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Do you rationalize death?

zago

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What makes you think that in 10 or 20yrs time we will have such a complete understanding of this extremely complex machine that we can safely tamper with it?

See the graphs above.

We already do safely tamper with it, and greatly to our benefit. Unless you like things like awful diseases and crippling deformities (many of which we no longer worry about, something you might be taking for granted). Our ability to do that will increase in the next few decades vastly more than it ever has in all of history combined.

It's not the first time humans have declared themselves masters of the universe and created more problems with their interference than they solved. It certainly will not be the last time that nature will teach us just how little we know regardless of how large our ego's may be.

Neither I nor you know that. All I'm saying is that science helps us solve problems. Who said anything about "master of the universe" or needing an ego check? Are we egoic in the way we use science today? Is it egoic of us to have defeated smallpox? Looks like we made nature our bitch on that front, at least. Progress is progress, not THE END WE WIN. Our solving 1 problem is a great thing, even if there are more to solve later on.

And there has never been a 25yr old in history that hasn't had a problem with their body? Things with a very small probability of occuring have never occured? The more complex the system the more chaotic it becomes. Unexpected results do happen all the time, things we cannot forsee come up. Even in a system as basic as a large computer network throws up bugs no-one predicted. You are talking about one of the most complex machines ever created and yet you are convinced that our pitiful level of knowledge will ensure that nothing new will result.

Such utopian views of technology and it's virtues are just as one eyed as a religious zealot convinced God is going to rescue the world. Every post here bringing up possibilities for discussion is whitewashed with your 'but technology will change everything' optimism. It seems to lack balance and is unconvincing.

Eh? Believing that science will continue to progress at its current exponential rate and solve problems is hardly comparable to religious zealotry. Are you anti-science now? That's a serious question.

In my opinion, we already live in a utopia, just not the best utopia. I don't have to worry about horrendous diseases. I had a birth defect corrected when I was a baby that would have drastically altered my life. I don't have to spend 14 hours a day doing farm work. I have clean, running water, which doesn't have poop in it (sup cholera?). I live in a relatively new age in which we have harnessed the natural godlike force of electricity, which enables me to do previously inconceivable things. I keep food in my refrigerator. I don't have to set shit on fire to keep my house bright and warm. I can talk to my loved ones RIGHT NOW even though I live more than 100 miles away. I could go on for about hundreds of pages, literally.

Do you take these things for granted? Do you think life hasn't improved since the dawn of technology? Because I can tell you this: we are about to make more progress in it in our very lifetimes than we have in all of human history. We kinda already do on a decade by decade basis, if not yearly. IF SCIENCE HELPS US SOLVE PROBLEMS, future life will be more utopian and the use of that word alone is not an argument, despite all of the failed attempts and fictional accounts of utopias gone wrong.

Dunno about you, but "technology will change everything optimism" is working pretty well for me. It's expanded my mind in ways I hate to think I'd have to have lived without. Shit, we have been to the fucking moon. We have robots on Mars. Those thoughts alone enhance my life. Discovery is its own reward. It's exciting. It's awesome. It DOES make us powerful, it does give us control over nature. Amazing control. We smash protons together at the speed of light. ARE YOU NOT IMPRESSED?

Your argument boils down to "what if the absurd happens, though? Technically it's not impossible!" THAT is what is akin to religious zealotry.

It might not be a point you are interested in but it is a point that will interest a great number of people. You're beloved scientist is looking for money for research, he's trying to drum up interest in a concept that supposedly has been the holy grail of existence, but where is the support for it? I will not be the only person to ever ask the question Is this even a desirable outcome?

Are you kidding me? Do you think no one is interested in things like curing cancer? Why do you think football players wear those fugly pink ribbons? This is what people want, to stop losing their loved ones, to stop facing aging and pain and loss of vibrancy. The only problem, as I stated FROM THE START is that they just don't know it. They have rationalized death, like you, because it is all we have ever known, because if there is no way around it you might as well think of reasons it could be good.

"No support" lol. Seriously? Why do people become doctors? Why do people GO TO doctors? They want to LIVE LONGER, HEALTHIER LIVES. WAKE UP.

And it's common for drug fuelled visions to create interesting reads either in publication or on the internet. My mission isn't to shoot down the vision but to question it, and it's value to me and humanity at large. Who says I even want my identity merged, or to change my gender or erase memories at will. Those are all things which clearly you find desirable but not everyone is the same.

All I stand for is choice. Somehow you are still missing my point. No one is going to force you to merge your identity. No one is going to force you to change your gender or memories. I don't know why you are writing as if they will, or as if other people wanting to is without value. It's ok if "not everyone is the same." I'm not saying everyone NEEDS to be the same. THAT'S NOT MY POINT. The one thing I do think pretty much everyone wants is the choice to have what they want to happen happen when they want it to happen. If you want to get old, ugly, decrepit, and die when you're 80 like as happens to be the norm right now in history, I don't have a problem with that. Although I do think it is random as shit. But whatever!
 

LonestarCowgirl

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Post shower thoughts....

So along these same lines, back in the middle ages people didn't experience aging, they just experienced early death. No-one knew that living to 100 would bring with it the complications we know today, because no-one had lived that long. So by extension, while its tempting to imagine an eternal life in a healthy body as being some kind of mid thirties groundhog day where you get to keep every memory ever created and remember your life from 1980 to 2165, for example. The reality may be very different. What does an eternally fit body do with 500yrs or more of existence? Would the length of incarnation throw up new kinds of mental illnesses from failing to either process or forget aspects of ones life. I've only been around four decades but I already have incredibly entrenched patterns of thinking, would me at 1060 be mentally calcified to such a degree that my existence becomes insufferable? Wiuld my brain start making connections between completly disconnected events simply because they are connected by a single expanse of existence? Would I become overly paranoid, or would I become intuitivey brilliant because I have already lived through all possible permutations that any group of actions produces? Would the body start producing weird outcomes as a result of a life without decay? My second brain growing out my arse for xample? While we may prevent death and aging do we have the necessary tools to then deal with the as yet undiscovered consequences of a lack of death? Not talking about the human load on the planet, I'm talking about the personal consequences of living in a body that retains cell memory and moves through time perpetually.

And one final question - is a ZZ Top styled beard necessary for finding the foundtain of youth.

Great questions. I'm curious, the word arse sounds so trite and girlie; why not buttock?
 

Such Irony

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I really don't think that's gonna happen in our lifetime, unfortunately.

Also, accidents/crimes would eventually limit an arguably theoretically possible eternal life. An eventual 'backup' would likely mean a different person being originated.

Also there would still be suicides, probably more.

We might be able to cure diseases but we can also create increasingly destructive biological weapons.

There are accidental deaths that following the laws of physics assures almost certain death. Like falling from a very tall building for example or crashing a car into a wall at a very high speed. We can develop new technologies but we cannot change the laws of physics.

I don't think immortality in the literal sense of the word is possible for these reasons because eventually if you live long enough, you'll be killed in an accident, victim or a murder, or driven to suicide. I do believe, however in a greatly increased life span, say hundreds to thousands of years.

I don't think I'd want to live forever. I do think that eventually I might get bored or start forgetting things from long ago. I do wish for a greatly increased life span as 80 years doesn't seem nearly long enough to do and learn everything I want. I just hope the capacity for it happens in my lifetime.
 

zago

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If life were exactly as it is now forever, yes I would get bored and want to die eventually. That simply won't be the case, though. Boredom itself is a problem that doesn't need to exist, it's just part of life right now as we know it.

What if life consisted of the better parts of LSD trips, ecstacy, and other drugs that make you feel productive, spiritual, empathetic, and euphoric without the nihilistic stupor of drugs like alcohol and heroin? We tend to imagine that our state will always be kind of "in the middle" like it tends to be right now in history, but in the best case scenario for the future, that absolutely doesn't need to be the case--it is neurologically possible to be extremely happy all the time.

And then you object, "wouldn't happiness itself get boring?" No, because then it wouldn't be happiness. Happiness is happiness. And the nice thing is, as I mentioned above, there are many different forms of happiness. You could simply dial up any experience you wanted, really. You could go to work and choose a cocaine like euphoric productivity, with no side effects or comedown, and then you could go to an art museum and choose ecstasy or LSD without the paranoia or nightmares. Conversation with humans and AI would be witty and intelligent beyond belief. These experiences would be beautiful, blissful, heavenly, everything you could ever dream and wish for. Life would be truly thrilling and wonderful.

Perhaps it sounds slightly hedonistic, but there is no inherent value to feeling "meh" most of the time. Life can be deeper than that. The one thing it is important to keep is critical thinking, and I reckon that would be easy to enhance as well.

Mind you, this is all in the best possible scenario. Barring disaster, I think it also happens to be the most likely scenario. Why? Because people want what is good, and that's what we are driven to move toward. We have no overall incentive to move towards unhappiness, especially if there is absolute material abundance. Scarcity = economy = people rationing things = it benefits them for you to be unhappy if you don't have those things. That sort of system ultimately undoes itself, though, as we are coming to see. It's hard for things to be scarce in full virtual reality, for one thing. But it's also hard for things to be scarce in a civilization with mastery of nanotech and AI.

My overall take is, if you are pessimistic about it, why even live? If humanity isn't growing and bettering itself, life amounts to meaningless suffering. Look around the world we live in - almost everyone is working on something, contributing to some field. Life is about progress. Even when suffering is gone from life, gradients of happiness are infinitely possible. It never needs to end. And the heights it can reach are good beyond description.

Knowing this is what keeps me alive. It makes me happy and motivates me. This is something it is possible to believe in. I believe in the possibility of an ever-brighter future. I believe the actions I take make a difference and contribute towards it. It IS my religion, yes.

Maybe it is true, we do all have that hole inside of us that needs to be filled with some belief of a higher power. I never thought I would find this feeling in a sincere way - I thought it required forcing oneself to believe in something that wasn't necessarily true or good. It doesn't, though. My god is possibility, and I create it with every step I take.

I think this message is important. I'm not just posting idly or musing. I think if everyone consciously realized what possibilities we can bring about, there would be a lot more movement in those good directions.

We are at a unique standpoint. Previously in history, no one really knew the possibilities of what man could create. Even a few hundred years ago, people had no concept that we could harness the electromagnetic force. What was their world of possibility like? It's hard for me to say.

Maybe that's why they believed in a supernatural god. Life was more mysterious. The cities hadn't brightened the sky, and every night the whole milky way was on display, a whole galaxy, a whole universe they knew virtually nothing about. Lord Kelvin himself thought the sun was literally a big ball of chemical fire, knowing nothing about nuclear fusion. No one knew about DNA, germs and how they cause disease, evolution, gravity, black holes, big bangs, or light years, or what the heavens were made of. Life was mystical - things happened, but no one knew how or why. A supernova in the sky in 1087 could have been anything.

The interpretation of life was up to the imagination. Now, it's almost as if we know so much that it isn't. Things lost their mysterious significance. Maybe that leaves us empty for a minute, as we realize that no, it isn't very likely that there is some supernatural man in the sky who makes things happen and who will bring about fate itself.

It's us, though. Now we control all possibility. We can be the subjects of our own religion. Just like god, though, we are unpredictable. It is up to us to bring about a good outcome, it certainly isn't something we can take for granted. And it's something we can't deny, either. The future is coming, and it has the potential to be very good or very bad. The worst thing we can do is be blasé and jaded, to act like life will always be pretty much as it is, to disbelieve in what we don't know.

The one thing I know about the unknown is that it is coming--and it will be our creation. I recognize this as my own responsibility. Do you?
 

Alea_iacta_est

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To address the title of this thread, did anyone else never really rationalize death? I've always been deeply disgruntled by the thought and it evokes an almost archaic fear, that we are only here for a short little while, and that each passing moment leads ever-closer to our removal from this world. I was raised in a secular family, so from the beginning I didn't really have a concept of life after death, though I knew what a heaven was but it seemed too optimistic in my opinion at the time. I have always been very anxious about the fact that one day the machine that we occupy our consciousness in will break like any old, worn desktop tower and our consciousness will be oxygen starved for thirty seconds to a minute and forced to face the deep, cold but not cold (because of sensory deprivation) abyss in that short amount of time, utterly afraid. Death is something that can't be easily put aside as a mere happening if you delve into the actual concept of death in the real world, instead of it being glazed over as inevitable and a mere moment in a person's life as we see in the media today.
 

zago

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I was raised protestant. I always felt that heaven couldn't really be that great because it would get boring and I wouldn't want to exist forever, but hell could truly be awful forever... and I pretty much felt I was going to hell, because I never really did anything that I thought was so great it should get me into heaven.

Truth be told though my answer for the first 27 years was more like "I don't know." Didn't know if there was a god or heaven or hell. By 28 though I had firmly decided on atheism, although like you [MENTION=20385]Alea_iacta_est[/MENTION] I somewhat believe in reincarnation because nonexistence doesn't exist, there can only ever be the conscious experience of consciousness.

Everything changed when I read The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil. It was the answer that made sense which I had been looking for my whole life, along with an amazing critique of Brave New World by David Pearce at www.huxley.net which taught me that heavenly states are actually a neurochemical reality and don't get tiresome. I had seen heaven several years before when on psilocybin mushrooms... it's a blur now, but I remember knowing what I felt surely must be the most profound eternal bliss possible - I was so happy I threw my arms in the air, looked at the sky, and screamed a scream that filled the whole universe forever....... but that was just part of the trip, which was equally good and bad actually.

But anyway, Kurzweil is a good step 1 for everyone. He was the first person I ever read who just said things exactly as they are: he doesn't like the idea that he is going to die, he doesn't like the idea of his limited, messy humanness, and he is working on fixing those things. Most people really do either claim to not be afraid of death, to want to die eventually, to appreciate the lows in life because they give contrast for the highs to also be appreciated. It's all rationalization and Kurzweil calmly identifies it and says what is being done about it.

Lastly, I would definitely say that the dominant thing I felt in my 20s was confusion until I became atheist and read those things I mentioned. Life is not at all confusing to me anymore, and in that regard a certain paralysis has disappeared. Free of god and free of death-worship, life finally feels like something it is ok to build on.
 
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To address the title of this thread, did anyone else never really rationalize death? I've always been deeply disgruntled by the thought and it evokes an almost archaic fear, that we are only here for a short little while, and that each passing moment leads ever-closer to our removal from this world.

I've never had a fear of death mostly because I've never thought life was spectacular enough to worry about leaving it. It is what it is. It's not an endlessly ecstatic experience for me, its rich amd complex but not something I really cherish. Truth be told I've always been rather resentful of being alive. Death to me was just the inevitable end of the suffering which is life, so its something I look forward to like sweet relief. Maybe that is rationalising death but does that really matter? To know that whats happened to others will happen to me also isn't something to fear, its just what is. To fear it would be to fear the sun rising in the morning.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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I somewhat believe in reincarnation because nonexistence doesn't exist, there can only ever be the conscious experience of consciousness.

I'm beginning to shed the term reincarnation in general due to its spiritual overtones. I'm thinking of it more like point-of-view shift due to the new super-consciousness metaphor to help explain it to people who can't make the contextual leap of dying and then being reborn instantly as a person while still dying.

I'm thinking something more along the lines of "redesignment", or, even better, reintegration.
 

Alea_iacta_est

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I've never had a fear of death mostly because I've never thought life was spectacular enough to worry about leaving it. It is what it is. It's not an endlessly ecstatic experience for me, its rich amd complex but not something I really cherish. Truth be told I've always been rather resentful of being alive. Death to me was just the inevitable end of the suffering which is life, so its something I look forward to like sweet relief. Maybe that is rationalising death but does that really matter? To know that whats happened to others will happen to me also isn't something to fear, its just what is. To fear it would be to fear the sun rising in the morning.

My whole concept is that we perceive death only in the third person until we actually experience it in the first person, a sort of psychological defense mechanism in our mind to keep us from worrying about something that's going to happen either way or not. I do understand how you don't really fear death though.
 
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Oh ok,I see what you mean now. I'm a terrible intellectual because I dont enjoy philosophical conversations or get the meaning most if the time. Its like something just happened but I have no idea what. I prefer more practical subjects.
 

zago

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My place in the lottery of birth is one I would never voluntarily give up. I would rather have someone press the "reset" button on my brain if I got bored after 1000 years or something than kill me and let me be reborn. For all I know anything could happen. I could be reborn in the Andromeda galaxy. I could be reborn a squirrel. I could be reborn in an alternate universe or dimension. I could be reborn as a Russian cannibal who gets caught and sent to live out the remaining 40 years of my life in a maximum security prison in Siberia. I just saw a documentary on that shit today. Hell exists on Earth my friends. Hell exists on Earth.
 

Qlip

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My place in the lottery of birth is one I would never voluntarily give up. I would rather have someone press the "reset" button on my brain if I got bored after 1000 years or something than kill me and let me be reborn. For all I know anything could happen. I could be reborn in the Andromeda galaxy. I could be reborn a squirrel. I could be reborn in an alternate universe or dimension. I could be reborn as a Russian cannibal who gets caught and sent to live out the remaining 40 years of my life in a maximum security prison in Siberia. I just saw a documentary on that shit today. Hell exists on Earth my friends. Hell exists on Earth.

Just continually kill yourself until you end up in a place you like. It's like channel hopping, all the cool kids are doing it.
 

zago

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Just continually kill yourself until you end up in a place you like. It's like channel hopping, all the cool kids are doing it.

That's exactly how I see it, actually. I don't think any of my memory or personality is carried over, but if consciousness came about once, it will come about again. The problem with that approach is not being able to remember the plan from one life to the next. It would be nice, though, to be born in a post-singularity dream world of immortality, super well-being, and creativity. In an infinite universe, everything must exist o_o
 

Qlip

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That's exactly how I see it, actually. I don't think any of my memory or personality is carried over, but if consciousness came about once, it will come about again. The problem with that approach is not being able to remember the plan from one life to the next. It would be nice, though, to be born in a post-singularity dream world of immortality, super well-being, and creativity. In an infinite universe, everything must exist o_o

Haha... I was just riffing. That sounds overly hopeful, just like all the ramblings of Kurzweil. I take my cues from everything else I witnessed in life. There's a time to make an entrance and time to make an exit, the knowledge of that makes the stuff in the middle meaningful. The alternative is the equivalent of watching all 10 hours of Nyan Cat.
 

zago

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Haha... I was just riffing. That sounds overly hopeful, just like all the ramblings of Kurzweil. I take my cues from everything else I witnessed in life. There's a time to make an entrance and time to make an exit, the knowledge of that makes the stuff in the middle meaningful. The alternative is the equivalent of watching all 10 hours of Nyan Cat.

Now you are rationalizing death! Death doesn't make life meaningful!

Kurzweil is quite realistic. He dedicated an entire chapter of The Singularity is Near to the dangers of biotech, nanotech, and AI and what should be done about them. I think he sees no reason not to maintain a generally positive outlook, though. The man is incredibly smart and rational, and quite personable to boot. Definitely someone I look up to at this point in my life.
 

Qlip

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Now you are rationalizing death! Death doesn't make life meaningful!

Kurzweil is quite realistic. He dedicated an entire chapter of The Singularity is Near to the dangers of biotech, nanotech, and AI and what should be done about them. I think he sees no reason not to maintain a generally positive outlook, though. The man is incredibly smart and rational, and quite personable to boot. Definitely someone I look up to at this point in my life.

He's an evangelizer, most futurists are. They're selling something, themselves, never trust anybody who's selling anything. My opinion is from taking an immense interest in the future myself, I dreamed with an Alvin Toffler paper back at my knee as a preteen. But also, as being a developer. It's simple, everything takes longer than you hoped, even if you thought you had everything covered. Kurzy doesn't have everything covered, there's so much.

Death's role in our perception is beyond rationalization, it it at the root of our existence. I have a hunch that if immortality is achieved before we proverbially blow ourselves up, (the possibility mass death up sooner, and the possibility immortality much later), our psyches wouldn't be able to quite process it.

Omni mag in the 90's told me we'd all be driving diamond cars by now, I am dissapoint.
 

zago

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[MENTION=10714]Qlip[/MENTION] I don't think evangelism is inherently bad; I would consider myself one. To me the only thing that can be good or bad is the substance behind what is being evangelized. It is really quite impossible not to be an evangelist. Even you are trying to convince me of your beliefs not to trust evangelists or people selling something.

One example Kurzweil uses (of many) is the pace of the human genome project. After 7 years they were 1% done and Kurzweil said, "great, it's almost finished." Indeed, it only took another 7 years, despite predictions that it would take hundreds. We can't anticipate what future technology will be, just that it will be, and it will be better and faster.

Bill Gates said no one would ever need more than 75 kilobytes of hard drive space!

Some predictions on the future are too optimistic, some are way too pessimistic. I'm sure I don't need to tell you about the great number of intellectuals who thought flight would not be a possibility just a few short years before it pretty much became ubiquitous.

So, while we may not have our flying cars yet (technically we do, Terrafugia is coming out with them this year) many other areas of tech have zoomed way ahead of what anyone would have ever predicted.

Now, what does "at the root of our existence" mean, exactly?
 

Qlip

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Qlip I don't think evangelism is inherently bad; I would consider myself one. To me the only thing that can be good or bad is the substance behind what is being evangelized. It is really quite impossible not to be an evangelist. Even you are trying to convince me of your beliefs not to trust evangelists or people selling something.

My stake is minimal and engenders minimal self-delusion, since all at stake here is a distraction concerning a field that interests me. Kurzweil's and your interest is the same that made many a human do some damned crazy things, brave dangerous journeys, bathe in the blood of virgins, etc, etc.

One example Kurzweil uses (of many) is the pace of the human genome project. After 7 years they were 1% done and Kurzweil said, "great, it's almost finished." Indeed, it only took another 7 years, despite predictions that it would take hundreds. We can't anticipate what future technology will be, just that it will be, and it will be better and faster.

Bill Gates said no one would ever need more than 75 kilobytes of hard drive space!

Some predictions on the future are too optimistic, some are way too pessimistic. I'm sure I don't need to tell you about the great number of intellectuals who thought flight would not be a possibility just a few short years before it pretty much became ubiquitous.

Oh, so many gaps. It boggles my mind trying to explain the difference between storage space, speed, data and the actual ability to process it to achieve a result that may or may not be able to exist in the real world, let alone the social waters to navigate in the process. Plus all those things are only projections.

I still firmly believe that nuclear power is our best source of energy next to solar (if we get some damned better energy storage solutions), but what's standing in the way isn't technology.

So, while we may not have our flying cars yet (technically we do, Terrafugia is coming out with them this year) many other areas of tech have zoomed way ahead of what anyone would have ever predicted.

I said diamond cars, as in printed, but I'm glad you brought the flying car up. They are the poster child for impractical futures. What the past futurists didn't predict is the shortage of energy. Flying cars will always be impractical as long as it's significantly cheaper to roll on the ground.

Now, what does "at the root of our existence" mean, exactly?

The interesting thing about death, is that it will never truly exist to a conscious being, meaning simply that once it happens, we won't experience it. But it looms large because the perception of our death is what drives us as conscious beings (for instance, Kurzweil's career). Consciousness is evolution's answer to effective procurement of resources and self-replication, i.e. the avoidance of death. Death is integral to experience, and I have a hunch that the introduction of immortality to our experience could cause some very interesting psychoses.
 

zago

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My stake is minimal and engenders minimal self-delusion, since all at stake here is a distraction concerning a field that interests me. Kurzweil's and your interest is the same that made many a human do some damned crazy things, brave dangerous journeys, bathe in the blood of virgins, etc, etc.

That's a valid distinction, I suppose, but then I would have to draw another one between strong evangelism of something rational and strong evangelism of something irrational. Kurzweil gets results. The man's had a hand in inventing a great deal of things widely used today. Religion is pure delusion. The law of accelerating returns can be shown through data.

Oh, so many gaps. It boggles my mind trying to explain the difference between storage space, speed, data and the actual ability to process it to achieve a result that may or may not be able to exist in the real world, let alone the social waters to navigate in the process. Plus all those things are only projections.

I still firmly believe that nuclear power is our best source of energy next to solar (if we get some damned better energy storage solutions), but what's standing in the way isn't technology.

First point is too vague. Don't know what you're talking about.

Second point I agree with. I very much lament the state of places like China that are covered in egregious layers of smog when they could be using nuclear power. The health toll of coal is invisible to us because it is slow. Meltdowns don't have to happen. Nonetheless, with solar power's efficiency doubling every 2 years, it will only be roughly 15 before it can power the globe.

I said diamond cars, as in printed, but I'm glad you brought the flying car up. They are the poster child for impractical futures. What the past futurists didn't predict is the shortage of energy. Flying cars will always be impractical as long as it's significantly cheaper to roll on the ground.

Agree there too. Flying cars are something we have been able to do for a long time, but weren't economical. That doesn't mean much to me. I never really had my heart set on flying cars, just general technological growth. That's a sure bet (barring disaster, as always).

The interesting thing about death, is that it will never truly exist to a conscious being, meaning simply that once it happens, we won't experience it. But it looms large because the perception of our death is what drives us as conscious beings (for instance, Kurzweil's career). Consciousness is evolution's answer to effective procurement of resources and self-replication, i.e. the avoidance of death. Death is integral to experience, and I have a hunch that the introduction of immortality to our experience could cause some very interesting psychoses.

Death really doesn't motivate people like you imagine. I think it is more a question of dopamine levels and such. There need not ever be an end to striving, even if death and suffering disappear. An ever increasing gradient of well-being is possible and could motivate us.
 

Such Irony

Honor Thy Inferior
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Oh ok,I see what you mean now. I'm a terrible intellectual because I dont enjoy philosophical conversations or get the meaning most if the time. Its like something just happened but I have no idea what. I prefer more practical subjects.

Sensor. ;)
 
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