Books Unwanted Spectral Advances: “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” by Robert Hichens Toxic masculinity, extreme repression, and a supernatural presence demanding affection and intimacy drive this classic tale of psychological horror. By Sam Reader | Published on August 13, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Dissecting The Dark Descent, where we lovingly delve into the guts of David Hartwell’s seminal 1987 anthology story by story, and in the process, explore the underpinnings of a genre we all love. For an in-depth introduction, here’s the intro post. Robert Hichens was a queer journalist, satirist, playwright, and novelist who chronicled the 1890s and the early part of the twentieth century. While his career was prolific and saw him rubbing elbows with George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, Hichens was also a gifted writer of psychological and supernatural horror. “How Love Came to Professor Guildea,” from Hichens’ collection Tongues of Conscience, is his most enduring work, an unnerving mix of hysterical fiction and supernatural horror suffused with terrors so intimate they could be a precursor to authors like Clive Barker. This tale of intimate invasion and a lack of masculine intimacy seems ever more prescient with the passing of time, adding an unnerving subtext about consent and bodily autonomy to an already wrenching psychological horror story exploring the effects of the patriarchy from a masculine perspective.   Father Murchison, an Anglican priest working in London, makes the acquaintance of Professor Guildea, a prickly and stuffy rationalist whose life is completely devoid of faith. The two strike up an odd yet incredibly cordial friendship over the years, having nightly chats by the fire at the Professor’s house. When Guildea is followed home by a strange spirit that falls obsessively and unconditionally in love with him, Murchison is the first person he asks to help him with his new and unnerving situation. As the all-loving priest and the prickly, repressed professor delve more into the mystery of Guildea’s new lodger, it’s unclear exactly what the spirit is. All that is clear is that it loves Professor Guildea. Whether he wants it to or not. It’s obvious Guildea is being punished for his toxic masculinity. He’s a misanthrope who eschews all intimacy, has no use for women, and the reason he’s punished specifically by a guileless manifestation of pure affection (one that comes off, while animalistic, as somewhat feminine, given its indistinguishable voice and light caresses) is because he shuts off his full range of emotion. He’s a creature of self-loathing and rationality bolstered by the idea that he has no need for “softer” emotions. The ironic punishment, then, is to be pursued by a creature who is the spiritual embodiment of all the things he lacks—an irrational, unseen avatar of desire and affection, the polar opposite of his cold rationality. He has relationships—his parrot Napoleon, his butler Pitting, and of course Father Murchison are all examples of lasting relationships in his life—but he is obstinate in insisting that he’s alone and incapable of feeling anything for the people around him. In the end, his absolute revulsion toward intimacy and self-loathing is what allows the strange presence he encounters to bring about his death, as he finds the entire thing so unbearable that his heart gives out. Guildea even rids himself of Napoleon and Pitting (his constant companions) when they cannot protect him against the spirit and his final monologue is about how he must “be a man again” and face down his spectral intruder with utter hatred.  Father Murchison, by contrast, is every bit the rational skeptic Professor Guildea is, but in a much less toxic fashion. His lack of intimate relationships is driven by his vows of celibacy more than any self-deprivation or a desire to rob himself of softer things. He’s skeptical at first and chalks the Professor’s distress up to simple overwork and being wound too tight until his dear friend (Murchison is perhaps the one healthy relationship Guildea has in the story) proves to him without a doubt that the only rational explanation is in fact a haunting. Despite his rationality, he’s conscientious, gives people space, and offers advice to those who need it. Murchison is genuinely worried about others and tries to find love in his life wherever he can. He’s no less a man than Guildea, but leads a much healthier existence. Once he’s convinced of the supernatural intruder, he even remembers his own unnerving encounters with a spectral woman in white who tried to invade his personal space in the same way Professor Guildea’s intruder invades his. The difference is that Murchison has learned several harsh lessons along the way, and isn’t nearly as violently closed-off as Guildea gets. Murchison’s final play is even to plead with Guildea to learn to love his intruder, to allow himself to express love and kindness somehow. Hichens reproduces the general structure of hysterical fiction as seen in the previous few entries of this column (such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily”), but from a new and masculine perspective. Both Guildea and Murchison are seen as rational people, but Guildea is driven to hysteria by the supernatural presence that senses his aversion to intimacy and shoves itself into the absent space. He is attacked and punished specifically for lacking “softer” emotions, with the invisible creature determined to give him a surplus of the very thing he lacks. While his brain and body might be ravaged by the supernatural, they’re also confronted by the very real psychological idea that his inability to let go of his own toxic attitudes eventually kills him. The isolation is self-imposed, the spirit’s presence is a punishment for Guildea’s desire only for negative emotions and a “facts and logic”-based approach to his social affairs, and in the end, as with most hysterical fiction, the result is his brain self-destructing while the creature finishes off his body. From a modern context, it’s possibilities to see more similarities with hysterical fiction than the author, perhaps, intended. While Murchison certainly means well and understands more than the average gothic fiction protagonist, his approach puts Guildea at the mercy of something he very much doesn’t consent to. Guildea is molested, his boundaries invaded, and the spirit makes intimate contact with him. Murchison might be correct about the thing being an ironic punishment for Guildea’s intense rejection of intimacy, but the solution for rigidly blocking everyone out is not to let a ghostly lover feel you up. In fact, that’s exactly how someone dies in It Follows. The advice he offers at the end—to love the creature who’s tormenting Guildea—even sounds like something every trauma survivor dreads their friends and family saying: “give them what they want, and they will go away.” For all his healthier attitudes, Murchison still believes that being intimately harassed by a ghost is something that Guildea somehow deserves for blocking out all intimate connection and emotion. “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” uses the framework of hysterical fiction as a darker satire to devastating effect. In Guildea, Hichens illustrates the horrors of toxic masculinity and the tendency to cut oneself off from anything deemed “soft,” most of the time to one’s detriment, and even to the point of self-annihilation. In Father Murchison, Hichens depicts a non-toxic masculine figure, but one still bound by the patriarchal ties of hysterical fiction to the point of encouraging his friend to abandon his bodily and sexual autonomy. In both cases, the story offers an unnerving portrait of exactly how inadequate modern masculinity (in both toxic and non-toxic versions) is at addressing feelings of intimacy.   And now to turn it over to you. Does Murchison’s encouragement to let the spirit love Guildea read like he’s ignoring Guildea’s bodily autonomy? Did Hichens’ queer perspective and command of intimate horror act as a precursor to later, more visceral works? Please join us in two weeks for horror legend Richard Matheson and his first professionally published story, the disturbing “Born of Man and Woman.”[end-mark] The post Unwanted Spectral Advances: “How Love Came to Professor Guildea” by Robert Hichens appeared first on Reactor.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. As anti-elite populism rises worldwide, from the U.S. and Europe to Latin America, the socialists are fighting tooth and nail, using everything from cynical election coalitions in France to outright censorship and jailing dissenters in Britain. But there’s one big country where populism has now taken over: India. Since first taking office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has managed to gain widespread support for populism: He regularly polls around 80%, gaining support from both working-class and middle-class Indians. And he’s won an unprecedented three terms in India’s rambunctious democracy. A recent Ipsos poll found 77% of Indians think the country is on the right track, compared to 35% of Americans, 30% in Canada, 21% of Brits, and 18% of the French. Modi’s success is down to three factors: First, an emphasis on nationalism as a unifier, as opposed to the Left’s tribalism. Those on the Left, naturally, frame nationalism as itself divisive, as they do in America, because they’re addicted to promoting civil war. Second, Modi has delivered relatively competent government and strong economic growth to the long-suffering voters of India. Outside of COVID-19, Modi has delivered 7% to 8% gross domestic product growth. The country is building coal and nuclear plants while America and Europe screw around with green handouts. And India’s cities are much safer than, say, blue cities in America and Europe. The third is a widespread feeling in India that the system’s broken under decades of the previous ruling party called Congress, so many Indians were open to a strong personality to push through radical change. This is actually true in the U.S. and Europe as well—the people are ready for change—but left-wing media diffuses that anger away from reform and into that tribalism. That’s divide-and-rule by the media-aligned elite. As for Modi, he just won a third five-year term—albeit with coalition partners—and he’s now promising to make India a developed country in 25 years by bringing back manufacturing and improving digital infrastructure. That may actually be possible. India is already the world’s largest exporter of information technology and business services at $193 billion last year. And it’s scooping up manufacturers fleeing China over rising costs and political risks ranging from Beijing’s police state to China’s trade friction with the West. As the Economic Times put it, for manufacturers, Modi replaced the red tape with the red carpet, inviting the kind of foreign investment that developed places like South Korea, Taiwan, and China itself. Still, there are a lot of challenges. India remains desperately poor, thanks to decades of socialism imported from postwar Britain. For example, a recent survey found just half of Indians can afford three meals a day. Modi remains in trench warfare with India’s deep corruption. A recent medical-test scandal brought it back to the headlines. And, y’know, the street vendors. Moreover, even if Modi’s bringing manufacturing back, a worldwide recession in America and Europe will slow or stop India’s growth in the near-term. So, what’s next? Modi’s populist success in India is an example for those of us who want more power for the people, as opposed to corporate and political elites. Emphasizing nationalism over race or class, delivering the goods in governance, and tapping into widespread dissatisfaction with corrupt elites, apparently, get the job done. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Modi’s Miracle: Indian Populism Wins Wide Support appeared first on The Daily Signal.

To hear Vice President Kamala Harris tell it, the Supreme Court’s decision this summer to curb the federal bureaucracy’s authority to interpret vague laws so as to favor giving itself more power threatens everything from clean water and air, accessible health care, and sound financial markets to safe products and worker safety. Well, don’t believe everything you hear. The court’s decision doesn’t spell doom for medicine, industry, or the environment, but it is important for a different reason; namely, the separation of powers and an important check on government power. In schools that still teach civics, kids learn that the three branches of government have different jobs: The legislative branch makes the law, the judicial branch interprets it, and the executive branch enforces it. That separation of power, America’s Founders said, protects our freedom by preventing too much power from ending up in too few hands. At least that’s the theory. The separation of powers works only if the branches actually stay in their own lanes. The Supreme Court’s June 28 decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo was a big step toward making that happen. LOPER BRIGHT decision SCOTUSDownload More than ever, the rules and regulations that govern our lives come from bureaucrats in powerful executive branch agencies. Implementing Congress’ statutes is not as simple as delivering a package to a particular address. Sometimes laws are unclear, and figuring out what Congress meant by what it enacted may take some work. How can we make sure that agencies don’t cross the line from interpreting what Congress meant to changing statutes altogether? The Supreme Court blurred that line in a 1984 decision, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, by requiring that courts must accept “permissible” agency interpretations of statutory provisions that are “ambiguous” or “silent” about a particular issue. Needless to say, those interpretations are in the eye of the bureaucratic holder. The upshot of Chevron is that bureaucrats will often have almost free rein to define their own power and how to use it. Loper Bright, in which the Supreme Court overruled Chevron, is a good example of how this paradigm can go wrong. In 1976, Congress enacted a statute to manage the coastal fishery industry. The National Marine Fisheries Service implements this statute through regional fishery management councils. The statute allows the agency to require that “one or more observers be carried on board” domestic vessels for data collection and to require that two categories of such vessels bear the cost of those observers, which can top $700 per day. The agency, however, began requiring that fishing vessels outside those categories also pay for observers, and Atlantic herring fishermen sued. The lower courts, citing Chevron, upheld the regulation, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, explained that America’s Founders designed a system in the “interpretation of the laws” would be the “proper and peculiar province of the courts.”   Don’t get us wrong. One of us worked in the U.S. Senate for a long time and saw how the legislative sausage is made. Congress enacts statutes with vague or unclear language, without defining important terms or answering key policy questions. It’s almost as if Congress figures that unelected bureaucrats will finish the job of lawmaking for them. Chevron, in fact, practically invited them to do so. Article III of the Constitution, however, forecloses that option by assigning the “the judicial Power of the United States [to] one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Interpretation of statutes—that is, determining what a legislature meant by what it enacted—is a core element of judicial power. The point is that, as the Supreme Court put it in Marbury v. Madison, it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Chevron turned that design on its head. In his concurring opinion in Loper Bright, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that the deference required by Chevron “compromises [the] separation of powers” by both “curb[ing] the judicial power afforded to courts” and “expand[ing] agencies’ executive power beyond constitutional limits.” That obviously does not mean that courts should ignore the judgment or opinion of agencies. That input can be helpful, but it cannot take the place of courts doing what they alone have the authority to do. Nor does a statute’s subject matter make any difference: Agencies have no more lawmaking power when a statute concerns the environment than when it involves something much more pedestrian. So, while Harris’ complaints about Loper Bright are emphatic, they are completely unjustified.Agencies will still be able to enforce clear statutes that protect industry, health, and the environment. But Chevron deference went too far. It invited agencies to abuse judicial power when the law was unclear. That breached the separation of powers. Therefore, Chevron had to go. Thankfully, our system of government prioritizes individual liberty over collective government power. In Loper Bright, the Supreme Court took an important step toward getting those priorities back in order. The post Judges, Not Bureaucrats, Interpret the Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has issued an order in the United States v. Daniel Goodwyn case reimposing the computer monitoring measure against Goodwyn, a January 6 defendant. We obtained a copy of the order for you here. Goodwyn was charged and convicted for briefly entering the US Capitol during the January 6 events, and although he stayed inside the building for just over half a minute, left when he was asked to, was not involved in violence nor did he cause any damage – it was his social media posts (among others, screenshot of public documents that show names of government employees) that were seen as a threat. In initial proceedings in 2023, Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of trespassing. As legal experts noted, normally a first-time offender isn’t sent to jail for this, but the US District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Reggie Walton sentenced him to two months in prison. This was accompanied by probation conditions that included unusually harsh and ongoing restrictions on Goodwyn’s online speech and access to information. Walton – a vocal critic of Donald Trump decided that Goodwyn’s computer must be “monitored and inspected” to make sure he was not “spreading disinformation.” The appellate court then found that the district court “plainly erred” by imposing these surveillance measures. Judge Walton next decided that now, “on the heels of [sic] another election,” he was worried Goodwyn was spreading “false narratives” and therefore affirmed his original sentencing. The defense, arguing First Amendment violation, went back to the court of appeals seeking an emergency stay of the probation conditions, but the three-judge panel ruled 2-1 to deny the motion. Judge Gregory Katsas filed his dissenting opinion, arguing against colleagues Florence Pan and Bradley Garcia – both of whom happen to be Democrat judges. Judge Katsas stated that Goodwyn neither used force to enter the premises nor did he attack police officers during his 36-second stay in the Capitol, as well as that in addition to 60 days in jail, a special probation condition required “the installation of software on Goodwyn’s computers that would enable the probation office to conduct ‘periodic unannounced searches’.” “Goodwyn appealed and moved for a stay,” wrote the judge, adding, “I would grant the motion because, in my view, Goodwyn is likely to prevail on the merits and has shown an immediate irreparable injury. See Nken v. Holder (factors for stay pending appeal).” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post US Court Reimposes “Disinformation” Device Monitoring on January 6 Defendant appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Family of Isaac Hayes Sues Trump Campaign, But is it Valid?

NY Times Columnist Dismisses the Cass Review but Readers Aren't Buying It

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected an application to allow the use of MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bringing an end to several years of excitement about the prospect of the party drug becoming medicalized. After analyzing research submitted by drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics, the agency ruled that the data was too patchy, unreliable, and embroiled in scandal to be accepted.Lykos’ application was based on a pair of Phase III clinical trials, one of which showed that 71 percent of PTSD patients who received MDMA-assisted psychotherapy no longer met the criteria for diagnosis four months after treatment. In a briefing document issued by the FDA in June, the agency acknowledged these findings, explaining that “participants appear to experience rapid, clinically meaningful, durable improvement in their PTSD symptoms.”However, the document goes on to highlight numerous factors that detract from the reliability of this data. For instance, while the clinical trial was designed as a double-blind study – meaning neither patients nor therapists knew if a participant was assigned MDMA or a placebo – the drug’s very obvious effects make it impossible to hide the truth.Known as “functional unblinding”, this led to around 90 percent of participants correctly guessing that they had been given MDMA. According to the FDA, “functional unblinding can introduce bias in clinical studies,” thus calling into question the validity of Lykos’ results.The agency also complained that Lykos had failed to properly track the biological impact of MDMA, and that an assessment of the drug’s safety could therefore not be made. In particular, the compound’s cardiovascular effects may pose a risk to patients with high blood pressure or heart issues, and must therefore be rigorously studied before the drug can be approved for therapeutic use.Other concerns about Lykos’ decision not to monitor MDMA’s potential for abuse – despite being directed to do so by the FDA – ultimately made up the agency’s mind. Voting 10-1 to reject the drug, an expert panel requested that Lykos conduct another Phase III trial, this time collecting all the necessary data.Responding to the setback, Lykos CEO Amy Emerson said in a statement that “conducting another Phase III study would take several years,” but insisted that many of the FDA’s queries “can be addressed with existing data, post-approval requirements or through reference to the scientific literature."However, in an additional blow, three studies conducted by Lykos-affiliated researchers regarding the use of MDMA for PTSD have now been retracted by the journal Psychopharmacology. The journal’s editors decided to pull the studies in response to a sexual abuse scandal involving unlicensed Lykos therapists and a participant in a Phase II trial back in 2015.Despite coming clean about the incident and banning those involved in 2019, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) – of which Lykos is a subsidiary – didn’t disclose this vital information to the journal’s editors when submitting the papers, nor did it remove the data generated during the encounter.Highlighting these ethical concerns at the FDA’s advisory committee meeting, researcher Nese Devenot from Johns Hopkins University claimed that “in addition to gross violations in Phase II, previously unreported violations include Lykos’s senior leadership having sexual encounters with a vulnerable individual who was then recruited into Phase III.”“The most significant harms in Lykos’s clinical trials were not caused by MDMA but by the people who were entrusted to supervise its administration,” she said.The FDA’s decision not to approve the drug means that Australia remains the only country in the world that allows the use of MDMA to treat PTSD. Lykos, however, says it will ask the FDA to reconsider, insisting that its data is robust and untainted by the transgressions of some of its therapists.

A former NASA analyst on TikTok has explained the (hopefully obvious) reason why photographs of our galaxy – the Milky Way – are not real.Responding to the question "How do we take pictures of the Milky Way if we are in it?", science communicator and former NASA space analyst Alexandra Doten explained that we simply do not have pictures of the Milky Way."Every full image you see of the Milky Way is an illustration," she explained in the video. "We cannot see the Milky Way like this, and I don't think humans ever will."The reason for this is quite simple, we have never been able to view the Milky Way from any other vantage point than the edge of a spiral arm of our galaxy. Think of it like with Earth, with a few added complications. We knew the shape of the Earth for a long time through mapping the surface, studying the motions and shapes of the planets and stars, and taking careful measurements of Earth's gravity at different points. Through this, we determined the shape of the Earth, including that it isn't perfectly round. But we could never have a complete image of the Earth until we left it and got far enough to photograph it all. The first image of the whole Earth from space came in 1972, when astronaut Ron Evans or Harrison Schmitt took a photo from onboard Apollo 17 while headed to the Moon. This was the first time that an Apollo mission's trajectory made such a photo possible, and the result was the iconic "Blue Marble" image.   Leaving the galaxy far enough to photograph it is a whole different undertaking for a species that has not yet left the Solar System."To get [images of the Milky Way] a spacecraft would have to travel either up or down from the disk of the Milky Way, and travel so incredibly far," Doten explains.But that doesn't mean we don't know what the Milky Way looks like. Most of the objects you see when you look up at the night sky are stars in our own galaxy, which we can map. We can see a good portion of the Milky Way in the night sky as well, and from this, we can map the stars within it and build up an impression of what it looks like. Doten compares it to trying to create an image of a Ferris wheel you are currently riding on.    IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.We can see and image enough objects within our galaxy – including the supermassive black hole at the center of it – in order to get a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Mapping the stars within it, and looking at its shape, we can tell we are within the spiral of a barred spiral arm galaxy. Seeing other galaxies similar to our own helps too, just as seeing Jupiter's bulge helped Isaac Newton figure out that the Earth is bulged too. The more we look at it, the better we can work out what is going on, including looking for collisions with other galaxies. But we will likely never see the Milky Way from far enough away to take a true photograph of its beauty, and certainly not within our lifetimes, or many, many generations to come.

Humans confirmed the existence of other galaxies surprisingly late. Only 100 years ago, in fact, when Edwin Hubble found a type of star known as Cepheid variables within Andromeda, and used them to measure the galaxy's distance.Since then, astronomy equipment and techniques have advanced, and more and more data has been collected on Andromeda and many of the estimated 2 trillion galaxies within the observable universe. As luck (or, to be more accurate, distance would have it, given that Andromeda is one of our closest neighbors) we soon found evidence that the first galaxy we discovered beyond our own was likely on a collision course with the Milky Way."Traveling at 250,000 mph [402,336 kilometers per hour], the neighboring giant spiral is scheduled to make a head-on encounter with our galaxy about 4 billion years from now," NASA explains. "Subsequent clashes over 2 billion years will give rise to a combined elliptical galaxy, replete with stars scattered in new orbits. It seems Earth, the Sun and planets in our Solar System will survive the crash but take on new coordinates in the cosmos."            But observations of Andromeda and our own galaxy are continuous, and as we get better information we can get a better impression of when this collision will take place, if it will happen at all.In a new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, one team looked at the latest and most accurate observations conducted by the Gaia and Hubble space telescopes, as well as more recent assessments of the mass of the galaxies within the Local Group. The team attempted to identify the areas of uncertainty in the evolution of the Local Group of galaxies and how it will evolve over the next 10 billion years."Predicting future mergers requires knowledge about the present coordinates, velocities, and masses of the systems partaking in the interaction," the team explained in their paper. "In addition to the gravitational force between galaxies, dynamical friction is the dominant process in the lead-up to galactic mergers. It describes a transfer of orbital kinetic energy to internal energy of the objects involved, and consequently leads to the decay of galactic orbits."Though these forces all play a part in the final stages of a merger, gravity is what plays the largest role in determining whether galaxies collide. The team looked for areas of uncertainty which could affect the evolution of the group, finding that uncertainty around Andromeda (M31) and Messier 33 significantly alter the chance of a merger between Andromeda and the Milky Way."While including M33 increases the merger probability, the orbit of the Large Magellanic Cloud runs perpendicular to the Milky Way-Andromeda orbit and makes their merger less likely," the team explained. "In the full system, we find that uncertainties in the present positions, motions, and masses of all galaxies leave room for drastically different outcomes, and a probability of close to 50 percent that there is no Milky Way-Andromeda merger during the next 10 billion years."The team are, of course, cautious about their findings, and say that more observations are needed to determine whether Andromeda will collide with our galaxy. But "as it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our Galaxy appear greatly exaggerated."The study is posted to preprint server arXiv.

Renowned futurologist Ray Kurzweil suggests that the merging of artificial and human intelligence is inevitable, potentially leading to a significant increase in human life expectancy. The concept of singularity, which refers to the fusion of human intelligence and AI, is borrowed from the world of quantum physics. Futurologists have long debated when this technological singularity will occur, a moment that could propel humanity to a new level of development and possibly extend our lifespans. American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil has consistently argued that this singularity is likely to happen by the middle of the 21st century. With the rapid advancement of AI, his predictions are becoming increasingly plausible, as noted by Popular Mechanics. In July of this year, Kurzweil released his latest book, The Singularity Is Nearer, a sequel to his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near. In this new work, Kurzweil asserts that human intelligence will be amplified a million times through the use of nanobots implanted in our brains. While many predictions by futurologists have not come true, others have materialized. Regardless, such forecasts broaden our understanding of what the future might hold. Kurzweil has long maintained that humanity is on the path to a technological singularity, where humans and machines will merge. Twenty-five years ago, he predicted that by 2029, AI would be capable of performing a trillion calculations per second. This idea was initially met with skepticism, with some scientists suggesting such advancements were at least a century away. However, recent breakthroughs in AI indicate that Kurzweil’s theory might become a reality much sooner than expected. In his new book, Kurzweil not only reaffirms his earlier predictions about AI’s development but also posits that by 2045, humans will be able to enhance their intelligence a millionfold through nanobots implanted in their brains. He envisions a future where natural and cybernetic intelligence work in harmony as a single entity. Previously, Kurzweil suggested that reaching singularity would grant humans superintelligence, enabling the creation of revolutionary technologies and transforming people into biomechanical beings. Some scientists, like Marcus du Sautoy from the University of Oxford, agree that the merging of humans and AI is inevitable and has already begun. Du Sautoy believes that humanity is moving toward a hybrid future where AI and human intelligence can coexist and complement each other. However, this hybrid existence raises numerous challenges and questions. How will it affect human behavior? Could it lead to immortality? And how might it redefine what it means to be human? Kurzweil is optimistic that AI will bring about unprecedented advances in medicine, making the concept of immortality a plausible reality. He predicts that by the early 2030s, technologies will emerge that could gradually extend human life expectancy. However, he cautions that this does not guarantee humanity will achieve eternal life. The post Path to Eternal Life: Scientist Believes Humans Will Reach Singularity in 21 Years appeared first on Anomalien.com.