Talk by Dr. Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey de Grey will give a talk entitled "Biological Immortality, Fact or Fiction?" which will take place on Tuesday, October 21th at 7:00PM in Building 420 Room 040. (This is the basement of the Psychology building, near the north-west corner of the Quad, facing the Oval.)

Aubrey de Grey is a leading geneticist and gerontologist whose life's work is to defeat biological aging. He contends, however, that there is a major barrier that keeps the scientific community as a whole from rationally investigating the prevention of aging and death: that is, the cultural tradition that death is not like a disease and thus shouldn't be "fixed", and that it is even a good thing. Advocates and skeptics alike are welcome to join Dr. de Grey for a talk about how he is investigating the development of medical treatments that repair the body faster than it breaks down, and, were that to succeed, about how we as a species might deal with the consequences of biological immortality. For more information about Dr. de Grey's research and philosophy, see his interview on the Colbert Report, his TED Talk, and this Technology Review Article.

Eliezer Yudkowsky Talk

Eliezer Yudkowsky, cofounder of and AI researcher at the Singularity Institute for Aritificial Intelligence will give a talk right here at Stanford. He will discuss the impact of cognitive technologies on the future of the human experience (scroll down for a blurb). He is known to be a very engaging and interesting speaker, so please feel free to join the discussion!

The talk will take place at Phi Kappa Psi at 592 Mayfield Avenue on May 29 (next Thursday) from 6pm to 7:30pm. Off campus folk may wish to park at the lot near Tresidder.

A delicious dinner will be provided to guests who RSVP, courtesy of Phi Psi. Please RSVP with Arty Rivera artemiorivera (at) gmail (dot) com.

We'll keep you posted.


Blurb:
"People looking out into the future - especially the far future - talk
about technologies ranging from fusion power to space shuttles. I
argue that most of these technologies, however interesting they may be
in their own right, pale compared to the impact upon humanity's future
of the cognitive technologies; those that directly impact on human
minds, or that offer us the ability to create nonhuman minds. Such
technologies promise to make the future genuinely different from what
we know today, in a way that no possible amount of non-cognitive
advancement could do."