A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. But the monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout—I can't waste my time with the likes of you!" His very
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“Robert Freitas estimates that eliminating a specific list comprising 50 percent of medically preventable conditions would extend human life expectancy to over 150 years.39 By preventing 90 percent of medical problems, life expectancy grows to over five hundred years. At 99 percent, we’d be over one thousand years. We can expect that the full realization of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions will enable us to eliminate virtually all medical causes of death. As we move toward a nonbiological existence, we will gain the means of “backing ourselves up” (storing the key patterns underlying our knowledge, skills, and personality), thereby eliminating most causes of death as we know it.”
― The Singularity is Near
― The Singularity is Near
“In our own case we went from a pre-electricity, computerless society that used horses as its fastest land-based transportation to the sophisticated computational and communications technologies we have today in only two hundred years. My projections show, as noted above, that within another century we will multiply our intelligence by trillions of trillions. So only three hundred years will have been necessary to take us from the early stirrings of primitive mechanical technologies to a vast expansion of our intelligence and ability to communicate.”
― The Singularity is Near
― The Singularity is Near
“Robert A. Freitas Jr.—a pioneering nanotechnology theorist and leading proponent of nanomedicine (reconfiguring our biological systems through engineering on a molecular scale), and author of a book with that title150—has designed robotic replacements for human blood cells that perform hundreds or thousands of times more effectively than their biological counterparts. With Freitas’s respirocytes (robotic red blood cells) a runner could do an Olympic sprint for fifteen minutes without taking a breath.”
― The Singularity is Near
― The Singularity is Near
“When a society strongly supports education, everyone is given a chance, inequality diminishes, and an informed and educated population leads to a better world.”
― The Original Young Turk: Stories and Life Lessons from an American Dream Come True
― The Original Young Turk: Stories and Life Lessons from an American Dream Come True
“Today, humans continue to progress physically, emotionally, technologically, socially, and mentally, so those who resist change are actually resisting the natural development of a free society.”
― The Original Young Turk: Stories and Life Lessons from an American Dream Come True
― The Original Young Turk: Stories and Life Lessons from an American Dream Come True
Dan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Dan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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