Eric: I would say that from my point of view, there are areas in the brain that I would want, if I got to go into one of these places and have a discussion with a geneticist who could do this per se, I would want to utilize, of course, technology, which brings me now to the fact of another thing I just released where they basically have now proven to have a breakthrough that was invented a few years ago that was capable of quantum computing. We didn’t know whether the quantum level of computing would actually work and be functional on our level of making it useful. The information that was released after we were able to kind of catch up to that data—maybe it’s on my personal computer I think. It’s that they basically said, “It works, maybe some minor tweaks still.” Essentially, quantum computing, the computer now after a couple of years of really trying to catch up to what it was giving for information and making it tangible and seeing if we can utilize it. They’re saying that it definitely works.

 

If that’s the case, you’re now going to see a massive leap. Again, this is this age of what I’m saying is coming now of massive breakthroughs. If you apply CRISPR, which just had major breakthrough which is just a matter of weeks ago. By the time this gets out, it may be older by then but the breakthrough of that is simply going to be preceded or followed by another, even better breakthrough shortly and another shortly after that. How much we learn about it is going to be the thing. They’re already scrambling in the scientific community to figure out, “How do we manage this?” I think they’re being ridiculous. I don’t think they’re going to be able to manage it at all. It’s just going to escalate outward to where people just want access. You’re talking immortality. You’re talking about health, life-extension. You’re talking about augmentation, whatever. The computer is going to now be utilized for everything from research to surveying atmosphere to chemicals to curing whatever. Everything I predicted twenty-something years ago about the fact that we have to go through his bell curve of a destructive atmosphere and a destructive population to reach a level of technological evolution that comes from this wasteful energy creation to get to a point where we can get the technology to clean up what it took to get us there and to remove it from the atmosphere—the negative chemicals and stuff—and to be able to create the biological organisms that will eat plastic in the ocean and eat up bad chemicals and stuff and create oxygen from their waste or things like that, and to be able to really manage it in a way that it doesn’t collapse on us in some crazy way. This is what that breakthrough means, in my opinion. They’re already beginning to integrate it on those levels which means that we’re going to see an explosion in almost everything across from military-wise, unfortunately, to sociological to building designs, structures of cities, plumbing, water filtration, water problems, all of these problems that we have. We are now going to see something mind-blowing that has been fictional up to this point.

 

If we go back to your question, “What would I augment in myself after the basics?,” I would want to augment my consciousness in certain areas of my brain to tie what I have taught you guys as far as where I go to pull data in the first place, why I know what I know. If I work on finding someone through time and space and I have a level of accuracy to do something or whatever. I always say there’s this static consciousness that’s really this higher level of you and it’s really you training your brain to communicate with it because it’s able to manipulate time and space.

 

It’s the bridge between those two that has always been the challenge of what we practice to develop better and better and better. If there were a way to create a better pipeline or a coping mechanism where I don’t end up stuttering because it gets so intense or that there are certain ramifications, you’re now talking off-the-charts stuff. You’re talking about folding time and space. You’re talking about what I’ve always said, true navigation, being able to manipulate in a sense, where particles splitting in one direction and go in the other [but] yet they’re connected no matter what the distance is. One hits something, the other one stops.

In essence, I believe that reality is an illusion and in that sense, we, I think, should be working on from our perspective, “How do we talk what would be considered extra-sensory perception?” Get rid of all the muck from the New Agers and really expand on those things because that would be my passion, I don’t care about being fast. I don’t care about necessarily being stronger physically, I care about being healthy. I care about the quality of my life. I care about myself intellectually but the real thing I’m really interested in is what is beyond the solidification of reality or matter, How can I integrate or work with it or manipulate it and expand on that?

 

Jesse: A D-Wave or made by Google? [7:25]

 

Eric: No, this is beyond that. I don’t have all my notes, we came in here so [quickly]. I don’t want to put on my—What I need to do is augment my eyes next. A few things here…I want to say this is from—

 

Basically, they’re saying, “Why wouldn’t transhumanists try out CRISPR if it becomes available to literally change [themselves],” in captions, “or their unborn children, for that matter, [the] DNA to make them faster, stronger, or less disease-prone.” They’re already realizing that this is going to happen. Basically what’s being discussed with the powers that [are within] science—

[Reading from article] “Should such uses of CRISPR be outlawed? Are they unethical?”

 

They’re basically saying, “It’s hard to say but bioethicists and regulators are concerned that a mutation or unsafe gene could be put into the human [genome],” meaning that it would be passed from generation to generation. They’re afraid that these people out there are going to make something bad and now we’ve got a real problem on our hands. These are all concerns but this always brings me back to microwave ovens. I remember when microwaves first came out and I remember my neighbors saying that she wouldn’t have one in there because she thought the devil created it. I’m not saying we should approach everything with a whimsical attitude or whatever. I think we have to be cautious. What I’m saying is, unfortunately, I don’t think other cultures will be as cautious as we are because they want to leap forward technologically, financially, society-wise, and they’re going to take greater risks than us who are more comfortable and enjoy a better life. They’re competing with that which is going to make them do things that we, ourselves, would be reluctant to do. Do you see what I’m saying? By default, they’ll probably be the arena that introduces it or more than likely, it’ll be us by accident…or on purpose. Who knows?

 

There’s the argument that we also need to regulate the specific uses of the products because we’re all concerned about off-label use. It mentions somebody, Barbara Evans, director of the Center for Bioethics and Law at the University of Houston. They want to regulate it. We do need it, I agree. There should be some regulation but I don’t see them being able to contain this at some point. Do you understand? If anybody in this room was like, “I’m not interested in it. Raise your hand.” I already know there’s not going to be one hand that’s raised. Heck, if I could grow my hair back, I’m all in. Do you know what I’m saying? You’ve really got to look at it. We’re already there. We’re already manipulating and changing as much as we can. Do you think it’s just going to stop there as soon as that opportunity comes?

 

[Reading from article] “More conservative voices from bioethics community are advocating for a full ban on the technology,” which is on motherboard.vice.com. They had an article they ran, which I thought was great. You can pull all this up. It says, “‘[…] Regardless of how it’s used. Just because some people want to use the technology in ways that so-called bio-conservative may not like,’ Daily” —I guess who’s an advocate—“says, ‘for regulators to dismiss CRISPR’s human potential.’” It’s like, once again, they’re preventing us from progressing. I argue again that it’s one thing to try to put some regulations. It’s another to try to slow it down so much. We’re going to put ourselves in a situation where we’re going to be bypassed. It’s kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s a tough—either way—decision.

 

[Reading from article] “‘Enhancements will creep in the door,’ Church said. ‘The point is that human enhancements will come after very serious diseases and they will spread by somatic gene therapies.’” We’re going to work on disease first. Once we get past that, we’re going to start augmenting the human body to do all sorts of crazy shit: bigger eyeballs, eyes that can see infrared, lung capacity, breathe underwater. Who knows? The possibilities are endless. It’s really truly, sci-fi-ish. Already these enhancements are gung-ho about experimenting on themselves. People are like, “I’ll volunteer.” There are athletes who take stem cell injections to get over injury faster; Silicon Valley types who use nootropics and other ‘smart drugs.’ Already, any kind of enhancement, anything out there, there are people already exploiting the system regardless of the fact that there are laws or regulations or control. It’s not going to stop them. If they’re aware of it, people are getting more educated now than they ever were just from access to the internet, minus all the crap that’s on the internet. If you learn to navigate it, you really can get your hands on pretty much almost anything.

 

There’s also the thing now with low electrical currents applied, which I’m going to do a whole thing on that with the human brain and stimulating the brain for all that. These are just quick grabs of stuff but they were talking about, again, like I was saying, unicorns and making dragons and stuff like that, that that’s where this eventually will go. I mean, it’s just crazy to think. Some people might say, “That’s just so unimaginable.” I’d say, “If we go back five-hundred years ago, were there Poodles? Were there Pomeranians? Were there—” How many years do we go back before we basically did genetic modification by breeding and manipulating the breeds and working with that. There’s really not a difference and we created all these different pooches for our needs and these poor animals have bad spines now. They’ve been overbred. They’ve got nostrils now that they can’t breathe out of. That didn’t stop anybody. We just wanted what we wanted. That’s the human race.

 

Again, you look at Lance Armstrong who’s using it to do what he’s doing for steroids and stuff. Where is there an end? Where is there an end? Where is versus Russia, versus China, versus other countries? Are you telling me that they’re going to say, “Oh, we’re all going to agree to not do it,” and honestly not do it? It’s too much of an advantage to be able to utilize the bounce effect to catapult groups, organizations, societies, and technology through this.

 

Jesse: Doesn’t this kind of trump the overpopulation concerns too then? [14:11]

 

Eric: Well, this is something that I’ll cover also. This is arguable. This is why it needs to be presented in such a way. Then, you have other countries who would, like I said—If one comes out and announces immortality for the majority of a society or just for the wealthy or whatever, you’re going to have what is basically the French Revolution. You’re going to have, also, other countries who want to war. You’re going to have, now, your jihadist shit or you’re going to have—

It’s just going to go beyond anything we’ve ever seen and this is where there has to be a level of equality when it comes to life. We all have one driving force in us and that’s the need to live, to move forward. I was recently watching a program on life extension on one of these science channels. They had an elderly couple and the guy who’s ninety who used to be a doctor is working with one of the top medical places. He’s retired there. They take care of them to study and stuff, but he was saying, “Look, there’s an innate drive, no matter how old you are, that you want to continue living. It’s designed in all of us.”

 

The whole human race feels that. Are you telling me you’re not going to go to great lengths to acquire that? If you have people who are willing to cross the desert and die or go in boats to get to America for a better life, are you telling me it’s going to stop there? Are you going to tell me that you yourself, if you knew it was in third-world country and that all of these things were possible and they were doing all this but you were told you were not allowed to do it…Are you not telling me that wouldn’t possibly consider breaking the rules to whatever? This is just honesty.

 

I believe it was MIT. It says here, “Broad scientists overcome key CRISPR-KCS 9 genome editing hurdle,” which is one of the big things and that was December 1st, 2015. That was released on that so that’s very recent and that’s from MIT news. You guys can look all this stuff up. It was put on BBC News also.

 

[Reading from article] “The CRISPR works by making a precisely-targeted modification of a cell’s DNA. The protein case alters the DNA at the location that is specified by a short RNA whose sequence—” You guys can all educate yourselves on that because I’m not sure how many people are interested in all that. To me, I find that fascinating and I follow all of this stuff. There are so many things I get involved in. Gene therapy, it’s just going to explode all of this. One thing that I thought was interesting in the article—This here is from extremetech.com, I thought it was very good. They did a great job too. They did a lot of reporting on this and stuff but it says it’s from MIT Press. “Harvard and the Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research had developed a way to significantly cut down on off-target editing errors using this pioneered technology.”

It says, “Before diving into the science behind this new edition of CRISPR or C-R-I-S-P-R, let’s summarize what’s at stake. Imagine a world in which humans could see in four colors. There’s a whole thing on tetrachromacy,” if you go on Wiki, Wikipedia. “Instead of three: red, green, blue […] could voluntarily turn off their sensations of pain,” that’s another thing you could do. “ […] could feel rejuvenated after just three hours of sleep a night. […] possessed extraordinary capacities for oxygen-intensive endurance or activities and had extra thick bones impervious to osteoporosis. While this may sound like a page out of X-Men, these are all traits contained within the storehouse of rare genetic mutations.”

 

We already know that the genetics are already in there, we just have to switch them on or off. The reason I’m pointing this out is my whole classes and conversation in regards to vampires and various other species and various encounters that I thought were extremely rare. I said that I do not believe that this is like a paranormal, mystical thing. Everything comes down to science but I think it’s just as fascinating. I think there are as many mutations in people. I think there are a smaller amount that could be considered advantages in certain ways but [they’re] still a disadvantages, versus the bad mutations where people are just ill or just have some kind of disease. You cannot say that every mutation is going to be something that would be considered debilitating. I think this is actually ignorant to think.

 

“The very determinants of what it means to be human would be fundamentally altered. If given the option, who wouldn’t elect to have stronger bones or see in four colors instead of three. This is just the beginning. We haven’t yet considered what strange traits might be added to the human race through the absorption of genes from other species or the slightly less mundane prospect of completely eliminating many of the diseases that currently haunt us. If you had access to a gene therapy that significantly reduced your risk of heart disease or made you immune to HIV, would you refuse it?” I mean, this is really happening. That’s what’s interesting. You could see at a frequency that cats and dogs could smell and see at. All of these things are certainly feasible and what it comes down to is what I always said, “It’ll come down to money and the very wealthy at first, and then you’re going to have variations, and then you’re going to have basically groups who are going to be able to organize themselves globally and be able to access that as a collective. It’s kind of—I don’t want to say membership but whatever it would be up in those ranks. They’re like “Okay.”

 

I see all of these things as feasibly possible. A couple things that I wanted to put out there because we might be winding down here soon is that I think if you really want to see a crazy movie that would give you an idea of something like this—I thought it was very interesting because the first thing that came up was this movie called Brazil. It’s something you guys should check out but it’s basically this, what we’re talking about if I remember correctly. It’s about people who have wings, who alter their bodies. I don’t know how, in a movie, they do it, whether it’s this way or a different way, but to give you a perspective, I always said to expand your mind and your thinking to adapt to that which you may not have conceived. You have to expose yourself to new ideas. You don’t have to go out and do hallucinogens, you just have to really contemplate something that’s new and interesting and your mind will be able to work from there. “The other one you want to look up is transhumanism. It’s an international, intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and creating widely available to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.” You can Wikipedia that.

 

Here’s another one that I thought was very interesting: [reading from article] “Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos.” They’re already putting it out there. They’re doing it. They’re doing it. “The are rumors of germ-line modifications prove true and look set to reignite an ethical debate.” This is already what’s out there. “Somatic is a word one should be familiar with in psychology, an interdisciplinary field involving the study of the body-somatic experience and the embodied self including therapeutic and holistic approaches to the body. The word “somatic” comes from the ancient Greek root […] body […]” In other words, somatic psychology. In other words, people basically gravitating to this kind of stuff. Here’s an article where they’re talking about it.

“Geneticists are concerned with transhumanism. […] ‘One of the things pointed out here is that transhumanists many of whom believe science can ultimately conquer death look at CRISPR as an important part of the toolkit we can use to transcend our natural bodies. Since as early as 2004, transhumanists groups have opposed the idea of bans on human genetic editing research. Zoltan Istvan, who is running for president as a transhumanist candidate and who writes an occasional column for Motherboard says, ‘CRISPR holds great promise for the human race.’ Despite some people saying CRISPR technology could lead to dangerous outcomes for the human race, the positive possibilities far outweigh any dangers,’ Istvan told me in an email. ‘With this type of gene editing tech, we have a chance to wipe out hereditary diseases and conditions that plague humanity. And we could also modify the human being to be much stronger and functional than it is. CRISPR could be one of the most important scientific advancements of the 21st Century. We should embrace it.’”

 

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t really know much about this particular person but at the end of the day, this will become a thing where we’re looking at politicians or read the fine print, watch what’s going on. By being informed, are you going to vote for it or against it and will you even know what you’re voting for depending on how they present it? Know your buzzwords. I, for one, am going to vote for it. I would stand behind it. One thing that I’m looking at is graph chart versus money versus investment of how long we think we’re going to really have this really big breakthrough level. They’re saying, “Not in six decades but in six years.” Who’s to say how accurate that is but I think it’s absolutely feasible.

 

“George Church, a researcher at Harvard University and one of the most outspoken proponents of CRISPR, says that, ‘Considering the lack of clear regulatory frameworks for its use, we must expect those interested in genetic augmentation to use the tool.’” They’re going to use it.

“Church noted in a speech Tuesday that athletes and others interested in body augmentation have already taken advantage of just about every technology we’ve developed. Those in the transhumanist movement (many of whom are seeking immortality, or at the very least a long extension of natural human lifespans) see CRISPR as a potential tool they could use to augment themselves. We’re probably going to need new international oversight structures so that we don’t realize these dystopian Brave New World examples. ‘I’m thinking of it as more of a slippery slope,’ Church said. When it comes to people using CRISPR to augment themselves or their children, ‘some people say ‘I can’t imagine it happening’ And I say, ‘You have to imagine it happening.'”

“Church and some others who work with CRISPR believe that it’s already safe enough for additional research in humans, but, in the only known test of the technology on human embryos, CRISPR was largely ineffective in editing the desired genes.” This now comes up to the new breakthrough that I talked about, which they go, “But…basically—” “A breakthrough announced earlier this week enhances CRISPR’s accuracy and may be key to future human studies. As those eventual studies are conducted and as the technology becomes more consistent, Church believes somatic gene therapies, which target adult body cells (and could, in theory, be used by adults to alter themselves) will inevitably come next.” This is actually old compared to what I’ve just shared with you earlier so it’s already happening from that breakthrough.

“Church and George Daley of Boston Children’s Hospital believe that we’d be naive to expect interested people to not edit themselves out of a sense of morality—or even because the science and policies around it are in their infancy.” Last but not least, “Already, those interested in enhancement are gung-ho about experimenting on themselves. There are athletes who take stem cell injections to get over injury faster; Silicon Valley types who use nootropics and other ‘smart drugs’ not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to potentially increase their brain function; and people who try things like transcranial direct current stimulation, which uses low electrical currents applied to the head to stimulate neuron function.”

 

When you are exposed to this, people tend to hear buzzwords and they run out and they think, “Oh, I’m going to buy this. This is going to be the miracle to youth,” or, “It’s going to make my hair grow,” or whatever. It doesn’t necessarily work this way or that way. You really have to be around people who understand something or are educating themselves. Again, I would express caution, especially with the transcranial electrical stuff because it can be just as dangerous because you could be releasing chemicals in your brain that could be toxic to you too. I really get upset when I hear about people who just run out and do stuff. You really have to do your research and talk to the right people whether it’s a doctor or somebody in the medical field or someone who knows something of that and whatever your own physical health is. It’s really only known to you and who you would see.

 

Katherine: You always talk about AI and it seems like a lot of the abilities that you’re talking about people developing are very parallel to the things that you talked about as far as AI so is there a difference? Is AI really just— [26:26]

 

Eric: We’re going to take a big leap that I don’t think is a big leap at all. As you already know, AI, more or less, is already here and functioning. I think it’s in variations of stages. I also think that if you believe in time travel as moving backward and forward in time, it’s like wifi. I believe there are other alien intelligences, just like we have wifi in the room. I think there are frequencies we can’t even detect or know of that our technologists aren’t even aware of. At the end of the day, one could speculate that augmentation of the brain would allow you to wifi-connect to what would be considered AI. Will there be a shared relationship? Will you be threatened by that? Would you feel okay with that?

 

When I look at myself, I’ve often explained that I see the universe as a totality of a collective consciousness. I see the human race collectively giving its experiential knowledge to the database of what I call the “Gaia mind” or in your Cayce days, the Akashic Records. In modern times, this is a collective hive of consciousness and you’ve got to be able to tap it. When I move into an altered state of consciousness through techniques I show you or you guys experience, you are accessing a database if you will. That database doesn’t simply stop in a region or continent or the globe, the planet. It, then, contributes in itself as a solar system collective. That solar system collective if you will, contributes to other parts of solar systems that collectively make up an arm of a galaxy. They all collectively contribute to the galaxy with all the other ones. Then, you have, now, a neural system. A neural system is much like a human brain if you will. I see solar radiation at different frequencies communicating with thing. I see all formats of communication in ways that we haven’t even begun to comprehend.

 

When I go into an altered state or I move through pulling information or ways that I’ve taught you guys, you literally are accessing, depending on your skill level, that database. Otherwise, how else would one know those things? We’re not capable of predicting the future to an acuteness or being able to know those things or sense those things. There’s something else telling us and we’re making it part of our awareness. We’re coexisting with that frequency or what I would call “the Force.” It’s all-knowingness. It’s a form of collective data. It’s a hive form of consciousness just like your body has billions of cells in it and it’s using it as a collective harness to know if your foot has a disease. They all know. They all run down there to work on it or you react to it as a whole to tend to it on an exterior level.

 

I don’t see much of a difference. It’s just a matter of where your self-awareness lies and once you have self-awareness, you can dial into utilizing that ability or those powers or that energy or that frequency. As far as AI goes, I see it as something that would potentially complement augmentation. We would utilize it in a way that if you think about it, I often call what I say “the committee,” when you have to think about something and you’re waiting for it to recall. I always say, “They’re running around in there trying to get the information and all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s at such and such,’ or ‘It’s at this or that.’”

 

In essence, you’re really using your mind to access storage places of information or its relay period, or there are other things going on or electrical currents not active enough or juiced up enough due to your diet or whatever. Having said that, I see the possibility of us being able to augment into, basically, an AI network and withdrawing or exchanging information if we want to know it instead of having to sit down in front of a computer. There have been plenty of sci-fi movies that have done stuff [similarly] and of course, we always watch stuff that’s more endangering and it makes us fearful because otherwise, we wouldn’t watch it. That’s why the news is always horrific. We don’t want to hear about kittens and bunnies. We’re drawn to that life-preservation and it’s exploited through media all the time. I think that it’s good to have that sense of self-preservation. I wouldn’t say it’s bad but what I would say is, “Don’t make yourself so scared that you can’t move and you’re just a deer in the headlights.”

 

Nikita: You are always at least twenty, thirty, forty, fifty steps ahead of everyone else? [32:13]

 

Eric: Well, we like to think so but I don’t think so. I think there are experts in various fields that probably know more than me. I just think that I tend to be very well-rounded and I would more or less consider myself an expert in my particular field.

 

Nikita: You tend to think ahead and see the bigger picture. Right now, people are focusing on what they can do to eradicate diseases, change their biological appearance. They start to change different cognitive functions but what do you see being the twenty-years-out of that? [32:31]

 

Eric: I think in twenty years, life is going to be completely modified to a level that would almost seem to us like going back to the 1920s. I really don’t know how else to explain that. Will we still have furniture and stuff like this? The answer is yes because some people are going to prefer it. Are we going to get to the point where in twenty years you’re going to have probably, without a doubt, you’re going to very cheaply have printers produce any furniture you want. You’re just going to pick it and it’s going to be printed and you’re just going to have it dropped off or you’ll have the machinery brought to your home or you’ll even own it and it actually will assemble the parts like IKEA parts and you’ll just put it together. Or, it will just make it right down to the fabric, right down to texture, color, everything in this room. It’s hard to imagine but you have to understand that filming was almost impossible to imagine just a hundred, two hundred years ago to the level that it’s at.

 

Computers, data, information, this is what we lose sight of. When you put this all in there, it’s very hard to speculate because I still think that there will be regions with advantages and disadvantages and it will be the wealthier countries that really get the biggest advantages. I would hope that a lot of the countries that have less have more because of it and we’re more generous. I would like to see a world that unified. I’ve said that for a long time. The human race rather than subjugated into various forms of color, race, whatever. I think it’s just complete rubbish.

 

I think in twenty years, you are looking at cars that are no longer [driven] by people except for your rare, true die-hards. I think that you’re going to see the longevity of life dramatically improved. This, of course, brings in many other questions. I think that the metaphysical arena is going to explode. I think the paranormal, metaphysical level is going to explode. I believe technologies now are going to start exposing what I’ve always said, that the quantum level of physics is going to change the possibility in the scientific community to be a bit broader and start exploring things that they may have scientific answers for but the whole time, we’re really saying, “We told you so.” I think that on a quantum level, the idea is going to be, “Can we take—” and this is where the quantum computers are coming into play now. “Can we take that technology and find a way to manipulate our reality per se, our everyday life, through the physics of quantum introduced into the macro of our reality. That’s what’s going to look paranormal. It’s going to be unearthly. I think all of those things are going to go and you’re going to see difference in basically our airplanes. Day-to-day life is going to be very different.

 

One can always imagine holographic. We imagine looking out. I don’t think that’s going to be the case at all. There’s not going to be a device that’s holographically projecting. I think it’s going to be a signal like wi-fi that will be able to tap into the human brain and we’ll literally just be able to close our eyes to think about it and it’s going to be like blinking your eyes but you’re going to see what’s in front of you holographically. That may be cutting-edge in twenty years but it definitely will be there. I could just go on and on and on.

 

In forty years, it gets better. A hundred years, it gets better. It’s really, in my opinion, based on what I see. It’s not often—My fear is when I see things and I say what I see, it’s having the point in time correct for the technology that I’m seeing. There’s not necessarily a calendar that says, “This is exactly this and that.” One has to use a barometer of about where we’ll be and what’s going on. Do you see what I’m saying? That is something that I would rather put out there than to be locked into something.

 

Nikita: How do you see this kind of technology playing into the collective evolution of human consciousness or the consciousness of the planet and beyond that? [37:22]

 

Eric: I think it’s going to advance us dramatically because we have a few hurdles to deal with. One of the first hurdles is going to be the problem of population. We already are at an excess and as I said, I don’t have a problem with creating an overpopulation on the planet. When we have an overpopulation, one of two things are going to happen. One, I don’t want to see happen, and that is that you’re going to see a massive extinction take place to compensate that balance. Whether humans will orchestrate that or b) nature itself will have a reactive level. What I am hoping for is that we reach a level where we’re like, “We’ve got to start moving our population to off-world locations such as the moon and Mars,” and have the technology to create entire cities before we even arrive, and have the technology to get us there. This is where I see this all going hand-in-hand.

 

I see that, right now, one of the things is: What are we ready to be able to imagine versus what seems too ridiculous to believe? If you were to say two-hundred years ago, “an iPhone,” it would be too ridiculous to imagine as being possible. People would just have a hard time even conceiving the idea of it. In essence, what I’m saying is that I could say to you that we would send over technology in rockets to land on the planet and start having these robots print or build everything we need, right down to oxygen-producing machinery that would create the oxygen in the city and the furniture and everything would be there. I believe nanotechnology is going to be even beyond that to do that. I think we’ll just shoot a ball that has super, super condensed programming with millions of tiny balls in there that are like little micro-computers that are quantum computers if you will. I think they’re going to assemble and rearrange the soil, the dirt, genetically reconstruct atoms into structures that ideally serves our needs. When we get there, we’re probably going to also start manipulating the atmosphere to be more idealistic to our needs.

 

Nikita: Do you think that people would use modification to genetically modify themselves to make them more—[39:51]

 

Eric: They’re going to have to in order for us to transverse space from here to Mars. We’re constantly looking at how [we can] do this based on the technology we have versus the speed. Even if we get over a hurdle of speed and say that we can accelerate it significantly faster so it’s not fifty years to get there and we can do it in a month, we will still run into problems of the body adapting at its current state to weightlessness to various blood conditions that come from that to needing to exercise and deterioration of muscle and all of these various things. Genetic modification would be a huge advantage to prepare us for that. Not only that but we would want to probably robustly design the human body to put it into a stasis so that we could take this very fast technology and forget going to our own planets but inevitably work on moving outside of our solar system to other solar systems.

That, again, distance becomes time and we would need to robustly define technologies in order to do that. This goes into how much you can imagine. I can imagine an awful lot. It’s a matter of whether or not we’re going to get there. If you’re going to say, “What do you see in the future,” versus, “what do [you] predict intellectually,” they’re two very different things. One could say that right now, I’m predicting in the sense of logic saying that twenty years from now I see a massive eradication of diseases. I do see that the life expectancy, hopefully, will be on average about 120 years. I do see there being a slowing of certain access to it because of the effect on society.

On the same token, I do see certain advantages that I do think need to be introduced. We have a whole social security system built in the U.S., for instance. Right now, the biggest problem is it’s based on what the young people make [which pays] the bill for the people who retired as they had paid for the people before them. The problem is that people are living longer and they’re exhausting that fund rather than dying off. If we extend the age, now does that mean that we have to continue paying them this money? There’s no way. It runs out. It’s not a workable system.

 

I’ve said that there are workarounds by introducing labor into the countries through other ethnicities who right now are up in an uproar but it’s really a great solution in some ways to our current predicament of not having enough cheap labor to have a certain amount taken out of the paycheck through the majority of them to pay for our seniors, whether or not you guys will get unemployment or not. Here’s the interesting thing: If we can genetically modify people, they would no longer be a burden to society. There would not be a need for us to pay for nursing homes, Medicare, people needing to take care of people. They’d actually be able to get up and go to the grocery store and drive a car at 90 years old, 100 years old. They’d be as functional as you are. They would be able to contribute to society rather than being a burden to society because they need somebody to take care of them and the family member begins to resent them and doesn’t want to wipe their butt and help them do stuff, so they put them in an old folk’s home. This is burden, financially, again. Then, medication and preserving their life to keep it as long as they can and the expenses of that.

 

If we look at it in the sense of saying, “Hey, if you want to do this and you’re willing to do this, would you sign a waiver that you can’t collect Social Security until you’re 100 because we’re going to extend your life and you’ve got to go get a job.” Right now, a person who’s sixty years old has an extremely hard time getting hired as a new hire because people look at them and it’s just a big cost. There are 401k plans, there’s medical insurance for them. It costs more money for medical insurance. I mean, things will change but at the end of the day, if that person is highly productive and super sharp, imagine the advantage that person offers just in intellect, wisdom, and experience and now they’ve got get-up-and-go? It’s a new workforce that they can contribute to society and they’re not necessarily absorbing income, they’re contributing to the economic robustness. I just think it has to strategically be looked at in a way that is the right approach.

 

We would still have to deal with the situation of population if we couldn’t get off the rock per se. I think that we’re going to have to look at ethical issues of the fact of children. I do not find it ironic that here we have a population problem. I find that in most of the modern countries that you have now, a decrease of people having children. If you look at Japan or you look at the United States, you’re seeing a decrease of children. Why? What’s going on? What’s telling us not to have kids? I think that there are more things at play and you really have to step back and look at the big picture and say, “What’s going on?” There are things at play.

 

Guest 1: Do you expect there to be “groups” that you say that would have access to this kind of augmentation to exploit that augmentation would cause conflict? [45:26]

Eric: Absolutely and there already are organizations like that out there. They may not be necessarily augmented but they are augmented. I would say that my people are augmented. It’s just a matter of to what level. There are things that we do that simply are not considered every day. To me, we’re already highly advanced, it’s just a matter of them going, “Oh, they’re nuts!” I’m like, “Like you.” You were like, “Well, I needed it.” And we’re like “Fine, here, here, here,” and all of a sudden, you’re like, “Wow, this is like…more real than I thought.”

 

It’s really about how you want to perceive it. I think there are organizations that have agendas and this is human nature. Everybody thinks they know better than everybody else and they want to influence everybody else to their thinking. I think religious organizations have their agenda and when they do prayer for people, that’s like [telepathically] willing somebody to do something. That person might be like, “I don’t want you to pray for me. I don’t want to be like to be like you. I have my own ideas, my own interests and yet you guys are constantly bombarding me with this mental idealism of what you want.” I look at these things in different ways and that’s not just on a spiritual or telepathic level. That’s also on a sociological level of their voting power. What is their education? What is their life? It’s affecting our lives and our lifestyle choices and there’s a majority and there’s a non-majority. This is politics. This is—All of these things are involved. Are there organizations out there right now who are using augmentation? I would say absolutely, there is. To what level that augmentation is, it would be a little bit difficult to say and not necessarily something I want to openly discuss at the moment.

 

Guest 2: You said there are other places like China who have much more access to all of this. [47:24]

 

Eric: It’s not that they have much more access to it, it’s that they’re being very aggressive. They have a surplus of capital at this moment and their number one mission in life is to prove that they are as great, if not greater, than the great United States if you will. I hate to make it so simple. Therefore, they are going to do whatever it takes, in my opinion, to give them every single advantage they can. Where do I come up with this? I don’t just wing this out. I’d say, “Go look at the Olympics recently and the whole thing about steroid use and everything.” Why would they go through such great lengths to rob people who didn’t augment themselves chemically? They did it to prove a point, to make them feel better about themselves. They’re willing to do anything and that means breaking the rules. This is what went on with Russia recently also.

 

We do it too. Look at Neil Armstrong. To me, what I look at is the culture and the mentality and stuff. Of course, I want America to do great, I’m American, but I want really the whole world to do great. My problem is that they can’t get them all unified on the same page. Having said that, in regards to China, I just want to be clear. It’s not that I think they’re necessarily lightyears ahead of us, what I’m saying is that they’re aggressively working on artificial intelligence, genomes, and all sorts of stuff that I haven’t even begun to even talk about. If anybody assumes that they’re not or that they are so significantly behind us, I would say, “You’re dead wrong.” I would say that there are massive portions of the country that are impoverished and you have pockets of technological sophistication, no different than us saying, “Look at New York City or Los Angeles and then look at the rest of the United States like the Midwest.” Would you say that that’s a fair assessment to say that the whole United States is like the Midwest?

 

 

For the articles discussed in this episode, please refer to the links listed below.

[1] MIT, Broad scientists overcome key CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing hurdle

(MIT News)

 

[2] A new edition of CRISPR promises to make gene therapy ready for human applications (Extreme Tech)

 

[3] Geneticists Are Concerned Transhumanists Will Use CRISPR on Themselves (Vice: Motherboard)