Last Podcast On The Left - Relaxed Fit: Transhumanism Part II - Violent Optimism

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

On this week's Relaxed Fit the boys return to the subject of Transhumanism, this time focusing on "human-enhancement technologies" and just how Transhumanism aims to take the human body to the next phase of our evolution.

You know, it's not that I want to give up every inch of my humanity, because my humanity is my skin and put an RCA adapter or whatever the type of thing, like the guy who starts his motorcycle. I was watching this one video of a guy put a chip in his arm and he could start his motorcycle with it. You're like, dumpy lawn mower, man.

I will say, you could just use the key. It does seem to still work. My thing is that I would revamp the whole thing just to get my ankle to stop randomly hurting. It's so sad, we are the apex predator of this planet. And just the slightest twinge in my ankle. And I'm like, you might as well shoot me in the fucking hem. Oh, absolutely.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone. Ben Kitzel hanging out with Marcus Parks on the very week, Henry Zabrowski, a man who can't handle his own human flesh. Isn't that unbelievable? I'm more human than human. We talked about this the last time we did transhumanism. But this time, and again, the last time

we did transhumanism. I did maybe unfairly come across to Marcus and attack Marcus for now, I think. You did attack. Yes, you did. Because he did allow the COVID nanomachines into his body via the quote unquote moxine. That's what we're gonna start calling it.

Oh, the moxine. He put that into his body in order to create a welcoming home for the COVID nanobots. But I just want to say, I'm sorry, I wish they didn't do that. Well, it's great to have another episode that's gonna be flagged and taken down. That's great. Also, I'm just gonna say this, if you're listening,

listen to this episode in italics. Because there is a lot of satire that's going to be expressed that some people might not fully understand. No, Kitzel, it is the libertarian free market of ideas. All right, because the thing is, everybody's saying, oh, they're concerned about the machines. They're concerned about the machines.

What about the monkeys driving the machines? Yeah, bro. I don't think that that's gonna happen. That was a fun movie with Ronald Reagan, though. All right, everyone, we are on to transhumanism part two. That's right. And Ben, you're thinking Bonzo goes to Bitburg. I think what you actually wanted was any which way, but loose starring Clint Eastwood,

where the orangutan drove the truck to bare knuckle boxing. Of course, anyway. So how the fuck are we supposed to take a single word you say seriously today? If you mix up two of the biggest monkey with man vehicles in show business history. To be honest, I don't want my words

to be taken seriously on this show. I'm not interested. This is the point is to spread laughter and joy. Also, any which way, but loose, fantastic documentary on buttholes. Okay, Marcus. Oh my God. He's been saving that.

So on our last episode on transhumanism, we focused on the idea that humans can take control of their own evolution on a biological level by combining our DNA with animals to make ourselves something more than human on a physical level. More human than human. But that shows, man, that's fucking the goopy dumb way

to do it, dude. Yeah, what animal would be the most fun to bond with? Maybe the octopi, because they're very strong. They have multiple arms. And I do like the idea of having suction cups to my hands, because that way I can climb up buildings and protest stuff. Deridactyl. Sure.

Sure, sure, sure. I actually would like to become even smaller and be able to hide in areas and jump in surprise and also be used for recon. Some form of like bionic iguana. Mostly we covered in the last episode the rumored Soviet program that aimed to combine man with chimpanzee,

so as to create a living war machine capable of enormous feats of strength while also being less likely to complain about the quality of their rations or their living conditions. Has anybody been near monkey cage? All they do is complain. Absolutely, completely false idea

of what the monkey needs. Monkeys are in desperate need of all types of food, and they'll have sex with your wife. Now, I think you got to train them to have sex with their wife, unfortunately. And you'd be like, my wife is beautiful. Come on, Jbenovo. Come on, have my wife, please.

Very henny young men of you. Now, as we know, Ilya Ivanov, the scientist in charge of this rumored Soviet monkey program was indeed obsessed with filling women with chimp cum and filling chimps with man cum, but it wasn't necessarily to create human chimp soldiers for Joseph Stalin. It was for purer reasons.

Yes, rather Ivanov was more curious about the next phase of human evolution, but just went about it in a manner that might be called clumsy. Yes, yes, yes, very much so. And a lot of these guys, I think that you're going to talk about this, Marcus, that clumsy seems to be the word.

I feel like clumsy is not the word. I think clumsy is the word. Seems like semen is really involved here. Yeah, as we delve further into transhumanism today, from the technological standpoint, you'll see that clumsiness is indeed the essence of the concept. I was watching this documentary, Technocalypse,

that it's very difficult to say, but one of the doctors in it, Dr. White, this guy, he was obviously a massive proponent for transhumanism. Well, and he, what I love, he's like, let's quote one of the best, most famous scientists in all the world, Dr. Frankenstein. When he said, first look at his creation,

that it's alive. And it's like, Dr. Frankenstein's not real. He's not real. And he's like the symbol of science run amok. Why do I feel like Dr. White, much like his television counterpart, is addicted to crystal meth? Maybe.

By the way, Henry, was that the same guy that did the monkey head transfusion, like switch the monkey heads? You wouldn't believe the marvels we'll be able to do in this lab, not just six years ago. Did we lop the head off a monkey? This is true.

He says, we kept it alive for seven days. And we knew, because the question always is, is Ken, let's say yes, you can keep the brain alive. You can pump it with blood and nutrients and keep it alive. But does the personality retain? But I'll tell you what, when we went and we had, we had that monkey's head placed upon another monkey's body, just from the screaming alone,

you can tell the personality remained intact. Is he the main character from Reanimator? What's wrong with this guy? We're gonna see a lot of those guys in this episode. Okay. Now, modern transhumanists certainly still dabble in the biological realm. We'll get to bio-hackers later.

But most transhumanists are concerned with how pure technology can be used to take humanity to the next phase of evolution. Yes! Now, the premise of transhumanist thought is that humans have been given a suboptimal piece of hardware on which to run our software. Our bodies are badly designed,

randomly thrown together vessels that in no way live up to the standards of the brains encased within. Look at my body. We're looking at it now. You see this flap? Yes, we do. It's right under the breast, yeah.

Is this perfected yet? I have four tits. If you look at me from the side, this is all tits. I have, I look like a mother dog. Well, and there's nothing wrong with that. For the last two years, I haven't been able to look down for an extended period of time

without being bombarded by debilitating headaches in one specific corner of my brain in a fucking condition called hemicrania continua that I have been told almost exclusively affects women in middle age. But it's still there for me and I can't fucking figure it out. But you know what I think is also incredible?

Like women of the middle age, Marcus' sex drive is through the roof. Absolutely through the roof. He is just, and honestly, and sometimes a little too much for some of the younger people. Well, I accidentally put two contacts in my left eye today. I thought I was going blind,

but turns out I could just see extra. And also, I have small amounts of ED. You're right to held this one. I am, but that's why this is what I'm saying. This two fragile beef that we are surrounded by, it must be replaced with something if we're going to possibly compete with the absolutely, it is definitely coming, rise of the robots.

There's no way that we can't, you know what I mean? We obviously can't develop a soda machine that works half the time. But we're definitely going to create an artificial intelligence that's going to take over the entire universe. I think it's already been created. And please, if anybody can give me any tips on how to cure

or at least treat hemicrania, continue without Botox because it doesn't really work on me, please. Email, side stories, lpotl at gmail.com. Biohacking. Biohacking, please, please help me. Basically, transhumanism sees itself as a liberation movement that advocates

a total emancipation from biology itself. It's a version of optimism that plans to kill us all. But seeing another way, and Ben, this might be more your perspective, total liberation from biology also means total enslavement to technology. So why would we want that? Because through technology we'll be free.

How? Cyberspace, bro, on hour man three, bro. It's going to be a remake, dude. Italics. And while transhumanism might seem like nothing more than a topic debated on Reddit, with no real consequence save the community's own internal dramas,

some of the most powerful companies in the world have been investing in transhumanism for years. Jeffrey Epstein and his millions and millions of dollars deep inside of MIT and Harvard has been very deeply embedded in the world of transhumanism in order to save his cock and send it to the edges of the rings of Saturn. And we don't know if they didn't do it. Don't worry, Harvard apologized for taking all that money

that they still have. Yeah. Very brave, Harvard. Google, for example, created a transhumanism branch called Calico that focuses on solutions to the problem of human aging, with leading transhumanist Ray Kurzweil acting as director of engineering. I will beat my father back from the dead.

Hey, it's me, Ray. You're fucking loser, piece of shit. You disappoint me, Ray. Oh, no. I thought that you were going to be happy. No, you disappoint me. You disappoint me. You don't play football.

You're not a man. You're not a man. I need to rethink everything. What about people who love gilfs? Grandma's who love the fuck? Yeah. What do you mean? You can keep them frozen at a specific age,

and you can honestly, you can put juice glands deep up inside of their pussy to make sure that they are what? At all times. I'm just saying, but if no one ages, all of a sudden. Well, sex bots, but we'll get to that later. Oh my god, this is just from Austin Powers. Well, additionally, some at Google also see that emerging of technology and biology

will expand the human mind beyond its limitations, such as when Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that eventually we'll have implants in which we'll just think a question, and the Google-connected implant will give us an answer instantaneously. It's called your fucking brain. No, no, no, no. It's called thinking with your brain.

No, no, no, no, no. This is accessing information that your brain does not have access to. For example, Ben, what is the average weight of a full-grown panda? What is the average weight of a full-grown panda? Well, my brain is able to. You don't know.

If you had a Google implant, you would have given me that answer instantly. 171 pounds. You're not right. You're not correct. I just know why you're not relying. What is it? You don't know.

You're just making up. I don't know. I don't have a Google implant. Average weight of a panda. The thing is, no, no, no, this thing is not instantaneous. This is taking time away from the show. No, it's not. It's actually not.

It's clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking. But this is the truth, right? They talk about it. One day we will have to consider the spectrum of our intelligence to include our phones. But I think that 150 to 280 pounds, I was right in the middle. Whatever, dude.

That's only because you know how much you weigh and you subtracted yourself by half. There's no way a full-grown adult panda weighs the same as me. It's possible. They're dense. That's what it says on the Google machine. It's 250 pounds. You're reading kilograms.

150 to 280 pounds. A female adult panda. Only the models. 220 pounds, female adult panda. I apparently Google tells us different answers depending on what we want. Exactly. It's weird that they downsize them for you.

Yeah. There's just some questions I wish that my brain could ask and then I don't get an answer to. Yeah, that's true. But another key component of transhumanism is that the staunchest believers are also well aware that a lot of the technology needed to enhance humanity in such implantable ways

is still decades, if not centuries away, in a practical application. I think that they might have invented the new futuristic version of the game, kick the can. Because all of these guys, as you watch documentaries on it, like again, I love the hopefulness. I love the optimism of those future guys. They're going to get it.

About 100 years from now, those guys will really haven't figured it out. And you're like, I don't know, bro, you're just wearing full black contacts. That's like all you're doing. I know it seems very revolutionary. You've got 25 rings in your face. I know that that's cool, but you're

still putting a lot of hope on future sciences. Right. The people who invent the internet apologize. Yes, that one guy. Well, he was an internet utopianist. He was one of the people that said that the internet will bring us all together, and it will usher in a new era of cooperation in humanity.

And racism. Yeah, all that kind of shit. And recently, with him, I think the last three or four years, he did write an entire article that said, oh, my god, I was so wrong. I never could have predicted social media this is going to destroy us all, if we're not careful. OK.

Additionally, many transhumanists are also obsessed with the idea of interstellar travel and are well aware that humanity is nowhere close to technology that even approaches light speed, much less anything faster that makes interstellar travel feasible. I mean, even going at light speed, the people who leave Earth will never actually

live to see any of the desert and another planet. That's why we have to be made out of machines in order to go into the deepest reaches of space. OK. Or we can just figure out a way to travel faster than light. One of the two. One of the two. I'll take both.

We have a game. But there are also many people who argue that there is, like, FTL travel is impossible by definition. So he's been doing the reading. Because he dropped the FTL in there. No, I dropped the FTL in there because I watched Battlestar Galactica.

Can we just go to Anchorage, Alaska first? I feel like there's a lot of stuff we could do here for a while. So the question is, if none of this is going to get done before everyone currently living on this planet dies, then how do transhumanists find a shortcut to the future where interstellar travel is possible

and all the nasty biological problems of living as a human are solved? The answer is cryogenics. Yeah, dude. They're going to do the science version of when you pause the porn video and jump to the come shot, where they're going to go all the way. You're going to skip all the plot.

You're just going to go all the way to the year 13,000, where all of this is going to be well taken care of. Right, right. But it is still a very transhumanist idea, and that we'll figure it out later. And one of the most well-known of modern cryogenics labs is Alcor cryonics. Alcor proposes to keep your body in a suspended state

for a possible future in which you can either have a new body regrown from scratch or machine built. So either you'll be biological or you will be robot, one of the two. Or will a nanomachine even be decipherable or discernible from biological? I don't know. Do you and Carolina Marcus have the argument,

often because you're both Trekkies, like do you have the argument about the idea that when you are beamed up about how the body is destroyed on one end and then re-put together on the other end, do you guys ever have the discussion about what does that mean that you are dead and that the person that is now on the other end of the being beamed up

is essentially a facsimile of your previous personality? We have definitely had that discussion many times. And where we came down on is that as long as the consciousness stays intact, then it doesn't matter whether your body is pulled apart and put back together. The only thing that truly matters is human consciousness. That's called the Netflix sharing of biology. Isn't that fantastic?

Well, that'll be great. Your love is going to be really strong because you'll be all torn apart and your arms will be in your ass and everything will be all wrong. I guess he doesn't understand any of this. He's not ready for this. No. Well, the problem with all this, just hoping and freezing

until all of this is done, is that there's absolutely no science behind this future possibility of a brand new body. But Alcor does not pretend that they're going to be the ones to figure it out. Rather, they're just here to keep you on ice until someone does figure it out. I feel like they are very optimistic.

I guess that's what you just said. That's the word of the day. Although what did you call it, Henry, violent optimism? Yes, it is about how we all have to die for any of this to work. But I would have a manual on cryogenics. And there is like a plan, but it is, apparently, it's very delicate, slowly bringing you

to this cooling point where essentially you're dead. But you are, because the key is, how do you keep you frozen without turning you to ice and having ice particles go inside of your blood? Because that is what will truly make sure you're actually dead. I never liked the names of these plates, Alcor. Alcor sounds like a man who cleans your shoes with his tongue. Why do they always name themselves

after horrible-sounding dystopian enterprises? Because that's them. Yeah. For the sum of $200,000. Oh, that's it. Alcor will cryogenically freeze your body. But for the budget cryonocyst, Alcor will charge $80,000 to cut off your head,

keep it petrified, and chamber it in steel. Yes. As you can see, Alcor, I have a coupon. Oh, yeah, yeah, you got a coupon? Yeah, good, good, good. Pru-pup-pup-pup-pup. Pru-pup-pup-pup-pup-pup. I'm just kidding.

I'm just going to need to lay over this ottoman, OK? Because, yeah, don't worry, let me get it put out. Can you get me those Garfield blankets? I need something to catch all this blood. Bit of a problem. Fantastic. I love this coupon. Additionally, you do also have to pay annual membership dues

to Alcor while you're still alive. Oh, yeah, dude. Who's paying it? The people who plant, yeah. If I am a member of Alcor, if I do say, like, hey, Alcor, one day, I'm going to be frozen. Here's $200,000. But every year, until then, I do

have to keep paying my membership dues. It's a scam. No. No, it's a cryogenics membership. I would call it a bet. This is like when my mother. It's a bet. It's a library.

It's a library for your life. This is like when my mother bought a fucking star. Yes, it is. And then they gave her a stupid picture of a star and said it was named the Laura. At least the star is far away. You can never get to it. Here, they have the refrigerators.

Yeah. Your brother can go and check out your head and say, there it is. With the frozen look of surprise and terror on it. Well, as far as where the heads are kept, Alcor uses cylinders called doers, giant thermos flasks filled with liquid nitrogen. However, each client does not have their own doer.

If you're freezing your body, then you have to share a doer with three other people. And if it's just the head, then 45 heads are crammed into a single flask. It's like how my mom goes through the stuff she froze from Thanksgiving to thaw something for me a year later when I visit. Just like digging through heads.

Like, hey, where's that one guy? Now, while this is an expensive and risky option, there are actually some transhumanists who suggest that everyone on Earth should be cryogenically frozen. A man named Ralph Merkel estimates that if humanity built giant doers, we could accommodate 5.5 million heads in each doer.

And by building 10 giant doers a year, we could stop death entirely. Provided, of course, that someone figures out how to bring the heads back one day. Listen to this. All right, listen. What we got here, yeah, you see, oh, that's some kind of a pop of complex.

Well, these families look right. But boom, we knock it down. Now, what it is, is a refrigerator for heads. Listen, come closer, come closer. All I gotta do is decimate several whole neighborhoods in massive metropolitan cities. And that's where we put the head refrigerators. Hey, we're going to be fine.

Don't worry, yeah, I'm not a doctor. I work in the refrigeration sciences. I actually trust you more than these people. The biggest problem with cryogenics, however, is that you can't really do it after you're dead, because the body and the brain decompose so quickly. From what I can tell, you pretty much have to choose your moment of death to do it properly,

meaning that cryogenics is, again, a pretty big bet on the future. That's why, Kissel, we should start doing podcast network softball like games with us versus other soft, like podcast networks. And then that time when you hit that big grand slam, that's when we freeze you. Yeah, absolutely, I love that.

Straight out of the movie Dodgeball, that's a great idea. What if I show up, but you know me, I'm from Wisconsin, it's about layers that would never make me cold. Oh yeah, that's the problem. It's like you and Adam Wurz, you both wear shorts when it's like 20 degrees outside. How are you supposed to be frozen? I ain't gotta get cold.

But to this end, if we do one day enter a kind of post-death future, then there's a question of what leaving behind one body and entering another one might be like. And Hans Moravec, professor of cognitive robotics at Carnegie Mellon, has laid out a possible scenario for how it might go. Ben, you're gonna find this terrifying.

Great. Well, the way Hans Moravec put it, the still living subject would be laid on an operating table, fully conscious, but incapable of movement. A somewhat comforting, humanoid machine would then appear at your side and bow with ceremonial formality.

Are you ready to get the ultimate draft? Did you get the coupon or not? Yeah, I did. It would then open up your skull in a brisk sequence of motions. The machine would remove a large panel of bone from the back of your head before laying fingers that are, as Moravec puts it,

as fine and delicate as a spider's legs on the viscid surface of your brain. How is that comforting? Did he ever see the end of the original it? Yeah. And he got hard for it. This, Hans Moravec says, is when you may be feeling some misgivings

about the procedure, because remember, you are fully conscious at every point of the process. Awesome. But at this point, there's no backing out. Yeah, he carved a window into your fucking skull. It's over now. It's done. Using microscopic receptors, the machine fingers

would scan the chemical structure of your brain and transfer the data to a powerful computer, building a 3D map of your entire consciousness and creating code to model the activity of your brain. See, Marcus, you said all that very simply in the sentence, but I feel like that might actually be super complicated and almost impossible at this point. Yes, we'll get to the impossibility of it here in a second.

You know what I would say if I was on the table? You're going to buy me dinner first? No. And the robot would give you a customary pity laugh and go, very funny, save for your comedy special, and then eat you. Suck your brain out. Now, all of this is entirely theoretical.

This is Hans Moravec just theorizing. Yeah, just fucking bullshitting. Yeah, just bullshitting, throwing it out there. Yeah, but as the 3D model is being built and as the code is being created, another mechanical appendage scoops the brain from your head and tosses it in the garbage. Wait, what?

It's over now. It's over. It's at this point that you realize you are no longer present in your own body. Your corpse will convulse one last time, leaving animal life behind with only machine life in your future. Bye.

Bye. I'm going to go live in WeTennis now. Well, this whole idea is called emulation, which is put into very simple terms, running a program on a different operating system than what was intended. For a very simple example, I have an emulator that runs Nintendo games on my laptop.

Yeah, and this is easily comparable to human personality. Sure. This is very simple. This is in very simple terms. This is a program run on a different operating system. So they're going to make me Italian? If you want, you're both missing the point entirely. Got it.

Completely and totally. You're being. Fantastic. Yeah, it's basically like, think of the human brain as a program. Think of the human body as a computer, as a hardware, as hardware. Yeah, so far, yeah.

Oh, yeah, definitely. For example, on my emulator, Mega Man 2 plays exactly the same on my laptop in 2022 as it did on my Nintendo in 1988. The program is exactly the same. But I no longer have to worry about the mechanics of my Nintendo breaking down as they once did. And now you don't need the cheat code to make Mega Man nude.

Yeah, is it Mega Man or Woman? No, you're thinking of Metroid. Samus is a woman. But in other words, emulation of the human brain out of the human body would mean you would never have to blow on the cartridge ever again. You'd never have to worry about the pins, the pin receptors in your Nintendo going rusty.

It's running on a much better machine that, of course, has its own problems, but will not break down in those mechanical ways that it once did. So you're going to make me a Nintendo? Yeah, I'm going to make you a Nintendo. OK. You got it.

You understand it now. You get it. You totally get it. Dog, this is as far as we could get him. But this is as far as we were going to get him. You know that, right? That this was a, that's actually a big step for him. Yeah, it is.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the problem with the emulation of minds, however, is that while we certainly know how to emulate something we ourselves created, like, say, 8-bit video games, we still don't even definitively understand how human consciousness works or even what human consciousness is, let alone how to reproduce it using raw data.

We're just going to have to take a look at that later. We're going to have to circle back. Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of stuff. They're just kind of yada-yadaing over. But to that point, kind of an intelligent conversation here, when it comes to Jerry, my little dog, how does he recognize that dogs are dogs and horses are horses?

Because he doesn't bark at humans. He doesn't care about. It's erratic movement. They don't like erratic movement. I actually, it was another experiment on technocalypse. This experiment was nuts. Did you see this? I did.

Did I see you? And so they were like, we wanted to see just how much an animal can see, right? And how much they can see. So what they did was they took a cat and they wired receptors, like wire receptors into the back of the cat's brain. And I mean, the cat doesn't look like it's in pain,

but it definitely doesn't. It looks, it looked bored, honestly. It does. And the cat's head is basically put into a comfortable version of a vice, right? Where they put it in his head in this little padded thing. You just see his head sticking through. And then you watch them show a movie at the cat.

What was the movie? Wasn't it like Beauty and the Beast? There was no, it was something. It was not Back to the Future. Indiana Jones. It was Indiana Jones. It was showing the cat, it was showing the cat, Indiana Jones.

And then the receptors were showing you what the cat saw of the movie that it was showing to the cat. So it showed the first images of all the normal movie. And then you saw what the cat saw, which is mostly just a bunch of shadows running back and forth. But the cool thing that it did show is that it did show a still of like one of the faces. And the face, like what the cat saw,

it did actually look cat-like. And that was very interesting to me. That was crazy. That was cool. That was interesting. But perhaps a larger hurdle for emulation is that even if we got to the point where we did understand human consciousness,

we still couldn't even attempt an emulation without killing the subject. Yeah, that's the thing. That's what Dr. White was always saying, that the worst part about his monkey experiment that he did is that he couldn't replicate it on people. Because everybody has all these issues. There's all these like humanist problems

that everybody he runs into. And everybody yells at him. I'll just have a couple of more breadsticks. Thank you. It's going great. No, this is a great first day with Mr. White, really. Life from your play. A roast as dark as the night.

Perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your podcasting. Don't mind the red eyes. He's just trying to warn you of the bridge. The bridge. Finally, from the caffeine-addled brains of Spring Hill Jack Coffee and Last Podcasts on the left. Bre bring you Mothman's red-eye blend.

Yes, delicious Panama beans. Go to lastpodcastmerch.com to order yours today. Now, while transhumanism seems like an entirely modern concept, some people think that it is merely an a new interpretation of an ancient idea, namely the idea of Gnosticism. This is fascinating to me.

Gnostics were an early heretical Christian sect that believed that the material world and the material bodies that we use to live in this world were creations not of God, but of an evil second-order deity called the Demiurge. Well, you say evil, I say flawed and mortal. This means that humans are divine spirits created by God trapped in a flesh

that is the very material of evil, sin, illness, greed, all the shit, anything that you wanna put in there. All the fun stuff. Everything that we like about being alive is bad. Oh, that's bad, okay. The only redemption Gnostics believe was a complete liberation from the human body, which is almost exactly what is believed by transhumanists.

That's fascinating to me. The human mind, we have the same brain in our fucking head. We talked about it in Black Plague. We have the same brain in our heads that we had 80,000 years ago. It's fucking nuts. And they got to ask these questions originally. I think it's interesting.

One day we will torture our audience with the Gnosticism series. I will make us all go through this because I find it fascinating. Absolutely. I mean, the only difference is that while Gnostics came at the problem from the perspective of evil and sin, transhumanists come at it from the perspective of inefficiency.

And it's not just because transhumanism is mostly populated by various Martin Screllies of the world, kind of fraudster-type people. No, not all. No, it's not necessarily a fraudster-type thing. It's more of a, let's say, there's not a lot of compassion in transhumanist world. It's violent optimism.

Yeah. It's absolutely, it's optimism that is a giant steamroller. So if I'm a Nintendo, can I just play Super Mario 3? Let's just move on. Let's move on, dog meat. We'll get there. No, there's more to explain. I like it when I fly with the tail.

There are some fraudsters coming up here in a bit. We'll cover them later. Great. But when it comes to the merging of religion and technology, perhaps there is no greater example than that of the singularity. My father. Defined simply, the singularity is the belief

that one day machine intelligence will surpass and consume humanity, making us one singular entity. I feel like there's a lot of negativity here in the way the dog meat is presenting this. But I feel like it's more about a cohabitation with technology. No, I know you're not. No, I mean it.

I thought it was being fair. Pretty objective. You're being very objective and fair here. What is the idea of the two should be merging? But that's the idea, is we have to merge to beat the robots. We'll get to it. OK. That just sounds like surrender to me.

No, no, no. Merge. Yield. Yield. Yield is a synonym for surrender. Yield is also a way to peaceably allow the highways to work. No, you're going to be the first one arrested for strangling a robot that gives you

a ticket for jaywalking, right? It's very possible. I did attack a coffee kiosk the other day, yeah. Well, first proposed at a NASA conference in 1993, the singularity is seen by some as an inevitability at this point in history. The man who coined the term, science fiction author Vernon Vinge.

Vernon Vinge, man. Yeah, Vernon Vinge, yeah. Predicted that within 30 years, which, by the way, is next year. Yep, we're on track. I think that he is right. Humanity will have created a superhuman artificial intelligence that will be the beginning of the end of the human era.

I completely understand and I totally agree. He claimed that there is no preventing the singularity because it is the inevitable consequence of mankind's natural competitiveness. We've done this to ourselves. Once a technology is put into motion, it is mankind's inclination to make it bigger and better so the other guy doesn't have something bigger and better.

Well, if man was created in the visage of God, then eventually man will step into the visage of God himself and become God in turn. Absolutely, I completely agree. Also, remember all sport? They are those funny commercials about the future with the moving baskets in the NBA, but the baskets are still just sitting there.

Well, in terms of violence and in terms of this escalation, this is how we went from smashing each other's skulls with rocks as cavemen to nuking entire cities as civilizations. It's just competitiveness. That's how mankind survives. Now, the aforementioned Ray Kurzweil said that the singularity is inevitable

because of the law of accelerating returns. This is the idea that technological advances tend to feed upon themselves, which increases the rate of further advance, thereby exponentially increasing the power of said technology. Basically, it's how we went from the enormous Eniat computer created in 1943 to the first PC in a little less than 40 years.

Then we went from PCs to the first power books in less than 10 years. And every computational advance after that has happened faster and faster and has been exponentially more powerful ever since. Ray Kurzweil actually, he proved his own theory by his job what he was working on as an inventor was a way, a reading machine for people who were blind

or to read books with who also have not learned braille. The idea of doing something like a mechanical process. And he, using his own company, caught up the technology of this reading pen. It's essentially it's a pen that you drag across a book and it reads it out loud to you. And he was the one that put all this money and energy into showing like, see, I made this technology this incredible,

quote unquote, this incredible over this limited period of time. It's not going to imply to everything, but it does seem to be there is a grand slowing of what is available to us in terms of the commercial person which is whatever the government has. I mean, who knows what the government is? Well, it's not even mostly about the government. It's about what's commercially feasible.

Like the sorts of things like touch screens and shit like that. It's like that stuff's been around for a much longer than it's been commercially available. It's just, is there any reason to put it out there if nobody can afford it? And it's not. And you don't have like, you know, the material enough materials to make it commercially available.

And Ray Kurzweil did this all because he misses his father. This is all because if you saw that documentary called The Age of Singularity where it just didn't be like, my father, like he's just obsessed with it. Well, it's a little bit sad that he misses a man who never respected him as a man. But you know, with commercially feasible, what they have horses, they can play football,

kick the field goal, we can see the Budweiser commercials. Also, when it comes to AI, they, every time a, for example, a smart car, if it makes a mistake, it learns from that mistake, but so does every other car, unlike human beings, who when I make a mistake, you guys don't learn from it, which is why we all fuck up constantly. So we're done, we're dead.

No, no, man, that's pro-singularity is what you're saying. Yeah. Well, Kurzweil believes that this same law of accelerating returns can be applied to man's convergence with machine. If that is, you look at the mechanistic view of a human being, that our brains are in essence, meet machines.

For what Kurzweil writes, our biological bodies are version 1.0, frail and subject to multiple failure modes. And they come with an enormous amount of constant maintenance, even at the most basic level, things like sleeping, drinking, and eating. You know how many times I gotta go to the store and then be like, what's the soup of the day? I'm sick of it, why does the soup gotta change?

And then I went to go, to go up the stairs, to go to the J train and I slipped and I fell. Oh, I cut my hands on this screw, it's on a stoop, and it is bugs everywhere, I can't even with this. So I need an elevator for my whole body, that's just me, I'm the elevator. You would prefer like a soup of the month, so it gives you a little time to get used to the soup.

No, I want a soup of the nanosecond. Oh, okay. And while the mind is capable of enormously imaginative feats, our thoughts, Kurzweil says, are mostly petty, shallow, and derivative. Everybody's all hard on this, the ending of Game of Thrones. And nobody understands how hard they all worked.

The crew worked so hard and all of the writers in there was just so many creative people involved and how dare they, yeah, they left the Starbucks cup, they were tired. Sure, it happens, they edited it out. But Kurzweil says, when the singularity kicks in, we will no longer be helpless primitive creatures restricted by our thoughts and fleshy actions.

We will gain power over our fates and our mortality. We will fully understand human thinking. Oh, yeah. And we will unlock the true human potential, which Kurzweil believes is trillions of times more powerful than what we currently access. We will, in effect, become gods. Yes, God.

But then, of course, comes the question of where our minds will be stored. And some believe that the answer is naturally robots. Rubits. That's how you know if you're a serious scientist. Absorbent. Stronger and more efficient than these filthy, fleshy ape bodies we currently inhabit,

our robot bodies will merely be optional. We will be able to come in and out of our robot bodies whenever we so choose. And they would replace us in all essential roles, displacing our existence in the material world entirely. They would be, in the words of Hans Moravec, our mind children built in our image and likeness. Well, I've always wanted to have a series of mind children.

I'm not frickin' Rockterio. What is happening here? Well, my question is, when it comes to upkeep, robots take upkeep. You gotta oil them. It's very similar to being a person. Other robots do the upkeep. They're doing it, yeah.

Yeah, but then what's the, that's just going to a spa? No, no, no, no, no, going, hmm. I actually, yeah, it is. But robots do it all faster. And also, robots don't know they're working. Yeah. They're just living their lives. They don't know that it's tasks.

Are the robots, are the robots that are going to be assisting me wipe my robot butt? Are they also going to be sentient? Well, that's the thing, if you have a robot that's programmed to wipe your robot butt, but I don't know why you're wiping your robot butt unless you have programmed your robot to actually fit. Shit.

And then everything has exhaust. Yeah, but it would come out in a, probably a chemical stream. No, everything, the only things that work on combustion, that have combustible engines have exhaust. Well, they give off waste energy, but that would be heat. It would be more like heat.

Well, this is kind of the problem. We've talked about this in previous episodes where that's where one of the fallacies that shows, like, why, I believe the Fermi paradox, why have we not met an alien race? Like, they're all over the universe. Why have we met them? The idea that maybe at a certain point,

there's an inevitability point where you cross over, become a robotic system entirely, but the heat from the batteries that it takes to create your entire society gets to be so big and so powerful that you basically have to shut down into the actual giant cooling where the universe is finally shutting down over those last set of trillion years in its existence

so that the universe is cooled enough so that the heat from your battery-sized planet could actually live in peace. So you just have to go to sleep. Yeah, but you don't know it's asleep. But you're not sleeping, you're human consciousness, your human consciousness still exists. Yeah, in the matter of course.

You're still interacting. What about swimming? No, no, no, no, no. He's derailing this whole thing. He's bringing this, his humanist agenda is derailing this entire show. But there are some out there in the transhumanist community who have not the patience nor the time

to wait for the singularity or even to cryogenically freeze themselves as a bet for the future. Perhaps the most visible of these modern transhumanists are the bio-hackers. Yeah, grinders. Bio-hacking is the idea that we can use different devices and techniques

to end around the biological functions of humanity, that we can augment ourselves using implants in the here and now. It's basically bio-hacking is an environment where instead of going to a doctor, it's like you go to a place that's way more like a piercing station at your buddy Greg's house.

Where you go and it's all about having a garage filled with tech that you barely understand. Because what seems to be, and maybe I'm a bio-hacker's out there at SideStoriesLPOTL at gmail.com, I'd love to hear from you. But it seems to be a lot of them were like, I did bad in school.

So I decided to take science to the garage. You're like, whoa. It's very transmetropolitan. It is. This is all extremely transmetropolitan. I mean, all the cryogenic stuff, like that's totally like the, what is it, not transient.

The recover, like, what is it called? Oh, intransplant, I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, the recoveries. Yeah, the people that are in, put into cryogenics and then come out many thousands of years later and their minds are broken instantly by the world that they enter into.

Great. But by merging ourselves with technology, bio-hackers believe that we can live at the very least decades beyond the normal human lifespan. Sweet. The proponents of this idea, revivals, that's what it's called.

Revivals. The proponents of this idea are called grinders. Hogies and grinders, hogies and grinders, navibins, navibins, navibins, and grinders consider themselves to be practical transhumanists. Yes. One of the most well-known of these grinder firms is Grindhouse Wetware out of Pittsburgh.

Yeah, man. A lot of gauges in there. Yeah, why do I feel like they just sell nipple-free bras, nipple, you know, with a little holes there and then nipples. These guys are more likely to add nipples. Oh, okay, fantastic, more nipples. Grindhouse Wetware creates devices

for sub-dernal implantation intended to enhance the sensory and informational capacities of the human body. The most famous of their devices is called Circadia, which is a Bluetooth device implanted into your forearm that takes biometric measurements of your body and uploads that information to your phone. It's not a Fitbit.

No, it's similar. It is a similar kind of technology to sleep trackers and Fitbits. Basically, Circadia gathers information about your body so you can use that information to make your body run more efficiently and therefore live longer and live better. I really feel like that my chip

would just constantly be like, you know that you could shit again, right? Like, there seems to be more in here. Today's shit, liquid. Hahaha. Shut your shit to liquid, boys. And we're off. Oh my God, he's hovering above the toilet.

Hahaha. Now, to give credit where credit is due, Grindhouse Wetwear co-founder Tim Cannon did actually put his money where his mouth was and had a Circadia prototype, which was about the size of a deck of cards implanted into his own forearm. They're gnarly and they don't use any,

they use some local anesthetic, but it's really fucked up looking. They gotta lift the skin away from the fat layer and shove it in and then, ooh, it's intense. That is how it goes. Okay, the device is inserted by first making a long incision, then the upper layer of the skin

is lifted away from the fatty tissue to place the device into what is called a yawning orifice. Ugh. Why is, why are you so tired? Yeah. And then the wound is sutured and reportedly,

Canon surgery was done by a self-described flesh engineer in Berlin without anesthesia. Only in Berlin. Yeah. Is a doctor sound like he spanks people for a living? Yeah, flesh engineer. Following the surgery,

Canon had to regularly drain the wound for weeks and medication kept his body from rejecting the implant, all while Canon spent his time worrying that the battery was leaking into his bloodstream and slowly poisoning him. So did it work out for him? Yeah, he said it worked fine. This is the thing, man,

is that all of the biohacking, again, please reach out and tell me, all of the biohacking that these guys do, it seems to just kind of like, like it kind of works. Yeah. One guy could turn on his motorcycle, the other guy put,

you put magnets in your fingertips because you can feel magnetic fields or whatever, but like, I know that it does feel weird, like you can feel it, but it's like, what is the practical use for it? I'm not quite certain. Right. Now, this is of course cybernetics in a very small scale,

but the United States government has been working on much larger projects since 1999, particularly in the field of creature machine hybrids. Yeah, bro, this shit's fucking dope. I will say every one of these transhumanist documentaries, they all pose this thing, we're like, we are already almost 50% cyborg as it is. And it cuts to see like a guy with prosthetic hands,

like doing stuff. And it's like, you know, that guy would much rather still have his old hands, right? Like he's not super thrilled with the fact that he's got these metallic grippers. Like I'm certain he's thankful that he has something, but he's still like probably not super jazzed to be a cyborg. Yeah.

An agency known as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has been working on this angle of transhumanism from the perspective of weaponizing cybernetics, or perhaps more accurately, from the perspective of control. Ooh, I did see a documentary on people who want to become automated

and want to become robots, and they want to like cut off their arms and stuff. So maybe some people are going to be very comfortable having fake arms like Jacks for Mortal Kombat. I mean, I think it's fucking, I think it's dope, but I'm afraid of pain. Yeah, some people want it, but also some people just want to amputate their limbs entirely.

I saw another documentary about people who just amputate their limbs because they, it's a great documentary, it's harrowing. Yeah. But among the research programs DARPA has funded, they've tried rats whose movements could be controlled from laptops via electrodes planted in the rat's brains, and hawk moths with semiconductors implanted

at the pupil stage so that the technology will become a part of their adult development. Oh, that's sweet, man, it's fucking crazy. It's like that one superhero from Suicide Squad who can control all the rats. I think that's a pretty cool superpower, especially if you live in New York. Oh, Marcus, you could take,

if you could control the rats of New York. Oh my God. If I could be rat catcher, fuck yeah, man, it'd be right. Oh, man, it's so many rats to control. We could produce so many rat-based podcasts. That's a great podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.

And they have openly talked about creating super soldier human machine hybrids who are able to thrive in extreme conditions 24-7, complete with brain-machine interfaces directly connected to command hubs so soldiers don't even have to think for themselves. Why is violence always like the conclusion or like always the motivation?

It's violence and sex. Those are the, that's how all technologies advance, is violence and sex. In America, it's how you get the funding. Is that you have to show how you could use to blow people up first and then you could use it for other things. At one video, I also said you, Marcus, of like the AI-driven little spider robots.

Those are cool. But basically they're- They did not work well. No, they don't, but that's kind of scary too, where they're like the size of a quarter and you watch them learn how to walk. Like they teach themselves how to walk. That almost like imagine them 10 feet long.

And then she's like, shan'tun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Wild, wild west, it's the wild, wild west. Yeah, oh yeah. But while DARPA is working on these terrifying possibilities. Good. Some of the biohacking grinders can be almost whimsical. Reportedly, Grindhouse wetware CEO Tim Cannon

even has a stencil above his kitchen window that says, can you guess? Live well. Yeah, love much. Laugh often. Triple L, man. Yeah, well, what if I just shoot you? Live from your play.

Hey, what's up, everyone? How you doing? Ben Kissel here with Henry Zabrowski. Yeah, it's me, man. Yeah, bro, Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast on the left, babe. Go out there and purchase yourself some. I hope you enjoy it.

We have Sativa, we have Indica, and we have a hybrid. And I have to tell you, from my personal experience, they are wonderful. Super tasty, live resin. You really get the delicious, weedy taste, which is what I like. And three different experiences.

You go to your local vape store and get it. Absolutely. Thank you all so much for supporting the show. We absolutely love you. Can't wait to see you on the road and get that vape. Put it in your brain and have a good time. And if you want to set your favorite weed store, give them a call and ask for them by name.

Last podcast on the left, it's weed. Hail yourselves, everyone. Hail Satan. On the more, let's say, acidic side of things, though, you've got other transhumanists like Zoltan Istvan. You know, this is a guy I will follow. Zoltan, I will believe. Zoltan found transhumanism after almost stepping

on an old buried landmine during a vacation to Vietnam and became consumed with what he saw was the unacceptable fragility of human existence. I mean, he could have got played the guitar or something, or he could have done something funny. Yeah, but you know. Also, this is a great reason, again, an example of why you don't want to be frozen.

Imagine you were frozen and you were actually a Vietnam vet, and all of a sudden you come back to Earth and you're like, where are you going on vacation, buddy? Going to Vietnam. Don't go there, man. Don't go. Don't go there, man.

Now, Zoltan is actually somewhat hard to peg as far as what he actually does. I'll say them. I bet you would. Yeah, if he could have nailed him out. You have a penis. You can't really peg someone. I mean, it's just fucking, no, I'll have a robo cock.

I'll have a robo cock. Also, is there a porno called robo cock? There must be. I would imagine. Well, Zoltan is what you might call a provocateur. He's kind of like a Timothy Leary, but for transhumanism instead of LSD, but nowhere near as charming, intelligent,

or insightful as Timothy Leary. No, it's transhumanism. Yeah. In 2013, Zoltan wrote a novel called The Transhumanist Wager, in which the protagonist, a thinly veiled representation of Zoltan himself named Jethro Knight, Oh, yeah, dude.

establishes a floating libertarian city state called transhumania. Look, as far as the eye can see, bowl cuts. Bowl cuts everywhere. Cheeto does. Yeah, it lines the street so you know you're home. It's simply an impossibility. You cannot marry a libertarian government

because you can't have libertarianism in government. Yeah, well, there's a lot of contradictions here. I see. Well, transhumania in the novel is a haven for unhampered scientific research into human longevity, a regulation-free utopia of tech billionaires and rationalists who have no pesky humanitarian restrictions

for what they believe is the right course for humanity. Transhumania, however, eventually becomes so fucking awesome. Yeah, man, it's too radical. Yeah. Nice. That the rest of the world, including a theocratic United States, attacks it. Whoa.

But in the end, transhumania wins and leads humanity to a better future. Because everyone knows libertarians are always the tip of the sphere. They're always there. They're always right on the front lines and they're certainly not 27-year-old stockbrokers. I will tell you this.

They'll definitely eat all the free pizza you have. I know that from experience. Not me, but others. In addition to being a novelist, Zoltan also ran for president in 2016 and 2020 for the transhumanist party. And he ran for governor of California in between. Very busy.

He did not expect to win, but instead was using it as a platform to spread the transhumanist ideology that death was merely a problem to be solved. Cool. The problem was the transhumanist party shares quite a bit with the libertarian party and that why you may agree with some of their ideas. It is absolutely filled with people

that are, to put it kindly, highly embarrassing to be associated with. It's just an internet message boards with shoes. It's all of the people that hide amongst the elaborance of the internet, but then they're at a conference together and they all think they should all live forever. Like that's the problem is that it's all the people who think they should live forever are the problem.

It's like, it's ever who should. Like Malala wants to die at 40. You know what I mean? She was like, she's looking to get out. She knows that this flesh is too subtle. If you want some funny insight into the libertarian party of Brooklyn, New York, Hale, yourself, America, you'll see Alton Yee, a man who wears a free metro card

around his neck because that's just how much he disagrees with the government handouts. He got everything for free. That's kind of funny. Well, for example. It's hypocritical. It's a lot of hypocritical stuff. A lot of contradictions.

Well, for example, of those embarrassing connections, one member of the transhumanist party named Rowan Horn, who worked with Zoltan, admitted that a big part of the reason why he was so into transhumanism was quite simply the sex bots. Whoa, now we're at the heart of it. Now we're really with the real answers are. Finally.

In one interview, Rowan Horn said, quote, and this is a direct quote. You say a personal sex bot would never cheat on you. And it would be just like a real girl. I have so far abstained from sex. I have never had a girlfriend. So I will not succumb to your paltry, flesh-based romances. You were hurt as a child or a teenager,

a girl left you maybe or broken. No, absolutely not. I never attempted to speak to anyone besides myself. And you are the first person I'm literally addressing outside of my mother and my dear belated father. OK, did you suckle on your mother until late in life? Were you a late person? Oh, she would not let me suckle at all.

She said that, unfortunately, there was something wrong with my. She said I was sharp. I was too sharp to suckle because I was born with a full set of teeth. Well, I'm sorry you had to go through that. Yeah, and when the interviewer asked Rowan if he was indeed saving himself for the sex bots,

Horne just raised his eyebrows and slowly nodded. Yeah. All right. Aw, poor guy. No, Zoltan. Being a provocateur and a sometime politician, he's gotten into hot water here and there for his stances on certain public policies.

No way. It is not what you would call the most compassionate of persons but people. In a piece for Motherboard, he argued that the $1.3 billion that Los Angeles was spending to make the streets more accessible for wheelchair access would be more sensibly spent in the research of robotic exoskeleton technology.

Well, you know, well, that was a lot of these guys say the same thing. We're like, well, if humans were actually built properly, we would have exoskeletons naturally. But all we have are these poultry endoskeletons that allow us to have discussing things like breasts and butts. Yeah, it didn't seem to occur to Zoltan that people in wheelchairs might want to have sidewalk access

today. Right, yeah, it's something that kind of has to get done there. Yeah, long before the technology was ever ready to be just like, say, given to everyone in a wheelchair. Because I don't think that exoskeleton technology is really readily available to most people. A lot of those things, too, will just rip your limbs off. If they are not done correctly, we're not there yet.

Not quite. But as Zoltan put it, and as many other transhumanists put it, all humans are fundamentally disabled just by virtue of having a human body in the first place. And he never really understood why he got so much pushback. I'm really going to say, everybody's yelling at me. Everyone's yelling at me. Story of my life, I'm actually going to go to the DMV

and try to get one of those sweet little placards so I can park closer to the Ralphs over here. I'll just be like, bye. I am disabled just because I'm a human. And see what they say. And maybe I can walk less. They're like, get in line. We have many of you.

Well, to spread his word of transhumanism, Zoltan traveled the country in an extraordinarily ugly, 43-foot-long, brown bus vaguely shaped like a coffin called the transhumanism immortality bus. And from that bus, he gave speeches about the tyranny of death over human lives to whoever happened to gather around. Much like our bus, the human body

breaks down two to three times a day. We must transcend this bus and move me to a private plane. Oh, wow. He did a little whistle stop tour. He did. And frequently, he bragged about driving the bus drunk, justifying the action by saying that the steering on the bus was so unresponsive that even if you're driving was erratic,

the vehicle's trajectory pretty much stayed the same anyway. I have said that to friends in college back in the day. And of course, many transhumanists also tend to be libertarian, go figure. And there was nary a man. And by the way, it was all men who rode in the transhumanism immortality bus while wearing a seatbelt.

You get kicked off. You get kicked off. You're like, you don't believe in the future. That's what they tell you if you wore a seatbelt. It's a big tent party. It's a big tent party. Big tent party. Big tent.

Now, returning to the subject of biohacking, it's probably fairly obvious at this point that there's a lot of money to be made in the field. And with money, especially in the tech business, there comes people who are ready and able to take advantage. Well, because a lot of this is the like, I feel like a lot of this money comes from. It's interested like billionaires,

like these type of people that are dumping money into this because who wants to live forever? The billionaires. They are really still excited about this concept of a breakaway civilization. I do believe that that's what they're all fervently working on. That is why these just went to space.

It's why they all wait because they want to go see, but like, oh, once we're done with this husk of a plan, we'll be able to leave. And I think they're certain to see that space is actually very difficult to travel in. Right. Well, this brings us to our last story today, which concerns the life and untimely death of a man

who could somewhat be considered the Elizabeth Holmes of transhumanism. Ooh, he never blinks. Yeah. His name is Aaron Treywick. Aaron Treywick was CEO of a biohack company called Ascendants Biomedical, whose business model was to gain financial control

over the inventions of others and sell those inventions before they were fully tested. Not unlike Elizabeth Holmes' company, Theranos, who sold blood testing technology. Theranos technology, that's just Theranos, it's just me, I just love blood and Theranos technology. I love tiny pills. I love tiny pills and I love conference meetings and TED Talks.

Yeah, she sold, of course, blood testing technology without ever figuring out how it worked. And while Treywick's technologies did indeed sometimes veer into life-saving territory, he also dabbled in products like the Lovetron 9000, which was a vibrating penile implant. Folks, you're gonna want to get the Lovetron 9000 right after your tactical bath.

Make sure you're nice and clean. The best part is that when your pen is vibrating at a certain level, your balls become numb and you never come again. It's incredible, just stay there. But honestly, if it did work, the Lovetron 9000 is what would bring the money into the rest of the company.

Yeah. See, from what people said, Treywick would find people who had created biotechnological inventions, aggressively tried to take the ideas, then profit off them as quickly as possible without any regard for executing the technology. Described as a, quote,

seething cauldron of animosity and predation. Yeah. Treywick founded his own company after being forced out of another company called the Global Healthspan Policy Institute. You actually could find him. I watched a really interesting documentary on him on Showtime and shows a picture of him

from his youth when he funk out of school with his Jell-O Biaffer shirt on. Oh, yeah, got it. And he found his way into the world of technology through lobbyists, which is incredible. Natural. Well, that's a thing. He was hired at GHPI by his cousin Edwina Rogers,

former economic advisor to George W. Bush. That kind of tells you the world that Aaron Treywick was growing up in. Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to hear some fun George W. Bush sound, listen to this week's Abling and Stop That when he jokes about his invasion of Iraq and every last school.

It was just only a very deeply veiled Freudian slip that, um, secondly, should have rocked the world. Yeah, but this also reminds me, you wait until Papa John comes back with Papa Wants and it's going to be like it's coming back with pizza. Kissel was what we joked about years ago and what he said about the day of reckoning. Maybe this is finally where it comes to fruition

when pizza and robot become one. I'm going to create pizza the hot. Well, Treywick, however, was fired from GHPI after stealing correspondence in order to force his way into events in which he was not invited. Yes, yes, it's very sad. Yeah, and the last straw came when he forced his way into Edwina Rogers' bedroom at 2 a.m.,

hopefully just to talk at her. I hope that's all he was there for. He was his cousin. Yeah, OK. But as it was with Elizabeth Holmes, Treywick was able to hornswoggle at least a few people into believing in his mission. Although it was on nowhere near the scale

that Holmes was able to achieve through her fountain of pure bullshit. Instead of swaying world leaders such as Henry Kissinger, like Elizabeth Holmes did, Treywick plucked his acolytes from the transhumanist community who were all on board with his dream of finding experimental ways to improve the human body and extend lifespans. And honestly, the grinders, the biohackers really

on that level are the most innocent of all of them, because their ideas are to really just, they are experimenting at home on themselves. And they're allowed to do that. I think it's interesting. I don't know what comes out of all of it, but I think it's really interesting. And that's what's sad is that that was the people

he was truly taking advantage of, not like Elizabeth Holmes, who at least took rich people's money and then everybody else soon invested. I mean, they're both criminals. But it's just sad how he went for the most, like, technically the nicest version of transhumanism. I mean, the biggest criminal we've talked about so far is Henry Kissinger.

Yes, but Elizabeth Holmes did also greatly injure quite a few people outside of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very destructive for us. Destructive person, yeah. Well, inevitably, some of these people, some of these acolytes started comparing Treywick to Steve Jobs, which, from what I can tell, is usually a bad omen

in Silicon Valley. Anytime someone does that, that means they're usually fucking crazy or cheats. But wouldn't Steve Jobs not be a transhumanist? Because he refused to get any kind of surgery. I mean, he could have survived his cancer. So not Steve Jobs in the terms of Steve Jobs being a transhumanist, but in the terms of being a disrupter.

Being a disrupter. It's all about disrupting, because that's what Treywick always talked about. He was going to disrupt the biomedical industry. OK. And once Treywick got someone on his side who could figure out how to market him, a PR person named Kelly Martin, Treywick

began touting experimental gene therapies meant to treat HIV. We're talking Jorts. We're talking Jinkos. You guys get it. Yeah, you got him. You got him. Yeah. God, Kissel.

The thing that I don't understand is that the idea of CRISPR, like this technology that you could go, it's apparently it's easy to use, quote unquote, easy to use, where you do gene therapy, where you replace things using your DNA with other structures of DNA, and it can go inside of you. But I don't know if it actually takes and does anything.

I don't understand CRISPR technology at all. At all. I don't know. Not even a little bit. I don't understand anything about it. Henry and I talked about fecal transplants on side stories this week. I guess it's kind of like, I think that's

where we're at, is poopy transplants. Actually, you got it. Fecal transplants is considered a form of biohacking. See? We are on the cusp. We're really on the pulse, man. Could it also be a sega genesis? No, no, no, no, I want to be sonic.

Sega check is technically a parallel move from Nintendo. We might get you up to something like a Commodore 64. Oh, cool. Awesome, thank you. Well, the idea was to inject an HIV-positive patient with gene therapy on a live stream. Sorry, I just got distracted. Nintendo is not a parallel movement over to sega genesis,

because Nintendo is an 8-bit system in sega genesis with a 16-bit system. So it is actually an upward movement between the two operating systems. OK, now I can fucking get back to it. You did that, Henry. I'm sorry, I didn't know what land mine I stepped on. Well, the idea that Treywick had,

as far as the experimental gene therapy for HIV, his idea was to inject an HIV-positive patient with gene therapy on a live stream to demonstrate in real time that the person's viral load would fall. But unfortunately for Treywick, and especially, unfortunately for the patient, the HIV viral load actually increased. I mean, he just gave the dude more HIV.

I think that Charlie Sheen, when he was doing his live stream, gave better medical advice when he told everyone to drink Tiger's blood. Yeah, it is something about just giving somebody more HIV. It's the saddest thing. He'd be like, ooh, sorry, like that move, yikes, ooh. Well, undeterred, Treywick then went to a body hacking conference in Austin called Buddy Hacks,

which is spelled B-D-Y-H-A-X. You can't put all the fucking letters in there, because then it's not from the future. I see. And then it's not a fucking conference in Austin. No. There, Treywick arranged a live test for an experimental herpes vaccine.

But when all he did was inject himself with something on stage, then claim it cured his herpes, the transhumanism community was not impressed. Oh, my god. I honestly think he's just telling people he has herpes, so it sounds like he's fucked. You know what I mean? It sounds like he's had sex.

So he's like, this is to cure my rock and roll style herpes. You're like, well, I don't know. It's like he just wanted to be a performer, but had no discernible talent. Henry, could you describe his look real fast? He looks like the hitchhiker from Texas Chainsaw Massacre got a makeover. $5.

$5. Yeah, yeah. It's basically. It's a good picture. It's a good picture. It's the long stringy hair. He just, it's that look on his face. I'm like, ah, it's a picture.

It's a picture. It's that look on his face. It's kind of rocking more on picture show. That guy mixed with Martin Screlly. Yeah. Oh, great. Well, after Body Hacks, former partners began cutting ties, lawsuits were filed, counter lawsuits followed soon after.

And of course, Treywick represented himself in all proceedings. But just a few days after one of his cases was dismissed in 2018, Aaron Treywick's story came to an end. He was found dead in a sensory deprivation tank in Washington DC with ketamine in his pants, which means he most likely took a bunch of special K, passed out, and drowned.

You don't need drugs in a sensory deprivation tank. It's kind of a point. Yeah, I thought that was the point. I guess it was, it really worked. It did, yeah. Because he was so, he was so alone, he went away. Well, some say that Treywick faked his own death so he could run off with whatever money was

left at Ascendants Biomedical. But it is almost certain that Treywick simply took a very simple biohack just a little too far. And while most transhumanists are not grifters, the fact remains that despite all the technological advances of the last 100 years, it's fairly obvious to me that we're still not all that far past squirting a woman with monkey cum to see what happens.

And honestly, that's even, in a way, isn't that more honest? Because cum salts of the earth, literally the salts of the earth, you're there, you're with a lady. Chimpanzees are fun. We're all hanging out for a while until they start screaming because the personalities have transferred. But this is, I still believe in the ideas of some forms of transhumanism.

Some of these ideas I'm totally down for. I would love to not have to eat, sleep, or shit anymore. I'd love that. Yeah, Marcus, you were one of the craziest, though, when it comes to eating because you hate to eat. If I didn't get to eat, I would be sad. Yeah, I have to eat. I love to eat.

It is a nuisance. No, I want bigger tubes. That's honestly, I would just add more mucusy tubes to me. Well, that's fantastic, very good. But on the other hand, I'm also not going to be one of those guys that drinks the soylent all the time. There's just like, here's my nutrient paste. Like, I'm not that crazy with it.

I still do enjoy a nice ham and cheese sandwich, but. Yeah, you like your chicken palm. You like your vindaloo. I do love the food that I eat. I just wish I didn't have to, I wish I didn't have to have to eat food. I wish I could choose to eat food at my convenience. Yeah, more goes in my mouth the better, man.

I love sucking and crunching and munching. Yes, indeed. We're all suffering here. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to transhumanism part two. Interesting stuff in many ways. And of course, the motivation for eternal life is something that is eternal to humanity.

So, you know, we're all just trying to find the answers. I say, I don't know, sit down more. Yeah. I think that can, you know what really can really help? They say that actually, that help, that is less helpful. You should stand up more. Sit down more. Stand up more.

I don't know. Run around. Yeah, humans are not evolution, like we are not meant to sit down anywhere near as much as we do. We're supposed to squat, stand, or lie down. Yeah, that's it. Ooh, yeah, sleep. Also, I think it's really important to stretch.

Stretching is important. Stretching is really important before you start injecting magnets into parts of your body. Maybe try a back stretch. I mean, does something agree? Maybe try a walk. Maybe take a walk in a park. I feel like that also helps.

It can cleanse the soul. But otherwise, I get it. I'm one of you. I'm going to join my brain to the cyberspace. I'm going to surf the web permanently eventually, and we will get there. We'll see. Yeah, well, that'll be fun.

The interesting thing is, when it comes to stints, you look at war criminal Dick Cheney's multiple hearts. I mean, transhumanism exists in the medical community in many ways already, doesn't it? Even the glasses you're wearing, am I wrong, Marcus Parks? You are not wrong in any way whatsoever. That's what people have already said. That's in the beginning of every transhumanism documentary.

It's like, we already wear glasses. We might as well be cyborgs. I'm going to coupon for this. You're going to have to buy me dinner first. All right. So anyway, thank you all so much for listening. June 18th, we're going to be in Nashville. So we're going to come to that.

We cannot wait for that. Do we have anything else to announce? I'd like to actually promote, I'll be doing Classy Night Out Sunday, Los Angeles, at the Pac Theater. Come check it out. It should be 9-9-30 is our start time. And because all the dates that we

had to cancel because of the unfortunate bout of COVID, we've got all those rebooks. So we'll be announcing when all of those dates will be redone. So don't worry. All of the shows that we had to postpone, we're still coming eventually. And we're going to come 100% and give you guys the best possible fucking show that we can.

That's my fucking transhumanist boy. Because I want to come out, and I want to be able to fucking scream at you first thing when I come on stage. And really just fucking set everybody on edge. And Marcus, we're proud of you. You're doing great. You're sounding great.

And thanks for all the encouraging words. Yes, thank you very much. You all are really, really sweet. Yeah, just everyone. I am doing better, doing better, and better. It might take a long recovery. But still doing better. And thanks everyone for all the kind words and support

that you've given over this last month and a half while we've been dealing with this shit. You're still too human. No, all too human. Although I am going to try a biohack later. I'm going to go check out a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Yeah, fuck that. Cool.

I love this shit. All right, well, all right, thank you all so much for listening. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail Geen. Magustylations, everyone. Hail me, because you better.

Because if not, I'm going to destroy you all with my robot spider. So just know that. Know that that's a plan I have. I plan to have a giant spider that I have a little seed on and that I become mayor of wherever I am. I mean, I think it's very plausible. Again, I believe I have the long vision

to bring justice to America. You're so scary. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.