Author: owent

How Long Does it Take to Learn a Foreign Language and is it Worth it?

Posted on By owent

I recently decided to start learning Russian, and in trying to consider the size of the task ahead of me, I came across the following useful YouTube video. It’s interesting because it gives a guide as to the length of time required to learn Russian in relation to other languages – for an English speaker that is.

The time estimated to take Russian is 1100 hours, compared to just 600 hours for a more closely related language such as German. As would be expected, unrelated Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese require twice as many hours as Russian and nearly four times more than German. As futurists are aware, promises of instantaneous language translation being around the corner have been made for sometime. Recently they have become more confident, and speech translation certainly has made impressive progress of late, though likely due to improvements in speech recognition rather than translation itself (I certainly haven’t noticed any great leap forward in Google text translation). Yet optimistic futurists might have faith in not only near term progress in A.I. language translation, but also such helping hands as advances in nootropics or other ways of boosting IQ (such as gene editing) or memory. Thus, the question does arise, at least for the optimists, as to the worth of making the effort of learning a language, when by the time you could realistically expect to master it, instantaneous translation may have been perfected, or more fancifully, the competence in the language downloaded directly into the mind.

After typing the above thoughts, I Googled ‘transhumanism is it worth learning a second language’ and was surprised to see a Huffington Post article written by none other Zoltan Istvan, the transhumanist candidate in the US presidential election which takes place tomorrow (Tuesday 8th November 2016) asking precisely the same question as mine. In the article, Zoltan quotes a remarkable claim by a professor at the Singularity University that in 20 years human speech itself might be redundant, as we could by then be communicating via ‘thoughts scanned and projected from our headsets and maybe even chip implants‘.

Zoltan mentions some positive side-effects of learning a language, such as benefits to the brain (something noted in children and Alzheimer’s patients). He also asks whether he would have been better off learning other skills such as Martial Arts rather than learning Spanish as he did in his youth. However, the same question surely arises, if perhaps less obviously, to most learned skills, particularly if we’re discounting the value of language learning on the basis of ‘brainwave communication’.

As I spend a lot of time now in Russia and the Ukraine, and it would come in useful to know even a limited amount of Russian, then I believe it’s worthwhile to make some regular effort to learn it, especially as I am rather sceptical of some of these predictions. However, a language such as Chinese would be another matter, even if I needed or desired to learn it.

Interestingly, the YouTube video above makes the point that in the internet age, x amount of hours to learn a language does not require all of them to be spent studying a dusty textbook or even attending classes. Many of these hours can be employed passively engaging in the language such as watching videos or actively but enjoyably taking part in social media. Technology has not yet shortened the time required to learn a language, but it has made it more fun.

How Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever

Posted on By owent

A YouTube video explaining how CRISPR is a game changer that will usher in the era of modified humans, much sooner than most people are even faintly aware of, perhaps the reason the video has gone viral – over 2 million view in just two days.

Transhumanim is a cultural tsunami about to hit mankind. Many people, even transhumanists, think that society needs to start thinking about the ethical implications of transhumanism. Actually, we need to start looking at society, ethics, politics, and..everything, through the lens of transhumanism, before it hits us.

The need for an alt-transhumanism community

Posted on By owent

It seems to me a peculiarity that most of the transhumanist community is decidedly ‘progressive’ in political outllook.  There seems to me no obvious reason why this should be the case.

I guess one might suppose a natural connection between an outlook based upon a positive view of the progress of technology and a ‘progessive’ view of politics and social justice.  The fallacy here is in assuming a connection between the relentless march of technological progress and human progress, in particular moral progres.  This assumption, the bedrock of humanism itself and thus perhaps unavoidably present in transhumanism, has been sublimely critiqued by the philosopher John Gray

Note that I tend to put the word progress in parentheses. Yes, I am very much sceptical of both the idea of the inevitibility of moral progress, and the assumption found in most transhumanists online that left-wing ideals represent moral progress.  To be blunt, I am politically incorrect.  Although I do not question that values such as tolerance and equality are noble ideals, I do doubt that the ‘progressive’ movements that claim to espouse them are themselves tolerant or fair, in fact, they are more akin to intolerant political fascism, and their fight for ‘social justice’ usually amounts to the promotion of victim culture and hatred of heterosexual white males, in particular, poor white males.

This site aims to rectify this situation in the belief that there is nothing inherently contradictory in holding ‘politically incorrect’ views and transhumanist ideals.  Indeed, if we all long to survive to see the arrival of true transhumanism, we need honest and open scrutiny of a political consensus that appears to be blindly engaging in social engineering, such as the welcoming of mass Third World immigration into the West, the majority of whom come from cultures that have changed little since the 7th century.  I regard myself as a libertarian, not a conservative, however I hold that Western values are superior to most or all others.  I am also an invidualist and anti-government, and believe that this is consistant with the essential idea of transhumanism, which is the belief in the positive use of technology to allow teh individual to escape the shackles of both his biological and social constraints as a human animal.