From: Neil Lucock (neil.lucock@zen.co.uk)
Date: Sun Feb 22 2004 - 02:41:12 MST
On Sun, 2004-02-22 at 00:13, Erik Aronesty wrote:
---snip--
> Which is why I evangelize transhumanism and life extension.
>
Hi,
ever read Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodinger's Cat comedy? They had a
SMILE economy, which if I remember correctly, stood for Space Migration,
Intelligence and Life Extension.They (the political party in the novels)
took the phrase "an end to death and taxes" as their slogan and worked
towards achieving it.A sort of Libertarian Immortalist manifesto.
The faith you discussed, expectations as a result of extrapolation, is
reasonable.An aviator in 1914 might have extrapolated trends and
predicted that an aircraft might fly at 500 mph for over 6 hours
carrying 200 people. Not possible at the time but they had an algorithm
showing how to make inanimate things fly. All that was needed was an
improvement in technological techniques to make it happen (about 50
years later).
Cryonics seems to be a lost cause to me. They are putting their faith in
a company (which must survive until the technology develops), an
unproven technology and an assumption that future generations will want
to spend time and effort on reviving that person. However, a slim chance
is better than no chance at all, so if they want to spend their money
that way, who am I to gainsay them? Some unexpected benefit may arise.
Tutankhamun had his tomb filled with things for hsi afterlife, we
learned about his life from them.Someone my need a sample of 20th
Century DNA for some useful project.
SETI has my vote. We should be moving to the near planets and moons
(well, Mars, Luna and Titan).
ciao,
Neil
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