From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Wed Mar 05 2003 - 22:06:22 MST
--> spike66
> Self discipline. Let us not be afraid to propose it.
> There are those on this list with gobs of self discipline,
> sufficient to lose 35 pounds, sufficient to avoid destructive
> financial and sexual behaviors, etc. In general, I would
> suggest that intelligence may be at least loosely correlated
> with self-discipline, and I know there is plenty of spare
> intelligence floating around on extropians, which is why
> I have been reading it all these years.
>
> Friends, I know it aint "hip" or "grooovy" but for now,
> until a scientific miracle occurs, CR is all we have,
> and self discipline is the only way we have to make CR
> happen, so get discipine and make it happen.
Yes. The same also applies to *ensuring* that better technology appears.
Just as you can't sit back and not practice CR, you can't sit back and
assume that life extension technologies will just materialize. You have to
be *doing something* about it. If you can develop or research or study, then
advocate: shout loudly and organize. If we -- who comprise, I suspect, a
surprisingly large small fraction of pro-life-extension types in the
world -- fail to rise to the challenge, there is a significantly increased
chance of all of us dying.
So it's not as though you have anything to lose by putting effort into
reducing this existential risk. Working towards life extension technologies
and advocating same seems to be very much the Pascal's Wager of the times.
Except there's a far better chance of actually pulling it off.
(And you can start by dragging yourselves to www.longevitymeme.org,
www.calorierestriction.org, or www.imminst.org and joining the newsletters
and participating in the forums. Those of you on the academic side should
already know the counterpart organizations, conferences and movements :).
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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