You drew the broad brush mightily fast then, Billy! ;)

But I must believe you, and in fact thought the discussion "was" enlightening, informative, and delightfully non-conclusive.

(Quoted from the Time Magazine article by the same name earlier this year.)

Misha shines a new light on the etymology of the word, and personified it and embodied immortality <long> before Kurzweil and his Cyborganic Singularitarians were wetting their diapers.

NASA hosts the Singularity University, cofounded by Kurzweil, and co-sponsored by Google, Nokia, LinkedIn etc., and has branches in Europe as well; it's THE globalists' toy, and the heart of modern day transhumanism movement. (Check out Global Future 2045 / <GF2045 -- “Russia 2045,” a global social initiative based in Moscow, together with the Eurasian Center for Big History & System Forecasting, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences , are pleased to announce that on February 17-20 the International Conference “Global Future – 2045” will be held in the conference hall of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel in Moscow.

The goals of the Congress are as follows:

- Discussion and demonstration of the newest developments in the fields of cognitive sciences, robotics, and modeling of living systems;

- Evaluation the potential for transforming planetary civilization in light of the rapid pace of technological development;

http://gf2045.com/read/24/

>

Very much for real, and with unlimited funds pushing forward all the time. They (CEO Peter Diamandis et al) predict that Homo Sapiens will be replaced by a far superior cyborg man-machine hybrid, and of course the Nanotech already used in Genetic Engineering is facilitating all this.

Luckily there are critical voices raised but for the time being they can go ahead as they please, government supported, we know what that means, so there really is no stopping this.

Pray, what do they supposedly reveal?

<It's not a theory as much as it is a goal that is worked towards relentlessly>

In concreto the goal first is to reverse engineer the Human Brain, over the next 20 years, and in the process Substrate Indepent Mind research by eg Halcyon Molecular is geared towards Life <expansion>, the natural precursor of Life <extension>, and a certain Randal Koene explains this very well, he works for Halcyon, and you can find a clip of his talk at the GF2045 conference website.

The GF2045 conference speakers address and participate in research that is stone-hard reality, little speculation in that regard, and from their website:

<Event speakers were comprised of world leading physicists, biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers as well as specialists in the fields of Big History, robotics, brain-computer interfaces, neurosciences and space technology from Russia, the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and other countries.

The three-day event concluded with the finalization of a resolution that will be submitted to the United Nations demanding the implementation of committees to discuss life extension Avatar projects as a necessary tool in the preservation of humankind, as well as defining ethical parameters for scientists worldwide.>

This is more or less the confirmation as quoted from the TIME article:

<Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is <<< the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011.>>>

This transformation has a name: the Singularity.

It really depends on how the word "luck" is being used, and the intended meaning of the user. Luck can simply mean "events outside of the control of someone", whereas skill "events inside the control".

I understand you probably don't agree that this is the definition of luck, but it is how people use it, without implying that it is some mysterious force.