At 05:03 PM 3/25/00 PST, Zero wrote:
>From: Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc>
>>I have read many of the posts on this thread and I'm mind boggled. I mean,
>>if we are really talking about having some money to do something courageous
>>with — what do you want to do? Live or die?
>>
>>I call it a war on death. The best defense is a cultural offense.
>Yeah sure spreading longevity propaganda is a good idea. But I think you'll
>have a hard time getting John & Jane Public to get on board until we can
>eliminate (or at least substantially reduce) world poverty and hunger. I
>mean the obvious response is: "What?!? There are *millions* of starving
>people in the world who don't have access to decent medical care, potable
>water or residential and communication infrastructures and you want us to
>work on giving them indefinite life spans? Are you mad?"
I have a different opinion. Whether or not anyone thinks investing in
extreme life extension is an inappropriate allocation of monies makes
little difference in the long term. People once thought that a couple of
guys who wanted to fly airplanes were mad. Those madmen became heros who
persisted in their dream. Today we benefit from it — but flying airplanes
was just a mere ambition.
But, let's not divert from the central question originally posed to us
which was: "What bold endeavors do you wish you could see funded in the
next decade?" I'm not so concerned about what anyone thinks when I'm
carefully considering one important problem regarding the well being of
humankind and what I would do to help humankind overcome it. As such, the
use of the money would be to *increase the well being of humankind.* What
better way to philanthropically bestow well being than to overcome disease
and death -- whether it be through uploading, cryonics, AI, genetic
engineering, nanotechnology, etc. (Personally, I do not believe that it
will be any one isolated avenue but a combination of many fields.)
In that the pools of money originally referred to was in part from "(1) the
estimated fifteen trillion dollars that baby boomers stand to inherit from
the World War II generation," the baby boomers are most definitely
interested and involved in basic areas life extension. Cosmetic surgery,
fitness routines and lean figures may seem very mundane, but multi-track
and see these boomers a decade up the road and they will be lined up for
cryonics, and then a few more decades up the road and they may be lined up
to have their brains uploaded.
Also, the word "endeavors" is plural and there is no reason why you can't
feed the world with your $100 million. I'd take the billions and free
everyone from the prison of death.
Natasha
Natasha Vita-More: http://www.natasha.cc
To Order the book: Create/Recreate: The 3rd Millennial Culture
http://www.natasha.cc/books.htm
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