>From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
>Zero writes
>
> > For me "immortality" doesn't necessarily mean living
> > unto infinity. I have a hunch that after a few billion
> > years my curiosity will be pretty much satiated, and
> > I'll be ready to "give up the ghost."
>
>Fat chance. If you get on any decent path of personal
>evolution at all, you'll come to love living more and more.
>This "boredom" that worries you --- curiosity satiation---
>remember, is a highly specific processes evolved by our
>primitive brains to aid survival. We are speaking here
>of *millions* of years from now. And sorry to be blunt,
>but it's pretty dumb to go about supposing that the
>fantastically enhanced "you" of the far future would
>experience the same "hunches" you do now.
I don't discount the possibility that a "fantastically enhanced" me would
feel differently than I do. But then a "fantastically enhanced" me would
not be *me*. I don't doubt that human curiosity was a great asset essential
to our survival and domination of the planet. However, I don't foresee that
curiosity will ever be evolved out of us. If you're not curious, what's the
point? *You* might want to live just for the sake of living, but for me its
learning answers to new questions and experiencing something new.
I'm not saying that's how everyone is, or should be, but that's how I am. I
was once big into motocross, loved it. Did it for a few years and
eventually sold my bike. Then I was big into mountain biking, still am but
I can only get to the top of the mountain so many times before my motivation
to keep doing it over and over starts to peter out. Now its inline skating.
Love it, but once I master it I'm sure it'll only be so many times up and
back the bike path before the thrill starts to fade. Call me fickle, but
that's me.
At some point in time, whether its a hundred, a thousand, or a trillion
years into the future, I am bound to run out of new experiences, interesting
questions, new frontiers. I don't imagine any of us will ever be
omniscient, so I suppose there will always be *something* new to learn or
some ultimate theory to disprove. But once it starts getting to the point
where it takes 99.9% of effort to make a 0.1% advance, no doubt about
it...I'm bored.
"Are you sure you want to move Zero to the Recycle Bin? This file cannot be
recovered." Yes - delete.
-Zero
Life is good. Refuse to die.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:57 MDT