Hear, hear! The more I study this Gaia that I am embedded within
(Gaia being the biolayer, not the planet, which is Terra) the more
my relationship to Gaia becomes a love-hate one. She's Mom, all
right... no question about that, and I do pay my props to Mama G...
but I really think it's time for me to get out of the house before
her odd habits and idiosyncrasies start driving me crazy.
> Nicholas seems to be on the side of the Borg, whereas
> personally I'm for the Armadillos; I can think of few things worse
> than being the only entity in the universe.
This is actually a heavy question within ethics. I think I share
Mark's preferences here... if I had the misfortune of finding myself
alone in the cosmos, I would almost certainly set myself to the
task of making other people, or at least fumbling my way through
search space looking for an implementation path toward that end.
(Lee Corbin's happy-boxes are just no good for a decent conversation.)
But one real brain-stretcher for me is trying to think up arguments
in favor of the continued existence of other people that I could
present to some obdurate Robyn Hitchcock who sings "I'm not afraid
to be the only person on the planet". That coming up with such
arguments that seem plausible to me is very difficult, scares me
a bit. But not much more than a good roller-coaster ride.
(P. S. Is there a Pink Goo in the goo bestiary yet? If not, I
suggest we use Pink Goo to refer to Old Testament apes who see
their purpose as being fruitful and multiplying, filling up of the
cosmos with lots more such apes, unmodified. Moravecians should
get a charge out of throwing this one around. There are probably
some interesting SubGenius interpretations for Pink Goo as well.
I like it because it's morally ambiguous. Sometimes I enthusiastically
identify as a member of the Pink Goo horde (parents take note of
this!). But other times I think perhaps we ought to do something
about the Pink Goo problem on this planet: Pink Goo can result in
insufficient slack.)
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ expectation foils perception -pcd