This article is the latest in a series exploring the conversation about the inclusion of transgender athletes in womens sports. You can find the series here.

I race a lot of bikes and I suck.

Tara Seplavy is very matter-of-fact about it. No sugar-coating, no thoughts of Olympic grandeur. Having raced bikes for many years, shes been around the sport long enough to know exactly where she stands, and its generally not on a medal podium.

Its not that she hasnt tried to break out in the sport. Since transitioning genders shes found renewed dedication to fitness, competition and the community that surrounds bike racing.

I had a coach for the last couple of years, and we tried really hard, Seplavy said from her home on Long Island. I bust my ass. Im training many hours a week, I try to eat reasonably well and do the things athletes do. Ive just never been a super gifted athlete in my life.

I hit the podium in local masters races sometimes if the weather condition is right and nobody else shows up.

Things were much the same when she was racing against men. She started her medical transition a little over three years ago, and she transitioned to womens competitions shortly after. Despite reading headlines and quotes from some professional athletes about her unfair advantage in sports, Seplavy is like the vast majority of trans women in womens sports: good enough to compete, but often just not fast enough or strong enough to win.

I hit the podium in local masters races sometimes if the weather condition is right and nobody else shows up.

Like so many other trans women in womens sports, Seplavy has been frustrated by the growing chorus of detractors who claim her very presence in womens sports puts the future existence of womens sports at risk. While some trans women are finding competitive success in sports, she knows she will never be the dominant trans female athlete held up by a few loud voices as the harbinger of doom for womens sports.

Part of Seplavys frustration is the first-hand knowledge she has of the rapid decline in performance trans women experience as they transition. She can quantify to some extent the change in her personal performance since transitioning. While competing against men years before her transition, she raced a local course in 2 hours, 20 minutes. Post-transition the same course took her 2:29, over a 6% drop.

Yet the gap would be greater if she were able to compare apples to apples. Racing in her pre-transition 20s and 30, Seplavy gave little care for her body, weighing around 40 pounds more then than she does now. She was, of course, also a decade-plus younger. If she had trained as hard then as she does now, that 2:20 would have been considerably lower, she asserts.

In addition, Seplavy said post-transition training is that much more difficult.

A lot of people dont realize how hard it is to athletically train when youre on hormones, she said. As my coach said, Im anti-doping. Im putting chemicals in my body that actually detract from athletic performance.

With all that, of the 100 or so womens bike races shes entered in the last three years, she cant even remember the last time I legitimately won a bike race. She said depending on who shows up for a race she may land on a podium (top-three) in an age category.

I went from being a mediocre dude on a bike to being a mediocre woman on a bike. Its not like I just changed my gender and my times stayed the same. I have to work that much harder for marginal gain.

In Buffalo, distance runner Allayva Stier has had a similar experience.

I only win when other people dont show up, Stier said.

Like Seplavy, she reports on a more difficult path to reaching what is an even slower time than her pre-transition performance. Pre-transition she was running only two or three times a week, and now shes training five times a week.

Its harder for me to drop a 7-minute mile than it was beforehand.

Im putting in significantly more work than I was putting in beforehand, she said. To maintain your fitness after you transition, you have to work more diligently. You have to be more purposeful. Before I could go in and run and lift and work out a couple times a week. That doesnt cut it anymore. I cant maintain my fitness if I dont put in the work consistently. Its harder for me to drop a 7-minute mile than it was beforehand.

This year shes run about 35 races and won two of them. Those two victories, she said, came because other people simply decided to not race. Winning a race is, of course, ultimately relative.

Of my group of running friends Im literally the slowest. If any one of them would have shown up, I wouldnt have won.

This isnt to say shes not naturally talented. At her high school she was one of the fastest in the boys races, winning some middle-distance dual meets and earning a spot at state sectionals. As she continued running through her transition competing against men and then women she saw first-hand the rapid decrease in her speed.

My competitiveness against the men was slowly going away. I was seeing my times drop. Nobody sees that process.

That level of competitiveness against the men pre-transition has matched up pretty evenly with her post-transition competitiveness against other women. Racing against men, she would earn a second or third in her age bracket in local races, with an overall top-10 finish here and there, despite not working nearly as hard as she does now.

Playing soccer throughout her transition, goalie Athena Del Rosario also saw first-hand the immediate impact transitioning had on her game.

As she began to self-medicate with estrogen and androgen blockers as a teenager, she transferred high schools to get a fresh start on life. When she tried out for her new schools soccer team, she quickly noticed her strength and speed had already diminished. One of the fastest kids on her boys soccer team at her first school, by the end of her senior year at her new school she was one of the slowest.

When she competed against her old high school team later that season, she said her former teammates who didnt know she was transitioning and on hormones noticed her decline in ability and asked her what was going on.

I noticed it the first day reporting to my new school, Del Rosario said. It was pretty obvious.

I didnt just walk in there and have it handed to me. I had to earn it.

By the time she transferred from her community college to UC-Santa Cruz several years later, she had to battle for playing time. She was out of shape, having gained 30 pounds after the death of her mother. She sat on the bench for much of her first season at UCSC, getting a shot when an injury befell the teams starting goalkeeper.

I had to put a lot of work in between seasons, and what set me apart from the other goalkeeper was that I got into better shape and I worked harder. I didnt just walk in there and have it handed to me. I had to earn it.

Still with all the hard work, Del Rosario still struggled at times to pass the teams fitness test. Her speed and strength had dropped to lower than a lot of the other women.

I was passing fitness tests, but I wasnt the fastest. And I was in shape. But we had girls running six-and-a-half-minute miles, and I was around seven minutes, barely passing the mile test.

With Del Rosario as a full-time starter her senior season, the Banana Slugs compiled a record of 6-11-1, earning a spot in the NCAA tournament where they lost in the first round.

She was good. She was competitive. But her unfair advantage claimed by some was a figment of critics imagination.

Since graduating, she has taken her goalkeeping skills to handball. There shes found shes again competitive, and again in the mix for some playing time, but shes still not a physically intimidating figure dominating other women.

Out of the pool of goalkeepers for my team, Im not the strongest. Im not the tallest. Its all very competitive and were having a goalkeeper competition thats very competitive.

Jessica Platt is just looking for another shot at some ice time.

Having played a couple seasons in the now-defunct Canadian Womens Hockey League, Platt considers herself a middle-of-the-pack player, maybe on the lower end of that.

The women I play against are incredible and they work equally hard. Im fairly average in the league.

Now with the league having folded and playing exhibition games for the Professional Womens Hockey Players Association, as well as getting some ice time with a Senior A team, shes hoping someone gives her another chance in womens pro hockey.

As hard as I work out and as much as I train and as much as I try, the women I play against are incredible and they work equally hard. Im fairly average in the league.

Her self-described average standing among the other women in professional hockey isnt for lack of effort. Since transitioning she too has dramatically increased how hard she works off the ice, saying she was probably up there in the amount of time working out in the league.

Platt, now 30, also doesnt suffer from lack of experience. Shes been ice skating since she was 3 and playing ice hockey starting with the kids in the neighborhood since she was 4. From age 8 or so she was part of a boys traveling hockey team until she was in her late teens.

Even with the hockey success she was desperately unhappy, burdened with her true identity. By the time she began her transition in 2012 she had left hockey behind completely.

Yet once happiness found her well into her gender-affirming transition, Platt started looking back at her time in hockey with a blissful recollection that left her wanting more.

Just as a teenage Platt was successful in boys hockey, she has found a place in womens professional hockey because of her natural instincts in the rink.

My dad always said I somehow just knew where everyone was on the ice. I had a great hockey sense.

Today she focuses on improving the things that are holding her back from being considered one of the best in her sport. For starters, she hasnt been playing womens hockey for very long and the systems are different. Theres a learning curve to that, and shes behind the puck on it compared to other women in pro hockey.

Plus, she said her puck control isnt the best. Given that shes always been a defenseman and now shes playing forward, thats gotten in the way a bit too.

In other words, shes experiencing the same struggles as any other athlete would, finding the same modicum of elite-level success as a woman that she found in boys hockey.

If youre mediocre as a man, it makes sense that youd be mediocre as a woman, Platt said. If youre dominating as a man, it makes sense that you would dominate as a woman.

While critics point to a handful who have won titles of late, no trans athlete is currently dominating womens sports. To be sure, some trans women have found various levels of success. Yet the majority find themselves like these four athletes hitting the gym and running laps in hopes of setting a P.R. or simply making a teams roster.

Were just like all the other athletes, Platt said. Some of us have certain skills, certain talents. But we all work hard to get where were at.

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Meet trans athletes who work hard, do their best and rarely win - Outsports

Derek Carr's performance in Raiders' loss to Chiefs bad in any weather

KANSAS CITY, Mo. Derek Carr heard all week about how bad he plays in cold weather, how Arrowhead Stadium is his personal house of horrors.

The Raiders quarterback had another terrible day in a 40-9 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs that spoon-fed that narrative and proved detractors right, but he vehemently stated that the elements played no part in his lackluster performance.

I think we handled it just fine, Carr said. It was not a factor, because I do not want to take anything away from the plays that they made. If it was 80 degrees or 30 degrees, it does not matter.

Carr cant escape the fact that hes 0-6 at Arrowhead Stadium and 0-5 in games played at 40 degrees or less.

Sundays weather in Kansas City was frightful. It was 36 degrees at kickoff with awind chill of 25 degrees, and snow flurries descended as the game wore on.

I think everyone struggles to a degree in cold weather. Thats is why a lot of people move south, Gruden said. I have to do a better job of helping him. I think it starts with me and ends there. He is a good quarterback. I think he has a chance to be great. It just wasnt his day and it wasnt our day.

Carr finished 20-of-30 passing for 222 yards, a touchdown, two interceptions and a 71.8 passer rating. Those numbers were inflated by a garbage time touchdown drive that accounted for 70 yards and a score.

The Raiders passing game was awful most of the night, and severely hurt the Raiders ability to finish drives despite Josh Jacobs going strong in the first half.

Carr threw two interceptions in the first half that led to Chiefs touchdowns. Tyrann Mathieu broke off his responsibility to make the first pick, baiting Carr to make a throw. Safety Juan Thornhill jumped Tyrell Williams route on the second interception and returned it 46 yards for a touchdown.

Mathieu said those calculated risks came about after properly identifying when Carr would try to work the ball down the field.

When he did take shots down the field, we were able to understand it pre-snap by the formation and it would put us in position to make a play, Mathieu said. Derek is going to try and take care of the football. Tight ends, running backs, check downs, thats kind of his game. I was glad we were able to capitalize on him when he did try to throw the ball down the field.

Easily read quarterback decisions mightbe a bigger issue than anything to do with the weather, and ultimately cost the Raiders dearly. The Mathieu interception was a tough break, but the Thornhill pick six was the games true turning point.

[The interceptions are] very frustrating, Carr said. You cant turn the ball over, and youve got to credit their defense. I pride myself on taking care of the football, but they made two great plays. We cant have that happen. Thats my fault.

This loss wasnt all Carrs fault, but the well-paid franchise quarterback will shoulder most of the blame after another nasty-looking loss. The Raiders were running well but the air attack was inept. Raiders receivers were a non-factor in this one, rarely creating separation against the Chiefs secondary. The Silver and Black played most of this game with just eight yards passing produced by a receiver, before more of them got involved on that meaningless touchdown drive. Williams was a non-factor, and Zay Jones didnt play a significant role. The Raiders certainly missed the injured Hunter Renfrow, a point made clear by the Raiders converting just 3-of-13 third downs.

[RELATED: Self-inflicted wounds cost Raiders]

While Carrs performance was bad in any condition, it continued a run of poor play in Kansas City. His 222 passing yards tied a career high in Kansas City. He has never had a passer rating above 77 in this place, where he has lost all six times he has played here.

Its easy to look as his interceptions, but it is a tough place to play, Gruden said. Its a tough environment. Its cold and windy. They played good defense, and we were behind most of the game. All those things, with bad field position and a long way to go are tough on a quarterback.

ALAMEDA --Trayvon Mullen logged his second professional interception. The Raiders rookie cornerback caught a ball straight from Patrick Mahomes, in the end zone.

Pick. Touchback. Possession claimed. Officials on the field confirmed it.

All turnovers and scoring plays, as we know well by now, are reviewed by eyes in the sky.

Those watching saw Mullen commit pass interference. It doesnt matter that wasnt called on the field, or that PI judgments are rarely overturned upon review, even after a specific coachs challenge.

Mullen got flagged by 345 Park Ave. Believe it or not, true freaking story.

We had an interception we thought we did intercept that was turned over by the Wizard of Oz or somebody, Raiders head coach Jon Gruden said after a 40-9 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs I dont know what happened on that. That was a big play in the game no doubt.

The Chiefs took possession at three yards from paydirt and scored on the next play. That play didnt cost Mullens Raiders a game. The result had been decided long before. While a call went against him, the second-round draft pick didnt let the outcome erase the athletic play originally made.

My goal is to make those types of plays. I didnt let the call get to me, Mullen said after the game. I believe Im a great player continuing to get better. Im going to keep being aggressive and working to make big plays.

Thats the right attitude for a young player developing on the job, someone tasked to both help his team win now while individually developing for a better future. That two-pronged attack has been asked from all contributing Raiders rookies.

Mullen ranks among them, given a starting job after Gareon Conley was traded to Houston near midseason. The Silver and Black need him to play well and progress, understanding full well that athletic plays and mistakes will be made.

In Mullens case, late in the fourth quarter, both happened on the same play.

I can live with that call, because I know that Im going to continue making plays and continue to get better, Mullen said. When plays present themselves, Im going to work hard trying to make them.

What was Mullen thinking after that review went against him?

That Im going to have to go back on the field, Mullen said, And make another big play.

The Raiders are seeing good things from their confident young cornerback, who is immensely talented but can be prone to aggressive mistakes that should tone become less prevalent with experience.

[RELATED: Should the Raiders move on from Derek Carr?]

The Clemson product was targeted nine times by the Chiefs --rookie initiations in full swing but gave up just three catches for 33 yards. He had two nice pass breakups, though the pass interference call will be held against his final line.

Hes getting better, Gruden said. He had some really good plays [Sunday]. He was obviously flagged a few times for penalties. One of them, I cant quite say where it came from, but it was a big reversal in the game. He made a couple great plays against a great receiver and I think hes getting confidence. I think hes getting better. I think he performed better and hes performing better and better each week.

USATSI

The Raiders offense has hit the skids. A unit that scored 24 points or more in six consecutive games has crossed the goal line just once since Nov. 17, a garbage-time touchdown that only mattered to those who bet the over.

The run game keeps marching along save a hiccup against the Jets, but the air attack has fallen on hard times.

Fingers will point straight at Derek Carr for recent offensive failings, but its never all on the quarterback. There were several times in that disastrous 40-9 loss to Kansas City where Carr was well protected, waiting for prospective targets to create separation.

Wide receivers had just eight yards through three quarters and just 34 on four catches and eight targets.

Tyrell Williams knows that isnt good enough, even if the conditions, early turnovers and the quickly lopsided score made life harder on the passing game.

They were trying to take me away. They were trying to take away [tight end Darren] Waller, making sure they had two guys on him, Williams said Monday in an interview with NBC Sports Bay Area. I saw a couple of double teams every once in a while. Hindsight is 20/20, but in the game, we felt like we had a good game plan. Were trying to continue to execute that game plan, but sometimes you get behind in the sticks and that takes us away from what were trying to do."

"We need to stay on schedule so we arent facing third-and-long situations, and we obviously have to avoid turnovers. Playing from behind, on the road, and in that environment is hard.

Head coach Jon Gruden took some blame for the overall lack of receiver production against the Chiefs. The position group has struggled this season after dealing with significant personnel turnover, Williams difficult bout of plantar fasciitis around midseason and Hunter Renfrows current rib injury. The overall talent level isnt soaring at this stage, but Gruden believes he can scheme targets open.

Well, Ive got to do a better job, Gruden said. Weve got to do a better job getting them better looks and getting them involved in the game no question, so I put that on myself. I think weve got good, young receivers. We might shake it up a little bit, give some other guys some more opportunities this week, but well study the Titans and see what goes.

Keelan Doss, Marcell Ateman and recent practice squad promotion Rico Gafford are 53-man roster options who havent been involved much. Zay Jones has and hasnt ever gotten in sync with Carr.

Williams scored touchdowns in his first five games as a Raider and has had a few nice moments in his return from injury, but has hit a production slump. He has three catches for 27 yards on eight targets over the last two weeks and was the intended target on two interceptions in that span, though neither pick should be blamed on him.

Williams is the teams best deep threat and has been targeted twice on passes 20-plus yards downfield in the last two games, and five times between 10-20 yards from the line of scrimmage in that span.

Williams obviously wants to be more productive than in recent weeks, especially with the offense struggling, but he isnt the type to yell or scream or demand the ball.

I never want to be that type of person, Williams said. Of course I want to get more targets. I want to be able to stretch the field a bit more and get that deep threat out there. I think that comes with talking and communicating with coaches and being on the same page with Derek throughout the week. That should allow us to focus and hit on those opportunities.

Theres also a danger of pressing to get out of slumps, whether its trying to do too much, stepping outside of ones responsibility or Carr forcing a throw. This offense has been steadily productive before and Williams believes it can be again. One key is not overthinking it.

You have to focus on each play as it comes and let the game come to you, Williams said. Im going to go out there and play hard and leave everything I have out there, but I dont like focusing on when targets are coming and when theyre not because that takes me out of my game. I have to just play and after the game evaluate and see what we did do and what we couldve done better.

[RELATED: Jacobs vows to get Raiders 'right' after loss]

Theres time to get rolling again. While losses to the Chiefs and Jets essentially snuffed their AFC West title hopes and largely erased margin for error, the Raiders can still land a playoff spot with a strong showing against the Titans and Jaguars at home and then on the road against the L.A. Chargers and Denver Broncos to close out the year.

The seasons long and theres still time to get back on track, Williams said. These two home games are obviously huge. Theyre against teams that are, like us, fighting for a playoff spot. The rest of the way for us, theyre all playoff games in a sense.

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Carr's performance vs. KC was bad regardless of weather - NBCSports.com

When it comes to using artificial intelligence in hiring, tread carefully. Hogan Assessments shares the secrets of how to avoid the AI trap.

BY TOM STARNER

Everyone, it seems, has a hard time staying away from shiny new toys these days. When it comes to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, the pull seems to be exceptionally strong.

Undeniably, those impressive tech tools are making serious progress in so many ways, including mastering complex games like chess and poker versus humans. Yet, as a couple of recent newsworthy cautionary tales demonstrate, AI and ML are far from a panacea. In fact, what buyers are promised and what they receive may not quite be in sync.

In the first case, a recent report in the New York Times focused on a well-funded Silicon Valley start-up, One Concern, that promised its AI-based platform could be used to pinpoint exactly where people in need of help could be located during disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes. On paper, it sounded great, and the company scored some serious investment dollars and new clients. Problem was, when users gave it a whirl, the results fell short. The Times reported that, when Seattles Office of Emergency Management checked out a simulated earthquake on One Concerns platform, troubling inconsistencies arose. For instance, many large buildings that would be vulnerable didnt appear on the AI-generated map. Not good when you are trying to save lives.

And, while the pre-employment assessment process certainly is no life or death scenario (depending on the job, that is), getting it wrong can, at a minimum, lead to higher attrition rates, lower productivity or other negative financial outcomes for employers looking to stay competitive.

Along those lines, the second example in the news, reported by the Washington Post, described a new service from a company called Predictimthat claimed to help people find the perfect babysitter. To do that, the services AI technology scans the would-be sitters entire social media profile (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram histories primarily), then uses recent advances in personality and data analytics to assess four personality featurespropensity toward bullying/harassment, disrespectfulness/bad attitude, explicit content and drug abusethat would weed out bad prospects. Unfortunately, that approach is limited when it comes to choosing the best person to care for your kids.

At face value, this type of service has merit, says Ryne Sherman,chief science officer at Hogan Assessment Systems in Tulsa, Okla. However, these services ignore a long history of research showing that people strongly respond to incentives and will modify or even falsify their responses to succeed.

And therein lies the rub, not just for Predictim but for any service offering to evaluate someones workplace potential on the basis of social media pages or other comparable data, according to Sherman.

If you believe the marketing hype, using AI as the only tool to find the best person for a job seems to make sense, but its destined to fail, he says.

Gaming the system

Sherman explains that, in the mid-2000s, many employers started using text-searching programs to quickly sift through resumes. This worked just fine until savvy applicants found ways to stuff their resumes with keywords. A simple tactic was to put loads of keywords typically used by employers to select candidates in their resume in a white font. When printed, the white font is undetectable to the human eye (on white paper, of course). However, the computers slogging through resumes picked up all of those keywords hidden on the resume, increasing the applicants chances of being selected.

Today, he adds, text-searching technology has gone beyond keyword-only searches to use natural language to weed out such strategies. However, the point is not about resume stuffing; instead, its that job applicants strongly respond to incentives and will try to trick or cheat the system to get selected.

Which, in turn, brings us back to choosing babysitters via social media analysis. Virtually all the research mentioned earlier that demonstrates that personality is linked with social media usage was performed in a context in which the people being studied had no incentive to be dishonest. However, when people know their social media profiles are being used to measure their intelligence and select them for jobs, they often will start gaming their social media profiles to beat the system. If there is an incentive for having a clean social media profile, people will do just that, Sherman explains, adding that many users already have both professional and personal Facebook accounts.

Which account do you think they submit to a potential employer who asks? Which Instagram account will the potential babysitter send to parents? Sherman asks.

With employers using social media records and AI-based systems to make personnel decisions, the stakes of social media use have become much larger. If employers continue to do this, services that specialize in creating sanitized social media accounts for job applicants will emerge. Sherman wonders, how will employers combat these services? How will firms that assess personality via social media know that the profile they are getting is the real Risky Rebecca and not the professionally cultivated Responsible Rebecca?

Faking is a common problem in the personnel-selection industry, though traditional personality assessments based on questionnaires tackled this issue long ago, he says. Simply put, faking a questionnaire-based personality assessment is extremely difficult, and many people who try to fake on such assessments get worse job-fit scores than they would have gotten if they had simply answered honestly.

Sherman adds that faking a social media-based personality assessment is much easier, as you just need to keep content positive and to a minimum. If AI-driven social media analysis companies cannot solve the faking problem, it will quickly put an end to their business model.

Promises, promises

There are many promises from AI in the talent-assessment industry, but AI-driven assessments are easy to foolakin to reading tea leaves, not actual personality traits, Sherman says, noting that Hogan is using AI, but as an enhancement tool only.

Weve seen it work in practical settings, even here at Hogan, he says. In fact, we revised our algorithms based on what we would call AI or machine-learning models. And theyve improved our ability to select high performers by about 20%, in certain job categories.

He also cites some marketing hype from one of the companies purporting to offer an AI-based solution as the only means to land top talent. The come on: We have applied proven neuroscience games and cutting-edge AI to reinvent the way companies attract, select and retain talent.

Were using AI, but I wouldnt say were reinventing anything. Were just making a high-quality product even better, he says.

Ryan Ross, managing partner at Hogan, readily admits that technology has enhanced the talent-assessment business, but the more AI and ML extract the human element from the process, the less effective they become.

Its night and day now, because today were delivering quality assessments 24/7 in 48 different languages. You cant do that without technology, Ross says. Whats really interesting, though, is some of the AI and gamification we see is much like the old saying of using a hammer to kill a mosquito.

In many cases, some are applying this emerging technology in ways that, yes, its very cool, but is it productive and does it get us where we want to be? he adds. I would say those applications are interesting, but they are not going to achieve that goal.

Sherman says many people today see AI and ML as if they are some sort of revolution in the assessment business, but thats simply not the case. Helpful? Yes. A revolution? Nope.

Weve been using linear regression for more than 30 years to build profiles, and these AI-based solutions are just fancier versions, he says. Thats why we see a little bit of improvement because theyre a little bit more robust. The computing power has improved.

For now, he says, the future of using AI in our business is unclear, but there is potential and thats where we operate.

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Focusing a digital first mindset in the New Year - Human Resource Executive

Investors sold off major benchmarks on Tuesday after President Trump ratcheted up trade tensions, threatening new tariffs on more countries and implying that an agreement with China may take longer than the market is currently expecting. TheDow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI)and theS&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC)were in the red all day but did close near highs of the session.

Data source: Yahoo! Finance.

As for individual stocks, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported strong Cyber Monday sales, and Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) announced a merger agreement with AK Steel (NYSE:AKS).

Image source: Getty Images.

Shoppers opened their wallets on Cyber Monday, with online spending hitting forecasts for a new record and Amazon reporting the biggest shopping day in the company's history. Shares of the e-commerce giant slipped 0.7%.

Accordingto AdobeAnalytics, U.S. consumers spent $9.4 billion shopping online on Cyber Monday, up 19.7% from last year and matching the company's forecast, with results boosted by a burst of activity from late-night shoppers.

Amazonsaid that Cyber Monday broke the record for the number of items ordered worldwide on its platform and that customers ordered "hundreds of millions of products" in the days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Last year, the company reported sales of 180 million items during that period. Top-selling categories were toys, home, fashion and health, and personal care.

Retail stocks slumped despite the strong sales news, with the SPDR S&P Retail ETFfalling 1.4%. Worries that the next round of tariffs on Chinese goods -- which would hit retailers particularly hard -- may go into effect on Dec. 15 after all likely outweighed any optimism about the health of the U.S. consumer.

Ironore mining company Cleveland-Cliffs announced an agreement to acquire steel producer AK Steel in an all-stock deal, but investors gave the news a cold reception, with Cleveland-Cliffs shares tumbling 10.7% to $7.51 and those of AK Steel rising 4.2% to $3.01.

Under the terms of agreement, Cleveland-Cliffs will exchange 0.4 shares of its stock for each share of AK Steel, a price that had represented a premium of 16% as of the stock prices yesterday, but that has been mostly wiped out today.

The combination would create an integrated steel producer that the companies think will be more efficient and less exposed to volatile commodity prices. Cleveland-Cliffs believes that the merged entity will find $120 million in annual cost savings, and that lower risk resulting from vertical integration will allow it to pursue new growth opportunities.

Investors weren't convinced of the benefits, though, and the market capitalization of the two companies together fell 5% today.

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What Happened in the Stock Market Today - The Motley Fool

Functional Threshold Power (FTP) is one of the key performance metrics for cyclists who want to train and race with power.

It is generally defined as the maximum average power, measured in watts, that a cyclist can sustain for an hour.

While this has applications in its own right if you race 25-mile time trials in the UK, for example, its a very useful figure to know if youre racing with a power meter its more commonly used to set training zones and for measuring improvements (or deteriorations) in fitness.

FTP is also one of the key figures used to determine all manner of things on Zwift, such as training zones and race categories.

Dont worry if this is all Greek to you though, because you can check out our full guide to FTP and why it matters for the full run-down. Here were going to focus on how to use Zwift to complete an FTP test.

While you can complete an FTP test on the open road, it can be difficult to find a suitable stretch of tarmac, free of interruptions such as junctions, traffic lights, road works and congestion. Given how downright unpleasant an FTP can be, theres nothing worse than having to stop your effort after 15 minutes.

Using the turbo trainer removes those variables and allows you to focus on producing your best performance.

Zwift is the ideal platform to test your FTP and for power-based training. Zwift

Before you embark on any kind of training plan, like those available on Zwift, its worth setting a baseline FTP figure for a couple of reasons.

Matt Rowe, of Rowe and King Cycle Coaching and host of the Zwift Power Up Cycling Podcast, says that having an accurate figure for your FTP is vital because its used to set you power zones.

If your power zones arent accurate, youll be training in the wrong zones, and not targeting what youre intending to, says Rowe.

Having a baseline figure from the very beginning of your training plan will also allow you to know how much progress youre making throughout the plan.

Get a couple of weeks under you belt, then get stuck in, he says. Youre not going to get a great score, but it helps establish where youre at.

Its particularly relevant at this time of the season, Rowe adds particularly if youre just coming back to training after a break. You might be a long way off where you want to be but, at this time of year, thats where you should be, says Rowe. Setting an FTP now will help you to evidence your improvements later on.

One of the main reasons to use Zwift is that it makes it all very simple the test protocols are well signposted and easy to follow. This also means its very repeatable, so you can be sure that your results are comparable every time.

If you have a smart trainer, then Zwift can also use ERG mode to control the resistance of the trainer to ensure you hit the specific power levels required in a ramp test, or in the warm-up for a 20-minute time-trial test. Weve cover those options in more detail below.

Once youve set your FTP, Zwift can then adjust all of the workouts and training plans to your specific level of fitness.

Youll also then know which race category you fit into, based on your current fitness level, because these are decided according to FTP in watts per kilogram (w/kg).

There are three FTP tests on Zwift: two classic tests, which involve a 20-minute max effort, and a ramp test. Zwift

Outside of simply riding as hard as you can for an hour (which is very hard to pace correctly and can also be pretty dull), there are two main ways to test FTP, both of which are available on Zwift.

First, theres the traditional 20-minute time-trial test. After a warm-up, you perform a 20-minute interval at maximum effort. Record your average power and then subtract 5 per cent to determine your FTP (Zwift will do this automatically for you).

The second way to calculate FTP is to perform a ramp test. As the name suggests, the ramp test involves performing intervals at ever increasing power levels until failure. Zwift then calculates your FTP based on 75 per cent of the maximum power interval that you reach.

If youre new to Zwift but you already know what your FTP is, you can manually enter it on your profile page or on the workout page it displays your FTP on the bottom right of the window, and to change it you simply need to click it.

Alternatively, Zwift will calculate your FTP from general riding in the game or from racing. Zwift will automatically calculate your FTP on every ride, using the maximum 20-minute average power you record on each ride, but will only notify you if it detects an increase over your current score.

However, the best way is to perform one of the three specific FTP workouts available in the training page on Zwift.

The first workout, which is simply called FTP Test, is Zwifts standard protocol.

It starts with a long, easy warm-up, followed by a few ramps and a 5-minute effort. After that, you get a rest period, before performing the 20-minute maximum effort test interval.

Zwift will then subtract 5 per cent from your average power during that test interval to extrapolate it out to an hour.

For example, if you average 300 watts for the 20-minute test interval, you FTP would be 285 watts.

The shorter FTP test simply ahortens up the warm-up the 20-minute max effort test interval is still just as long. Zwift

The second FTP test on Zwift is called the FTP Test (shorter). Its simply a compressed version of the first test.

The 20-minute maximum effort test interval is the same, so its not any easier, the only difference is that the initial warm-up is shortened to save time.

This test has the advantage of being a reasonably long interval, so it tests your aerobic capacity very well and can give accurate results. However, Rowe says it can be a daunting task for many people, because its always going to be a very hard test and is difficult to pace properly, especially for beginners.

With that in mind, Zwift has recently introduced a different kind of test; the ramp test.

The ramp test is intended to be a more manageable way to test your FTP. Zwift

As the name suggests, the ramp test involves performing intervals at ever-increasing power levels until you cant ride any further.

Rowe says the ramp test is more manageable than the 20-minute test, so people repeat it more often and therefore have more accurate zones as their training progresses.

Another benefit of the ramp test is that the result depends less on pacing you simply keep going as long as you can.

On Zwift, after a brief warm-up, the ramp test begins at 100 watts, then increases by 20 watts each minute. At first, it should feel easy, but it will eventually get very hard (how long that takes will depend on how strong you are the test continues as long you can keep holding the power).

Zwift will then take 75 per cent of the maximum power you reach on the test as your FTP.

No matter which workout you do, Zwift recommends staying seated for the duration of the test effort, because this helps to keep your effort and technique consistent throughout the intervals.

In terms of how often you should be retesting your FTP, Rowe recommends doing so once every six to ten weeks, or at the end of each training block preferably after an easier few days so that youre well rested.

You might think it would be useful to test more often, to keep your zones as accurate as possible, but Rowe says that any more often than that and you risk getting bogged down with testing rather than training.

At the end of the test, Zwift will notify you of your score. Hopefully you will have improved, but dont fret if not sign up for one of Zwifts training plans and kick-start your winter riding. Zwift

1

Once you hit the test part of the session, you dont want to pause or take any sort of breaks, because doing so will spoil the data.

With that in mind, its vital to ensure your indoor training setup is running as efficiently as possible: make sure youve fuelled correctly, have a full water bottle to hand, a fan to keep you cool, and youve got some suitably motivational music lined up to last the full duration of the test.

2

When pacing an effort such as a 20-minute power test, its very easy to go out too hard and end up finishing with a whimper or vice versa. What you really want to do is ride right on the limit of what youre capable of for the entire duration of the test which might leave you wondering how you are supposed to know where that limit is?

British cycling legend Chris Boardman once suggested a method whereby you simply ask yourself, Is this current effort sustainable for the remaining duration?. If your answer is yes, then youre going too easy, if its no, then youre going too hard. What youre looking for is maybe.

3

Although hitting huge numbers in the lab/shed/spare room can be exhilarating and hats off to all those who do it the final figure isnt the be all and end all of cycling.

An FTP test isnt a race there arent any prizes for getting a great score, and getting a low score doesnt mean youve lost anything either its simply a personal performance benchmark and everyone is different.

Sign up for one of the many training plans available on Zwift and try to focus on the process of self-improvement, rather than the specifics of the raw data. Unless youre a professional, having fun is what matters, after all. The numbers are just that numbers.

Simon is a freelance writer and photographer, who has been riding bikes for fun since he was a kid, but took a deep dive into road racing, crits and time trialling culture whilst living in London in his twenties. As a man of very little talent, he always looks to tech to compensate and loves nothing more than finding a smart (preferably cheap) hack that others hadnt thought of. His stable of bikes certainly isnt the most extravagant, but theyre all customised to meet Simons particular tastes and kept fastidiously clean. His current No.1 bike is a 2009 Giant TCR Advanced SL, that he purchased second hand from a friend in London he maintains that the 2019 TCR is basically the same bike, so why bother upgrading?

See the rest here:
How to take an FTP test on Zwift to kick-start your winter training - BikeRadar.com

Serge Aurier was in top form on Tuesday evening as he helped Tottenham complete a remarkable turnaround against Olympiacos.

Trailing 2-0 after a nightmare opening 20 minutes, the right-back scored the crucial third goal before they ran out 4-2 winners overall to seal a place in the knockout phase of the Champions League.

Excellent against the Greek side as he started his second successive game under Jose Mourinho, it has not always been easy for the Ivorian with a number of poor performances since his transfer from Paris Saint-Germain in 2017.

Now getting a good run in the team following Kieran Trippier's summer move to Atletico Madrid, the 26-year-old has opened up on his difficult display against Liverpool at the end of October and why he now believes he's in his "best period" for the Lilywhites.

"It's all about confidence," he told the club's matchday programme. "Starting the season with Mauricio Pochettino, I had some good games and then, after the game against Liverpool where we lost, people talked quite a bit about that performance.

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"In tough moments, we have to stay calm, not listen to anything that is being said externally. I know if I've had a bad game, I'm a footballer, I know when I have played well or when I have not.

"I've been here for three years now; I know when people aren't happy about my performance. I've played at Paris Saint-Germain and Toulouse and, of course, it was the same there. I'm not young either. For me, I prepare myself for everything, every possibility, for good things and for bad things.

"It wasn't that easy when I arrived here because I didn't always play. It's difficult. Players need to be playing to keep their confidence. When you play each week, it's easy to stay in that same vein and mindset and keep your levels. I work hard to stay at that level so I can do my best for the team and the gaffer.

"When I came back in against Crystal Palace, my first game of the season, I gave everything and Mauricio was very happy with my performance that day. I want to keep at that level but sometimes, if the team is in a difficult period and when you suffer a defeat, people will talk about your personal performance, that's normal. When the team are winning, it's easier to show your qualities because everyone is at their best level.

"Now, I feel I'm in the right place. I need to stay in this mood and with this confidence because when I am like this, I am happy, I play well, I can give the team and the fans good energy.

This week football.london are running a special series of articles looking back at the key moments from the last decade for Spurs.

Each day, there will be three new articles; one in the morning, one at lunchtime and one in the evening.

Here are some of the best bits so far...

"I think I'm at my best period, especially with the team winning back-to-back games but we need to do more and work harder. We might have won 4-2 against Olympiacos but there are still many parts of our game that we need to get right - it was by two clear goals that we won but we are conceding too many, so we need to say focused for the full 90 minutes. We have to stay together in difficult moments, like at the start of the Olympiacos game.

"Obviously, it's good to win but we want to be in control and dominate games. We know what we need to do to get to that point, so everyone is working towards that."

Link:
Serge Aurier speaks out on that Liverpool display, his form and why he's in his 'best period' - Football.London

The Uplands Lifelong Learning Institute is joining with Pleasant Hill Community Church, United Church of Christ, to bring a different kind of program to the area.

Ulli (formerly the Shalom Center for Continuing Education) has sponsored two-day educational programs or short courses meetings for six to eight weeks with live speakers or leaders.

On three days, Friday-Sunday, Dec. 6-8, the Institute and Church will bring the broadcast of an Omega Center Conference Webinar called Love at the Heart of the Cosmos: Living in Relational Wholeness to Pleasant Hill. The sessions will be shown on the large-screen and smaller video screens in Adshead Hall of Fletcher House for Assisted Living.

After each of the lectures, Ulli Group Discussions will be led by Ed Olson and Mark Canfield. Because of the different nature of this program, there will not be a potluck dinner on Friday night, but coffee and a light breakfast will be provided for the morning sessions.

On Friday, Dec. 6, the webinar will begin at 5:30 p.m. with an introduction by Ilia Delio. This webinar is an event committed to Teilhards vision for a new religion of the Earth for a new planet of life.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and is known for his theory that man is evolving, mentally and socially, toward a final spiritual unity.

Delio said, Teilhard envisioned a new type of energy flowing from the convergence of world religions, giving rise to a new religion of the Earth and a new ultrahuman community, electronically connected in a rising Cosmic Person.

The lecture beginning at 6 p.m. will be by Ursula King, a German theologian and scholar of religion, who specializes in gender, religion, and feminist theology. She has been a professor of theology and religious studies, president of Catherine of Siena College, and a prominent lecturer.

King received honorary doctorates from the universities of Edinburgh, Oslo and Dayton, OH, as well as research awards from the University of Delhi and Sorbonne, Paris. She is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts.

On Saturday, Dec. 7, from 7:45-8 a.m., a continental breakfast will be followed with the morning lecture by Kathleen Duffy, editor of Teilhard Studies who serves on the advisory boards of the American Teilhard Association and Cosmos and Creation, holding an honorary doctorate from Iona College.

She has published Teilhards Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution.

Following a break, there will be Teilhard & Centering Prayer led by Cynthia Bourgeault from 9:45-11:15 a.m. She is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer and internationally known retreat leader. She is a core faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, a member of the Global Peace Initiative for Women Contemplative Council and recipient of the 2014 Contemplative Voices award from Shalem Institute. Bourgeault is a founding director of both The Contemplative Society and the Aspen Wisdom School and author of several books.

The program will resume again from 4:30-6 p.m. with a lecture by John Haught. A theologian of science and religion, he will provide an analysis of what faith might mean in an age of science.

Haught is a distinguished research professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University and the author of 20 books, more than 100 book chapters and articles as well as hundreds of invited lectures and major academic presentations.

He offers fresh insight into the biblical nature of hope in order to clarify his position about those who differ with his approach the New Atheists and Creationists.

On Sunday, Dec. 8, from 7:45- 9:30 a.m., Ilia Delio will focus on exploring divine action in a world of evolution, complexity, emergence, quantum reality and artificial intelligence.

She earned doctorates in pharmacology from Rutgers University-School of Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences and in historical theology from Fordham University, NY. She is the recipient of a Templeton Course in Science and Religion award and the author of 17 books, many of which have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and German.

Ulli anticipates people will come and go throughout the three days of the conference.

Adshead Hall is on the lower level of the Elizabeth Fletcher House for Assisted Living, 40 Fletcher Dr. in Pleasant Hill off of Church Dr. across from the Community Church.

The webinar is free and open to the public, but donations will be appreciated.

This week in Pleasant Hill:

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2 p.m. Documentary (Retirement Revolution) in Room 4, Pleasant Hill Community Church, United Church of Christ, Main St. and Church Dr.

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 5:30 p.m. Spaghetti supper, 6:15 p.m., and Taize Service in Pleasant Hill Community Church sanctuary, 67 Church Dr.

Wednesdays, 6 p.m. Bible study and prayer at the Pleasant Hill Baptist Mission at 39 Browntown Rd. near Main St.

Thursdays, 2-4 p.m. Fair Trade Room open in Pleasant Hill Community Church. Coffee, tea, chocolate, SERRV crafts from around the world. Supports co-ops and crafters with a fair price for their goods.

Thursday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m. Community Bridge at Fletcher House Dining Room. All welcome. Call 931-277-5005.

Friday, Dec. 6 Obed Wild and Scenic River 1.5-mile hike to the high rock outcrop of Lilly Bluff. Meet at 9:15 a.m. in the Aquatic Center parking lot on West Lake Rd. to carpool to the trailhead.

Tuesday, Dec. 10, noon Pleasant Hill emergency siren test.

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 6 p.m. Pleasant Hill Town Council meeting at Pleasant Hill Town Hall, 351 E. Main St. Call 931-277-3813.

Link:
PLEASANT HILL RAMBLINGS: 'Love at the Heart of the Cosmos' webinar set - Crossville Chronicle

There's at least one industry millennials haven't killed: real Christmas trees.

Millennials could actually be the saving grace for an industry that is facing a growing threat from fake trees.

Environmentally conscious millennials who are settling down with families are helping fuel demand for real trees during the holidays, Doug Hundley, a seasonal spokesperson with the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA), told Business Insider.

"We're really glad to see the environmentally minded millennial generation joining the group of people who prefer real trees," Hundley, who worked in the real-Christmas-tree business for 40 years, said. "Because we've been losing market share for some time and it's not because we don't have the trees."

More than 95 million American homes had Christmas trees in 2018, at least 75% of which were fake, Hundley said.

Despite the threat from the fake-tree business, demand for real Christmas trees has seen an uptick in the last year. According to data from the NCTA, 32.8 million real Christmas trees were purchased in 2018, up from 27.4 million in 2017. There was also a smaller uptick in fake-tree purchases from 21.1 million in 2017 to 23.6 million in 2018 which Hundley attributes to a stable and surging economy.

But the NCTA said the uptick in real tree purchases is related to millennials' shopping habits.

"The millennials are now settling down and having children and families and they're looking to let their kids have the experience of using a real tree,"' Hundley said.

Millennials are also known to be more environmentally conscious when it comes to their spending. Real Christmas trees are biodegradable and can be reused and recycled, a press release from the NCTA said.

"In today's world as consumers increasingly seek to reduce the use of plastic straws and plastic bags with their purchasing decisions, choosing a real tree is another way they can make a positive contribution to the environment and their Christmas enjoyment," the NCTA said in the release.

Environmental aspects aside, the real-tree industry always benefits from a generational evolution, Hundley said.

"It's a lot of heritage there," the real-tree expert said of the decades-old tradition of having a Christmas tree in the home. "And I think when people start having kids and wanting to build memories, that's an increase for us."

See original here:
The Christmas tree industry is banking on environmentally conscious millennials to save it - Business Insider

by Jens Zimmermann, Project Director, Human Flourishing; Canada Research Professor for Interpretation, Religion, and Culture at Trinity Western University; Visiting Professor for Philosophy, Literature, and Theology at Regent College; Visiting Fellow of the British Academy at the University of Oxford; Research Associate at the Center for Theology and Modern European Thought in Oxford. Read more about Dr. Zimmermann.

One of the most important contemporary issues is our relation to technology. To be sure, technology is nothing new but has always been integral to human evolution; never before, however, has technology suffused every area of life or shaped human self-understanding to the extent it does today. Consequently, debates about the benefits and possible drawbacks of technology currently dominate all crucial, formative arenas of human existence: work, education, healthcare, social development, and even religion. Critical voices are not lacking in these discussions but, on the whole, we increasingly place our future hopes for society in technological enhancements. Transhumanism, in its pursuit of a humanly engineered evolution that will eventually leave the body behind by uploading our digitized brains to computing platforms, a vision that includes merging human with artificial machine intelligence, is merely the extreme edge of a techno-reasoning that increasingly forms our collective social imaginary.

How is one to assess this development? I suggest that the most effective assessment of techno-reasoning is to probe the range of its imagination. After all, how we perceive the world, others, and ourselves is principally a matter of the imagination. As the well-known Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye put it in The Educated Imagination:

we use our imagination all the time: it comes into all our conversation and practical life: it even produces dreams when we are asleep. Consequently we only have the choice between a badly trained imagination and a well trained one, whether we ever read a poem or not.[1]

Fryes reference to poetry indicates his view that literature best exemplifies the language of the imagination, of how we perceive the world in all its semantic complexity: our use of metaphors and choice of words in everyday speech reveals the vision of society, and indeed of reality that underlies our thoughts and actions. Equally important, the fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce out of the society we have to live in, a society we want to live in.[2] We need fiction to envision reality differently. We often use the word fiction to refer to what is untrue or false, but the word actually means creative invention and describes our capacity for understanding and shaping reality meaningfully through narrative. Hence reimagining society differently depends in turn on the sources that train our imagination to produce narratives for our self-understanding.

What should concern us is that Transhumanisms imagination runs only along engineering and computational lines. Transhumanists like to call themselves critical rationalists,[3] but the fact is that this critical aspect is limited to a techno-reasoning that produces a narrative of techno-fiction. When we examine the current techno-reasoning of transhumanism, we will find a strongly diminished view of human identity that reduces consciousness to the activity of neuronal networks we can detach from the body and transferable to a computing platform.[4]

It is generally known that transhumanism denigrates the human body as rather primitive biological form of existence that requires perfection through nano- and computing technologies. Ultimately, as Ray Kurzweil argued in his book How to Build a Human Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (2012), the brain is a complex biological machine in which human ideas, feelings, and intentions are ultimately tied to neuronal functions of the brain. Kurzweil imagines that the imminent completion of mapping this biological machine anatomically will allow us to digitize its functions and thus transpose human thinking into computational format, permitting in turn the uploading of ones mind (of consciousness, self, or personality) to a data cloud storage. This transhumanist vision indicates a breathtaking ignorance of human cognition and its dependence on biology for a human consciousness. For one, aside from being technologically unfeasible, the computational model of the brain and its possible detachment from the body is flatly contradicted by recent neuroscience and its insistence on embodied cognition.

For example, the well-known neuroscientist Antonio-Damasio breaks with the traditional cognitivist view of human beings as rational minds inhabiting insentient bodies.[5] In his book The Self Comes to Mind (2010), Damasio reintroduces the body as essential for structuring the brain, albeit still based on a representational view of cognition: Because of this curious arrangement, the representation of the world external to the body can come into the brain only via the body itself, namely via its surface. The body and the surrounding environment interact with each other, and the changes caused in the body by that interaction are mapped in the brain. It is certainly true that the mind learns of the world outside via the brain, but it is equally true that the brain can be informed only via the body.[6] You may not consider this concession very great, but eight years later, Damasio rejects the Cartesian mind-body dualism behind traditional neuroscience, arguing that a new, biologically integrated position is now required.[7]

This new position leaves behind a computational model of the mind, rejecting the dried-up mathematical description of the activity of the neurons because it disengaged neurons from the thermodynamics of life.[8] New brain science acknowledges, according to Damasio, that the body as organism, for example through our nervous and immune systems, possesses a kind of perception conveyed through feelings that are registered in turn as complex mental experiences that help us navigate life. Damasio concludes that neural and non-neural structures and processes are not just contiguous [i.e. adjacent, sharing a common boarder] but continuous partners, interactively. They are not aloof entities, signaling each other like chips in a cell phone. In plain talk, brains and bodies are in the same mind-enabling soup.[9] On the basis of this new insight (new to brain scientists at any rate), Damasio rejects the reductive, but sweepingly common notion in the worlds of artificial intelligence, biology, and even neuroscience, that natural organisms would somehow be reducible to algorithms.[10]

Damasios new insights from Neuroscience are a welcome antidote to the severely stunted imagination of the Transhumanists. Even so, neuroscience in general, and transhumanism in particular, suffer from a striking lack of philosophical reflection on the historical origins of the naturalist and functionalist view of organic life that still forms the imaginative framework of cognitive science. Natural scientists, along with all those who pursue their research into human perception in the investigative mode of the natural sciences, still have a hard time with admitting that metaphysics is always at play when imagining what it means to be human. How many scientists (and indeed philosophers) are fully conscious of the historical developments that made possible a purely materialist view of reality?

The philosopher Hans Jonas offers a superb philosophical analysis of this development and its effects on the study of human nature in The Phenomenon of Life: Approaches to a Biological Philosophy (1994). He describes how the duality of mind and spirit of the ancient world was reified into a mind-body dualism by Descartess division of reality into the two spheres of timeless mental ideas on the one hand, and spatio-temporal mechanisms of material stuff on the other hand. Leaving the side of mental ideas to religion and philosophy, he reduced nature (including animals and the human body) to an inert machine running on functional, mathematical principles, wholly explorable through quantifiable data. The legacy of Cartesian dualism was the modern conception of nature without soul or spirit.[11] Encouraged by the enormous success of the scientific method, it was only a matter of time until a secularist science, eager to do away with Descartes God, also claimed the mental sphere for its mechanistic understanding of reality.

This mechanistic monism was further aided by Darwins theory of evolution. Naturalistic evolution exploded Cartesian dualism or a separate mental realm by integrating human beings into a general developmental process. Jonas argues that even though evolution raised once again the problem of how the transcendent freedom and intentionality of consciousness could arise from such a process, the functionalist bias of naturalism closed the door to any arguments that may have led out of the reductionist dead-end of materialist monism. Early evolutionary theory dogmatically adhered to a mechanistic view of causality that tried to explain organic life analogously to complex machines, declaring consciousness to an epiphenomenon, a random side-effect of an essentially material process. This view, argues Jonas, inverts how organic life forms, and in particular human beings, actually function. Human thought and action originate from an intentional center and exercise volitional freedom in their striving to accomplish goals. While we are certainly able to automate strategies for accomplishing goals, this ability does not warrant reducing our humanity to the workings of a complex machine.

Jonas work himself has helped inspire profound changes in evolutionary theory, including the growing conviction among evolutionary psychology that an embodied intentionality or consciousness is intrinsic to organic life itself. The phenomenon of organic life is impossible to describe, let alone understand, without recognizing that a minimal form of intentionality, individuation, and indeed freedom is evident in even the most primitive living organisms striving to survive.

Neither transhumanism, however, nor the AI research that fuels transhumanists hopes for melding human and machine intelligence, have followed this trend of evolutionary biology. Instead, the transhumanists and AI researchers remain beholden to the basic premise of cybernetics that human life and thought boil down to mechanisms controlled by the exchange of information and are therefore amenable to transposition into algorithms so that the essence of human thought and emotion can be digitized and replicated on computational platforms.

This brief historical sketch shows us that transhumanisms abandoning of the earth by leaving behind the body constitutes not a neutral fact based on scientific progress but is indeed a historically conditioned choice. This choice takes one particular aspect of human perception, namely our ability to abstract material from the rich flow of experience to objectify and quantify it for better understanding, and the re-imagines all of reality in these terms. This reductionist ontology ignores the organic and especially the personal aspects characteristic of human life.

It is worth reiterating that the materialist, functionalist premise of transhumanism (and much AI research) is neither empirically convincing nor in any way morally neutral. From a historical point of view, it is actually astonishing how beholden the field of techno-science still is to scientistic attitudes originating in the scientific revolution and the European Enlightenment.

For example, the well-known AI researcher Marvin Minsky (d. 2016), equated belief in consciousness with the kind of religious mumbo jumbo science is supposed to combat.[13] For Minsky, there is no such thing as consciousness, there is no such thing as understanding.[14] Those who believe in such silly superstitions ignorantly hold to this religious idea that there is magic understanding: there is a magic substance that is responsible for understanding and for consciousness, and that there is a deep secret here.[15] For Minsky, the problem of consciousness and understanding with regard to AI simply doesnt exist because he has a thoroughly mechanical, functionalist view of the human mind. For this reason, he looks to Freud as an important figure because hes the first one to consider that the mind is a big complicated kludge of different types of machinery which are specialized for different functions.[16] While most of psychology and other sciences have moved on from Freuds nave mechanical view of the psyche, transhumanism and much popular opinion has not.

One cannot blame transhumanists for wanting to improve human life, but a sober, historical-philosophical analysis of transhumanism exposes it as delusive and naive. The whole idea of engineering a post-human existence by abandoning the organic body is based on an untenable materialist metaphysics. As Hans Jonas perceptively put it, materialistic biology (its armory recently strengthened by cybernetics) is the attempt to understand life by eliminating what actually enables this attempt in the first place: the authentic nature of consciousness and purpose.[17] Only because they suppress the basic structure of organic life and reduce consciousness to an epiphenomenon of materialist functions can transhumanists propose their futuristic vision. Only because they have already reduced life to a machine, however complex, can they imagine a post-humanist future of immortality through technology. The transhumanist imagination concerning our humanity is deceived by the strange proclivity of human reason to interpret human functions by the categories of the artifacts created to replace them, and to interpret artifacts by the categories of the human mind that created them.[18]

Given that transhumanism is driven by this historically conditioned reductionist view of human life, I am less worried about the question whether transhumanism functions as Ersatzreligion, though the growing number of Christian transhumanists is somewhat alarming. Their belief in technology as providential means for procuring god-likeness and immortality makes one wonder about the efficacy of the incarnation. Why did God bother to become a human being rather than a cyborg? Only an imagination already hooked on techno-fiction could suggest that the divine transformation of biological matter is inferior to, or even akin to a man-made metamorphosis through technology.

From a traditional Christian perspective at least, techno-fiction that deems the body to be optional ranks among gnostic heresies. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer explained, from an incarnational point of view, we dont have bodies but we are our bodies, and are thus rooted in the earth. Abandoning the earth, he declared, therefore means also to lose touch with our fellow human beings and with God who created us as embodied souls. Bonhoeffer concluded that the man who would leave the earth, who would depart from the present distress, loses the power which still holds him by eternal, mysterious forces. The earth remains our mother, just as God remains our Father, and our mother will only lay in the Fathers arms him who remains true to her.[19]

However, what is of greater concern than grouping transhumanism among gnostic heresies is that the movement perpetuates the pervasive techno-reasoning in our culture by glorifying the functionalist image of human existence that continues to enthral the public social imaginary by means of social media and AI research. Transhumanism is just one example, perhaps the most glamorous one, of our current collective culture delusion that the human mind, human language, and human relations boil down to functions that computers will eventually master in far better ways.

We would do well to listen to critical voices of those well familiar with the computing industry like Jaron Lanier. Lanier, credited with inventing virtual reality, exposes the false and dangerous presuppositions of techno-fictions. For example, he debunks the delusion that AI has anything to do with computers gaining intelligence, let alone sentience. AI, he reminds us, is nothing but a story we tell about our code.[20] This story, he confesses, was originally invented by tech engineers to procure funding from government agencies. AI, in short, does not exist if one implies that machines actually think or feel with even the lowest form of consciousness we know from organic life.

Lanier warns that current techno-fiction and our use of technology are deeply dehumanizing. Social media apps are designed to manipulate users into addiction to exploit their consumer habits. Moreover, the whole gamut of computing technology erodes our self-understanding of what it means to be truly human. Lanier worries that if you design a society to suppress belief in consciousness and experienceto reject any exceptional nature to personhoodthen maybe people can become like machines. The greatest danger, he concludes, is the loss of what sets us apart from all other entities, the loss our personhood. His warning echoes the prophetic voices of other critics like the former software coder Steve Talbot, or the late philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who also worried that instead of adapting technology to human intelligence we slowly conform human consciousness to the functional logic of machines.

These thinkers show us that one does not have to be a luddite or religious zealot to reject transhumanism or entertain a critical attitude towards the nave embracing of current technologies. What is at stake in the discussion about technology and transhumanism is nothing less than our true humanity. Now, it is certainly the case, in my view, that the more holistic approach to human existence offered by religions, and in particular the Christian teaching that God became a human being, provide better anthropological frameworks for approaching technology than secularist or naturalist approaches; however, the time may be ripe for all those concerned about losing our true humanity to come together in exposing the dehumanizing misconceptions put forward by transhumanists, no matter how much these are presented in the radiant, Luciferian promises of divinity. Sicut eritis deus . . . .

[1] 134-135.

[2] 140.

[3] Max More, The Philosophy of Transhumanism in Transhumanist Reader (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 1-17), 6.

[4] Martin Rothblatt, Mind is Deeper than Matter, in Transhumanist Reader, (317-326).

[5] Economist John Greys endorsement of Damasios recent book The Strange Order of Things (2018).

[6] The Self Comes to Mind, 97.

[7] The Strange Order of Things, 240.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 200. Damasion recognizes that the worlds of artificial intelligence, biology, and even neuroscience are inebriated with this notion. It is acceptable to say, without qualification, that organisms are algorithms and that bodies and brains are algorithms. This is part of an alleged singularity enabled by the fact that we can write algorithms artificially and connect them with the natural variety, and mix them, so to speak. In this telling, the singularity is not just near: it is here. For Damasio, these common notions are not scientifically sound because they discount the essential role of the biological, organic substrate from which feelings arise through the multidimensional and interactive imaging of our life operations with their chemical and visceral components (201).

[11] Jonas, Phenomenon of Life, 140.

[12] Das Prinzip Leben, 219.

[13] Why Freud was the First good AI Theorist in Transhumanist Reader, 169.

[14] Ibid., 172.

[15] Ibid., 170.

[16] Ibid., 169.

[17] Das Prinzip Leben, 230.

[18] Prinzip Leben, 199.

[19] Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English, 10, 244-45.

[20] Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

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Abandoning Earth: Personhood and the Techno-Fiction of Transhumanism - Patheos

For millennia, people have found support and community through defining factors, ranging from age and race to income and education levels.

However, these characteristics are not staticand drastic demographic changes are starting to create powerful ripple effects in the 21st-century economy.

Todays infographic from BlackRock delves into the significant impact that demographics and human rights movements have on global markets. Of the five megatrends explored in this series, demographics are predicted to have the farthest-reaching impact.

Demographics are the characteristics of populations that change over time. These include:

As a result, major demographic trends offer both unique challenges and opportunities for businesses, societies, and investors.

What are the biggest shifts in demographics that the world faces today?

The global population is aging rapidlyas fertility rates decline worldwide, those in the 65 years and older age bracket are steadily increasing in numbers.

As the population continues to age, fewer people are available to sustain the working population. For the first time in recorded history, the number of people in developed nations between 20 to 64 years old is expected to shrink in 2020.

Immigration has been steadily increasing since the turn of the 21st century. Primary migration factors range from the serious (political turmoil) to the hopeful (better job offers).

In particular, areas such as Asia and Europe see much higher movement than others, causing a strain on resources in those regions.

A steadily aging population is slowly shifting the purchasing power to older households. In Japan, for example, half of all current household spending comes from people over 60, compared with 13% of spending from people under 40.

Demographics are the characteristics of people that change over time, whereas social change is the evolution of peoples behaviours or cultural norms over time.

Strong social change movements have often been influenced by demographic changes, including:

Examples of major human rights movements include creating stronger environmental policies and securing womens right to vote.

These changes pose some exciting opportunities for investors, both now and in the near future.

Global healthcare spending is predicted to grow from US$7.7 trillion in 2017 to over US$10 trillion in 2022. To meet the demands of age-related illnesses, companies will need solutions that offer quality care at much lower costsfor patients and an overburdened healthcare system.

With a declining working population, adapting a workforces skill set may be the key to keeping economies afloat.

As automation becomes commonplace, workers will need to develop more advanced skills to stay competitive. Newer economies will need to ensure that automation supports a shrinking workforce, without restricting job and wage growth.

By 2100, over 50% of the world will be living in either India, China, or Africa.

Global policy leadership and sales of education goods and services will be shaped less by issues and needs in the U.S., and more by the issues and needs of Africa, South Asia, and China.

Shannon May, CoFounder of Bridge International Academies

In the future, education and training in these growing regions will be based on skills relevant to the modern workforce and shifting global demographics.

Spending power will continue to migrate to older populations. Global consumer spending from those over 60 years is predicted to nearly double, from US$8 trillion in 2010 to a whopping US$15 trillion in 2020.

Demographics and social changes are the undercurrents of many economic, cultural, and business decisions. They underpin all other megatrends and will significantly influence how the world evolves.

As demographics shift over time, we will see the priorities of economies shift as welland these changes will continue to offer new opportunities for investors to make an impact for the future of a global society.

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The Global Inequality Gap, and How It's Changed Over 200 Years - Visual Capitalist