New Religion, "Freedominism"

Freedominism
A new religion for the less delusional
(and a way to shut the religiods of the USA up)

We should all gather and start a new religion, let's call it "Freedominism". It is a faith in the randomness of the known universe, and it calls for a belief in the deity of "no-ne".
The Freedoministic faith requires the acceptance into one's life of the following canonical acts of devotion:

A Freedominist must use the empirical method at all times

A Freedominist must understand the burden of evidence

A Freedominist must understand evidentiary standards

A Freedominist must respect the choices another human makes with their body and not interfere with the sacred act of self determination

Female humans show devotion by choosing how and when they become impregnated, therefore the use of birth control is a divine blessing and rite

Gender choice and Sexual Preference are personal divine rites - the act of embracing one's self identified gender and sexual preference is of paramount importance and is not to be interfered with

Devotion is reflected in self determination, and therefore choosing the means and manner of one's own demise, where possible, is encouraged.

Then a pharmacist could not in good conscience deny a Freedominist woman birth control because then he/she would be committing the very act that they are claiming to be so opposed to, which is this so-called religious discrimination
(as if religion is anything but a criminal and destructive enterprise itself)

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New Religion, "Freedominism"

Freedominism
A new religion for the less delusional
(and a way to shut the religiods of the USA up)

We should all gather and start a new religion, let's call it "Freedominism". It is a faith in the randomness of the known universe, and it calls for a belief in the deity of "no-ne".
The Freedoministic faith requires the acceptance into one's life of the following canonical acts of devotion:

A Freedominist must use the empirical method at all times

A Freedominist must understand the burden of evidence

A Freedominist must understand evidentiary standards

A Freedominist must respect the choices another human makes with their body and not interfere with the sacred act of self determination

Female humans show devotion by choosing how and when they become impregnated, therefore the use of birth control is a divine blessing and rite

Gender choice and Sexual Preference are personal divine rites - the act of embracing one's self identified gender and sexual preference is of paramount importance and is not to be interfered with

Devotion is reflected in self determination, and therefore choosing the means and manner of one's own demise, where possible, is encouraged.

Then a pharmacist could not in good conscience deny a Freedominist woman birth control because then he/she would be committing the very act that they are claiming to be so opposed to, which is this so-called religious discrimination
(as if religion is anything but a criminal and destructive enterprise itself)

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Why it confounds me that there are Atheists that eat non-human animals (or animals in general, including humans)

An Essay on the topic my mind keeps turning to of late - the notion that not all Atheists are also Vegans (or if not 'Vegan', at least a practicing a diet and lifestyle that does not include causing the death or suffering of complex mammals and avians)

I often imagine reading such an essay in front of an audience of Atheists at an Atheist convention, and I wonder what the reaction would be. I imagine some people would agree, others disagree but that everyone would have a strong opinion on the topic.

Atheists generally know about evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionarily stable strategies, and the like. And they generally don't believe in souls, as well as not believing in gods, because - basically, an Atheist is an Atheist because he or she rejects ideas which have no evidence to support them. Not all Atheists are this rigorous, but as a generalization most would not object to my categorization.

If a person does not believe in a soul (because there is no evidence of souls or gods or afterlifes), then the question becomes one of what makes a human more valuable than a non-human. And I'm not here to argue that in general, an average human is less valuable than an average non-human. My argument is that the differentiator between species is the most amazing and magical (in the secular sense of incredible and awesome and almost achingly beautiful) structure of the complex brain that many advanced animals possess. Such an organ is without contest or dispute the most complex physical structure in the known universe. And the Human animal has the most incredible brain of all. So - brains in general - incredible, and human brains - most incredible of all.

That said - without a soul, humans are firmly a part of the animal kingdom, not apart from that kingdom. The argument I would make is that there may be a graded spectrum of animal / brain complexity and that humans are on the top of that graded spectrum, but still are a part of it. And - for a second removing humans from that spectrum - most people would not have much to argue against the assertion that the more intellectually complex the non-human animal, the more immoral it would be to allow it to suffer or to cause it harm. For example - the AVERAGE HUMAN, if put in a situation where he or she had to select one creature to suffer/die - given the choice between a snail and a cat, our subject would likely select the snail rather than cause the cat to suffer. Similarly, if the choice was between one of our simian cousins, a chimpanzee for example, versus a mouse, the average person would likely select the mouse over the chimp to suffer/die. Even if they couldn't explain why, they would likely do so, because their brain is making a value judgement and that judgement comes down to (consciously or unconsciously) the complexity of the mind as judged by that human subject, in the given scenario.

Once that point is conceded, then the question comes up - is it moral and ethical to allow or cause the suffering in another being capable of suffering. We evolved evolutionarily stable strategies of behavior that instinctively tell us (except the broken sociopaths among us) that allowing other to suffer or causing others to suffer.. if we identify them as part of our tribe/inner circle.. is wrong/bad. And as our culture evolves and as we learn more we keep expanding that inner circle. We have now - at least all Atheists on Earth - have now expanded that circle to include ALL HUMANS. And most cultures, secular at their root regardless of the religiosity of the citizens in the culture, have codified into law protections to limit/prevent the suffering of its members. Yet, Theists and even many(some?) Atheists draw the line at Humans.

At this point, many omnivorous Atheists might say, "sure, humans are part of the animal kingdom, yet non-human animals slaughter and kill other non-human animals of different species", and this is true. They go on to argue, "as a human animal, and the apex predator on the planet, why wouldn't I kill and consume lesser creatures?" But here is where morality, ethics and our advanced brain once again allows a quantum leap ahead of simple evolution and baser primal instincts. Thanks to the incredible complexity of our human brains, we can abstractly model our universe with such fidelity we can even model the notion of self.. an amazing achievement for sure..., but we can also abstract our notion of self OUT of that model and look at a system holistically, rising above our baser primal urges.

When we do that, we come to see - or I should more precisely say - that the EVIDENCE LEADS US to the understanding that our previous notions of non-human animal intelligence were skewed by species bias, and we now understand that complex non-human animals with advanced brains not-too-different from our own have the capacity for emotional and physical suffering as nuanced and complex as any human can suffer. We now understand and there is an overwhelming body of evidence that shows that complex non-human animals like pigs, chickens, cows, dogs, cats, etc, can feel fear, anxiety, joy, love, devotion, anger, etc. And we know from more precise tests that their intelligence level, when tested with tests adjusted for their body form and environment is comparable to humans animals at ages 2 years to ages 6 years.

This means for Atheists who do not believe in a soul, who acknowledge that non-human and human animals are all part of the same animal kingdom, and who can only justify the value of humans over non-humans comparatively due to the more complex and nuanced brain organ, that to them, morally and ethically, eating a non-human pig, with an cognitive intelligence level of a 5 or 6 year old human child, is pretty much the same as the moral and ethical burden of eating a 5 or 6 year old human child. Not to even mention that from an emotional capacity, from a sentient capacity - i.e. the ability to FEEL emotions; to feel pain - is just about EQUAL between pigs and humans.

Similarly, given a retarded or brain damaged human, compared to a fully healthy pig, cow or chicken. There would be pigs and cows and chickens who are MORE cognitively capable than a retarded or brain damaged human animal. So - to kill the chicken and fight to spare a retarded human from suffering is a logical, intellectual, moral and ethical contradiction. This type of behavior can be explained by the neurological conditions known as speciesismm and carnism. But like the mental infection of belief in things for which there is no evidence, I'm sure most Atheists can be cured of those afflictions too.

Nevertheless, I am just flummoxed that they could be so infected to begin with, having recovered from the infection of religion.

It seems to me that to be an Atheist, and to be in possession of the evidence at hand regarding the minds and nervous systems of our non-human cousins, would require one to expand that 'inner circle' of morality to also include non-human animals. That once one acknowledges that the notion of a soul is a fantastic unfounded delusion, for an individual who is in general agreement that causing suffering or through inaction allowing another to suffer is morally and ethically bad, then that individual has to apply that moral and ethical principal to all beings capable of suffering in a comparable fashion, and also to err on the side of caution for the species for which the case is undecided.

I would argue that simple nervous system creatures, which we know to have brains incapable of the type of complex modeling of their environment that we would define as suffering, fear, anxiety, etc would be excluded from this moral and ethical inner circle. Taking a bivalve or snail for example - both have such simple nervous systems we can definitively say that while the living tissue may react to stimuli and damaging stimuli could be defined as pain, that the creature does not have the emotional or cognitive capacity to suffer. We could also say the same for lobsters and most simple sea creatures. For cows. pigs and chickens; for primates, dogs and cats, etc - the whole mammalian branch of the tree - we know definitively that they can suffer emotionally and physically in the same way humans can, and should therefore unequivocally be afforded the same rights to live lives free of suffering. For the creatures who's complexity is not yet fully understood or for which the evidence is inconclusive - like many fish in the sea, I would say it would be morally and ethically wise and responsible to err on the side of caution and to avoid causing harm or suffering if possible.

I cannot see anyone mounting an argument to counter that, without straying into the territory of having to justify why we as a society should protect the mentally infirm and inferior from harm or abuse. Without a soul and divine decree, all such arguments fall apart once speciesism and carnism are accounted for.

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Why'd they do it - the indictment of the Republican Party and TeaParty

Why do they do it?

The US government is broken, the Republicans and the cancer that is the Tea Party are actively seeking to destabilize the Federal government simply to line their pockets even more brazenly at the expense of the US citizenry, and global economic stability. They are all rich enough but they are peerless in their unwavering greed and avarice.

They are not dumb, they sabotage all efforts to improve efficiency and spend responsibly, stoke fear and insecurities if their ignorant, credulous base, then use the inefficiencies and broken disjointed policies they fostered with their obstructionism to fan those very flames of unrest even higher! All simply to keep their base aligned to their singular purpose, which is the conversion of a democracy to a plutocratic corporatocracy of which they are they ultimate beneficiaries. And in the process they turn the us citizenry into what is effectively feudal serfs, serfs of corporations instead of barons and lords.


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Above Zero Cryo Stasis

I recently posted this entry on my idea for cryo surgery but I have been kicking around another more generally applicable idea for long term hibernation/stasis for quite some time, but have never written it down.

I would love to see research/investigation into hibernation stasis at temperatures slightly above freezing. A long time staple of science fiction - from the Alien franchise, through Demolition Man, Stargate, Firefly and many other classics of science fiction including let us not forget, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Buck Rogers, as well as a recurring trope of video games from Portal to Fallout, I think it's actually a technology we could develop in reality, in the here and now.


The problem with freezing a complex organism like a human is that when ice crystals form, their structure destroys the cellular workings of the body.


This makes freezing a person to put them into long term stasis kind of problematic - as they will wake up dead when melted.

But - other than killing the subject, freezing a person would be a great way to get people to the Moon, Mars, other plantes/moons in our solar system and even to other stars. It would also be a good way for people to 'quickly' (subjectively) travel to the future. But it would also save taxpayer money. Beyond all the space travel aspects, think of the Military - when not in use, tax payers have to maintain the personnel in the military, and they must constantly train to avoid skill fade, which consumes additional costly resources, etc. If we could induct classes from boot camp, furnish them with advanced skills training, and then put them in cryo-stasis, they could sit there on ice until a situation requiring their skills were needed. When reanimated they would be as prepared and capable as graduation day. We would be able to have instant-on-demand military might, without paying for standing armies when not in use. Meanwhile, the soldier thus stored could be earning half or quarter pay for the entire time, and when they get discharged, be as young and healthy as they day they graduated boot camp, but significantly more well off financially.

So - how do we get there?

I think the following approach would likely bear fruit.

Rather than trying to freeze a person solid, drop their body temperature to less than a degree above freezing, and let no part of their body get colder than that. This would require very precise temperature sensors both in the body (needle thin thermocouples inserted into the major organs and muscle groups) as well as in the cooling mechanisms to ensure no transient thermal dips.


A non-toxic cocktail of substances could be introduced into the body to increase the temperature ice crystals form - such as glycerine, mixed with probably some broad spectrum anti-biotics to further suppress bacterial growth.

The subject would be intubated and would be put on bypass at extremely low speeds, blood would continue to flow, and oxygen would be in the lungs, but respiration and cardiac functions would be completely stopped. Almost all metabolic activity would cease, but there would be fuel/oxygen in the system for cellular consumption. This would help in several ways. First, any minimal metabolic activity would be sustained, and Second, when the subject is awoken, their will be fuel and oxygen in the system for cellular activity to resume.

Consider the many examples of people falling into ice cold bodies of water, and being recovered hours later, who make a full recovery. Some of those victims make partial recoveries, suffering brain damage, but others are fully 100% recovered with no deleterious effects at all. I suspect the difference is how quickly the brain cools once respiration and cardiac functions cease, once fuel and oxygen stops being renewed in the cerebral tissues. I suspect that a victim of falling into freezing water who's brain rapidly cools to sub 40 degrees, before oxygen depravation starts to work its ravaging way thru the neural tissue, are the ones that make the full recovery.

It is also possible that some of the victims with lingering negative effects got too cold, and perhaps ice crystals started to form in their brain or other organs, those crystals ripping their cellular walls to ribbons.

We know that a mammal's heart beat and respiration will stop at temperatures much higher than freezing. And we know that refrigeration keeps food (which for some people includes the flesh of dead animals) fresh for longer than leaving the food at room temperature. If we can cool a person to just above freezing, rapidly and while keeping oxygenated, nutrient filled blood flowing, and if we can return them to normal body temperature quickly, without ever interrupting the flow of blood and nutrients, there should be no reason a person kept in such a state could not be maintained for extended periods of time.

To quiesce a subject, placing them into stasis, one would likely require several days of preparation. First, the subject would be subjected to a regime similar to the preparation for a colonoscopy, they would have their GI and bowels completely cleaned out, and would spend 24 hours after being purged consuming nothing but water. They'd also be put on a broad spectrum anti-biotic. The subject would be placed in the stasis chamber, connected to an IV which would introduce a solution comprised of a soporific, anti-biotic, and a saline solution, possibly laced with other non-toxic anti-freeze molecules, such as glycerine. Once unconscious, the subject would be intubated, and would be partially submerged in a thermally conductive hydrating gel. The body temperature would be reduced until cardiac and respiratory functions ceased, at which point the subject would be connected to a low velocity / low pressure bypass system to circulate the blood through the subject's body. At this point, needle thin thermocouple temperature sensing probes would be inserted into the major muscle groups, and thoracic cavity, as well as a probe deep into the sinus cavity. These thermocouples would be used to precisely control the temperature of the chamber and the subject. A ventilator would be connected to the intubation tube, and the ventilator, bypass system and IV would serve the subject for the duration of their stasis session.

Measures would need to be taken to control bacterial/viral proliferation, the stasis systems would need to be designed to offer little vibration, the low pressure, low velocity bypass pumps would need to be gentle enough not to damage any red blood cells, the lungs would need to be kept on ventilators, and the whole body would need to be kept in a hydrating thermally conductive gel so that there was no 'freezer burn' dehydration of tissues.

Upon reanimation, the subject would need to be warmed back up to normal operational temperature, while being kept on bypass and ventilators, and when warm enough, the heart would need to be restarted with a defibrillator.

Once the subject's heart was beating and lungs were functioning on their own, the bypass and intubation systems could be removed, and shortly thereafter, the subject could be allowed to wake up, where after a brief recovery they would be able to resume normal physical and mental activities.

While the subject would be on bypass and ventilated and while nutrients would be available via the IV, the total calories consumed, total O2 consumed and total waste produced during this period of stasis should be negligible, which would make this process ideally suited to long term space travel where resources are so costly, further, such a chamber would be easily shielded from radiation.

But - this process would also be useful where resources were not at issue but instead, time was the villain, time sapping the skills and preparedness of soldiers, or time sapping the youth and vitality of key citizens who's skills/knowledge/experience would be needed in the future, or simply time that remains between the current time and a future time where newer technological capabilities await. Imagine, for example, some of the luminaries of our age - Richard Dawkins, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, Lisa Randall, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, Carolyn Porco, etc, etc - imagine being able to allow them to hibernate in stasis until such time as senescence could be staved off indefinitely, thereby allowing them to continue to contribute to our society for the life of our civilization?

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Robot Surgeons and Cryo Surgery

I was thinking about medicine, and medical technology. Specifically about surgical procedures and what I know of the state of the art.


For quite a while it has baffled me why we perform surgery on patients while they are warm, have hearts beating and lungs inflating. There's all that movement, and of course, the flowing blood, which can leak out and make a mess, etc. Further, it seems a lot of surgical procedures are under a variety of time constraints and I have heard of marathon surgical sessions where a doctor (or tag team of doctors) have performed surgery for many hours consecutively without breaks. This seems like a recipe for disaster.




I would have thought it would be better to chill a subject down to 35 degrees F, just above freezing, that way a surgeon could perform delicate surgery without the heart beating, lungs inflating or blood flowing. Additionally, the subject could be kept at that temperature, stable and without metabolic functions occurring for quite some time, most likely days (*may require some non-toxic preservative, possibly just a broad spectrum anti-biotic). This would allow surgery to be performed over time, unhurried. It would be measured and methodical. Additionally, while the tissues would not be frozen solid at 35 degrees F, they would be firmer, allowing for more precise manipulation.

So - why isn't that the normal practice today? It occurred to me that the issue might be that a human surgeon would not be able to perform delicate.. or actually even gross surgery at those temperatures. The human surgeon's fingers would lose fine motor control, there would be risk of chills and shivers causing undesired muscle contractions, and none of those effects would be tolerable in any surgery.


Gloves would not be an option because if they were thick enough to allow the human surgeon to operate without degradation of dexterity and risk of shivers, then they would be too thick for any delicate movements. If the gloves were ultra thin but somehow heated, then the heat would risk the integrity of the patient's tissues which have to be maintained at the 35 degree F temperature.

So - while attractive in theory for a variety of reasons, Cryo surgery would be impractical if the procedure was being performed by one or more human surgeons.

NOW ALL THAT CAN CHANGE

Robotic surgery has become a viable and quite successful alternative to surgical procedures performed directly by a human. Robotic surgery has allowed for procedures that a human cannot do manually due to the requirement for exactingly precise and fine movements which are not possible with a human hand and a human eye but which can be done by a human directing a robotic limb and using enhanced vision from electronic ccd cameras.




If Robotic surgery allows for procedures which a human cannot perform on their own, then a Robot should be able to perform any procedure that a human can as well. And a robot can perform at any temperature range with no change to performance capabilities.

If we combine the two concepts above -

chilling the surgical subject down to 35 (or 34 or 33, anything just north of 32) degrees F, and then use Robotic surgical systems to perform the surgery, then all procedures should see an increase in success rates, some minor procedures may not see much of a change as they are close to 100% successful now, and the cost/complexity of the cryonic process may exceed the benefit but for others the improvement should fully warrant the extra
effort.

I would further speculate that procedures performed in this manner would result in reduced recovery time and better post operative response. Inflammation should be reduced, sutures should be more precisely implemented, etc.


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True Random Number Generation using Radio-Isotopes

Using a series of long life beta emitter radio isotopes and detectors in separate vessels to generate truly random binary numbers. At any given moment, a detector will detect a particle emission (1) or will not (0), and this detector can be sampled hundreds or thousands of times per second. If there are 10 vessels with 10 samples and detectors, then every time the detectors are queried one will receive a truly random number. If the detector can be interrogated 1000 times per second that would allow for a binary string 10,000 factors long per second (slice up any way that a consumer would require).

So ... turns out that a lot of other people have had this idea and are doing something about it.

RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service uses atmospheric noise to obtain truly random numbers.

Even more interesting is Hotbits: Genuine Random Numbers - Fourmilab which uses radioactive decay to obtain a random number sequence

Both of these services are available via the web, and a person or company can subscribe to them and obtain random numbers. Of course, for encryption, cryptography, gaming, gambling, and certain other activities where random number generation is mission critical, it would seem obtaining them from a 3rd party might introduce some uncertainty.

I'm envisioning motherboards and discrete systems with on-board true random number generation.

Imagine for example a tiny sample of Tritium gas, which is a radioactive isotope of Hydrogen, very safe, a beta particle emmitter, with a 12 year half life. A sample in a phial the size of a grain of rice, with a detector on each end, could obtain a continuous stream of random 1's and 0's for well over 12 years, which is far beyond the life of any computer system. Something like this would easily fit on the circuit board of even a mobile phone.

One note on the issue of half life and radioactive decay. Over time the sample will become less radioactive, and if 'no-particle-detected' = zero, then over time the average ratio of 1 (particle detected) to zero will deviate from 50/50 to some ratio where it is statistically more likely for a zero to come up than a 1. BUT - a detection even, while happening many times per second, is still not exactly an instantaneous event. The detector is 'detecting' for a very narrow window of time. So - a very small ROM and a small amount of DRAM storage should allow the randomness to be maintained for more than the life of the circuit board in the following manner. The DRAM would be used to store the detector's output from the last - few million detection events, and the ROM would have an algorithm that calculated a running average of '0' events, and a clock circuit that controlled the time span of the detector window. As the 1/0 ratio trends towards 0 being more frequent than 1, the system would expand the detection time span window duration so that the rolling average of 1's and 0's remains 50/50. At all times the actual result of any one detection event would be 50/50 to all significant digits, but over time as the sample decayed the amount of time that the system would leave the detector on would need to increase to allow for the fact that older samples emit particles less frequently.

Editorial on why I was thinking about this....
Well, I like to play a lot of games, and when I'm on the go, a game I like to play is the iPad version of RISK, which involves lots of computer generated dice roles. And I play so much that I can usually tell very early on if the random number 'seed' the game is using is favorable towards the attacker or the defender and I can modify my gameplay style to account for that. And that is sad because the dice rolls should be completely random.

This got me thinking of a circuit board sized random number generator for the iPad/tablet computers.

I also happen to be a futurist, and I think about the direction technology will unfold and how that will affect human life/culture/civilization (now don't get too excited I'm pretty pessimistic about our chances for long term survival - we could, there's no technical reason we shouldn't, but people are very myopically selfish, and poorly educated and very bad decision makers so all our actions over the last 50 years especially have all been doing nothing more than accelerating our civilization's collapse) - BUT... say we didn't all die off, say on the off chance for example, we actually bothered to stop destroying our planet, and each other. Well, while it's probably unlikely, if we did decide to stop the madness, then humanity would have a great potential to spread out to the rest of the solar system and beyond, and we could easily eliminate poverty, homelessness, famine, and improve health care enough so that death would be something much less likely than it is today. If we did so there'd be a lot of people around, since right now we do such a great job of killing each other and our population is still growing. So - I think about what to do with all those beings, the sentient minds.

There's every reason to believe that brains can be kept alive and connected to a 'matrix' like virtual reality simulator for quite some time, allowing people to live on long after their bodies give out but ultimately, even a brain will decay and stop functioning. Over a long enough timeline, if humanity is going to prosper, humans must evolve away from these organic meat-sacks and into a more robust architecture, in other words, must become sentient inorganic systems (some of you might call them machines or robots). Its easy to see several developmental paths to such an architecture, but all of them require truly random number generation. A human brain is the most complex configuration of matter in the known universe and it will take some time to model it, though the good folks at IBM are making great strides already in the nascent first steps. Once these systems start to improve themselves, there should be a pretty rapid increase in their capabilities, but if the systems are always based on pseudo-random numbers they will never make the leap to a truly dynamic, unpredictable system of sentient self aware processes.

So - while a circuit board based truly random number generator would be great for people who like to game-on-the-go, it is also a critical component of the architecture humans will one day rely upon within their own inorganic bodies.

[I know that some people of our current generation would not call an inorganic sentient being a human, but I would warrant that if Australopithecus met a modern human and had the capacity to do so, she would not call us human either. While likely a topic for another post, if humans don't succeed in committing mass global suicide, the most probably path of evolution will be a blending of organic and inorganic components, possibly powered by systems such as these, with more and more of the functions performed by our organic brains migrated over to inorganic processing subsystems until finally there is no need for any of the organic components at all. Over this whole transition, society will always call the beings in question, (at least in english) "human".]

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