From: BillK (bill@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 15:16:11 MDT
On Sun Aug 03, 2003 01:25 pm Lee Corbin argued:
> I think that it's extremely important for us to question
> the inevitability of senescence and death.
I agree. My poetical image of 'sitting in a rocking chair on the porch'
was not intended to be taken too literally or to imply senescence.
Older people who do not have to worry about income (because they have a
good pension or are wealthy) and already have much experience of the
world are not as 'driven' as the young turks. Some are old crocks, but
many play golf, tour the world, take drugs (prescribed - of course!),
etc. Age, experience and relative wealth does change your outlook on life.
The European nations are just beginning to grapple with the problems of
an aging population, because the young folk don't want kids anymore. If
they do have children, they only have one, which is not enough to stop
the aging population problem.
Now, Lee claims that when our science makes us relatively immortal, we
will still want to produce loads of offspring. I think that all the
evidence so far points in the opposite direction. Give people a good
standard of living, a bit of education and only ten extra years and they
already stop having children.
The only way round this is to assume that as well as immortality, we
also get unlimited resources, so we can support lots of offspring.
But, Will we want to? is the big question.
A recent analysis of the lives of famous scientists claimed that after
they got married and had kids, their contribution to research was
finished. You may not like the idea at present, but I am pretty sure
that when you are immortal and independently wealthy, you won't want to
work 9 to 5 hunched over a computer in a cubicle, or heating exotic
substances in a test tube.
>
> Anyway, I *will* want to continue to delight in understanding,
> and, were I only able to muster the intelligence, the knowledge,
> and the energy, then I also *would* be among those doing research
> and exploring the galaxies.
>
> Well, why not? What is physically impossible about *me* having
> unlimited energy? It's just a matter of the application of
> intelligence, and the sun at present supplies vastly more
> energy than would be required. All I need to do is live
> long enough, and somehow survive this century.
>
Again, I don't disagree. I'll let you have all these things. :)
But when you've got them, you won't be the old Lee with a few
superpowers. You will be a completely different being who will laugh at
the pre-singularity ambitions of the old Lee.
There probably will be a tiny window of time when we are in the process
of changing, when many different and dangerous things will be going on.
But assuming we survive, we will come out the other end as very
different beings.
I do not see it as a defeatist philosophy that a wise, immortal being
sees no need to conquer galaxies. When the nano world is available to us
a molecule floating in space could be a universe for each of us.
BillK
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