#E24: Radical Life Extension and Human Augmentation With Dr. Natasha Vita-More, the Author of The Transhumanism Manifesto

About Natasha Vita-More

Natasha Vita-More is a renowned figure, making her presence known in over 24 televised films and documentaries centered around humanity's future. She authored The Transhumanist Manifesto back in the 1980s, and pioneered the first whole body prosthetic. Natasha's expertise spans a wide range of topics, including longevity, AI, nano-medicine, human enhancement, emerging technologies, speculative technologies, ecological features, and social change. Throughout her prolific career, Natasha has placed a particular emphasis on a concept that she refers to as radical life extension. Join us today as we discuss how longevity is essential for the well-being of individuals, the ecosystem, and the economy.

Read the HYPERSCALE transcript.

(00:37) Briar: Hi, and welcome to the podcast Hyperscale. Natasha, it is so good to see you. I've actually been super excited. I've been reading your book, I've been doing your course, so really looking forward to catching up today.

(02:02) Natasha: Thank you. I am so delighted to be here, and it's a great to have a fellow woman who is of such stature to be talking to in depth. I really love this idea.

(02:20) Briar: Thank you so much. I was equally as excited about that point as well, so it's, it's really nice because sometimes I feel like I speak to so many men all the time and it's so, yeah, same old. So let's jump into it. So you wrote The Transhumanism Manifesto. Tell us about this. What is transhumanism?

(02:39) Natasha: Transhumanism is both a philosophical concept. It's a theoretical approach to the future. It's a practice of what we can do today to better support the query the questions about what we will become as not only a humanity, but society at large. And it really is founded on critical thinking about the future, the technologies and sciences that we're using today to help improve the human condition.

(03:12) Briar: So how do we see the future? Like how do transhumanists picture a future world?

(03:20) Natasha: There are many different approaches to the future, depending on one's background. For example, in my field as a designer and futurist and scientist, I approach it in several different venues, let's call it. But largely I apply it with systems thinking. I look at the gestalt, all the variables within the system that make up the future, which include the various fields that people are engaged in, the various studies, both in the fields of science and technology and philosophy. And how we educate each other is where we spread knowledge and how we spread knowledge. And the idea of moving beyond some of the constraints that we subscribe to since birth, since childhood, that we inherited from either our families, our parents, our culture, our societies, and to better understand where they're going awry and what we can do to better improve on them. And that means everything. And this is just part of basically common sense and human nature, but the transhumanist approach is a sincere look at the objectives of where we want to head in, whether it's space science or biomedical science or psychological science, and the use of the different technologies, whether it's artificial intelligence or machine learning, or nanotechnology, et cetera. So it's an approach that brings it together not for any purpose today, but to look at the continuum of the future, how we're getting there, what paths we're taking.

(04:59) Briar: If I was to, in the future started to deteriorate. Say I'm in my eighties or maybe I'm a hundred or even 130, often we, we talk about how we could replace our legs or our hearts with robotic pieces. But the one thing we can't replace is our brain. Do you believe in mind, uploading or what sort of your thoughts about this aspect?

(05:28) Natasha: It's an interesting idea when we talk about what is the future of our brain and our neurological structure. And this has been the crux of cognitive scientists and computer scientists for a very long time. And the field of neuro neurology and neuro-pharmaceuticals has been addressing it as well. But the bottom line is, as we're aging and we start recognizing a slowing down in our cognitive processes and our memories starting to lose, its quick response. And we're kind of haemorrhaging in our thinking. The best thing to do is to pay attention, to have a CT scan or an MRI and, and understand if we have early onset dementia or Alzheimer's. Now, that's the pragmatic approach to the here and now. What we can do once we start noticing this

The bottom line is as we age, the brain ages too. It's not just our skin that starts wrinkling and sagging, or our bones becoming brittle and, and we becoming less flexible. It's also the brain that starts losing its plasticity. And by plasticity, I mean the, the term that's used for the quick actions of the brain and the ability of the brain to adapt. So to answer your question specifically, I think mind uploading is a very important science and technology of the future. But today, I think it's very important to start paying attention to what is actually happening rather than to be too focused on the future of uploading. So the bottom line is, and it's not pretty, more and more people are getting dementia, early onset Alzheimer's is on the rise, and we're being distracted by the constant need to be online or on social media, or not using our brains to problem solve. We want the problems addressed quickly for us and using our brains to do research, for example once we read something or hear something to go further into it and to really recognize what needs to be researched and doing the research on our own.

So we become a little bit, we in general lazy about how we search for information, but it's really important to remember that searching for information learning helps exercise the brain and that plasticity. So this quick app stuff, slide to the right slide to the left up, down quick learning is really hindering our ability to learn the skills that are so necessary. Critical thinking, assessment, problem solving puzzle solving, et cetera. So I think what is needed is more science and technology investing in backing up the brain. And as you suggest, the concept of uploading will-- really it's for preserving the brain. It's to copy or transfer the neurological synapses and the collection of neurons that function together to form thought memory to somehow preserve that through computational systems or vitrification or crowd preserving neurons. There are many different theories. I think that it's essential and I think it'll probably be here sooner rather than later because it's so needed

(08:58) Briar: When we're talking sooner rather than later. Like, what's this timeline? And I thought when I was doing your course and listening to your lectures and exploring your book and things like this, like I think you have like, to me it almost sounds quite realistic what you talk about. I think when I'm on Reddit, I hear a lot of doomsdayers and I hear a lot of really hype kind of people about these particular topics. So I'd love to hear your sort of balance view. I guess

(09:29) Natasha: There is so much pessimism and hyperbole. In fact, within the scope of transhumanism, there's more written about dystopic futures or vision of the transhumanist vision rather than the opportunities, the problem solutions, the scenarios, the strategic thinking, all the different skills that are used by transhumanists to assess the future and to look at alternative futures. What's possible, what could come around the corner, what's really taking place. So the good news is hindered by the hyperbole and bad news. That's so exciting, especially with terms like existential risk. So it's a tough one to try to convince people to use their critical thinking skills and to think like a futurist or visionary or like a transhumanist to go, oh, well this could be dangerous, but there's tremendous potential. So how do we arrive at the potential by eliminating the danger that's what needs to be asked, rather than writing open letters or journalistic articles on the dangers of these technologies and how humanity is coming to an end.

There’s been prophesizes going on for eons back to antiquity about the end of the apocalypse of humanity. So our current apocalypse about humanity is GPT four and it's offspring GT five or machine learning or artificial general intelligence. But we're not there yet. It's in the future and we ought to be aware of it. So that's why I, going back to your original questions and my answers, it's so important to be knowledge gainers, to exercise our brains in finding information and assessing it and having discussions with other people about alternatives rather than to be opinionated and jump to conclusions. So we're seeing a world where people are jumping to conclusions and not to dismiss that. I mean, many of these that I'm talking about are very bright and capable, but God look at all sides of the issues.

(11:44) Briar: I think that's really important as well. And I often try and digest information that I don't necessarily agree with, and I often like to look at places like Reddit or dig kind of deep into the depth, so to speak, just to kind of hear all sides of the story to a certain extent and then try and find that kind of balanced view, you might say. But I agree, I think we are-- I get quite worried sometimes I think about the youth today with TikTok and just the way they've grown up with social media and things. I get very concerned that they're not digesting enough information, that they're not building their critical thinking. I know that in China, for instance, their TikTok is a very different from the US TikTok and China, they only get educational videos on TikTok. And then in the US we get twerking.

(12:39) Natasha: Social media has done some really wonderful things. It's brought people closer together from all over. It's brought instant, response and people can gather and, and give virtual hugs. All this is really wonderful. And on the other hand, it's kind of a dark mirror where you are constantly looking to see if your posts are liked and how many people are following you and, and which post gets the most attention. That's not a healthy way to be in the world. It's quite un-transhumanist if I can say that. Because if the transhumanist perspective is to apply critical thinking to look at the world to engage in the world on so many different levels to try to answer the questions that people who are so concerned are asking. We can't do that if we're parroting what we heard on social media or spending our time googling around to find information that way.

So we need to reassess who are the experts in any field and this term influencer, what does that really mean? Who's influencing what. So I think that AI has a great benefit in maybe helping us get beyond some of the foibles of early use of social media, instant access, instant replay, instant communication. Because we are not, or most of us, let's say, I don't mean to say we everyone, but many of us are not sorting it out first. We're just-- the headlines, the splash pages, the, headliners are getting our attention and they are organized, or programmed to do that. We’re being followed everywhere we go to see what we like, what we look at, what we pay attention to. And that's what's fed to us. So it's reinforcing what we already like and your academic inclination and scholarship is to look at the other side.

When you were saying that I thought of a game we used to play some decades ago, and it was a great game and I'd like it to come back. What we do is a group of people would get together a group of transhumanists and we all had our views on something because it's a diverse group of people with a common goal. But we would play devil's advocate in that, say if you were cryonicist and I was someone who wanted to be cremated because I'm a spiritualist or Buddhist and believe in reincarnation, we would take the other side, you would become the Buddhist or reincarnation person, and I would become the cryonicist and I would try to convince you to persuade you that cryonics was the way to go. And you would try to persuade me to your views, which is the opposite of what we were originally inclined to think in this fiction scenario. 

What that exercise did, what that game did, it's like playing chess. It would help us understand the whole board and the plays and what each play will cause in response to the movement we made. So it's very good to look at the other side of the story and try to put yourself in the role of the other person who the other belief system, let's say, rather than person that you don't agree with, just to be a part of it, to understand it more aptly.

(16:01) Briar: Oh, absolutely. And you mentioned cryonics. Tell us a bit about cryonics. What is it for those that are listening that don't know, I'd love to hear a bit more about Max Moore's thing He's got set up. I hear there are a few frozen bodies. So yeah, tell us a bit about this.

(16:18) Natasha: Well, first off cryonics is located in the field of Cryobiology. And Cryobiology is a highly regarded biomedical intervention that has been so beneficial to millions upon millions of people throughout the world. Cryobiology being a highly regarded field of biomedical intervention has been used for stem cells, vitrified or freezing stem cells, sperm, egg embryos. The use of cryobiology in many fields is astounding and highly beneficial within that field of cryobiology is the practice of cryo preservation or cryonics. And cryonics is a process by which animals like humans, dogs, cats, sea elegans are put in suspension sustained through vitrification and vitrification is not freezing. It's not like put in a freezer where you're frozen. Vitrification is a process by which the cellular structure of the body and brain are put in a bios stasis mode where they're not quite frozen, but they're very cold, so they sustain in that state.

Some call it non-existent. You have to be dead before you're put into cryonics, but you're not dead, dead, you're not totally lost. You could be revived or re reanimated revived, brought back the science, the protocol or methodology of cryonic vitrification is the same technique that's used in vitrified or freezing embryos, which we know have been highly successful in the field of infertility. In fact, my latest research shows that there are around 6 million people among us around the world who were conceived in a petri dish, in other word conceived in a lab because of infertility or, low sperm rate or problems with the ovaries or the eggs. So that's really wonderful that the field of infertility has been able to use cryonics so successfully. 

The humans can be put in human cryo preservation. And there's a number of different facilities around the world and it's growing in not only it science and technology, but people who want to sign up for it. The bottom line with cryonics is that it's a way to maybe escape the finality of death. Now there are no absolutes in the world and there's certainly no absolute in cryonics. We do know that simple animals have been revived. And that's a fact that the sea elegan, which is a nematode very simple animal, has been worked on by Dr. Cynthia Canyon for many years as a bio gerontologist. She has extended the life of these simple animals. And notable in that field, Dr. Greg Faye has worked with cryobiology and researching freezing of organs because that's one issue that's really paramount across the world where people need organ transplants, but there's not enough organs to help all these people. And literally every day there's hundreds of thousands of people waiting for an organ transplant. So vitrified or let's just say freezing organs would be very helpful to these people who are dying because they can't get an organ, transplant.

The other area of that offers promise and hope, well it's been successful in this, the elegance that my particular research in the field has been to look at long-term memory. It's an issue I have great concern with and I wanted to find out that if someone is put into cryopreservation, if their memory would be retained over the long-term while they're in cryonics before reviving, and no one had done that research. So I made it my work to do. I spent a couple of years working on this many, many long months in the lab with hundreds and hundreds of animals working with them, training them and testing their memory. And I was successful in this research. The paper was published and it did prove to be a scientific discovery or breakthrough, a small step in that direction. But I think an important step, so that's important.

You asked about the, human bodies or animal bodies in cryonic facilities and there is certainly Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which is probably the largest cryonics organization, but there's other organizations, there's Biostasis Tomorrow in Switzerland, which is doing quite well and there's going to be I think a new facility in Spain and different countries are starting to develop chronic facilities. In fact, what's interesting is that there is a hospital in Tel Aviv that now has a department or wing for healthcare where people can go in and have all their biomarkers checked to go through a number of different testings, blood work, stem cell work, looking at their heart rate, MRIs of their full body scan, et cetera, to look and see how their aging and what diseases they could be acquiring or when their genes would turn on, the messaging system to say turn on a cancer, for example.

So that's being done in Tel Aviv, but it's part of an established hospital which is really unique. Now, it won't be long before there are cryonics facilities attached to hospitals so that when the doctor comes in and for example says, I'm sorry, there's no more that today's medicine can do to save the life of your loved one or save your life. So an option is to go home and, and live your remaining days at home and we'll give you pain pills or you can go into Cryostasis. So that's around the corner and that's a scenario that I think will probably take place within the next 25, 50 years.

(22:30) Briar: Do you know how many people are frozen around the world roughly?

(22:35) Natasha: Yeah, thousands. You can go to Alcor's website and see how many people there're in the bios stasis state, but I don't know exactly because I don't know all the cryonics organizations. I just know Alcor specifically because I'm a member of Alcor. But I'm very respectful of Biostasis Tomorrow in Switzerland. I think it, it's moving by leaps and bounds in its research and it's outreach, which is really important. But, no one wants to go into cryonics only go into it if, the other option is cremation or being buried in the ground.

(23:14) Briar: Absolutely do you think that this sort of talk about living forever, do you think that this is something that could potentially come around in 2045? Because some people are throwing this out that come 2045, we could, may well have an option to keep living.

(23:32) Natasha: Yeah, it's an interesting projection or let's just say forecast or prediction. I, I don't make predictions because they come around and then they bite you in the rear end because if you're wrong, everyone will point it out. If you're right, few people will applaud you. They'll just go on and say they thought of it first. So it's an area that's fascinating for many futurists. But what's interesting is that the advances in science and technology are so rapid that we're finding things that, immediately through the successful use of AI to sort data that is quite astounding because I mean, just think we once thought that DNA if we could sequence the whole human genome that wow, we discover what causes aging and learn how to live indefinitely.

 But no, once the full human or almost the full human genome was sequenced, we find out that inside the gene is something called the protein. And then the field that gained attention was proteomics. And then we learn that proteomics even within that field, the proteins communicate with the genes. There's a messaging system that goes on that tells the proteins when to deliver certain messages to cellular structures to turn on or off mutations and to deliver information, et cetera. So there's this whole communication system going on with within the cellular molecular body, but no one can really know for sure. So let's take a look. The idea of living forever is kind of an oxymoron. While we want to think of, excuse me, living indefinitely because we love life, maybe people who are not happy or depressed or suffer from something may not want to. And granted their respect or for life ought to be included. If not everyone has to live forever. Some may opt not to, and that's their personal choice and they have a right for that. 

Those who do want to live indefinitely often say that they want to live forever, but the consequences of what forever means are going to change. We don't know what the future holds. So living forever usually is more of an emotional request. Like you just want to continue as you are in your love of life. Now I know my mother who lived into her hundredth year who suffered from dementia, thus my interest in memory research, she wanted to live to a hundred. That was her goal. She was very adamant about it, but she also had dementia and she was suffering. And in her last year, she really wanted to just stop. When people are suffering deeply from pain or anguish, if we can't help them, just let them be. We don't know if any one of us who wants to live forever, let's say, could be in that state of mind. 

By the year 2030 or 2045 here's a possibility that artificial intelligence will help us transfer the neurological network of the functionality of the brain onto computational systems or synthetic systems to back up memory. There's also possibility that we could coexist in alternative environments, for example, virtual environments synthetic or artificial environments and use alternative bodies such as avatars or something else that we haven't quite defined yet. So that's a possibility. There's also the possibility that we could share our time with being an upload in a symbiotic environment that is a simulation of life here and symbiotically live there or coexist there and here in real time in this biosphere. 

There's so many different alternatives games who knows what it is. But I think most likely by 2035 there'll be alternative environments to coexist in. the human body is an extremely complex system. In fact, some are now saying some smart people are now saying that probably artificial general intelligence will come about before radical life extension or immortality or living forever. But I think it's really kind of fun to suggest scenarios for the future because it gets us to dream and think. I took a long way around answering your question because I'm not going to commit to it because I don't know. And I wish more people would say, I don't know, but we want to live as long as we can to find out. So that's the exciting thing.

(28:45) Briar: Yeah, and I definitely want to circle back on these virtual worlds and avatars and things, but before I do, what do you do on say like a daily or weekly basis so that you are optimizing or sort of hacking yourself so that you do have that longevity to your life?

(29:03) Natasha: My bio-hacking routine is very simple and I've been practicing it for many decades. It is first and foremost to wake up with a positive attitude that sets the pace for the day to not worry if anyone's complaining about me or criticizing me, don't read it It's not worth it. To self-assess what am I doing beneficial for myself and others. Is there any way I'm not doing something beneficial? And if so, how can I alter that behaviour first and foremost. Then I usually have my morning ritual, which is to watch as many news programs as possible with my two big dogs. And so I'll have my cup of coffee and I'll gather information and I know that no news program on television is accurate. Absolutely. And that no broadcaster or news journalist is unbiased. Absolutely. So I gather information, then I think about it, and then my routine is to go into my study and study something. Something new.

I usually study, I'm studying French right now. I'm studying chess and I have a new keyboard. I'm going to be I used to play the piano. I'm going to start playing the piano again. So I do these cognitive exercises and that again is first and foremost. I go to the gym pretty much every day. I lift weights, I love muscles, I love building out the delts and the biceps and triceps, my hamstrings and glutes and quads. I work them to the same level I did in my 40s. So I haven't declined there, which is, is kind of wonderful in a way. And I do Pilates three or four times a week. And that's to stretch the body, to keep the, the balance and the limberness, the plasticity of the body if you, if you will. So I do that. I communicate with people I work for a non-profit and I get requests for money or projects and I read through them and then I write every day.

I write articles for different chapters of books and I'm writing my new book and that's about it. So I put my mental first and then my physical because it's just my practice. Someone could  do it totally differently. What do I eat? That's part of my daily routine. I try not to put anything in my body that's going to disrupt it. And my body is fragile, I'm constantly altering it. I have to make sure I eat pretty much paleo and take my supplements. I don't take too many supplements because I don't think that they can be, are always beneficial. I think that sometimes one vitamin does not fit all. And so I'm very cautious about that because there can be vitamin toxicity if you're taking too much of vitamin D, for example, or certain B complexes and not every multiple vitamin is the best.

But I do take hormones every day bio-identical estradiol and testosterone and a counter to the bio-identical estradiol, which is the progesterone. So this is really important those things. So that's pretty much my bio-hacking. I'm not one of the people that wants to inject myself with a whole bunch of stuff because number one, I don't have the money to do it. If I did, I'd probably be at the forefront much like Sam Altman, but I don't, so let him do it, let him receive the acknowledgement and reward for doing that. And bravo to him for that it's great. That's pretty much it. I think that if you read the reports of people who live long lives, it wasn't that they didn't smoke or drink, it's that they loved life. And I think that has to be first and foremost.

And your tribe. Something Michael Rose taught me Michael Rose is the scientist who extended the life of fruit flies very well known for his research. And very dear friend who I respect enormously. He said, it's your tribe. Get your tribe together, your community of people. And in the transhumanist community, it's a solid community, but there are transhumanists who I may not enjoy or I may not have as close friends. And that's okay there, Christians could say the same thing or Democrats or socialists could say the same thing. Not everyone shares. You may have the same goal, but you might not have the same personality traits.

(34:03) Briar: I think it's very interesting, something that I always remember my great grandma said. So she lived to about 104 and people kept saying to her, what's the secret? What's the secret? And she said, working every day on the farm and a glass of sherry with my dinner.

(34:12) Natasha: Yes, yes, I agree. I agree. So she enjoyed her life.

(34:20) Briar: She did, absolutely. Yeah. It's really interesting hearing about your sort of workout routine and things like this. I think there's been some studies recently, or not even recently, but over the years where they've been talking about muscle and the impact that this makes on obviously healthy body, healthy mind, and longevity as well. And I remember the last call we had with each other. You showed me your, your biceps and I was very impressed. To be honest. I've also been at the gym building my back muscles and my arm muscles and I was one of those children who could never even do monkey bars. So kind of like you are, I'm feeling, I'm feeling strong and I'm getting really excited to see these things starting to sprout. But yours are way better.

(35:05) Natasha: No, it's really quite wonderful. I love it. it's, it's, you just watch them grow and, and, and cut and carve and, before I press any weights I envision, Linda Murray or one of the Olympian champion bodybuilders of the level of Schwarzenegger and I think about how they focused in and I focus In and get to the point, of do it and then do it. And with that as well as everything in life, my alignment is the most important thing. And I come from a dance background. So how your form is the most important thing with weightlifting and in Pilates and in life.

(35:49) Briar: You sound like someone who has quite a bit of discipline. Like I love the fact that you're doing all of this research and you're always learning and now you're saying that you're about to start playing the keyboard again. I think that's really awesome. What would your advice be for, for somebody out there who constantly feels like they're scrolling on social media and just kind of can't get out of this cycle where they're not actually a achieving some big goals that they really want to be doing?

(36:19) Natasha: Put it away. It’s like the, it's like the credit card syndrome. Don't use credit cards. If you don't have the money, don't buy it. And that's something I learned late in life, believe me, because I didn't worry about money early on. Cause I always worked and, I, I didn't take out loans and I just, I worked and I like your grandmother. I loved working and so it wasn't a big deal to me. But when credit cards, I started noticing people using a lot of credit cards and then trying to get their credit score up and going, what your credit score doesn't matter if you own your own house and have money in the bank. Your credit score is just necessary if you're trying to get a loan. 

So the discipline is for social media would be just, it's like anything with drinking, with, saying bad things just stop. Someone recently accused me of, saying bad things about others and I said, where, where have I ever, I don't, I may I, but as a philosopher, not a scholared philosopher, but, within transhumanism it's okay to be theoretical and to offer your views. Like, I don't support socialism. I think it's a false premise and it's based on false premise. I also don't support a lot of the Republican attitudes because I think they're forgetting certain other things. So in politics I'm not one way or the other, but in life I don't support taking too many vitamins or getting on the bandwagon and yelling, hooray, hooray, we're going to live forever because I'm a very pragmatic person. And so when people are saying things about you, and that's why people are on social media, they want to either gossip about someone else or find someone else's dirty laundry or they're checking to see if someone's saying something about them.

Why are we so interested in what other people are saying about us? And why do we need to be in other people's lives? Why are we, it's almost like stalking, when you're following someone on social media, you're kind of stalking them, you want to see what they're doing all the time. But if you get busy and focused on your own purposefulness, you don't have time for that. Yes, I look at Facebook and I send out a tweet every few days and I do all this too, but it's kind of like fun. But to be on it all day long I think is, can cause a very dangerous habit. It's like being in Las Vegas in front of a slot machine and every time you send a tweet or you slide or you're looking at you, it's another pull on the slot machine. What is that thing called? You know? 

(39:12) Briar: I know what you mean I don't know what it's called either.

(39:19) Natasha: Pulling on the handle to see what's going to come up. If, and, and I guess it, if you get all tomatoes are all apples and you've got some good news or bad news on someone. So there's not much you can say because once people have a habit they need to want to break it themselves. So I think probably the best thing is to set an example. If someone says something bad about you, don't respond, ignore it. If someone goes publicly, like a journalist who disses you in a newspaper, call the editor of the newspaper and say, this is not true. And this is why that's kind of hard to do because most people today, I know within even in transhumanism a lot of the articles I read the tweets I read and the journalistic articles I read are smack full of misconceptions and hearsay boulder dash hyperbole. And it's really ridiculous. 

In fact, I was just reading something yesterday where this blogger who wants to be known was talking about transhumanism and had no idea what he was talking about. And I thought any of the people that he mentioned, did he call them up and interview them? No. Did he read all the information? No, it's almost like skimming off the top and just copying stuff because there are a lot of things about transhumanism that could be improved. There is no doubt about that. And over the years, since I wrote The Manifesto in the 1980s and then helped to build the movement in 1991, I guess it was, yeah, 1990, 1991, that things have changed and the movement has been gone become more mature and self-actualized and a lot of the outliers with extreme views have kind of left and gone in a different direction. But the core group of us have stayed together. We have maintained all the, the tomatoes thrown at us and, and criticisms and misconceptions because we support the philosophy so strongly as something that's very much needed in the world.

(41:41) Briar: What would you say are the most common misconceptions that you hear or see?

(41:49) Natasha: Oh gosh. , my god. Do we have two days? . Okay, so I'll try to be brief. Let's see. The most common misconception, is based in a strong bias against applications of technology and science to help improve the human condition. That's probably a bias against it that people want to be natural and they think that in proving the human condition, they will no longer be natural or it's unnatural to do that. But let's take example. Humans have been using technology to be benefit their condition since our early Australopithecus, hominids, early bipeds and Neanderthals our sister or cousins species. What whatever the, the differentiation is in the early times technology has been used until we became Homo sapiens. And we still use it today. 

So it's benefiting us or has been benefit benefiting us with transportation, communication, healthcare. One of the issues is about the misconception is that we want to change what it means to be human. Well, let's just take a look at that. Most people today have a line that can't be crossed. And I think that includes everyone. Even transhumanists probably have a line that they won't cross. Well, basic, mainstream, any country or location throughout the world in whatever community or tribe it's in, has a line that ought not to be crossed based on their, morality or beliefs. And they see transhumanism as crossing that line. But if we take a look at it, that line has been crossed before. It's been shifting in a fuzzy line for a long, long, long time. It's just that that people today don't look historically about that hard line. 

I think that the desire to improve the human condition for most people means we want to play God. These are the criticisms and the misconceptions, wanting to play God change our bodies augment our bodies live longer. And so that's natural to human, that we should stay within our limited timeframe of a hundred twenty two, a hundred twenty three years and living past 80 or 90 with dementia or arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis or different cancers. In a wheelchair drooling, that's normal. Well, it is not normal to me. I will never accept that as normal. I think that is immoral actually, to allow people to get to that state without intervening and helping them if they want to be helped, if they want to be in that state, that's their choice. Morphological freedom comes up in this area because morphological freedom means the right for a person to alter his or her or their or its body form and the right not to ever be coerced to do so.

I think that's a very important principle. The misconception there then becomes, we want to play God and we want to be create an elite society. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't know any transhumanist who has ever said, let's create an elite society of people and force everyone to upload or enhance themselves. And if anyone were to ever have ever said that, I would've stood up immediately and say, what are you talking about? You're in the wrong group. Go to a cult. We’re not a cult. We're a philosophy and a worldview and we're futurists who are really looking at the issues. 

Other misconception is that we don't think about the future. That we are Pollyanna, just see the future as rose colored and everyone's going to live forever and be immortal and happy and blissful and abundance. Well sure that's a beautiful scenario, but is it pragmatic? We know from history that even our, our greatest hopes and dreams go through consequences. And even if we were to arrive at that a hundred years from now, 200 years from now, whenever we will still go through many consequences, many risks, many downturns, many unintended consequences that will throw us off and will have to get back in the mind-set again. So I think that what is missing in the misconception about transhumanists is that we are indeed flexible thinkers and we're adaptable. That we understand the risks, we understand the consequences, and we're willing to go through them in order to get to the other side.

(46:39) Briar: I love it. Thank you so much for giving all of those overviews and everything. And it's, it's, it's, it's really fascinating. I think this has been the most incredible part about exploring transhumanism and doing your course and reading books and speaking to people is, I just love the fact that it is about this flexible thinking. It is about we don't have to accept things the way they are. We can think and design the future. We can think and design our bodies and I just like this really active approach, I guess when it comes to this topic.

(47:18) Natasha: Yeah. And I respect that you like that active approach. I wish more people did. I wish more people had your level of intellectual acumen and observation and inquiry. Those are the attributes that are so much needed today, rather than the social media copying and opinions and judgments and biases and doomsday scenarios. What if we could teach children early on to explore their imaginations as they ought to as children and as they do naturally? And if that is a natural part of the beautiful sponge brain of a child, to have that curiosity, then it ought to be a natural part of us as adults to have that curiosity still. Why do we lose it? What causes us to become sequestered to these segregated silos of thinking that limit us to imagination that limit us from accepting the differences between us.

It's kind of like religion. I've traveled the world a bit and I've participated in many different religious groups and spiritual or belief systems out of curiosity and, wanting further a deeper understanding. And what I've learned, my takeaway is that there is so much diversity in belief systems. I won't make an affirmative. How could there possibly be only one that's absolutely the right one. Who is the one that says that the person who has that phone line to the universe? I don't know. But if there were certainly, why would we be in the situation that we're in today?

I mean, just think I've done, okay, start here. I'll start with myself criticizing, I've been doing transcendental meditation since I was 18 years old, remember of my brother who's a medical doctor. He's a reconstructive surgeon. He realized that I had anxiety my freshman year in university cause I didn't like where I was going to university. I wanted to be at the Rhode Island School of Design and I was in Memphis at the university and I was unhappy, but I had anxiety about it. I didn't know how to get to where I wanted to go. And so he said try transcendental meditation because he had been doing it for years and it really helped. Well, here I am decades, decades later and I still do it, but it hasn't solved world problems and it hasn't solved mine. But it's a good practice. It's one of those cognitive practices for longevity because it is healthy for the functionality. If everyone in the world did that, it still wouldn't solve the problems. 

Religion is another one for eons upon eons. People have been practicing a religion to overcome odds, but they're still dealing with those odds. Governments, leaders, politicians, leaders in whatever field have been trying to come up with ways to help the poor, the starving, the impoverished, the disease, the injured goes on and on and on. But still more people in the world deal with this today. But the world in general is getting better all the time. So we can focus on the fact that no solution has been arrived at thus far and be a little bit sad about that to be sure. But we can look also, I should say also look at the other side of that, which is we as a species and the planet have outgrown so many of our foibles and are so as a whole much more prosperous in every way than we were hundreds of years ago. And that's something to be applauded. 

It’s a balance there in going, this hasn't worked, this hasn't worked. And appreciating that somehow, even though nothing really has unilaterally helped it somehow incrementally co-esthetically helped in combinations. So it's that conversion so coalescence of all these different practices that have somehow helped all of humanity.

(51:56) Briar: Absolutely. And tell us a little bit about virtual worlds and avatars. Because I loved that chapter of the book and I think it was because I spent 48 hours nonstop in the Metaverse last year. But I was fascinated because obviously Metaverse became such a buzzword last year, I don't even know what we're calling it now, spatial computing, I guess the new hypes or AI and things. But you were obviously writing about this stuff many years ago, so what was your thoughts when suddenly it got so hyped up?

(52:28) Natasha: It was interesting. Gosh, yes I've been writing about this for many, many years about this virtual world. And I remember in the 1980s, actually it was 1979, I participated in a project called Arts and Sciences put on by Richard Lowenberg and the, I think the United States Foundation for the Arts. But it was put on in Telluride, Colorado. And scientists and artists came together to talk about the future. There were two artists there, and they were videographers, kit Galloway and Sheri Ovitz. And they did the first virtual project using two satellites, the West Star one and the West Star two with the approval of the federal Communications Commission, the FCC. And they set up video cameras in New York City and Times Square and video cameras in Los Angeles and Century City and in real time without making any public commotion about it, no media, no press.

They just set this up through the satellites and relayed people in New York communicating with people in Los Angeles all of a sudden in a store window. And they would see each other full size. And it hit the press. It was one of the most astounding pieces of art in the late 20th century because of that. It was virtual and then they created Electronic Cafe in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica. And  I worked out of there as well as Timothy Leary and Dr. Fiorella Tezi and a number of Janine Parker. I mean the list goes on, Michael Masucci. I mean the list goes on and on. And it was really exciting because we did virtual work back then, but it was very primitive. We talked about what would it be like if we could live in these virtual worlds Again, this is the 1980s, very interesting in going on to the 1990s.

And then you had Lawnmower Man, of course. And we had meetings on VR back then too. Today. I am delighted that it's taken a turn. I loved Second Life. I remember putting on events in Second Life at the Terrasome Movement Island, which was very fantastic and beautiful, great architecture. And we had transhumanist meetings there. I still have the recordings of them. And this was in the 1990s I believe. Second life became kind of uncomfortable in a way. I mean, but today, when you go in virtual worlds like the One Sends has in Silicon Valley, they have it for their research and for those donors and people who want to learn about life extension, they have a virtual world where you just move about more freely. Where in the beginning we had to build our own avatars and use code commands to step up or down or sit now it's so seamless.

So the Metaverse largely is phenomenal. I have to pay tribute to Philip Vanderbilt for this. He has been working in the metaverse virtual world for over 40 years. He is one of the purveyors, one of the true athletes of virtuality in the sense, and his business is called Easy Spaces. And he does amazing work in this area. Also David Orban is also well known in that area too. What's interesting is that gaming took more attention away from the metaverse, what it could be than, than we expected. Gaming just was kind of that wild card that threw us a curve. So most people enthusiasts in virtuality spent their time gaming than in virtual worlds because in gaming you can go to different levels and learn different things and you play. But in the Metaverse it was more a place to go to buy things or to maybe meet people. But in gaming you played a lot.

I think there was the distinct difference between the build out of the metaverse and the advances in the gaming field. And that grew by leaps and bounds. And as we know today, gaming has, really taken the place of a lot of entertainment. But we're slowly getting back to the Metaverse as an environment. And I think that the idea of the avatars, once we start having all artificial or synthetic alternative bodies to coexist in, we'll be spending more time in metaverses if and when , the architecture is easier to use and more familiar. Much like the film avatar I guess, where it's kind of beautiful and seamless. The issue there becomes one that you just asked me about was social media. How do we get people to maybe come back to real time and will they get lost in these virtual worlds and is it a good thing or is it not? No one knows, but I think the field of psychology really needs to enter the space of transhumanism, the future life extension and not be biased. Not to tell us all the downsides of it, but to offer alternative thinking and, and ways that we can approach this because it's out of the bag. Let's get our heads out of the sand we have to face the fact that AI is here now, how are we going to deal with it

(58:11) Briar: And how do you think we should deal with AI?

(58:17) Natasha: I have a lot of different views. I wrote a paper for a Metaverse Creativity magazine I think in 2008. And it's about when AI and humans integrate in a metaverse environment. And my suggestion was then, and it continues to be that AI whether it's narrow, what wouldn't be too narrow, but whatever stage of evolution it's in could be a great asset to each person. It could be like a best friend I wrote about the--, it was like an angel. You know how you have an angel on one's shoulder and the devil on the other one saying, oh, you can do it, you can do it the other one's you better not do it. So it was the one that says, here, you can do it, but be reasonable. Apply critical thinking. It was not just the Pollyanna commenter or best friend, it was the one that offered caution and careful thinking and analysis and all those things.

I have that on my website. It's called Wisdom, a Meta Knowledge through AGI Neuro macro Sensing. And it's starts out with good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. . So it was produced in Metaverse Creativity and I wrote a number of papers on that when AI and humans integrate we're already doing it with our computers and our cell phones, but more seamlessly. And I think there are some apps today that are a step in that direction. There are certain applications for people with anxiety, how to get over your anxiety for shyness applications for people who are drinking too much to help them slowdown in drinking applications for people who maybe have certain phobias to help them like PTSD and whatnot help them with it.

These applications on our smart devices can be extraordinarily helpful when we're suffering from over emotions or maybe a manic phase or a phase where we're not thinking as carefully as we would like to. And I think that's really good. So that's in our smart device, which is external. Fairly soon we'll have different implants and chip and whatnot to better help guide us in our thinking. And that scares a lot of people. They say, oh no, we won't be human if we have a technology put in our body or we have some other agency in our body. But I come back with the same response and it's my usual response that humans evolved not as a sole species. We evolved with another species. In fact, if we didn't coexist with this other species that doesn't have our DNA, we would never have existed.

And that DNA is that of mitochondria, which is a different life form. It's not human and it works with our biology to provide ATP or energy. So that exists in many cells of our body. Not every single cell, but many cells of our body. So we're already a combination of species and what's true too, interestingly enough, there are some people, some humans who have Neanderthal genes and that's kind of interesting. So it shows that you don't have exclusively human genes if you have mitochondria or some Neanderthal genes. So that's kind of interesting. 

(1:01:51) Briar: Where did the mitochondria come from? I remember hearing about this so much in like biology and things, but I didn't realize it came from perhaps a non-human species.

(1:02:01) Natasha: Yes, it did. Well, when, how did humans come about? Or well, our early ancestors, the earliest Australopithecus how did they come about the, Lucian Ethiopia and the, the different, the out of Africa? Well, we first came about in a cesspool and I'll attribute Dr. Len Margolis in her book What Is Life? And she was an evolutionary biologist and wrote about life in its earliest forms. And she came up with a term about how life created, well it's like a spark, you have certain molecules and stuff in a cesspool of murky stuff. And all of a sudden something changes, it shifts and all of a sudden there is another shift and there's another shift. And then you have a very simple organism, a cell, and that cell divides and starts shifting and grows and evolves and forms a nexus of cells. Those cells need certain things to grow. And so it combines with other cells. 

So we started as a mixture, a conglomeration of bacterium may put it simple. And mitochondria is our energy, our energy system. So exactly how mitochondria knocked on the door of the cell and said, Hey, can I come in? I don't know. But it is part of our evolution as far as that, that chemical composition. So it's all in the chemistry of it. So I think the bottom line is that we will learn to co coexist with AI and whatever shape and form it takes, just as we've learned to adapt to our computers and have the computers part of our lives, whether it's in a tablet or a Kindle or any smart device or a cell phone or a desktop computer. But if we think back, it wasn't even a hundred years ago, it wasn't e maybe it was 50 years ago, someone said, why on earth would any person need a computer? Another person said, why would a computer ever weigh less than two tons? 

You think about some of these questions that were made, but they weren't made by the everyday layperson. They were made by entrepreneurs who were leaders in their respective industry of computer science and product development. So, it's really interesting when we think about that even those who were some of the founders of computers didn't understand why any person might need a computer, but here we're with them on a daily basis.

(1:04:49) Briar: Yeah, I think it's fascinating. I often think back to history and just how quickly the world evolves. Honestly, it's mind boggling really. Like I remember a time when, yeah, we didn't have mobiles, we didn't have computers very easily accessible. It's, it's interesting now where we're at and how people can be quite fearful of what's coming next. But when you kind of look at it, or when I look at it, I think it's so silly that we're trying to live in these virtual spaces that we're spending so much time on our mobile or on our laptop. And there's such a disconnect between the two.

(1:05:31) Natasha: I think that we're being inundated by the semblance of these virtual habitats through social media rather than really participating in them. If we're using virtuality just to read gossip or give opinions about something, then it's really not helping us. And also if we're getting our news from different virtual groups, we're probably not getting as much news information as needed or we're getting a biased or opinionated news. So I think that there's going to be a solution to this. We don't have it today, but I'm sure there are people smart enough to know how to deal with it that are working on it because it is a problem. And once an issue becomes known amongst people and it's on TV or wherever you're getting your information on the radio, people are worried about it. And once we start worrying about something, we find a solution to it. So I think that we're seeing a phase, an early phase of our adapting to virtuality and we kind of got a little bit off track with the social media onslaught that has become dark mirror and we need to get back on the horse and keep on riding.

(1:06:49) Briar: Well, today has been absolutely awesome. Thank you so much, Natasha, for all of your opinions, ideas, your research. Like, it's just been so fascinating to, to get to know you more today and to obviously be reading your book and doing your course. I'm halfway through, I'm almost at the finish line and I've just been really enjoying it. So I do encourage everybody listening to today to check out Natasha's website. There's her course there, it's really amazing and you can buy her books as well. And she got her Transhumanism Manifesto. She wrote this back in, was the 1980s, was it Natasha?

(1:07:25) Natasha: Yes.1983. It was published and I've revised it since because I've grown, I've matured, I've learned some things and I've added to it to where it's, I think more, it was first very poetic, like a salvo, and it did get on board the Cassini Huggins spacecraft. So it sent the words, I am transhuman out into our solar system. However, I've taken that poetic salvo, let's call it, about living longer and healthier and made it a more concretized manifesto that actually addresses certain things that I think are important today. So it's still the same, but it's, it's grown and I think it's just like us. I think it represents how I feel about myself and you all that we're maybe great as we are, but let's keep on learning and growing and developing

(1:08:17) Briar: And stay curious. I love that . Well, thank you so much Natasha. Nice to see you.

(1:08:22)Natasha: Thank you.