Geneticist Dean Hamer has suggested that a particular allele of the VMAT2 gene correlates with spirituality using data from a smoking survey, which included questions intended to measure "self-transcendence". Hamer performed the spirituality study on the side, independently of the National Cancer Institute smoking study. His findings were published in the mass-market book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hard-Wired Into Our Genes.[11][12] Hamer himself notes that VMAT2 plays at most a minor role in influencing spirituality.[13] Furthermore, Hamer's claim that the VMAT2 gene contributes to spirituality is controversial.[13] Hamer's study has not been published in a peer reviewed journal and a reanalysis of the correlation demonstrates that it is not statistically significant.[13][14]

The vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2) also known as solute carrier family 18 member 2 (SLC18A2) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SLC18A2 gene.[5] VMAT2 is an integral membrane protein that transports monoamines particularly neurotransmitters such as dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and histamine from cellular cytosol into synaptic vesicles.[6] In nigrostriatal pathway and mesolimbic pathway dopamine-releasing neurons, VMAT2 function is also necessary for the vesicular release of the neurotransmitter GABA.[7]

Dr. Dean Hamer from the National Cancer Institute published a book in 2005 titled, "The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes." In this book he identifies a specific gene named VMAT2 as predisposing humans to spiritual/mystical beliefs and experiences.
The Wiki summary of the "God" gene rationale is as follows:
"The God gene hypothesis is based on a combination of behavioral genetic, neurobiological and psychological studies. The major arguments of the hypothesis are: (1) spirituality can be quantified by psychometric measurements; (2) the underlying tendency to spirituality is partially heritable; (3) part of this heritability can be attributed to the gene VMAT2; (4) this gene acts by altering monoamine levels; and (5) spiritual individuals are favored by natural selection because they are provided with an innate sense of optimism, the latter producing positive effects at either a physical or psychological level."

Generating controversy, some began to propose that this powerful psychedelic drug could be produced by the human body (and indeed the brain) in sufficient quantities to enable a natural psychedelic experience. The conjecture that we could produce enough of our own, endogenous DMT to induce altered states of consciousness without ingesting any chemical compound generated enthusiasm, and these unproven claims departed the clinic to lead independent lives in popular culture at large.

Speculation on the psychedelic efficacy of the pineal has reawakened interest in the organ. People have championed the capacity of the pineal to arouse previously dormant powers of perception, especially those associated with vision: clairvoyance, seeing auras, and being awakened to information from other dimensions. Appealing to spiritual practitioners, parapsychologists and filmmakers alike, the readouts from Strassman's study impressed those eager for neurochemical explanations of extrasensory abilities and extraordinary states of consciousness.

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N,N-DMT) is a tryptamine molecule which occurs in many plants and animals.[3] It can be consumed as a powerful psychedelic drug and has historically been prepared by various cultures for ritual and healing purposes.[4] Rick Strassman labeled it "the spirit molecule".[5] In most countries, DMT is illegal.
DMT has a relatively short duration of action, intense effects and rapid onset. For that reason, DMT was known as the "businessman's trip" during the 1960s in the United States, as a user could access the full depth of a psychedelic experience in considerably less time than with other substances such as LSD or magic mushrooms.[6] DMT can be inhaled, injected, or orally ingested, and its effects depend on the dose. When inhaled or injected, the effects last a short period of time: about 5 to 15 minutes. Effects can last 3 hours or more when orally ingested along with an MAOI, such as the ayahuasca vine in the traditional ayahuasca brew of many native Amazonian tribes.[7] DMT can produce vivid mystical experiences involving euphoria and dynamic hallucinations of geometric forms, higher intelligences, extraterrestrials, elves, and God.[8]

Which brings us to the question – can morality be engineered in AGI system through design and code? Can moral rules be programmed into AGI systems? According to Goertzel, “AGI is a highly complex, highly dynamic self-organizing system”. Subsequently, this program can even end up deleting the moral rules one programmed in, or it may reinterpret the terms.

Experts predict that a technological singularity caused by an AGI may lead to existential risks as well as risks of substantial suffering for the human race. Some clusters of problems appear in multiple research agendas and can be used as design guides for development of AGI:

Value specification: How do we get an AGI to work towards the right goals?

Reliability: How can we make an agent that keeps pursuing the goals we have designed it with?

Corrigibility: If we get something wrong in the design or construction of an agent, will the agent cooperate in us trying to fix it?

Security: How to design AGIs that are robust to adversaries and adversarial environments?

Safe learning: AGIs should avoid making fatal mistakes during the learning phase.

Intelligibility: How can we build agent’s whose decisions we can understand?

Societal consequences: AGI will have substantial legal, economic, political, and military consequences. How should we manage the societal consequences?

The human-machine mind meld is just around the corner if you believe the buzz coming out of Silicon Valley these days. But neuroethicists worry the technology poses a threat to the last bastion of privacy, our innermost thoughts, and have suggested tweaks to our fundamental human rights to protect that privacy.

“While the body can easily be subject to domination and control by others, our mind, along with our thoughts, beliefs and convictions, are to a large extent beyond external constraint,” they write. “Yet, with advances in neural engineering, brain imaging and pervasive neurotechnology, the mind might no longer be such an unassailable fortress.”

1. The Right to Cognitive Liberty

The first proposed new right is the right to “Cognitive Liberty,” which states that people have the right to use emerging neurotechnology to modify their mental activity. But it also protects the right to refuse to use it in situations such as an employer requiring workers to take advantage of devices that would improve their performance.

2. The Right to Mental Privacy

Second on the list is the right to “Mental Privacy,” which would protect people from third parties accessing data about their mental activity collected by a neurotechnology device without their consent.

The impulse for this protection is obvious; tech giants are already hoovering up huge amounts of our behavioral data in their efforts to divine our innermost desires and sell us stuff. Brain data could let them bypass this guesswork and precisely tailor our online experiences in pursuit of their goals.

The authors debate whether this right should be absolute or relative, though. In certain situations, allowing the state to access the thoughts of criminals and terrorists could have obvious benefits for society. But the researchers suggest this could erode the already well-established right not to incriminate oneself, which is widely recognized across the democratic world and enshrined in the Fifth Amendment.

3. The Right to Mental Integrity

The last two rights are intertwined and deal with the emerging ability to not just record mental activity, but directly influence it. The right to “Mental Integrity” effectively protects against people hacking brain implants to hijack or interfere with their mental processes or erase memories.

4. The Right to Psychological Continuity

The right to “Psychological Continuity” deals with the vaguer notion of attempts to alter someone’s personality or identity, either through similar brain hacking approaches or more subtle ones like neuromarketing, which can involve companies using insights from neuroscience to try and alter unconscious behavior and attitudes in consumers.

The Moral Landscape
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
Author Sam Harris
Published 2010 (Free Press)

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is a book by Sam Harris published in 2010. In it, he promotes a science of morality and argues that many thinkers have long confused the relationship between morality, facts, and science. He aims to carve a third path between secularists who say morality is subjective (e.g. moral relativists), and religionists who say that morality is given by God and scripture. Harris contends that the only moral framework worth talking about is one where "morally good" things pertain to increases in the "well-being of conscious creatures".

Harris contends that the only moral framework worth talking about is one where "morally good" things pertain to increases in the "well-being of conscious creatures".

We also know that all cells and biological organisms interact with and respond to the physical world around them including the physically detectable properties of light, magnetism, gravity, barometric pressure, and the like. It is now known that biological organisms also interact with the quantum entanglement found ubiquitously about them. Not only do organisms interact with quantum entanglement, but this relationship is a basic building block of living material in a Darwinian sense. This is evidenced by some of the latest scientific work on how birds use quantum entanglement to follow the earth’s magnetic waves when they migrate. At the heart of the matter we have an example of a form of evolutionary adaptation to entanglement.

We humans are no exception to these biological adaptations of our species to entanglement. Coming from the same primordial cauldron of cells, we too have evolved in response to the quantum entanglement around us as a means of survival. That is to say, we have adapted our species to quantum entanglement in such a way where the most fit survived to pass on our genetic material to our offspring; this fitness came about because of this long standing relationship between our cells and quantum entanglement. This confers to us and our offspring a survivability edge within our niche.

Earlier this year, for example, researchers showed the process of photosynthesis—whereby organisms make food using light—may involve some quantum effects. How birds navigate or how we smell also suggest quantum effects may take place in unusual ways within living things. But these only dip a toe into the quantum world. So far, no one has ever managed to coax an entire living organism—not even a single-celled bacterium—into displaying quantum effects such as entanglement or superposition.

So a new paper from a group at the University of Oxford is now raising some eyebrows for its claims of the successful entanglement of bacteria with photons—particles of light. Led by the quantum physicist Chiara Marletto and published in October in the Journal of Physics Communications, the study is an analysis of an experiment conducted in 2016 by David Coles from the University of Sheffield and his colleagues. In that experiment Coles and company sequestered several hundred photosynthetic green sulfur bacteria between two mirrors, progressively shrinking the gap between the mirrors down to a few hundred nanometers—less than the width of a human hair. By bouncing white light between the mirrors, the researchers hoped to cause the photosynthetic molecules within the bacteria to couple—or interact—with the cavity, essentially meaning the bacteria would continuously absorb, emit and reabsorb the bouncing photons. The experiment was successful; up to six bacteria did appear to couple in this manner.

Marletto and her colleagues argue the bacteria did more than just couple with the cavity, though. In their analysis they demonstrate the energy signature produced in the experiment could be consistent with the bacteria’s photosynthetic systems becoming entangled with the light inside the cavity. In essence, it appears certain photons were simultaneously hitting and missing photosynthetic molecules within the bacteria—a hallmark of entanglement. “Our models show that this phenomenon being recorded is a signature of entanglement between light and certain degrees of freedom inside the bacteria,” she says.

According to study co-author Tristan Farrow, also of Oxford, this is the first time such an effect has been glimpsed in a living organism. “It certainly is key to demonstrating that we are some way toward the idea of a ‘Schrödinger’s bacterium,’ if you will,” he says. And it hints at another potential instance of naturally emerging quantum biology: Green sulfur bacteria reside in the deep ocean where the scarcity of life-giving light might even spur quantum-mechanical evolutionary adaptations to boost photosynthesis.

There are many caveats to such controversial claims, however. First and foremost, the evidence for entanglement in this experiment is circumstantial, dependent on how one chooses to interpret the light trickling through and out of the cavity-confined bacteria. Marletto and her colleagues acknowledge a classical model free of quantum effects could also account for the experiment’s results. But, of course, photons are not classical at all—they are quantum. And yet a more realistic “semiclassical” model using Newton’s laws for the bacteria and quantum ones for photons fails to reproduce the actual outcome Coles and his colleagues observed in their laboratory. This hints that quantum effects were at play in both the light and the bacteria. “It’s a little bit indirect, but I think it’s because they’re only trying to be so rigorous in ruling out things and claiming anything too much,” says James Wootton, a quantum computing researcher at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory who was not involved in either paper.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and Republican claims about health care.

But G.O.P. health care claims are special, in several ways. First, they're outright, clearly intentional lies, not dubious assertions or misstatements that could be attributed to ignorance or misunderstanding. Second, they're repetitive: Rather than making a wide variety of false claims, Republicans keep telling the same few lies, over and over. Third, they keep doing this even though the public long ago stopped believing anything they say on the subject.

when Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, went on TV Sunday to declare that every single plan Trump has put forward covered pre-existing conditions, that was just a lie.

Here'ss what the Congressional Budget Office said in its assessment of the Republican's American Health Care Act, which would have caused 23 million to lose coverage, and would have passed if John McCain hadn't voted No. People who are less healthy (including those with pre-existing or newly acquired medical conditions) would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all.

But Mulvaney's pre-existing conditions lie, along with his lie about nobody losing coverage if the lawsuit against Obamacare succeeds, was normal by G.O.P. standards. Which brings me to the second reason this particular form of lying is exceptional: Republicans just keep telling the same lies, over and over. Again and again they have promised to maintain coverage and protect pre-existing conditions then offered plans that would cause tens of millions to lose health insurance, with the worst impact on those already suffering from health problems.

"Basket of deplorables" is a phrase from a 2016 presidential election campaign speech delivered by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on September 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event, which Clinton used to describe half of the supporters of her general election opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump. Clinton later said that she "regrets saying half [of Trump's supporters]", and the Trump campaign repeatedly used the phrase against her during and after the 2016 presidential election.

From Newsweek
Liberals Don't Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers, Study Finds
By Chantal Da Silva On 2/6/18 http://www.newsweek.com/liberals-dont-s ... nds-800219

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed.

Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into the sources of "junk news" shared in the three months leading up to President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address last month.

On Facebook, they found that "extreme hard-right" conservatives shared more fake news stories than all other political groups combined, while on Twitter, Trump supporters consumed the most fake news.

The number of people without health insurance rose by 1.9 million people from 2017 to 2018 despite strong economic performance, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The total number of uninsured was 27.5 million, or 8.5% of the population, a 0.5 percentage point increase from 2017. The change was driven by a decline in government coverage of 0.4 percentage points and by a decline in insurance coverage among Hispanics.

The overall rise in the uninsured is the first increase recorded by the Bureau since the one that occurred from 2008 to 2009, and the first decline since Obamacare started expanding coverage in 2014. According to the agency's presentation, the change in the uninsured can be attributed to economic trends, changes in demographics, and changes in health policy that affect access to care.

Democrats are laying the blame Trump, long accusing his administration of deliberately undermining Obama's health care law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday blamed Trump's "cruel health care sabotage" for the rising number of uninsured people. In a statement, the California Democrat said Trump's ongoing efforts to erode Obama's health law have forced Americans to "live in constant fear of an accident or injury that could spell financial ruin for their families."

Trump spent most of his first year in office unsuccessfully trying to get a Republican Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He is now asking a federal appeals court to overturn it as unconstitutional. The president also slashed the program's sign-up season ad budget and scaled back funding to help people navigate the enrollment process. Trump also removed a subsidy for insurers, thereby triggering a jump in premiums.

However, within the context of the relationship between humans and quantum entanglement, there are physical phenomena that have the ability to not only minimize our entangled evolutionary relationship with the world around us, but to disconnect it all together.

Pain is one such phenomena and its occurrence is quite effective at minimizing the entangled relationship, or at least our awareness of this relationship. The pain can be either physical or psychological pain. Under either circumstance, the human organism’s capability to perceive and be self aware of the entangled relationship, either consciously or unconsciously, becomes diminished. The process of prayer and meditation on the other hand seems to enhance and strengthen the entangled relationship. But ask any individual what their mental state is like if they have a bad toothache and its associated pain while sitting in meditation. Most will answer they begin to focus on the pain rather than their meditational clarity of mind. This is a diminution of the awareness of the entangled phenomena.

Finally, at the extreme end of the spectrum is the taking of a human life; the inevitable result is a lack of neuronal functioning capable of interacting with and perceiving the quantum connectedness about us. This ends the brain’s capability to process and be self aware of the entangled relationship. This form of separation from our connectedness to the universe is deemed to be extremely immoral.

The story is in the data: The biggest and most definitive study of what happens to death rates when Medicaid coverage is expanded, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that for every 455 people who gained coverage across several states, one life was saved per year