Lifeboat Foundation

It was a career-defining (and perhaps life changing) moment when Dr. Vittorio Sebastiano, a reproductive biologist by training, realized that because we are able to create life, that same body of information could be harnessed to create youth — that is, radically reverse our biological aging process to a younger time point without losing cellular identity.

In 2014, he and his lab began unpacking this epiphany. They made the radical decision to conduct their investigations in human cells and tissue rather than in rodents, with the expectation that such a start would be a better bridge to human clinical trials.

Continue reading “Decoding Aging: The Science Of Cellular Rejuvenation With Dr. Vittorio Sebastiano” »

Aimée Parker shares how her childlike curiosity and collaborative spirit motivate her scientific pursuits.

Organoid intelligence (OI) is an emerging scientific field aiming to create biocomputers where lab-grown brain organoids serve as ‘biological hardware’

In their article, published in Frontiers in Science, Smirnova et al., outline the multidisciplinary strategy needed to pursue this vision: from next-generation organoid and brain-computer interface technologies, to new machine-learning algorithms and big data infrastructures.

Continue reading “Organoid intelligence: a new biocomputing frontier | Frontiers in Science” »

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to upload your mind to a computer? To have a digital copy of your personality, memories, and skills that could live on after your biological death? This is the idea behind whole brain emulation, a hypothetical process of scanning a brain and creating a software version of it that can run on any compatible hardware. In this video, we will explore the science and challenges of whole brain emulation, the ethical and social implications of creating digital minds, and the potential benefits and risks of this technology for humanity. Join us as we dive into the fascinating world of whole-brain emulation!
#wholebrainemulation.
#minduploading.
#digitalimmortality.
#artificialintelligence.
#neuroscience.
#braincomputerinterface.
#substrateindependentminds.
#transhumanism.
#futurism.
#mindcloning

AI systems mass-producing cheap research would be bad news for an already struggling scientific ecosystem.

The progress of science in the last 400 years is mind-blowing. Who would have thought we’d be able to trace the history of our universe to its origins 14 billion years ago? Science has increased the length and the quality of our lives, and the technology that is commonplace in the modern world would have seemed like magic to our ancestors.

For all of these reasons and more, science is rightly celebrated and revered. However, a healthy pro-science attitude is not the same thing as “scientism”, which is the view that the scientific method is the only way to establish truth. As the problem of consciousness is revealing, there may be a limit to what we can learn through science alone.

Perhaps the most worked out form of scientism was the early 20th century movement knows as logical positivism. The logical positivists signed up to the “verification principle”, according to which a sentence whose truth can’t be tested through observation and experiments was either logically trivial or meaningless gibberish. With this weapon, they hoped to dismiss all metaphysical questions as not merely false but nonsense.

The Monty Hall Problem.

Goat or no Goat!

Matt Hodgson reviews Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI by Anil Ananthaswamy.

Continue reading “Goats, sports cars and game shows: the unexpected science behind machine learning and AI” »

A very dangerous position to be in the world community of scientist should gather in agreement those friendly to the values and principles of democracy to advance science for the good humanity and freedom.

The U.S. sorely needs a coordinated national research strategy, says Marcia McNutt, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

By Saima S. Iqbal

Continue reading “American Science is in Dangerous Decline while Chinese Research Surges, Experts Warn” »

Terry Tao is one of the world’s leading mathematicians and winner of many awards including the Fields Medal. He is Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Following his talk, Terry is in conversation with fellow mathematician Po-Shen Loh.

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.