Using LifeChain™ to Advance Science, Protect Humanity & Search for Life
At YawLife, we aim to support new and exciting developments in technology. We look at society and the ever-increasing pace of evolution it has achieved over the past years and decades, and we cannot help but be astounded with our rate of progress. With such exponential advancement, our present has increasingly become riddled with a living incarnation of a science fiction future. Be it cellphones (which were first envisioned in Star Trek) or technological uncharted territory, the impossible becomes a metric that’s often loosely defined. It is thus that we endeavor to bring before our very eyes these nuances to the definition of the impossible. For as we mentioned in the grand vision of our whitepaper:
In order to advance, we must aim for the actual circumstance of the impossible… preparing for its arrival, rather than pretending that it will not come to pass.
To redefine what is possible, YawLife will reward users in LifeCoin for voluntarily contributing their computing power towards a worldwide, distributed supercomputer. This is done through the LifeChain, and we dub this mining process “foraging for LifeCoin.” By leveraging the combined resources of the technology we all hold, we can advance faster as a species — be this using a computer, phone, or other IOT enabled device to further science and make discoveries. A phone itself is more powerful than what got us to the moon, yet sits in each of our pockets and gets used to look at cats. We think there ought to be a change of resource utilization. As such, there are many intriguing, relevant scientific prospects we would like to support with the LifeChain. This includes SETI@Home by UC Berkley, protein folding and beyond.
In the spirit of giving this Holiday season, YawLife will support various nonprofits, charities and scientific initiatives by donating 100 million LifeCoin, beginning at the end of our crowdsale (and staggered to prevent over-inflation). We have selected 3 visionary nonprofits and charities set to have transformative effects upon humanity and society, and decided to award them 10 million LifeCoin each. After we explain our motives behind each one, we invite you to participate in suggesting your own nonprofits, charities and scientific initiatives for LifeCoin to support. The philanthropic and scientific prospects brought about by supporting these organizations can profoundly impact the future of human life in a positive way. As such, we want to be smart with who we choose to support from the inception of this initiative.
The first 3 philanthropic pillars of LifeCoin are The SENS Research Foundation, The SETI Institute, and The Lifeboat Foundation
From these humble beginnings, a monumental future awaits. A future where YawLife’s worldwide, distributed supercomputer can aid organisations such as these in their quest to further humanity in new and exciting ways, and lay the groundwork for a better future for all of us. In this article, we also discuss the potential use cases of this distributed supercomputer in various analytical processes that elevate our understanding of what it means to be human… To understand where we come from in the universe, and how we fit into the grand scheme of life. In pushing to reach these new understandings, it is our hope that we can unite humanity and stave divisiveness in society, so that we may strive towards working together as a multifaceted, singular species enlivened by our shared and fulfilled potential.
Without further ado, I would like to start out with the mission statements of our 3 philanthropic pillars, followed by our reasoning for choosing them, and how foraging for LifeCoin will contribute computational power towards scientific advancement in relevant areas.
“SENS Research Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity that is transforming the way the world researches and treats age-related disease.”
Why SENS?
Age-related illnesses are a leading cause of life debilitation. Ranging from neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, to various types of cancers, aging is a common denominator in their prevalence. SENS endeavors to “reimagine aging™,” by curing age-related illnesses and reversing aging. As such, we want to support new developments in this area to improve quality and length of life.
How can YawLife help beyond donating 10 million LifeCoin?
YawLife will use the LifeChain as a worldwide, distributed supercomputer to find better ways to diagnose, treat and cure health conditions, and work towards reversing aging. One focus would be on identified biological instigators of aging, cancer and neurodegeneration and work towards preventing somatic mutation (which contributes towards aging and related illnesses). Just as IBM’s Watson has been deployed in hospitals, it is foreseeable that the LifeChain could one day be even more effective (and/or potentially work alongside IBM Watson) by leveraging more computer power and improved machine learning algorithms.
“The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.”
Why SETI?
We believe that advancements in astronomy help humanity to recognize our world as a singular organism. From space, borders are invisible. This helps us to realize both our significance, and insignificance — two sides of the same coin that ultimately render our existence more powerful as a singular species, rather than one divided. We believe that peace and prosperity poses profound possibilities for the advancement of science and the future of humanity. And that this peace and prosperity is enhanced by the awe-inspiring discoveries related to our Earth as a whole, and its place in the cosmos.
As impassioned by Carl Sagan as he spoke of our farthest stellar object:
“The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.
It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos — but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.
So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.
Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
How can YawLife help the cause beyond donating 10 million LifeCoin?
To this end, we aim to help learn more about the universe by analyzing data from radio telescopes and other scientific instruments. One such impressive instrument used by NASA to make exciting discoveries is The Kepler Space Telescope. By looking at a period of sky for an extended period of time and measuring the dimming of light, scientists have begun to determine when stellar bodies pass in front of their host star. There have already been discoveries of Earth-like “exoplanets,” with details about their orbit distance, length of its day/year, and certain planetary details.
We want to explore data analysis methods in the convergence of numerous instruments. In looking at different waves on the electromagnetic spectrum, visual data from telescopes, and other scientific instrument data, we hope to learn more about our place in the universe. This partially includes integrating SETI@Home by UC Berkley into our worldwide, distributed supercomputer — to help examine stars, fast radio bursts, and beyond.
The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.
Why Lifeboat Foundation?
We believe it’s important that as society moves forward, that it does so without forsaking ethics. Keeping those advancing technology accountable, we can work to prevent certain technologies from getting into the wrong hands, and to incite responsible progress. A great example of this listed by Lifeboat is, “we are against the U.S. government posting the recipe for the 1918 flu virus on the internet.”
As put so eloquently by Nick Bostrom,
“Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach — see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience — is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.”
How can YawLife help the cause beyond donating 10 million LifeCoin?
Once developed, we will use our worldwide, distributed supercomputer to run simulations and promote scientific advancements. This can be geared towards aiding in preventative measures against extinction-level events. Be it in the form of deflecting large asteroids from colliding with Earth, or otherwise, we seek to do what we can to protect humanity and foster a future where we become a multi-planetary species.
It is important to note that while certain prospects discussed can seem science fiction in nature, the theoretical (and proven) understandings behind many of them are already in place, and their future inception is closer than one might think. Just as in life itself, it’s good to apply the following mentality to them:
The “impossible” is a pliable metric attainable through passion, perserverance and a willingness to overcome obstacles in your path.
We have grand ambitions to work with institutions such as universities, non-profit organisations, companies and government to help them analyze data more efficiently by securely using the LifeChain to make new discoveries. We are directly looking to support scientific advancements which will propel humanity forward into a new age. Whether that relates directly to safeguarding society from existential threats through the Lifeboat Foundation, helping to search for life in the universe through SETI, or find cures to age-related illnesses/reverse aging through the SENS Institute, the possibilities are endless. We aim to transform the way the internet works, to have more people participate in furthering humanity and society because of an incentive to do so. We believe that in providing this incentive, that the advancements we facilitate (and make ourselves) will breathe new life into the world around [and within] us.
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*Nonprofits/Charities YawLife and our community chooses to support with LifeCoin/LifeChain does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of YawLife by the respective organization(s). It is important to note that this article is not intended to communicate technicalities of how we will build a worldwide, distributed supercomputer, but rather the vision for what it can achieve, and our end goals.*
