RE: Eliezer at 18

Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
13 Sep 97 22:02:05 CST

Anders Sandberg noted:

I have noticed that more interesting things happen every month
now than it happened during whole years of my childhood (of course, I
didn't see it like that then), so rotations about the sun doesn't say
much. Maybe one should have something like proper time in relativity,
"proper mental age" (this may be relevant to your ethics paper?).

Rick Knight adds:

This got me to thinking that we do place tremendous emphasis on our
"year" concept like it *means* something. Granted, cycles are
something to set your watch by <G>.

Shortly after the release of "Schindler's List", I saw Dustin Hoffman
being interviewed on Larry King Live. I had always wondered, being
rather a rebel in nature, how SO MANY people were just shepherded into
boxcars and systematically annihalated. Dustin really opened up
something for me when he said noted that Eastern Europeans were
exposed to as much information, over the course of their lives, as an
average modern American gets in a day!

Now, accuracy aside, I thought that was a fascinating notion. So,
even though people of more agrarian times lived how ever many years, a
young person in their teens has experiencially far exceeded them in
many situations. Notwithstanding the sentimental rites of passage we
put on such things as first kiss, first sex, first job, first car,
first house..., I think people like Eliezer have assimilated knowledge
and a perspective that is rare and extraordinary. He also has
extraordinary tools at his disposal for acquiring vast amounts of
knowledge, something unprecedented in human civilization.

Here's too peeling off the next layer of the universal onion!
Eliezer, I wish you peace, love and personal fulfillment, regardless
of how many seasons you are here. It took me twice as long as you
have rotated around to get some of those fundamentals but as the
nature vs. nurture volley goes, balance them as good as you can.

Rick