To celebrate the publishing of my new book, Beyond Machine Man, I'm happy to share a short but fun excerpt from chapter Homo Digitalis.
For a little more morbid fun, let's formulate The I'm my Brain Challenge to all enthusiastic transhumanists, asking them to prove Machine Man right that we are just creations of our brains, that consciousness is created by mere unconscious matter.
A perfect candidate would surely be Elon Musk, the flamboyant multi-billionaire, founder and chief executive of many high tech companies, including Neuralink Corporation that develops implantable brain–machine interfaces (BMIs). His transhumanist credentials are impeccable: he invested a cool $100 million into this venture, believes that we live in a computer simulation (more on that to come!), and so on and so forth.
He could always have the very latest model of his company's devices implanted into his brain, one that could somehow or another help him communicate with the world, at least by spelling words using Morse code that get displayed on a computer screen for us to read.
Then, upon his eventual but definite physical death, remove his brain. Connect the main blood vessels to a machine that keeps pumping his own blood through the brain. Ensure that it is sufficiently oxygenated, filtered, and supplied with enough glucose to keep everything running smoothly. If need be, jump start the brain with an electric jolt or two.
Liberally inject neurotransmitters (like serotonin, noradrenaline, dopamine etc.) a bit here and there, as needed. And to keep Elon in high spirits, add a good dose of ethanol and THC once in a while. Or anytime upon demand. He could keep busy listening to music, hearing or reading books, maybe even watching movies, depending on the implant's features available at the time of his demise.
Elon would become the first immortal in the history of the world, sales of his products would simply skyrocket, and we could all stay entertained and enlightened reading his Tweets live streamed directly from his genius brain.
And should he ever have enough of it and said so, we can always pull the plugs and power down everything. But hopefully, he would allow us to send his brain to Mars on one of his rockets and become our roving reporter, so to speak, tweeting his latest insights and observations literally from the last frontier that separates humble humans from becoming posthuman gods.
Another great contender would of course be Mark Zuckerberg, the multi-billionaire founder and CEO of Facebook who also likes to dabble in transhumanist endeavors. He is widely rumored to be a cyborg already anyway, so he might as well prove us all right by becoming the world's first full-fledged cyborg. The real deal.
Anyway, let's see who will take up the challenge first, if anyone. If not, why not? There's nothing to lose and much to gain! Or maybe, not so much...
To read some selected quotes, see Volume 1 and Volume 2
To delve a bit deeper into the book, check out Arne’s feature article on GrahamHancock.com
Beyond Machine Man is widely available in Hardcover, Paperback or as an Ebook. E.g. in the USA from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Kobo, Booktopia in Australia, Waterstones in the UK, and Hugendubel in Germany.
Topics covered include: #philosophy #consciousness #neuroscience #psychology #psychiatry #transhumanism #posthumanism #minduploading #mind #brain #brainscans #brainmapping #emotions #memory #medicaldrugs #pharmaceuticals #physicians #health #mentalhealth #fears #depression #anxiety #subconsciousness #consciousmind #unconsciousmind #self #identity #ego #society #racism #technocracy #politics #AI #artificialintelligence #robots #robotics #bionics #science #research #physics #quantumphysics #life #intelligence #immortality #biology #biochemistry #CRISPRCas9 #DNA #geneediting #geneticengineering #astrophysics #evolution #transpermia #nanotechnology #simulationtheory #machineman #beyondmachineman #homocredo #homomysticum #homodigitalis