Second Annual Colloquium on the Law of Transbeman

International Human Right’s Day
Recognized by Terasem Movement, Inc.’s Second Annual Colloquium on the Law of Transbeman Persons

Public Invited Via Conference Call on December 10, 2006

Monday, December 4, 2006, MELBOURNE BEACH, FL -- Terasem Movement, Incorporated announced today that its Second Annual Colloquium on the Law of Transbeman Persons will be held December 10, 2006 in Melbourne Beach, Florida. A transbeman person is: a being who claims to have the rights and obligations associated with being human, but who may be beyond currently accepted notions of legal personhood. Examples of transbemans include beings who claim legal rights but (a) are of computerized substrate, or (b) have been revived from biostasis, or © whose DNA varies significantly from human DNA.

These colloquia proceedings are open to the public via real-time conference call and will be archived online for free public access. The public is invited to call a toll-free conference-call dial-in line from 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. EST. Callers within the continental US and Canada may dial 1-800-475-3716; other countries: (00+1) 719-457-2728.

Most Colloquium presentations are designed for a 15-20 minute delivery, followed by a 20 minute formal question and answer period, questions from the worldwide audience will be invited. Presentations will also be available on the Colloquium’s website:

http://www.terasemce...iumProgram.html

This year’s speakers by order of presentation are:

Prof. Wendell Wallach, Lecturer, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics
J. Storrs-Hall, Ph.D., Institute for Molecular Manufacturing
David Calverley, Esq., Scottsdale, AZ
Peter Langrock, Esq, Middlebury, VT.
Prof. Gene Natale, J.D., Melbourne, FL
Will Rosellini, J.D., Dallas, TX
Susan Fonseca-Klein, Esq., Fonseca LLC
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig, Bar-llan University, Israel
Michael Rivard, Esq., Natick, MA.

For additional information, please contact: Loraine J. Rhodes at 321-676-3690, ext 100, or lori-at-terasemcentral.org

About the Terasem Movement

The Terasem Movement, Inc., is a 501©(3) not-for-profit charity endowed for the purpose of educating the public on the practicality and necessity of greatly extending human life, consistent with diversity and unity, via geoethical nanotechnology and personal cyberconsciousness. The Terasem Movement accomplishes its objectives by convening publicly accessible symposia, publishing explanatory analyses, conducting demonstration projects, issuing grants and encouraging public belief in a positive technologically-based future.

For more information, please visit http://www.terasemcentral.org or http://terasemfoundation.org.

Susan and I look forward to attending this ground-breaking event.

Terasem's founder, Dr. Martine Rothblatt, supported and participated in the ImmInst Film and Conference:

http://www.imminst.org/film
http://www.imminst.org/conference

Terasem logo...

Susan Fonseca-Klein and Sebastian Sethe (ImmInst directors) participated in the first colloquium (photos):
http://www.imminst.o...=ST&f=69&t=7868

Bruce, the Terasem movement describes itself as a religion. How do you reconcile this with your notion of atheism?

Thanks for the question, Prometheus.

As I’m more of a Dawkin’s style atheist (minus the anger), I suggest that Terasem's attempt to promote a “trans-religion” is not the most advantageous goal. However, Terasem's mission of "diversity, unity and joyful immortality achieved through exponential growth of geo-ethical nanotechnology" is very much in line with my technological thinking.

Hank, if you haven't had a chance to view Dr. Martine Rothblatt's ImmInst 05 Conference speech on "Transbemans", it may change your mind. She's a gifted and eloquent speaker on the subject... and created the term:
http://video.google....238344329648161

Discussion & PPT here:
http://www.imminst.o...ST&f=191&t=7108

Susan Fonseca-Klein and Sebastian Sethe (former ImmInst directors) participated in the first colloquium (photos):
http://www.imminst.o...=ST&f=69&t=7868

http://www.imminst.o.../terasem_16.png

Susan looks pretty good in that suit, Bruce...it matches her CEO type personality (illustrated below). [thumb] I can tell who's boss by the pic below.

http://www.imminst.o.../terasem_22.png

December 10th in Florida, eh? I guess I'll check my PDA.

Thanks for the question, Prometheus.

As I’m more of a Dawkin’s style atheist (minus the anger), I suggest that Terasem's attempt to promote a “trans-religion” is not the most advantageous goal.  However, Terasem's mission of "diversity, unity and joyful immortality achieved through exponential growth of geo-ethical nanotechnology" is very much in line with my technological thinking.

Do you think in an age of Scientology, Raelians and other variously succesful experiments at introducing neo-religions, that it may detract from the notion of Immortalism and Transhumanism, irrespective of the positive values it promotes? Christianity, Judaism and other religions also promote positive values.

Monday, December 4, 2006, MELBOURNE BEACH, FL -- Terasem Movement, Incorporated announced today that its Second Annual Colloquium on the Law of Transbeman Persons will be held December 10, 2006 in Melbourne Beach, Florida. A transbeman person is: a being who claims to have the rights and obligations associated with being human, but who may be beyond currently accepted notions of legal personhood. Examples of transbemans include beings who claim legal rights but (a) are of computerized substrate, or (b) have been revived from biostasis, or © whose DNA varies significantly from human DNA.

December 4, 2006 hasn't happened yet, right, Bruce?

Bruce, I was there for it

Ah... that's right, Hank.

December 4, 2006 hasn't happened yet, right, Bruce?

Depends, Adam

Do you think in an age of Scientology, Raelians and other variously succesful experiments at introducing neo-religions, that it may detract from the notion of Immortalism and Transhumanism, irrespective of the positive values it promotes? Christianity, Judaism and other religions also promote positive values.

Thus far, Terasem's religiosity (as stated on its website) seems nonessential to its outreach. Susan and I attended two of the past three workshops, and it was not mentioned. I was fortunate to listen in on the very first event via the web.

Thus far, Terasem's religiosity seems nonessential to its outreach.

It had the opposite effect on me. The moment I read religion I become very sceptical.

Which webpage did you see?

http://www.terasem.com/

Apart from the reanimation of souls concept, which is certainly open to interpretation(an perhaps debate?), Terasem's transreligion lacks any of traditional religions mention of the supernatural. Rather Terasem focuses mostly on technological wording... such as cyber-substrate, geoethical-nanotechnology and computational emulation.

See the following from the website:

2. What is Terasem? Terasem is a transreligion that includes all religions the way a forest includes its trees.

2.1 Forest of Terasem: Our forest is that good lives are immortal, and all faiths are welcome in cyber-heaven.

2.1.1 Fundamental to every religion is the immortality of the soul, which in Terasem is our consciousness.

2.1.2 Afterlives differ for good and evil, thus Terasem knows a joyful immortality means only good lives.

2.1.3 Identity migration amongst physical substrates honors Creation by continually bearing witness to its greatness.

2.1.4 Transferring identity to cyber-substrate is a matter of mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values.

2.1.5 Having multiple transferred identities for a single soul is just as joyous as having many children.

2.1.6 Souls will be reanimated via computational emulation because it is doable, respectful and completes Terasem

http://www.terasem.org/what.htm

I think Terasem is trying to create a bridge between those who are attached to more traditional non-scientific religions... between Terasem's more technologically focused transreligion. Coming back to the definition of soul question, Terasem seems to emphasize only non-supernatural aspect:

2.1.1 Fundamental to every religion is the immortality of the soul, which in Terasem is our consciousness.

In general, I perceive Terasem's "transreligion" focus as admirable. My suggestion (and the focus of 90% of my current work: novamente.net & agiri.org) is to advance the successful/safe creation of greater-than-human-level artificial intelligence.

It all sounds very metaphysical with a heavy emphasis on meta:

- Good lives are immortal? How is a "good life" determined? Is a "bad life" destined for oblivion?

Apart from the reanimation of souls concept, which is certainly open to interpretation(an perhaps debate?), Terasem's transreligion lacks any of traditional religions mention of the supernatural. Rather Terasem focuses mostly on technological wording... such as cyber-substrate, geoethical-nanotechnology and computational emulation.

See the following from the website:

2. What is Terasem? Terasem is a transreligion that includes all religions the way a forest includes its trees.

2.1 Forest of Terasem: Our forest is that good lives are immortal, and all faiths are welcome in cyber-heaven.

2.1.1 Fundamental to every religion is the immortality of the soul, which in Terasem is our consciousness.

2.1.2 Afterlives differ for good and evil, thus Terasem knows a joyful immortality means only good lives.

2.1.3 Identity migration amongst physical substrates honors Creation by continually bearing witness to its greatness.

2.1.4 Transferring identity to cyber-substrate is a matter of mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values.

2.1.5 Having multiple transferred identities for a single soul is just as joyous as having many children.

2.1.6 Souls will be reanimated via computational emulation because it is doable, respectful and completes Terasem

http://www.terasem.org/what.htm

Again, this is one of those times when we need a new emoticon.

Susan and I had an excellent time during Terasem's 2nd Colloquium. We met with the Terasem group, including Martine and Bina Rothblatt, and their beautiful daughter, Jenesis who runs http://www.terasemradio.com.

You guys should take a look at the photos and download a few of the powerpoints here:
http://www.terasemce...iumProgram.html

In general, I was struck by the depth of understanding by all participants... and was especially impressed with Josh Hall's presentation on "Ethics for Machines".

By the way, Susan and I talked with Martine about Terasem's term "transreligion". Martine explains that its mainly used because most of these technologies (Nanotech, AI, etc) require a certain amount of belief, just by their very nature. She also reassured us that the organization's total emphasize is to advance the understanding of practical, and completely non-metaphysical, pathways for reaching "diversity, unity and joyful immortality". Martine is no god-lover.. she's a god-becomer!

Hey guys, Martine Rothblatt has asked that I post the following on her behalf:

--
I really appreciate reading the comments above. I think criticisms of the concepts of transbeman and transreligion are helpful. I agree that transbeman is an awkward term but I think it is so because of its novelty. I developed it because other terms were more problematic, specifically post-human and transhuman ran afoul of Kurzweilian principles that there won't be posthumans because the machines will be us and transhumans implies we are currently transmonkeys. My main point with transbeman is to get people off of fleshism and think of us as beings routed in human culture based on information theory concepts. It is all about our beingness, not our substrate.

I agree that any word incorporating the term religion carries enough baggage to weigh down Atlas. However, baggage is also reality. Just like our cells are chock-full of the remains of old viruses and bacteria, which now perform useful functions for us, religion can perform a useful function by incorporating a previous environment into a new environment.

The previous environment is the notion of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience and omnificience. That is the definition of God. That is what 90% of people believe in somehow/someway. Back to Kurzweil, there no doubt that we'll have that in 100-200 years with self-replicating nanotech + exponentiating IT. The only God we have today is the very minimal (but still quite useful) God we've built with our technology -- eyeglasses, vaccinations, elementary justice, remote sensing satellites. In other words, we are God, but we are weak, so God is now minimal, but we'll be strong, and then God will be strong, and ultimately we'll be all, and then God will be complete.

An atheist believes there is no God. That is totally consistent with Terasem Transreligion because God=all-knowing, powerful, etc. An atheist does not need to believe that there will *never* be something all-knowing, etc even after centuries of self-replicating nanotech and IT. Indeed, an atheist could not say that as it has not had its 200 years to be an empirically testable proposition. Hence, you can readily be an atheist and a Terasem transreligionist if you believe the gist of Kurzweil's SIN.

A traditional religionist can also be a Terasem Transreligionist because both believe in God (again, God is simply a term that equals the statement "something somwhere sometime that is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, all-present"). And, as both Moravec and especially Tipler have shown, eventually resurrection by technology is equivalent to resurrection by the Gods of traditional religions.

Basically, the term transreligion is designed to help the futurist/immortalist movement by building a bridge to everyone else, the hypothesis being that such a bridge will adduce to our momentum rather than detract from it. But, remember, a bridge is not the same thing as either side that it connects -- it is but a common pathway for connection between two sides. Each side also maintains their own domain. You give up little when you build a bridge, but are likely to gain much.

m

Dr. Rothblatt's video discussing CyBeRev, one of Terasem's life preservation projects:
http://video.google....973409929483635

For more Rothblatt videos, see (currently 7 total):
http://video.google....rch?q=rothblatt

Hey guys...

Dr. Rothblatt w/ Bina and Jenesis, appeared on Howard Stern!
http://www.howardste...hs?d=1172725200



And I've uploaded a few more video shorts concerning Terasem Movement and transbeman:
http://video.google....907835248&hl=en
http://video.google....944939347&hl=en
http://video.google....764396331&hl=en
http://video.google....401264919&hl=en

Enjoy!

Thanks for the links, Bruce. I guess Rothblatt was on Stern because he is on Sirius now?

Yeah... see:
http://en.wikipedia....dia_appearances

Here's a blog on the TransBeMan movie, to be released in 2008:

http://www.transbema...beman_has_.html

"TransBeMan - the death of death, is a philosophical, techno-thriller set in the near future. The film is about the creation of the world's first post-human and explores the moral questions raised when technology and consciousness collide. It stars James Remar (Dexter, Sex In The City, The Warriors), Kevin Corrigan (The Departed, Goodfellas) and new screen sensation Jane Kim (West 32nd Street) as Mia 2.0 the world's first TransbeMan."