he was married (or living with someone) and had multiple children in his apartment in the Sawtelle neighborhood.
It sure sounds like him. By the way, our two teammates simply loathed him, thought him a complete prick. My view was: Granted, he’s a prick, but he’s also kind of right in thinking himself a new, advanced version of homo sapiens compared to us lowly worms.
If my old teammate really was Martin/Martine, could I tell that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body? No, of course, he wasn’t. He had no feminine traits at all. It was, recall, the universal view of his teammates that he was a big prick.
Bina Aspen, the woman who married Martine 33 years ago, when Martine was a man, and remains her devoted wife, calls herself not straight or gay but “Martine- sexual”—as in the only person she wants to have sex with is Martine.
Reminds me of The Simpsons’ writers describing Smithers as “Burns-sexual.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689673
“One thing that’s pretty clear is that part of the ongoing World War T irruption stems from science fiction fans like Rothblatt and Larry/Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) who are into sci-fi ideologies like transhumanism that reject any limits on the superior individual’s aspirations, even limits like sex and death.”
Somewhere or other, I read that Shulamith Firestone was a sci-fi geek as a kid. I always thought The Dialectic of Sex is really a sci fi freak’s cry of pain.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689676
A totally plausible future for a planet which will have several billion Africans in a few decades.
An Ubermensch in saggy pants, pilfering cheapo cigars from the Quickie Mart.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689679
I find it so difficult to read these WWT articles and keep the pronouns straight, especially when it involves trans marriages. Papers go out of their way to print fantasy but avoid reality (race/religion of crime perpetrators, printing the name Washington Redskins or showing Chief Wahoo). I can give them a pass on climate change, since that is a theory not fact so lots of room to argue, but what type of society is it when I am told that the sky is yellow and we are all just supposed to accept it? If Martin prefers to be called Marv-It when he thinks his brain has evolved to an alien plain of existance should the media roll with it and print it? This isn’t like Snoop Dogg turning into Snoop Lion or Prince turning into a symbol, which are inherently ridiculous from the start. Keep pointing at the naked emperor for us Steve.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689681
We live in a degenerated technocracy so it’s not surprising that we’re seeing more and more degenerate techies popping up all over. One reason is all this talk about brains. Degenerated technicians spend so much time thinking about systems and machines that they come to believe they themselves are no more than a kind of machine with a piece of “wetware” machinery, a brain in charge. Other people have minds and/or souls but these guys only have this piece of machinery that makes them do the things that make up their personality. Once a nerd really comes to believe this about himself then swapping out one sexual identity for another is no more moral or immoral than loading new software on a PC or changing the ink cartridge on a printer. The argument that pretending to be a woman is profoundly infra dig or sinful would mean nothing to them. These people are pagans who’ve built a low cult around computer technology and pop psychology and the rest of us should give them a wide berth. Alarm bells should go off when a non-neuroscientist starts jabbering on about “it’s just your brain telling that’s not okay” or “my brain wants me to eat that” or similar excuses for them getting what they want from the world.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689700
I laughed out loud.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689702
Martine’s “wife” is black, which means that he was too socially awkward to find an attractive woman.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689710
I just do not understand this desire to live forever. Not that I am going to jump out in front of a train, but the world seems to be getting increasingly lamer the older I get.
The kids… they are not alright. Actually they suck. Kind of off of my main point, but at what point do you call it and say it’s just kind of a rerun of things you’ve done before?
Plus these guys get these ideas, transhumanism, robot bodies, cheating the reaper.
Then they don’t think it through. There is a real anthropomorphic streak running through all these guys. Kind of like thinking aliens are fetching green lasses with three boobs. When in actuality you might not recognize alien life if it bumped into you. There is a lot of things it could be, some of which we might find understandable. But mostly not.
And an ai is an unknowable. What the heck is an intelligence devoid of all emotion, instinct, and the reptilian parts of our brains? What does it mean when you could run a million instances of “you” assuming you had the processor power?
Most of these guys assume their consciousness is going to be “transferred” into a machine. Do a wild hair assumption, and say that in the next 20 or 30 years you could “scan” a brain for whatever it takes to turn someone into a machine intelligence. Furthermore, let’s say it is not destructive.
You still going to be sanguine when the monitor blips into a copy of your own face, and says “Hey Meatbag, good to see ya. Tell you what, let’s have a party and run about 10 of us right now. We’ll have so much to talk about.” (I have to say I imagine my computer alter ego would be like Bender)
I have no idea what that would mean, but the whole thing doesn’t interest me at all. Let someone else do it. At that point we call the human race because it is no longer relevant.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689713
Also has a baby with another black woman
“Martin had met a woman in Kenya on his way home from the Seychelles; the relationship had not worked out, but had produced a son, Eli, who was 3. Bina’s daughter, Sunee, was about the same age.”
Sorry, but this is odd.
Oh, wait. . .
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689714
Wow this is way out there; here he is with his wife:
Gnosticism is an ancient heresy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4KHuQYm_z4
Featured speaker at a conference of Most Powerful Women is a mutilated man. Think on that, ladies, before taking the advice of Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg to "lean in."
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689716
Is Martin Luther Queen’s marriage to “her” Bantu wife considered legal in Alabama for example ? Same sex marriage is illegal there but Martin Luther Queen is not really a woman, so their marriage would probably be legally accepted in Alabama. But I could be wrong.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689721
Martin Luther Queen’s voice still does not sound like a woman when “she” speaks, “she” still sounds like a feminine Homosexual male.
“Her” voice still sounds too deep to be a real woman.
This is all too weird for me and I am not exactly the most socially conservative guy in the world, I take a libertarian view on a lot of social issues. But even this creeps me out and that says a lot.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689731
I’ve known a lot of really smart people, and they usually don’t make an issue of it. They know they’re smart and they don’t need to make themselves feel good by denigrating others.
They’re also too smart to get their nuts chopped off and then go around jabbering about that trans-human nonsense. Let’s see them master being human before they start claiming to be more than that.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689736
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4KHuQYm_z4
Sideshow freaks.
Gnosticism is an ancient heresy.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689746
What is the IQ gap between this guy and his wife, the black real estate agent from Compton that he loves so much? 60, 70 points? Indicates that he/she is incapable of real human relationships.
Averages are averages but there are certainly many outliers.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689748
I see nothing at all wrong with Transhumanism. I’m all for life extension, intelligence amplification, fun virtual reality games, etc. What’s annoying is pretending the future you envision is already here and forcing others to bend to your delusion. In this case it’s saying trans = normal. Obviously by definition something that is a rare outlier is not normal; no one claims Einstein is normal. Until you actually overcome the current biological reality of BEING A DAMN MALE don’t make us call you “she” and pretend otherwise.
Honestly, if I were plain old gay, I’d probably be upset that transsexuals are lumped in with my kind.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689769
“he was getting two degrees at once, JD and MBA, unlike us MBA-only slackers, so we’d have to muddle along.)”
Could be he thought you guys were taking too much time off working out at the gym or going to the home games at Pauley Pavillion? After all, if he made time to get two degrees at once, that would’ve left little in the way of time for a social life and/or enjoying campus events. UCLA, then as now, isn’t a walk in the park. Of course, it is for the athletic special admits. But for everyone else it wasn’t a walk in the park and if was a double major….always the highly motivated ones.
“My view was: Granted, he’s a prick, but he’s also kind of right in thinking himself a new, advanced version of homo sapiens compared to us lowly worms.”
Wait, were you describing this Rothblatt or Steve Jobs? Many of the descriptions of Rothblatt could easily have been written by former Apple employers of their late boss as well as his peers.
Shame that Jobs wasn’t interested in Sci-fi; he could’ve helped the tech world lead the way in cryogenetics and extension of life (e.g. Return of the Jedi, where Han Solo is frozen and the aging process is greatly reduced). That would’ve been up Jobs alley.
'Tis a pity, but them's the shakes.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689771
I know a lot of cryonicists, but I haven’t met Rothblatt, though my sources tell me that Rothblatt has arrangements for cryopreservation, like the Bitcoin developer (and regular married guy) Hal Finney, who went into cryo late last month. Cryonics attracts some pretty odd people, along with ordinary ones; but from what I’ve read, Rothblatt stands out among the unusuals.
BTW, some neuroscientists and cryobiologists think that cryonics deserves a second look as a way to try to turn death from a permanent off-state into a temporary and reversible off-state by approaching the problem as a challenge in applied neuroscience. They have set up the Brain Preservation Foundation to educate the public about this idea and raise money for incentive prizes to encourage scientists to push hard on the envelope of current and reachable brain preservation techniques:
http://www.brainpreservation.org/
http://www.brainpreservation.org/content/faq
Two prominent figures in the skeptic community, Michael Shermer (U.S.) and Susan Blackmore (UK), have associated with this foundation as advisers, so they apparently consider the idea scientifically defensible:
http://www.brainpreservation.org/content/advisors
Another BTW, and Sailer should like this: Cryonics has a reputation as a rich guy’s indulgence, but mostly middle-class men have signed up, and they use life insurance as the funding mechanism, which makes it affordable for ordinary people. We can tell that few wealthy men have gotten involved because of the absence of adventuresses in cryonics. If adventuresses saw that cryonicists’ gatherings, like the one scheduled to happen in Laughlin, Nevada, in November, drew in alpha males with money, they would try to infiltrate and exploit the situation. Yet in reality, the poor prospects for such women makes cryonics act like “female Kryptonite.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689772
“Just after her sex-reassignment surgery in 1994, her appearance was more feminine than it is today—old photos show her wearing lipstick, her long, curly hair loose about her shoulders. But in the years since she has developed her own unisexual style.”
This is something I’ve noticed with middle-aged transitioners. They soon tire of the lady-wank stuff and soon switch back to comfortable shoes and simple hair.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689777
Steve this guy seems to be “living the dream” of the b-list stature, a-list quality sci if writer John Varley, whose forgotten classic Steel Beach features everyday people switching sexes like you or I would switch socks. Varleys a good writer and as near as I can tell emulates and idolizes Heinlein. This fruitcake is trying to live in the world Varley imagined …
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689782
"Martin had met a woman in Kenya on his way home from the Seychelles; the relationship had not worked out, but had produced a son, Eli, who was 3. Bina’s daughter, Sunee, was about the same age."
Sorry, but this is odd.
Yeah, why would anyone want to make a baby with a Kenyan?
Oh, wait. . .
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689805
Great, this guy/girl is gonna live forever while former classmate Steve, his readers and the rest of Western Civilization dies.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689821
OT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beto_O%27Rourke
ISteve-y goodness. The border district is 77% Hispanic, so Bob O’Rourke, son of Judge Pat O’Rourke, Columbia grad and IT entrepreneur, became Beto O’Rourke. I’m not so good with the facial comparisons, though. Tom Cruise?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689833
You have no idea, Hepp.
Averages are averages but there are certainly many outliers.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689835
Bit of trivia:
According to Gore Vidal, “Martin Luther Queen” is how John and Bobby Kennedy referred to the gay black writer James Baldwin.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689836
Trivia bonus: Vidal says they found this hilarious and used to argue over who came up with it first. Of course, all of this assumes Vidal is a trustworthy source, which is always in doubt when dealing with Vidal.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689851
ISteve-y goodness. The border district is 77% Hispanic, so Bob O'Rourke, son of Judge Pat O'Rourke, Columbia grad and IT entrepreneur, became Beto O'Rourke. I'm not so good with the facial comparisons, though. Tom Cruise?
Non-Latino whites in El Paso like O’Rourke tend to assimilate into Latino culture. El Paso – and much of South and West Texas – offer up a good model of Latino/Anglo “conviviencia” as they say in Spanish – there really isn’t an equivalent English language word. A model of both melding together and adapting a similar culture. Mainly because the PC/SWPL faction among whites in Texas (outside of Austin) isn’t big enough to be an obstacle, unlike in much of California. Such a model is the only hope for national survival.
what does "national survival" mean to you?
Yeah, no cognates with that Latin conviv- root. Thank God we have Spanish to provide words for complex notions that we Anglos can't savvy with our own Low German dialect.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689864
“He had no feminine traits at all. It was, recall, the universal view of his teammates that he was a big prick.”
A buitch? Butch bitch? Or biutch.
He was no pussy but sure sounds like a cunt.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689870
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martine_Rothblatt
PS. What was the team assignment?
Humanism is so dead.
It’s transhumanism now.
For a black guy, it’s donning a blonde wig.
For a Jewish guy, it’s making a billion dollars.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689871
Steve, re your old post on Thatcher sounding downscale, here is a list from a Greg Clarke paper of rare elite and non-elite names
Pick out the one out of three from each list you think are elite (early 1800′s Oxbridge name):
1 Agnerv
2 Atthill
3 Allbert
1 Baitson
2 Berrton
3 Bradsey
1 Bodgett
2 Brooshooft
3 Bradsey
1 Casamajor
2 Carville
3 Clemishaw
1 Callaly
2 Cavat
3 Conynham
.
.
.
.
.
Answers are 2, 1, 2, 1, 3
I made it hard on purpose, I could have used Agassiz, Belfour, or Boinville as elite choices.
Casamajor is the Anglicization of a rare elite Spanish surname, Casamayor, which means old or oldest house. They’ve been doing well in England since the 1600′s.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689873
Exactly. Vidal is the type of person who after a bit of going down that lane would have us all believe that Bobby Kennedy tried to hit on him in a nightclub so he could take him back to his apartment for a…anyway. Always good to consider the source.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689876
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/24100000/Kit-Fisto-star-wars-characters-24132482-332-500.jpg
Transhuman future
I wanna be a green octopus-head man.
Who wants to be pan, minotaur, and centaur?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689882
“Jefferson says
This is all too weird for me and I am not exactly the most socially conservative guy in the world, I take a libertarian view on a lot of social issues. But even this creeps me out and that says a lot.”
The things you have taken a libertarian view on have inevitably led to this thing which creeps you out.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689888
[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689891
ISteve-y goodness. The border district is 77% Hispanic, so Bob O'Rourke, son of Judge Pat O'Rourke, Columbia grad and IT entrepreneur, became Beto O'Rourke. I'm not so good with the facial comparisons, though. Tom Cruise?
He looks a lot more like a Kennedy to me.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689893
Lets see here. What values define Western civilization and make it exceptional compared to the rest of the world?
1) liberty
2) work ethic
3) free markets
4) spirit of inquiry
5) pioneering
6) productive accomplishment
7) self-reliance and self-help ethic
8) A “can do” spirit where nothing is impossible
These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization.
You guys need to get with the program.
I feel pretty confident in saying that "living forever" doesn't mean "living to 2045." Barring a catastrophe, plenty of people alive in 2014 will live another 30 years and a few months any way through natural maturation and aging. They won't mysteriously "become immortal" by surviving to January 1, 2045.
If transhumanists want to set a date as a goal which makes sense and at least shows some ambition, they should pick one well beyond anyone's current life expectancy, even this year's newborns'. How about a year in the 24th Century? Yet no transhumanist I know of has proposed a "2345 Initiative" (an easy to remember number) as the name of a life extension project, because transhumanists apparently think about time like teenagers and don't know how to scale up to what a much longer lifetime would have to mean.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689897
“RedneckCryonicist says
Two prominent figures in the skeptic community, Michael Shermer (U.S.) and Susan Blackmore (UK), have associated with this foundation as advisers, so they apparently consider the idea scientifically defensible:”
It should be pointed out that Michael Shermer has no scientific training (unless one considers psychology as such). I read Shermer’s book “Why People Believe Stupid Things” several years ago. It was a good book. However, I remember him stating in it that he had, at one time or another, believed in just about every crazy, unsubstantiated, crackpot thing you can imagine. It made me wonder if perhaps his newfound “skeptical” belief in rational humanism wasn’t just a new fad for him – a new thing to believe. One has to wonder when one says: I used to believe in every kind of crazy s**t there is, but now I don’t, and you should listen to me.
http://www.skeptic.com/past-lectures/surnames-and-the-history-of-social-mobility/
Setting aside Shermer, however, the fact remains that cryonics involves some fairly well defined problems in neuroscience that scientists can work on in the here and now, with current and reachable techniques, and independently of speculative revival mechanisms. Again, refer to the Brain Preservation Foundation's website: http://www.brainpreservation.org/
In fact, I've made myself unpopular among cryonicists by calling bullshit on Drexler's "nanotechnology" nonsense from the 1980's, and I want cryonics organizations to stop invoking that in their literature. Neuroscientists have independently started to converge on solving the front-loading problem of making cryonics a feasible survival strategy, and cryonicists need to emphasize that because, again, it shows progress in the here and now.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689899
1) liberty
2) work ethic
3) free markets
4) spirit of inquiry
5) pioneering
6) productive accomplishment
7) self-reliance and self-help ethic
8) A "can do" spirit where nothing is impossible
These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization.
You guys need to get with the program.
So is Scientology.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689908
Here’s an article about another blood clotting gene, present in 5% of whites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_V_Leiden
So it is quite common and carriers have a much higher risk of thrombosis, and women who have it have a higher risk of miscarriage.
What’s the benefit?
Presenting with higher clotting tendencies than normal generally means easier wound recovery at the tradeoff of increased stroke risk (but the increase is not so high compared to the wound recovery ability).
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689915
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_V_Leiden
So it is quite common and carriers have a much higher risk of thrombosis, and women who have it have a higher risk of miscarriage.
What's the benefit?
Maybe in caveman days, people got cut all the time while stabbing wooly mammoths, and bleeding to death was a big risk. So, maybe we clot more than we should for our modern lifestyle? Is this why we take a tiny aspirin every day?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689918
Two prominent figures in the skeptic community, Michael Shermer (U.S.) and Susan Blackmore (UK), have associated with this foundation as advisers, so they apparently consider the idea scientifically defensible:"
It should be pointed out that Michael Shermer has no scientific training (unless one considers psychology as such). I read Shermer's book "Why People Believe Stupid Things" several years ago. It was a good book. However, I remember him stating in it that he had, at one time or another, believed in just about every crazy, unsubstantiated, crackpot thing you can imagine. It made me wonder if perhaps his newfound "skeptical" belief in rational humanism wasn't just a new fad for him - a new thing to believe. One has to wonder when one says: I used to believe in every kind of crazy s**t there is, but now I don't, and you should listen to me.
Plenty of scientists respect Shermer. They want to publish in his Skeptic magazine and speak for his Skeptic Society. Even an HBD scientist highly regarded by Sailer, Dr. Gregory Clark, author of The Son Also Rises, has spoken there:
http://www.skeptic.com/past-lectures/surnames-and-the-history-of-social-mobility/
Setting aside Shermer, however, the fact remains that cryonics involves some fairly well defined problems in neuroscience that scientists can work on in the here and now, with current and reachable techniques, and independently of speculative revival mechanisms. Again, refer to the Brain Preservation Foundation’s website: http://www.brainpreservation.org/
In fact, I’ve made myself unpopular among cryonicists by calling bullshit on Drexler’s “nanotechnology” nonsense from the 1980′s, and I want cryonics organizations to stop invoking that in their literature. Neuroscientists have independently started to converge on solving the front-loading problem of making cryonics a feasible survival strategy, and cryonicists need to emphasize that because, again, it shows progress in the here and now.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689921
http://takimag.com/article/bluster_and_bluff_in_the_baltic_patrick_buchanan/print#axzz3Cn68PRfq
If Russia invades Estonia, we’ll react as if America itself was invaded, and it’s time for WWIII.
But if millions of illegals invade America, we give them free everything and offer them amnesty.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689926
1) liberty
2) work ethic
3) free markets
4) spirit of inquiry
5) pioneering
6) productive accomplishment
7) self-reliance and self-help ethic
8) A "can do" spirit where nothing is impossible
These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization.
You guys need to get with the program.
I have trouble taking transhumanism seriously these days, and I’ve advocated disengaging cryonics from it because cryonics has some observable neuroscience problems to work on which don’t depend on speculative technologies. Transhumanists since the 1970′s (I’ve lived long enough to bear witness to that) have a history of making nonsensical pronouncements that we’ll “become immortal” or “live forever” or “conquer aging” by arbitrary dates within the current life expectancies of the transhumanists spouting these fooleries. Lately some of them have fixated on the year 2045 for some reason, or a little over 30 years from now.
I feel pretty confident in saying that “living forever” doesn’t mean “living to 2045.” Barring a catastrophe, plenty of people alive in 2014 will live another 30 years and a few months any way through natural maturation and aging. They won’t mysteriously “become immortal” by surviving to January 1, 2045.
If transhumanists want to set a date as a goal which makes sense and at least shows some ambition, they should pick one well beyond anyone’s current life expectancy, even this year’s newborns’. How about a year in the 24th Century? Yet no transhumanist I know of has proposed a “2345 Initiative” (an easy to remember number) as the name of a life extension project, because transhumanists apparently think about time like teenagers and don’t know how to scale up to what a much longer lifetime would have to mean.
Having said all that, I still consider myself a transhumanist in the larger context in that we should use biotechnology to cure aging (which is certainly doable) and to have robust regeneration (which is also certainly doable). I don't believe in defining dates when we become immortal. Rather, people doing the actual work set milestones such a repair/replacement of mitochondrial DNA, removal of lysosomal aggregates, or other such definable objectives. This is what the SENS foundation and other such groups are doing. Same for cryonics. The near-term objective for cryonics should be effective cryopreservation of the brain (defined as complete preservation of neuro-structure down to the synaptic connection level without damage).
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689933
If Russia invades Estonia, we'll react as if America itself was invaded, and it's time for WWIII.
But if millions of illegals invade America, we give them free everything and offer them amnesty.
Article V of the NATO treaty is a bizarre anachronism for the 21st century, and I say that as someone who is a lot less skeptical about American exercises of military power than most people here.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689935
Why do all the wrong people have money? I wish the realist right had some billionaire donors so the Steve-o-sphere could freeze one of its young volunteers (possibly Svigor?) and some high IQ chicks and send them into the far future to do battle with the forces of darkness and repopulate the earth.
The project would probably end in tears when Svig misses the allotted time and Whiskey gets frozen instead. When he wakes up the white women hate hate hate him…
Cue Dorothy Parker:
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gives it to.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689939
This garbage is a subset of AI. Like Roko’s Basilisk which I kid you not had people who believe in that transhumanist stuff in tears and frightened. It is a subset of a gnostic idiot religion just as the anti-Gnostic says. It is moronic beyond belief, and anyone betting on transhumanism might as well put their money on Prester John, or the Philosopher’s Stone, or a unicorn, or a Hippogriff.
Baron Munchausen by contrast was a paragon of calm, considered wisdom and restraint.
Sci-fi writers like Jules Verne and Michael Chrichton and Larry Niven and David Brin and Arthur C. Clarke would be aghast. Much of this weirdness is a result of feminism into Sci-Fi. Away with “HARD” sci-fi speculating on the effect of new technology on society and power (example: Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”) and IN is navel gazing sexual identity mongering.
I ask you, which is more male oriented? Stuff about how society CHANGES if say, warp-drive becomes a reality and people can colonize other planets readily and spread out across the galaxy, or how people can have their head chopped off and frozen and stuck on some robot; or exist as some AI simulation.
———————
Roko’s Basilisk, for those too tired to read the link, had a bunch of AI/Transhumanists idiots screaming in terror. It posits a future AI that is oriented towards helping and preserving humanity, not one hostile or indifferent to it. To that end, it knows people in the distant past (like now) who could have helped birth it earlier (and saved many, as the AI would end wars and hunger and Trayvon types getting “profiled” or something, or even worse Donald Sterling ranting to his half-cat mistress out of Avatar). And it would punish those people who could have helped but didn’t (in stopping Donald Sterling ranting to his half-cat mistress from Avatar or ending world hunger, which ever is worse) … by creating a simulation so real that it “crosses over” to reality and where people from the past are tortured … forever! For not putting every cent into AI research. Heck, the Roko’s Basilisk goes even further, it postulates even reading this text and scoffing, will have a future simulated “you” tortured in all sorts of ways in a simulation so real its really real, or something.
To me that’s like when the French a few hundred years later dug up the Cardinal who condemned Joan of Arc to death and dragged his bones around Paris. Did he care? Nope he was long dead. Go ahead, stick voodoo pins into dolls labeled Obama or Putin or Vanilla Ice all you want, it will have no effect at all.
A lot of “smart” people fall for the stupidest stuff. Confidence tricks an average guy on the street would see through right away. Its akin to sending all your money to Jimmy Swaggart because he “needs some really quick money, or God will call me home.”
I would argue that chopping your member off, prancing around saying you are a woman, and believing in transhumanism counts for being monumentally stupid. Smart? I can point to smart guys all day: Tesla, Berners-Lee, Turing, Einstein, the Brunels, father and son, Beethoven, the Wright Brothers. None of them chopped off their members, pranced around in dresses, and believed their heads would be stuck on some robot a hundred years after they were frozen after death.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689952
The geek shall inherit the earth.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-08/facebook-s-value-tops-200-billion-on-mobile-ad-optimism.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/jack-ma-how-billionaire-alibaba-founder-is-worth-22b-pGn3fJ5~Q2eOW~MhQKO46w.html
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689954
http://wreg.com/2014/09/07/witness-reacts-to-violent-attack-at-kroger/
Blacks are naturally tougher and more aggressive than other races. So, they do stuff like this against whites, browns, and yellows. It’s racial because blacks would not be acting like this if they were weaker. But since many blacks are muscled and wild, they enjoy kicking butt and laughing about it.
How do sub-Saharan Africans do in pain tolerance compared to Northern Europeans and East Asians?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689958
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11080428/Far-right-extremists-lead-hundreds-in-Calais-anti-migrant-protests.html
Guess what?
Wanting to defend Europe is ‘extreme right-wing’, so crows a ‘conservative’ paper.
I wonder…
Does the Telegraph think Israel is ‘extreme right’ for protecting its borders?
And if open borders are so great, why do papers like the Telegraph cheer Ukraine against Russkie ‘invaders’?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689962
The touches of humility suit you well, and are very funny.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689972
“Why do all the wrong people have money? I wish the realist right had some billionaire donors so the Steve-o-sphere could freeze one of its young volunteers (possibly Svigor?) and some high IQ chicks and send them into the far future to do battle with the forces of darkness and repopulate the earth.”
Why? We need to do battle with the forces of darkness and repopulate the earth (with the right sort of people) in the here and now. No need to travel into the future; and there won’t be a future and/or time machines (if such were even possible, which is unlikely) worth having if this isn’t done now. I know, you were just making a joke. I’m just pedantic.
“The project would probably end in tears when Svig misses the allotted time and Whiskey gets frozen instead. When he wakes up the white women hate hate hate him…”
Again, why bother? Women hate hate hate Whiskey today, in the here and now. No need for time travel.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689978
Comedy gold in this amusing juxtaposition
Frenzied Female validation
http://www.theonion.com/articles/female-friends-spend-raucous-night-validating-the,27446/
Chelsea Clinton story
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689979
This Rothbard person may be smart, but he may also be insane. But more likely just a pathologically narcissist person. Only that today this is celebrated.
As for transsexualism and transhumanism, it is just part of the same process of trying to subvert human nature.
A good article on how this attempt to erase all borders and differences is having terrible and unforeseen consequences:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-07-021-f
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689980
Sigh.
This is the kind of news my mother cites when I infrequently have arguments with her about whether America or my birth country in NE Asia (where she lives) is a better society.
She’ll say, “You see! Why do Americans allow deviants and degenerates so prominently in the public place? It’s like they want to rub them on your face! How can you stand it?”
She’s well-educated and modern, but also very East Asian, very traditional, and very orthodox Catholic. For much of her life, she thought of America as this shining, great, noble Christian country. She cannot fathom why it has now become “The Whore of Babylon.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689987
What’s your definition of “tough”?
How do sub-Saharan Africans do in pain tolerance compared to Northern Europeans and East Asians?
It sure is hot and malarial there. They cope.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689989
If it menstruates, it’s female; otherwise it’s not.
By the way, watched the video of this dude for about 2 minutes and then turned it off. He is one strange fellow.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-689992
She seems pretty cool from the video posted by
I knew of a Taiwanese programmer who called himself Autrijus Tang. He was so smart, productive, creative, elegant, and an excellent communicator… A shooting star. One day he became Audrey Tang. It took more than a day, of course, and seemed to be quite an ordeal. Many in the programming community thought this was pretty funny and strange. The joke was that, since it’s so hard to attract women to the community, we have to do what we can…
As far as I know Audrey is still an awesome programmer. I ran into her at a conference a while back. She gave a great presentation, and looked quite cool.
My point being… At an individual level, who cares? At the political, “World War T” level, there can be some argument. But when you know someone, you don’t judge them, you just appreciate them for their considerable talents, and you don’t give a damn if they are he or she or who knows what.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang
https://www.google.com/search?q=audrey+tang&tbm=isch
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690005
What’s with all the mean-spirited vitriol from some of the comments? Sure the guy/girl’s pretty damn weird, then again probably most of the commenters here are too in their own way. By all accounts Rothblatt seems pretty harmless. She’s not overly political. She’s made her fortune from running a company that genuinely benefits consumers (have you heard FM radio lately?). And her transhumanist and AI endeavors are probably off-the-wall but there’s a slim that they may actually contribute important tech to future human generations.
I think the current political hysteria concerning LGBT issues is getting pretty ridiculous. But that doesn’t mean I have to harbor personal ill-will towards everyone in that group. Just like if you don’t like affirmative action, the solution isn’t to be racist against all black people. I get it, everyone here’s fed up to *here* with political correctness. But the response from some of you just sounds like a bunch of grown men playing the Internet version of “smear the queer.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690007
Why Jews outwit Russians.
http://youtu.be/2EaZa9yUd50?t=4m53s
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690009
“These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization.”
It’s certainly a hypertrophy of the better Western values (ie what sets the West apart from other cultures), which shows you what happens when you take a good thing too far, without any checks and balances from other good things.
In other words, no, it is not “gnosticism”. Eric Voegelin was dead wrong: ancient Gnosticism bears no relationship whatsoever, except very superficially, to modern political movements. No Gnostic ever intended to “immanentize the eschaton”; Gnosticism is best understood as being similar in spirit to Hindu philosophy and religion, which makes no attempt to “immanentize the eschaton” (a critic of Indian civilization might observe that perhaps they could have done with a little bit of immanentizing, maybe). The point of Gnosticism is to free yourself of the World and to return to God (that’s what the Gnosis is for); if you tried to “immanentize the eschaton” you would be alienating yourself from God and tying yourself down with the World; ie going the wrong way entirely and missing the point about what Gnosis is for. That is the complete opposite of modern political movements.
Modern political movements are Western Christian heresies (ie, starting with people like Joachim of Fiore, and later Millenarians). They are all about creating a heaven on earth – ie “immanentizing the eschaton” – something which some Jews and early Christians might have tried to do, but which Gnostics did not try to do, because they were about finding a way back to God, not trying to magically transform a material world which was, according to their view, either intrinsically evil, or intrinsically good but totally inferior to God and of lesser importance. A Gnostic can’t immanentize anything because for them, the higher cannot descend into the lower; that’s why they did not believe that Jesus was an actual flesh-and-blood human. Jesus’ sacrifice was in a higher plane and according to the classic Gnostic view Jesus either never came to Earth, or only his appearance did so, not his actual flesh. Lingering Docetism is probably the source of the Islamic idea that Jesus did not actually die on the cross.
Voegelin relied on Christian heresy hunters and Church fathers who were not exactly the most reliable source for knowledge about Gnosticism. He did most of his writing before he could absorb the discoveries from the Nag Hammadi library. He spent a lot of time pounding square pegs into round holes. His criticism of modern political movements isn’t wrong, it just has nothing to do with ancient Gnosticism as it actually existed. Making up a totally new category called “modern Gnosticism” that is different from actual ancient Gnosticism to describe modern political movements isn’t an honest way to go about criticizing modern political movements since the label simply does not fit.
“These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization.”
I have often thought of World War T as a byproduct of Cultural Marxism, which to an extent it is, but it is also true that it is a uniquely Western sickness, too, in that it is a Western “Perfectibility of Man” delusion that unfortunately follows naturally from our Western “can do” attitude (a Gnostic would only see Man as perfected if he returns to God; he can’t be perfected by way of this World).
For the first time recently I discovered someone I actually know, who now claims to be a woman (no surgery yet, just hormones, in his late 20s/early 30s) and was completely baffled by this (he was neither someone who was very feminine, nor was he as far as I know “self-titillated” at the idea of being a woman – although I have no way of knowing that for sure) since he does not seem to fall into the usual categories. Is there such a thing as “ideological gender change” the way some women become lesbians due to their politics?
What catches my attention now is Steve’s linking of transgenderism to transhumanism, because this person was a few years ago talking a lot about transhumanism, and one day “living forever” thanks to technology. Although he is generally a leftist and a Cultural Marxist, he is also a technological Utopian and now that I link transhumanism with transgenderism in my mind, his “switch” makes a bit of sense – well, it’s nonsense to me, but I guess I can see where this is coming from. What he needs is a good dose of realism but modern media seem well designed to keep people’s fantasy bubbles intact and PC reinforces their delusions.
Western technological Utopianism (transhumanism and the rest) and Cultural Marxism together make for a powerfully corrosive mix.
Yes, this is one of the strong social currents of our time. I really wish it wasn't but it clearly is. Two related symptoms in pop culture is the body modification trend - tattoos, huge ear loops etc - and the obsession with zombies, clones, hybrid mutants and such things. This all looks like people fretting and trying to figure out what it means to be human and an individual when all your are is "wetware" and biological hardware. People sense we're wallowing in the mundane; some people embrace it and some people try to reach for the transcendent via this sad transhumanist cult. What a mess.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690011
The project would probably end in tears when Svig misses the allotted time and Whiskey gets frozen instead. When he wakes up the white women hate hate hate him...
Can we freeze Svigor anyway?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690012
“Sigh.”
“This is the kind of news my mother cites when I infrequently have arguments with her about whether America or my birth country in NE Asia (where she lives) is a better society.”
“She’ll say, “You see! Why do Americans allow deviants and degenerates so prominently in the public place? It’s like they want to rub them on your face! How can you stand it?””
“She’s well-educated and modern, but also very East Asian, very traditional, and very orthodox Catholic. For much of her life, she thought of America as this shining, great, noble Christian country. She cannot fathom why it has now become “The Whore of Babylon.””
Listen to your mother!
She sounds like a smart cookie.
I know I’d get the heck out of the USA now, if I actually had the option.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690013
OT: Lots of talk today about Ray Rice and domestic violence in the NFL
Interestingly, there’s a database of all the arrests of NFL players since 2000. It’d be even more interesting if someone were to add race to that dataset.
http://www.utsandiego.com/nfl/arrests-database/
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690014
“RedneckCryonicist says
Plenty of scientists respect Shermer. They want to publish in his Skeptic magazine and speak for his Skeptic Society. Even an HBD scientist highly regarded by Sailer, Dr. Gregory Clark, author of The Son Also Rises, has spoken there:”
I”ve nothing against cryonics. If they can figure out a way of putting a person on ice without them merely becoming a corpse-cicle, I’m all for it. I’m merely pointing out that the endorsement of Shermer is not necessarily much of an endorsement. An admission by someone that he believed a bunch of crazy stuff in the past does not instill in me the confidence that I should believe everything he says now.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690034
” Smart? I can point to smart guys all day: Tesla, Berners-Lee, Turing, Einstein, the Brunels, father and son, Beethoven, the Wright Brothers. None of them chopped off their members, pranced around in dresses, and believed their heads would be stuck on some robot a hundred years after they were frozen after death.:”
I laughed at this. Thank you Whiskers.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690041
“One thing that’s pretty clear is that part of the ongoing World War T irruption stems from science fiction fans like Rothblatt and Larry/Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) who are into sci-fi ideologies like transhumanism that reject any limits on the superior individual’s aspirations, even limits like sex and death:”
First, how can you compare gender to death? Death is something we (still) can’t overcome, but gender is not some unsurpassable obstacle. Judith Polgar can beat 99.99999% of men at chess, a game where men are vastly overepresented at, and at which psychologists claim that men have mental traits that make them more suited to achieving success. Women are usually more interested in the arts than men, and have higher rates of enrollment in college arts courses than men. Yet, most of the World’s greatest artists have been male. This indicates that there is huge variations between people to a much greater degree than between genders.
It is pretty obvious that you greatly exaggerate the psychological differences between gender to emphasize your conservative point of view that the conservative society of the 1950′s was better than what we have now because it understood and respected gender differences.
There are MINOR differences in terms of preferences and abilities between genders on average. There is far greater variations between individuals than genders. Yes, a woman who pursues powerlifting will most likely not be able to bench press 1,000 lbs or be as great as the best male powerlifters. She might, however, become stronger than 99% of all men who train as well.
And death is a limitation that we haven’s transcended, but there is no reason to assume that we will never transcend it. The problem with you conservatives is that you have this Panglossian view of the World, that what we have is the best that we can ever hope for, and that the past is always better than the present, which is always preferable to any future changes. Hence, you see any attemt to improve anything as a dangerous risk where we stand nothing to win and everything to lose. I have said it before: if all humans were conservative, we would all still be living in caves and hunting game with stone spears. Funny that, the higher you go up in the educational and income ladder, the lower the degree of conservatism of people.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690064
What many people do not seem to know: it is not even remotely known how exactly the brain stores memories. Unlike what many people tend to think, the brain does not work like a computer separated into hard- and software.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690067
“A model of both melding together and adapting a similar culture. Mainly because the PC/SWPL faction among whites in Texas (outside of Austin) isn’t big enough to be an obstacle, unlike in much of California. Such a model is the only hope for national survival”
what does “national survival” mean to you?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690077
The project would probably end in tears when Svig misses the allotted time and Whiskey gets frozen instead. When he wakes up the white women hate hate hate him...
“Why do all the wrong people have money?”
Cue Dorothy Parker:
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gives it to.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690081
A guy says he’s Napoleon. Not that he wants to pretend that he’s Napoleon and will the rest of us play along? But that he’s really Napoleon.
Well, everybody knows, he’s nuts.
A guy says he’s a woman. Not that he wants to pretend that he’s a woman and will the rest of us play along? But that he’s really a woman.
Well, if you don’t go along with him, you’re the one who’s nuts.
Oi vey!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690083
All these transhumanists who are going to live forever or at least until they’re 150/200 years old, do they think they’re still going to retire at 62 and have 90+ years lazing about off the fat-of-the-land?
When they realize that they're looking at ninety-plus years of bingo, they'll hang themselves.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690085
Best career advice for women: to have been a man.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690087
a good model of Latino/Anglo “conviviencia” as they say in Spanish – there really isn’t an equivalent English language word.
Yeah, no cognates with that Latin conviv- root. Thank God we have Spanish to provide words for complex notions that we Anglos can’t savvy with our own Low German dialect.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690090
A totally plausible future for a planet which will have several billion Africans in a few decades.
An Ubermensch in saggy pants, pilfering cheapo cigars from the Quickie Mart.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690094
They’re also too smart to get their nuts chopped off and then go around jabbering about that trans-human nonsense. Let’s see them master being human before they start claiming to be more than that.
The first step on the path to Transhumanism is Inhumanism.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690097
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4KHuQYm_z4
Wow this is way out there; here he is with his wife:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4KHuQYm_z4
Featured speaker at a conference of Most Powerful Women is a mutilated man. Think on that, ladies, before taking the advice of Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg to “lean in.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690108
#51 Twinkie: Ha. Your mother sounds like my late mother. Except the country where she lived, and my birth country, once covered exactly the same geographic area as the country I live in now. Sigh indeed.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690112
Averages are averages but there are certainly many outliers.
Nothing to indicate she’s an outlier. Doesn’t appear to have gone to college, the article doesn’t list any intellectual interests she has that are not intertwined with that of her husband. If I cared enough, I’d watch videos of the couple too to gauge her IQ. But whatever. And odds are the Kenyan he slept with wasn’t a genius either. The guy probably likes dumb black women since they’re nonthreatening (due to the IQ and status gap) to his fragile psyche.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690114
BTW, some neuroscientists and cryobiologists think that cryonics deserves a second look as a way to try to turn death from a permanent off-state into a temporary and reversible off-state by approaching the problem as a challenge in applied neuroscience. They have set up the Brain Preservation Foundation to educate the public about this idea and raise money for incentive prizes to encourage scientists to push hard on the envelope of current and reachable brain preservation techniques:
http://www.brainpreservation.org/
http://www.brainpreservation.org/content/faq
Two prominent figures in the skeptic community, Michael Shermer (U.S.) and Susan Blackmore (UK), have associated with this foundation as advisers, so they apparently consider the idea scientifically defensible:
http://www.brainpreservation.org/content/advisors
Another BTW, and Sailer should like this: Cryonics has a reputation as a rich guy's indulgence, but mostly middle-class men have signed up, and they use life insurance as the funding mechanism, which makes it affordable for ordinary people. We can tell that few wealthy men have gotten involved because of the absence of adventuresses in cryonics. If adventuresses saw that cryonicists' gatherings, like the one scheduled to happen in Laughlin, Nevada, in November, drew in alpha males with money, they would try to infiltrate and exploit the situation. Yet in reality, the poor prospects for such women makes cryonics act like "female Kryptonite."
I know a lot of cryonicists, but I haven’t met Rothblatt, though my sources tell me that Rothblatt has arrangements for cryopreservation, like the Bitcoin developer (and regular married guy) Hal Finney, who went into cryo late last month.
In our world in the making, all these rich geniuses on ice are likely to serve as microwavable meals for roving, starving gangs of Black Ubermenschen.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690117
“Judith Polgar can beat 99.99999% of men at chess”
But not 100%.
And the most elite women runners can beat 99.99999% of men.
But not 100%.
In other words, the best men still beat the best women, in every single endeavor (except birthing and nursing babies).
Every single endeavor, including art, and even including hairdressing and clothes designing, ffs.
(Oh, and I’m a woman, btw.)
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690119
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4KHuQYm_z4
Calling Mike Judge.
Martine looks like the present day Vanessa Redgrave. And he doesn’t really sound gay to me, he sounds like a laid back surfer dude who has taken a few too many hormonez.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690127
“or exist as some AI simulation.”
??????
The Heechee saga begun in the ’70s by Frederik Pohl (Gateway, Heechee Rendevous, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, I forget what else) eventually saw its hero Robinette Broadhead become a machine-stored intelligence, as well as the plot device that the Heechee carried around their own machine-stored ancestors as a kind of information and advice computer.
Since, as a kid I was a sci-fi geekette and have probably read 80% of the golden age of SF, I believe Pohl’s stories are the first, and classic, introduction of the idea, if not the word, transhumanism. Pohl can hardly be accused of writing sex stories, nor was he a girl.
Whiskers, you’re confused.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690138
D’Marco Mobley are you saying that post-menopausal, uh, persons cease to be female?
By the way, watched the video of this dude for about 2 minutes and then turned it off. He is one strange fellow.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690144
All these transhumanists who are going to live forever or at least until they’re 150/200 years old, do they think they’re still going to retire at 62 and have 90+ years lazing about off the fat-of-the-land?
When they realize that they’re looking at ninety-plus years of bingo, they’ll hang themselves.
That's really the end game for the transhumanists: "Every death a wanted death. Every death a suicide from existential despair."
Assuming massive life extension were possible, how many immortals do you think would actually endure a thousand years of earthly life? Every curiosity satisfied or terminally frustrated, every pleasure sated, all friendships gone stale, every sight familiar to the point of tedium... Haldane wrote an essay On Being the Right Size; maybe we need a companion one, On Living the Right Lifespan.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690149
It's certainly a hypertrophy of the better Western values (ie what sets the West apart from other cultures), which shows you what happens when you take a good thing too far, without any checks and balances from other good things.
In other words, no, it is not "gnosticism". Eric Voegelin was dead wrong: ancient Gnosticism bears no relationship whatsoever, except very superficially, to modern political movements. No Gnostic ever intended to "immanentize the eschaton"; Gnosticism is best understood as being similar in spirit to Hindu philosophy and religion, which makes no attempt to "immanentize the eschaton" (a critic of Indian civilization might observe that perhaps they could have done with a little bit of immanentizing, maybe). The point of Gnosticism is to free yourself of the World and to return to God (that's what the Gnosis is for); if you tried to "immanentize the eschaton" you would be alienating yourself from God and tying yourself down with the World; ie going the wrong way entirely and missing the point about what Gnosis is for. That is the complete opposite of modern political movements.
Modern political movements are Western Christian heresies (ie, starting with people like Joachim of Fiore, and later Millenarians). They are all about creating a heaven on earth - ie "immanentizing the eschaton" - something which some Jews and early Christians might have tried to do, but which Gnostics did not try to do, because they were about finding a way back to God, not trying to magically transform a material world which was, according to their view, either intrinsically evil, or intrinsically good but totally inferior to God and of lesser importance. A Gnostic can't immanentize anything because for them, the higher cannot descend into the lower; that's why they did not believe that Jesus was an actual flesh-and-blood human. Jesus' sacrifice was in a higher plane and according to the classic Gnostic view Jesus either never came to Earth, or only his appearance did so, not his actual flesh. Lingering Docetism is probably the source of the Islamic idea that Jesus did not actually die on the cross.
Voegelin relied on Christian heresy hunters and Church fathers who were not exactly the most reliable source for knowledge about Gnosticism. He did most of his writing before he could absorb the discoveries from the Nag Hammadi library. He spent a lot of time pounding square pegs into round holes. His criticism of modern political movements isn't wrong, it just has nothing to do with ancient Gnosticism as it actually existed. Making up a totally new category called "modern Gnosticism" that is different from actual ancient Gnosticism to describe modern political movements isn't an honest way to go about criticizing modern political movements since the label simply does not fit.
"These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization."
I have often thought of World War T as a byproduct of Cultural Marxism, which to an extent it is, but it is also true that it is a uniquely Western sickness, too, in that it is a Western "Perfectibility of Man" delusion that unfortunately follows naturally from our Western "can do" attitude (a Gnostic would only see Man as perfected if he returns to God; he can't be perfected by way of this World).
For the first time recently I discovered someone I actually know, who now claims to be a woman (no surgery yet, just hormones, in his late 20s/early 30s) and was completely baffled by this (he was neither someone who was very feminine, nor was he as far as I know "self-titillated" at the idea of being a woman - although I have no way of knowing that for sure) since he does not seem to fall into the usual categories. Is there such a thing as "ideological gender change" the way some women become lesbians due to their politics?
What catches my attention now is Steve's linking of transgenderism to transhumanism, because this person was a few years ago talking a lot about transhumanism, and one day "living forever" thanks to technology. Although he is generally a leftist and a Cultural Marxist, he is also a technological Utopian and now that I link transhumanism with transgenderism in my mind, his "switch" makes a bit of sense - well, it's nonsense to me, but I guess I can see where this is coming from. What he needs is a good dose of realism but modern media seem well designed to keep people's fantasy bubbles intact and PC reinforces their delusions.
Western technological Utopianism (transhumanism and the rest) and Cultural Marxism together make for a powerfully corrosive mix.
Western technological Utopianism (transhumanism and the rest) and Cultural Marxism together make for a powerfully corrosive mix.
Yes, this is one of the strong social currents of our time. I really wish it wasn’t but it clearly is. Two related symptoms in pop culture is the body modification trend – tattoos, huge ear loops etc – and the obsession with zombies, clones, hybrid mutants and such things. This all looks like people fretting and trying to figure out what it means to be human and an individual when all your are is “wetware” and biological hardware. People sense we’re wallowing in the mundane; some people embrace it and some people try to reach for the transcendent via this sad transhumanist cult. What a mess.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690152
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2014/0909/A-billion-Africans-under-18-by-mid-century-More-jobs-or-more-angry-youth
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690153
I thought the HBD crowd is supposed to be the transhumanist movement’s biggest fans. Either you are for the dysgenic idiocracy or you are for genetic engineering of humans. Extending age limits, transhumanism, flying to mars, maybe self-driving cars are all sci-fi fantasies… They are great ambitions. The big flaw is that they can be unrealistic. Some of them will succeed though.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690155
1) liberty
2) work ethic
3) free markets
4) spirit of inquiry
5) pioneering
6) productive accomplishment
7) self-reliance and self-help ethic
8) A "can do" spirit where nothing is impossible
These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization.
You guys need to get with the program.
You wrote “Western civilization” where you meant “Enlightenment anti-civilization.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690160
No use of the term ‘rape’.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/eternal-paternam
Pervert’s life is…. ‘complicated’.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690174
“Pollyannacon says
As far as I know Audrey is still an awesome programmer. I ran into her at a conference a while back. She gave a great presentation, and looked quite cool.
My point being… At an individual level, who cares?”
The point is, if this individual self-mutilated person insists that you refer to him as a woman, then he is engaging in an act of micro-totalitarianism: insisting that you join him in his lie. Nobody has the right to demand that we agree with a lie and indulge them in their mental derangement.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690175
I’d expect that a man who “always felt like a women” might have a sex change operation, and then marry a man.
It’s telling that instead these men-who-feel-like-they’re-women get married (or remain married in the case of Martine) to…. women.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690179
Ha, I remember the Roko’s Basilisk fiasco well. It made me lose all respect for Eliezer Yudkowsky.
I wonder how many of those who are into cryonics realize that even in a best case scenario, they will never actually “wake up” from death. Continuity of consciousness will have been broken completely, and they will have been duplicated, not resuscitated. (What’s more sobering to contemplate is if this ever happens naturally. Does your consciousness dissolve completely in, say, a coma or under anesthesia? When you awake from these states, are “you” merely duplicated into a near-exact facsimile inhabiting the same body?)
What a strange view. Do you think you'd see some spooky conundrum if you cryopreserved other organs in the body and then functionally resuscitated them from that state? Would a resuscitated kidney "never actually 'wake up' from death," for example, even if it works just like any other kidney?
In other words, do you believe that philosophical arguments about "continuity" of something or other only apply to the human brain's resuscitation, but not to other organs?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690180
I’m kinda torn on the sanity of Transhumanists…
On one hand I’ve got to deal with the seeming insanity of immortality and the pseudo religous idea of the technological singularity. It sounds very much like end of days prophecy and paranoia with a side of fear of mortality.
On the other hand Transhumanists have the ability to make their ideals more reality every day. Ray Kurzweil (BIG NAME transhumanist) is the head of R&D at Google, Google has massive data analysis ability, a lot of genetic information (23andme… Sergey Brin’s wife is CEO), and a company dedicated to advancing that research (hello Calico). Think about it. If Google can compare what they know about individuals with their genetic info, and then compare people on a wide scale they could very well make real progress.
Reality is getting stranger.
They are no friend of humanity or liberty. Brin and company should be fed to pigs.
You really want this bunch with its hands on the levers of power? I don't.
As for Transhumanism it's simply a joke, a modern day philosopher stone or El Dorado created by a bunch of sexless, amoral beta males in the tech industry who are terrified despite their wealth they are going to die like everyone else. So they invoke the techne to save them. Be it by chopping their heads off and putting them in a bottle or digitizing them into a electronic ghost.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690182
Nick Diaz says:
First, how can you compare gender to death? Death is something we (still) can’t overcome, but gender is not some unsurpassable obstacle.”
“Gender” is a term made-up by feminists and so-called “queer theorists”. The correct term is “sex”. And nobody said it was an “obstacle”. It is a physical reality.
“Judith Polgar can beat 99.99999% of men at chess, a game where men are vastly overepresented at, and at which psychologists claim that men have mental traits that make them more suited to achieving success.”
Yes, we know you have no grasp of statistics. You need not provide more examples.
“Women are usually more interested in the arts than men, and have higher rates of enrollment in college arts courses than men. Yet, most of the World’s greatest artists have been male. This indicates that there is huge variations between people to a much greater degree than between genders.”
No, it might indicate the difference between studying something and doing something. However, when men actually produced art, more men also studied it. There is no art anymore. There is “transgressive” crap that calls itself art, whereas in reality it is just crap.
“It is pretty obvious that you greatly exaggerate the psychological differences between gender to emphasize your conservative point of view that the conservative society of the 1950′s was better than what we have now because it understood and respected gender differences.”
Again, this term “gender” is meaningless puffery. The word is “sex”. It is a biological term. And this meme of “more variation among than between”, whether applied to sex or race betrays nothing but the ignorance (or – I’ll be charitable – in your case, willfull stupidity) of he who brays about it.
“The problem with you conservatives…….”
The problem with you and your kind is that you are simpering nitwits.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690190
1) liberty
2) work ethic
3) free markets
4) spirit of inquiry
5) pioneering
6) productive accomplishment
7) self-reliance and self-help ethic
8) A “can do” spirit where nothing is impossible
These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well.
There’s no naive fool like a libertarian naive fool. What makes you imagine that what comes out of the other side of “transhumanism” will give a damn about any of those things?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690191
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver_(film)
“The setting is a society in the year 2048. After a big war, the community had decided to get rid of colors, therefore different races and feelings.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvp6FnYWRZU
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690209
Strong article over at Breitbart.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/08/Zuckerberg-Pushes-Amnesty-in-Mexico-with-Billionaire-Carlos-Slim
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690217
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/technology/google-is-target-of-european-backlash-on-us-tech-dominance.html?_r=0
google tentacle
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690235
How do sub-Saharan Africans do in pain tolerance compared to Northern Europeans and East Asians?
“What’s your definition of ‘tough’? How do sub-Saharan Africans do in pain tolerance compared to Northern Europeans and East Asians?”
It sure is hot and malarial there. They cope.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690237
Another one. I just came across a book called MY BROTHER MY SISTER by film critic Molly Haskell, whose brother is now her sister.
This is truly a terrible meme that is being spread.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690238
But not 100%.
And the most elite women runners can beat 99.99999% of men.
But not 100%.
In other words, the best men still beat the best women, in every single endeavor (except birthing and nursing babies).
Every single endeavor, including art, and even including hairdressing and clothes designing, ffs.
(Oh, and I'm a woman, btw.)
i don’t think that’s true wrt runners. The gold medal winner in the london womens 100m would hav e finished 40th in California’s boys high school 100m. last year.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690239
On one hand I've got to deal with the seeming insanity of immortality and the pseudo religous idea of the technological singularity. It sounds very much like end of days prophecy and paranoia with a side of fear of mortality.
On the other hand Transhumanists have the ability to make their ideals more reality every day. Ray Kurzweil (BIG NAME transhumanist) is the head of R&D at Google, Google has massive data analysis ability, a lot of genetic information (23andme... Sergey Brin's wife is CEO), and a company dedicated to advancing that research (hello Calico). Think about it. If Google can compare what they know about individuals with their genetic info, and then compare people on a wide scale they could very well make real progress.
Reality is getting stranger.
Google is also evil given they openly admit they read their customers email(gmail) and work hand in glove with the NSA and Chinese government. They have no regard for laws or anything.
They are no friend of humanity or liberty. Brin and company should be fed to pigs.
You really want this bunch with its hands on the levers of power? I don’t.
As for Transhumanism it’s simply a joke, a modern day philosopher stone or El Dorado created by a bunch of sexless, amoral beta males in the tech industry who are terrified despite their wealth they are going to die like everyone else. So they invoke the techne to save them. Be it by chopping their heads off and putting them in a bottle or digitizing them into a electronic ghost.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690240
Pick out the one out of three from each list you think are elite (early 1800's Oxbridge name):
1 Agnerv
2 Atthill
3 Allbert
1 Baitson
2 Berrton
3 Bradsey
1 Bodgett
2 Brooshooft
3 Bradsey
1 Casamajor
2 Carville
3 Clemishaw
1 Callaly
2 Cavat
3 Conynham
.
.
.
.
.
Answers are 2, 1, 2, 1, 3
I made it hard on purpose, I could have used Agassiz, Belfour, or Boinville as elite choices.
Casamajor is the Anglicization of a rare elite Spanish surname, Casamayor, which means old or oldest house. They've been doing well in England since the 1600's.
What is your point? That elite names weren’t always Norman-French? That the English have lots of funny names?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690241
When they realize that they're looking at ninety-plus years of bingo, they'll hang themselves.
When they realize that they’re looking at ninety-plus years of bingo, they’ll hang themselves.
That’s really the end game for the transhumanists: “Every death a wanted death. Every death a suicide from existential despair.”
Assuming massive life extension were possible, how many immortals do you think would actually endure a thousand years of earthly life? Every curiosity satisfied or terminally frustrated, every pleasure sated, all friendships gone stale, every sight familiar to the point of tedium… Haldane wrote an essay On Being the Right Size; maybe we need a companion one, On Living the Right Lifespan.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690255
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_V_Leiden
So it is quite common and carriers have a much higher risk of thrombosis, and women who have it have a higher risk of miscarriage.
What's the benefit?
The benefit is better postpartum recovery and lower likelihood of postpartum hemorrhage (and better survival of same). In a world without easy access to blood transfusions, it’s a pretty big win to trade a slightly higher risk of miscarriage for a significantly better ability to weather bleeding related to the birth itself and the postpartum period.
Presenting with higher clotting tendencies than normal generally means easier wound recovery at the tradeoff of increased stroke risk (but the increase is not so high compared to the wound recovery ability).
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690260
“And if open borders are so great, why do papers like the Telegraph
cheer Ukraine against Russkie ‘invaders’.”
Good point. The Kiev junta can’t admit that it’s losing to the rebels, so it says that it’s actually losing to the Russian army. Russia has helped the rebels with weapons, sure, but NATO has helped the junta in the same way. The playing field is roughly equal.
Anyway, the main thrust of neocon propaganda about the Ukraine right now is that Russia has invaded it. According to them the Donbass War is entirely about brave Ukrainian patriots defending their sovereignty. Think about it: the neocons have just come out for national sovereignty IN EUROPE. And for borders. They finally found a European border with whose defense they’re willing to sympathize. It’s a small stretch of the Eurasian steppe east of Lugansk and south of Donetsk.
If I were Ukrainian, I’d be offended by this. Usually the powers that be only support third-worldish nationalisms against first-worldish ones. The MSM is treating Russians as white and Ukrainians as black in this conflict, even though in real life the two peoples are indistinguishable.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690274
That's really the end game for the transhumanists: "Every death a wanted death. Every death a suicide from existential despair."
Assuming massive life extension were possible, how many immortals do you think would actually endure a thousand years of earthly life? Every curiosity satisfied or terminally frustrated, every pleasure sated, all friendships gone stale, every sight familiar to the point of tedium... Haldane wrote an essay On Being the Right Size; maybe we need a companion one, On Living the Right Lifespan.
Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa includes his discovery of the Immortals. He is initially excited, then dismayed: they don’t die, but they do get older and older.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690277
I feel pretty confident in saying that "living forever" doesn't mean "living to 2045." Barring a catastrophe, plenty of people alive in 2014 will live another 30 years and a few months any way through natural maturation and aging. They won't mysteriously "become immortal" by surviving to January 1, 2045.
If transhumanists want to set a date as a goal which makes sense and at least shows some ambition, they should pick one well beyond anyone's current life expectancy, even this year's newborns'. How about a year in the 24th Century? Yet no transhumanist I know of has proposed a "2345 Initiative" (an easy to remember number) as the name of a life extension project, because transhumanists apparently think about time like teenagers and don't know how to scale up to what a much longer lifetime would have to mean.
I hear you and agree with you. However, the issue of transhumanism is that of semantics. I guess I define myself as a transhumanist in the larger context of meaning in that transhumanism is defined simply as the use of technology to improve the human condition. I agree with you that a lot of what the self-proclaimed transhumanists belief in is a lot of horse pucky, particularly the AI/uploading stuff. I think the future is biological (stem cells, SENS, synthetic biology, etc.). I also think it a joke to prescribe a date when we get immortality. I admit a lot of this prattle is quite flaky. I can tell you that I have very little personal contact with these people (simply because I am too busy getting my industrial automation SI business going, along with my regular job which is also industrial automation for an OEM). Some of us actually do real work.
Having said all that, I still consider myself a transhumanist in the larger context in that we should use biotechnology to cure aging (which is certainly doable) and to have robust regeneration (which is also certainly doable). I don’t believe in defining dates when we become immortal. Rather, people doing the actual work set milestones such a repair/replacement of mitochondrial DNA, removal of lysosomal aggregates, or other such definable objectives. This is what the SENS foundation and other such groups are doing. Same for cryonics. The near-term objective for cryonics should be effective cryopreservation of the brain (defined as complete preservation of neuro-structure down to the synaptic connection level without damage).
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690290
the executive whom Howard Stern calls Martine Luther Queen.
According to current usage, it should be MarTEEN Luther Queen.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690297
“In other words, the best men still beat the best women, in every
single endeavor (except birthing and nursing babies).”
Singing is a rare profession in which the top women aren’t necessarily worse than the top men. This is because a nice voice is an integral part of a woman’s sexual attractiveness. We could throw in modeling, but it’s not really a craft or a skill. Singing is.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690299
transhumanism is defined simply as the use of technology to improve the human condition.
That’s a nonsensical definition. “Improving the human condition” might sensibly be called “humanism”, but it can never be transhumanism, a term which implies going beyond or escaping from that which is human.
Thanks for the good point.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690301
Lol I meant Rothblatt not the guy from the Austrian school of economics, that was a good guy.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690304
In more World War T news, the new Apple iWatch will be sold in a large and a small size. But they studiously avoid calling the models a “men’s watch” or a “women’s watch”.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690330
Borges’ short story The Immortal is another meditation on the subject. Having drunk from the River of Immortality, the Immortals build a fantastic city, which they elaborate to the point of decadence and madness, then abandon it to sink into a centuries-long torpor as cave-dwellers. Eventually they rouse themselves to go in search of the River of Death.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690345
, Shawn, RedNeckCryonicist, and Jonthan Silber: Martin/Martine Rothblatt is Jewish. Jews have a higher intermarriage rate with blacks.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690367
It's certainly a hypertrophy of the better Western values (ie what sets the West apart from other cultures), which shows you what happens when you take a good thing too far, without any checks and balances from other good things.
In other words, no, it is not "gnosticism". Eric Voegelin was dead wrong: ancient Gnosticism bears no relationship whatsoever, except very superficially, to modern political movements. No Gnostic ever intended to "immanentize the eschaton"; Gnosticism is best understood as being similar in spirit to Hindu philosophy and religion, which makes no attempt to "immanentize the eschaton" (a critic of Indian civilization might observe that perhaps they could have done with a little bit of immanentizing, maybe). The point of Gnosticism is to free yourself of the World and to return to God (that's what the Gnosis is for); if you tried to "immanentize the eschaton" you would be alienating yourself from God and tying yourself down with the World; ie going the wrong way entirely and missing the point about what Gnosis is for. That is the complete opposite of modern political movements.
Modern political movements are Western Christian heresies (ie, starting with people like Joachim of Fiore, and later Millenarians). They are all about creating a heaven on earth - ie "immanentizing the eschaton" - something which some Jews and early Christians might have tried to do, but which Gnostics did not try to do, because they were about finding a way back to God, not trying to magically transform a material world which was, according to their view, either intrinsically evil, or intrinsically good but totally inferior to God and of lesser importance. A Gnostic can't immanentize anything because for them, the higher cannot descend into the lower; that's why they did not believe that Jesus was an actual flesh-and-blood human. Jesus' sacrifice was in a higher plane and according to the classic Gnostic view Jesus either never came to Earth, or only his appearance did so, not his actual flesh. Lingering Docetism is probably the source of the Islamic idea that Jesus did not actually die on the cross.
Voegelin relied on Christian heresy hunters and Church fathers who were not exactly the most reliable source for knowledge about Gnosticism. He did most of his writing before he could absorb the discoveries from the Nag Hammadi library. He spent a lot of time pounding square pegs into round holes. His criticism of modern political movements isn't wrong, it just has nothing to do with ancient Gnosticism as it actually existed. Making up a totally new category called "modern Gnosticism" that is different from actual ancient Gnosticism to describe modern political movements isn't an honest way to go about criticizing modern political movements since the label simply does not fit.
"These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization."
I have often thought of World War T as a byproduct of Cultural Marxism, which to an extent it is, but it is also true that it is a uniquely Western sickness, too, in that it is a Western "Perfectibility of Man" delusion that unfortunately follows naturally from our Western "can do" attitude (a Gnostic would only see Man as perfected if he returns to God; he can't be perfected by way of this World).
For the first time recently I discovered someone I actually know, who now claims to be a woman (no surgery yet, just hormones, in his late 20s/early 30s) and was completely baffled by this (he was neither someone who was very feminine, nor was he as far as I know "self-titillated" at the idea of being a woman - although I have no way of knowing that for sure) since he does not seem to fall into the usual categories. Is there such a thing as "ideological gender change" the way some women become lesbians due to their politics?
What catches my attention now is Steve's linking of transgenderism to transhumanism, because this person was a few years ago talking a lot about transhumanism, and one day "living forever" thanks to technology. Although he is generally a leftist and a Cultural Marxist, he is also a technological Utopian and now that I link transhumanism with transgenderism in my mind, his "switch" makes a bit of sense - well, it's nonsense to me, but I guess I can see where this is coming from. What he needs is a good dose of realism but modern media seem well designed to keep people's fantasy bubbles intact and PC reinforces their delusions.
Western technological Utopianism (transhumanism and the rest) and Cultural Marxism together make for a powerfully corrosive mix.
I think there is a connection between gnosticism and modernism. Modern nihilism = certain individuals have a secret knowledge and can understand, eventually, the entirety of existence. They have no love OF knowledge. Their hubris is promethean.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690475
It's certainly a hypertrophy of the better Western values (ie what sets the West apart from other cultures), which shows you what happens when you take a good thing too far, without any checks and balances from other good things.
In other words, no, it is not "gnosticism". Eric Voegelin was dead wrong: ancient Gnosticism bears no relationship whatsoever, except very superficially, to modern political movements. No Gnostic ever intended to "immanentize the eschaton"; Gnosticism is best understood as being similar in spirit to Hindu philosophy and religion, which makes no attempt to "immanentize the eschaton" (a critic of Indian civilization might observe that perhaps they could have done with a little bit of immanentizing, maybe). The point of Gnosticism is to free yourself of the World and to return to God (that's what the Gnosis is for); if you tried to "immanentize the eschaton" you would be alienating yourself from God and tying yourself down with the World; ie going the wrong way entirely and missing the point about what Gnosis is for. That is the complete opposite of modern political movements.
Modern political movements are Western Christian heresies (ie, starting with people like Joachim of Fiore, and later Millenarians). They are all about creating a heaven on earth - ie "immanentizing the eschaton" - something which some Jews and early Christians might have tried to do, but which Gnostics did not try to do, because they were about finding a way back to God, not trying to magically transform a material world which was, according to their view, either intrinsically evil, or intrinsically good but totally inferior to God and of lesser importance. A Gnostic can't immanentize anything because for them, the higher cannot descend into the lower; that's why they did not believe that Jesus was an actual flesh-and-blood human. Jesus' sacrifice was in a higher plane and according to the classic Gnostic view Jesus either never came to Earth, or only his appearance did so, not his actual flesh. Lingering Docetism is probably the source of the Islamic idea that Jesus did not actually die on the cross.
Voegelin relied on Christian heresy hunters and Church fathers who were not exactly the most reliable source for knowledge about Gnosticism. He did most of his writing before he could absorb the discoveries from the Nag Hammadi library. He spent a lot of time pounding square pegs into round holes. His criticism of modern political movements isn't wrong, it just has nothing to do with ancient Gnosticism as it actually existed. Making up a totally new category called "modern Gnosticism" that is different from actual ancient Gnosticism to describe modern political movements isn't an honest way to go about criticizing modern political movements since the label simply does not fit.
"These values happen to form the basis of transhumanism as well. So, it would appear that transhumanism is the embodiment and logical progression of Western civilization."
I have often thought of World War T as a byproduct of Cultural Marxism, which to an extent it is, but it is also true that it is a uniquely Western sickness, too, in that it is a Western "Perfectibility of Man" delusion that unfortunately follows naturally from our Western "can do" attitude (a Gnostic would only see Man as perfected if he returns to God; he can't be perfected by way of this World).
For the first time recently I discovered someone I actually know, who now claims to be a woman (no surgery yet, just hormones, in his late 20s/early 30s) and was completely baffled by this (he was neither someone who was very feminine, nor was he as far as I know "self-titillated" at the idea of being a woman - although I have no way of knowing that for sure) since he does not seem to fall into the usual categories. Is there such a thing as "ideological gender change" the way some women become lesbians due to their politics?
What catches my attention now is Steve's linking of transgenderism to transhumanism, because this person was a few years ago talking a lot about transhumanism, and one day "living forever" thanks to technology. Although he is generally a leftist and a Cultural Marxist, he is also a technological Utopian and now that I link transhumanism with transgenderism in my mind, his "switch" makes a bit of sense - well, it's nonsense to me, but I guess I can see where this is coming from. What he needs is a good dose of realism but modern media seem well designed to keep people's fantasy bubbles intact and PC reinforces their delusions.
Western technological Utopianism (transhumanism and the rest) and Cultural Marxism together make for a powerfully corrosive mix.
Gnostics couldn’t “immanentize the eschaton” because they were declared heretics and therefore accrued no real power. Every system of eschatology or existential order can and does affect human action.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690496
Your’s is a good point. Indeed, I think its best to dispense with the term “transhumanism” and refer to the collective basket of our activities and objectives as simply “doing our own thing”. Since reasonable people never object to people simply doing their own thing in life and minding their own business, it would then make anyone who objects to us “doing our own thing” in life out to be the intolerant, bigoted busy-bodies that they are.
Thanks for the good point.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690681
It sure is hot and malarial there. They cope.
And how well do they cope with Siberian or Nordic climates? And, indeed, how well do they cope in competition from people from those climates on neutral ground?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690710
Its called being a bully sir. And a coward.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690746
single endeavor (except birthing and nursing babies)."
Singing is a rare profession in which the top women aren't necessarily worse than the top men. This is because a nice voice is an integral part of a woman's sexual attractiveness. We could throw in modeling, but it's not really a craft or a skill. Singing is.
I would propose dancing and gymnastics as well, especially the type that require superior flexibility and range of motion. Men are far better at “power” gymnastics, to be sure, but the kind that requires flexibility can be quite beautiful and elegant and women excel in it.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690763
@Mr Anon:
“Micro-totalitarianism”? A variety of “micro-aggression”? I am micro-amused, but please don’t take micro-offense!
Seriously, it seems ok to show some tolerance and leave open the possibility that it’s not entirely an illusion or, as you say, a lie. People are strange. As @Doug says “Sure the guy/girl’s pretty damn weird, then again probably most of the commenters here are too in their own way.” One of the things I like about America is that it lets people let their freak flag fly without judging too much. Freedom and tolerance! Just don’t abuse them.
Well, we do allow freedom of religion… And when every politician ends every speech with “God bless America”, we choose not to object, even if we don’t agree. We could start a fight about it, but most Americans would agree that would be a dangerous waste of time.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690784
“Pollyannacon says:
Seriously, it seems ok to show some tolerance and leave open the possibility that it’s not entirely an illusion or, as you say, a lie.”
No, it’s a lie – a damned lie. And I’ll be damned if I’ll go along with it.
“One of the things I like about America is that it lets people let their freak flag fly without judging too much.”
The inability and/or disinclination to judge others will be our downfall. Judgement is part of life. Nobody has the right to be free of the judgement of others.
“Well, we do allow freedom of religion… And when every politician ends every speech with “God bless America”, we choose not to object, even if we don’t agree. We could start a fight about it, but most Americans would agree that would be a dangerous waste of time.”
Yes, that would be a waste of time, and wrong to boot. I don’t begrude believers their majority, even though I don’t share their beliefs. Their beliefs support the foundations of society. The foolish insistance of some dude that he’s a chick does not.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-690982
This whole tranny thing is just downright creepy.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-691192
“Trivia bonus: Vidal says they found this hilarious and used to argue over who came up with it first. Of course, all of this assumes Vidal is a trustworthy source, which is always in doubt when dealing with Vidal.”
The same claim about Baldwin and the Kennedys can be found in David Halberstam’s “Best and the Brightest” so it’s probably legit.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-691411
I wonder how many of those who are into cryonics realize that even in a best case scenario, they will never actually "wake up" from death. Continuity of consciousness will have been broken completely, and they will have been duplicated, not resuscitated. (What's more sobering to contemplate is if this ever happens naturally. Does your consciousness dissolve completely in, say, a coma or under anesthesia? When you awake from these states, are "you" merely duplicated into a near-exact facsimile inhabiting the same body?)
>I wonder how many of those who are into cryonics realize that even in a best case scenario, they will never actually “wake up” from death. Continuity of consciousness will have been broken completely, and they will have been duplicated, not resuscitated.
What a strange view. Do you think you’d see some spooky conundrum if you cryopreserved other organs in the body and then functionally resuscitated them from that state? Would a resuscitated kidney “never actually ‘wake up’ from death,” for example, even if it works just like any other kidney?
In other words, do you believe that philosophical arguments about “continuity” of something or other only apply to the human brain’s resuscitation, but not to other organs?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-691487
"My view was: Granted, he’s a prick, but he’s also kind of right in thinking himself a new, advanced version of homo sapiens compared to us lowly worms."
Wait, were you describing this Rothblatt or Steve Jobs? Many of the descriptions of Rothblatt could easily have been written by former Apple employers of their late boss as well as his peers.Shame that Jobs wasn't interested in Sci-fi; he could've helped the tech world lead the way in cryogenetics and extension of life (e.g. Return of the Jedi, where Han Solo is frozen and the aging process is greatly reduced). That would've been up Jobs alley.
Shame that Jobs thought he could cure his cancer by eating an all-fruit diet. He could’ve extended his own life by at least a few years if he’d listened to his doctor. But he swallowed his own bullshit hook, line, and sinker, and he got roasted on the spit of reality.
‘Tis a pity, but them’s the shakes.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-691587
@RedneckCryonicist
>In other words, do you believe that philosophical arguments about “continuity” of something or other only apply to the human brain’s resuscitation, but not to other organs?
Yes, since consciousness is an emergent property that resides specifically and exclusively in the brain.
From an outsider’s perspective, the person who is resuscitated is identical. But from your perspective, you die when your consciousness is fully extinguished.
If, out of sense of vanity, you want a perfect copy of yourself, complete with your memories and your personality, walking around in 100 years, by all means go for it. But just don’t expect to cheat death in that manner.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/more-than-i-care-to-know-about-martine-luther-queen-highest-paid-female-ceo/#comment-692031