Extropia DaSilva: Welcome, mortals, to Thinkers!
Anna Tretiak: hi Rhiannon
Extropia DaSilva: Today, the topic is the oddly titled…WE LOVE DEATH?
Extropia DaSilva: Welcome, mortals, to Thinkers!
Anna Tretiak: hi Rhiannon
Extropia DaSilva: Today, the topic is the oddly titled…WE LOVE DEATH?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: snickers
Lem Skall: since when do you consider all of us mortals?
Athena Maeterlinck: Well in many ways modern Cryonics isn’t really solving the death issue in any case. It is a gamble whether they will ever be revived.
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Extropia DaSilva: As I said, I mention Cryonics but bare in mind this is about the importance (or not) of death…
Extropia DaSilva: anyway..
Extropia DaSilva: Cryonics is profoundly disruptive of the hard core of contemporary civilization. It erodes the need for a mystical afterlife, radically redistributes capital, and it prevents closure by removing the finality of death. Is it inevitable that this and any potential means of obsolescing death would not be popular?
Khannea Suntzu: Interesting… your topic implies a new dynamic… while we all assumed darwinism was dead now we might get a new darwinism. As soon as there is any measure iof actual life extension,m even a very small margin of such will increase the percentage of life extensionists in society significantly – ‘defectors’ will die quikcker and the values of life extension will propagate more.
Scarp Godenot: Extended life does not lead to the absence of death….
Athena Maeterlinck: It is a new thing. A fundamental shift in society. Such things are never popular.
Rhiannon Dragoone: “Death is good; death is fun; death is good for everyone”–Brave New World
Khannea Suntzu: The trick is however – measurable success
Lem Skall: I think that everyone would like to prolongue their lives even if it’s not for eternity
Extropia DaSilva: But cryonics is the absence of finality. Them popscicles might come back to life one day!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, we *have* prolongued life to three times its average in less than two centuries…
Scarp Godenot: Not everyone Lem, The depressed and suicidal want to shorten their lives.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Yes, prolonged life doesn’t mean that we conquer death
Rhiannon Dragoone: And if there is a malallocation of resources; well, if we left that to the free maket, that would right itself
Lem Skall: Gwyn, only the average, but there were enough people who lived for a long time before
Rhiannon Dragoone: hi Mir!
Athena Maeterlinck: Probably Lem. The earlier mention of the afterlife philosophies is a strong suggestor that death is rarely something people want. An afterlife is a valuable coping mechism with something that connot be avoided.
Miroirs Hax: hi Rhiannon, all
Khannea Suntzu: No. Cryonics is creatig clones with at best hazy memories. Or thats what lawmakers will argue for a looog time. Rekindling the deceased does not inply legal or societal recognition of continued identity.
Louisa Bourgoin: I’m boored to death by this topic. Can’t we make an end to all of this 😀 …
Khannea Suntzu: It would be ’emulated’ identity
Extropia DaSilva: Already?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Of course, Lem! But the “average” just shows that life-prolonging methods have slowly become commonplace, not only available to a “selected few”….
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, i’m sure we are assuming the perfection of the technology
Louisa Bourgoin: no! I’m kidding! matter of factly I know there are situations where one would embrace death
Rhiannon Dragoone: luisa, we will freeze it for you and make it into soup for later
Ataraxia Azemus: I’m stupid laggy and probably won’t get to say much, so I’ll try to cram everything I have in one go: 1) cryonics is expensive, 2) there’s no guarantee that Future Science will be able or want to revive anyone and 3) most people think it’s kind of kooky, and most people also care what others think about them, too :p
Extropia DaSilva: How would you feel if you were of the last mortal generation?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Yes, for the sake of teh argument, Rhi 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: So in that case, we revive people and they resume their lives
Rhiannon Dragoone: Except–
Lem Skall: Gwyn, we’ve only improved health but we haven’t really changed the natural lifespan of a human
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Atari, I believe that Extie means not only cryonics; but gradual replacement of all organic parts, for example, with infinite ability for self-reconstruction, for example
Rhiannon Dragoone: Their loved ones will be dead, they will be in a futgure world that they will have to adapt to; do they really want to do that in order to postpone the inevitable
Rhiannon Dragoone: Hi Aeris!
Aeris Betsen waves
Gwyneth Llewelyn: So what IS the “natural lifespan” of a human, Lem? 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: Those that don’t all die. Those that doe live on in some form, but probably for some time in a ‘legal limbo’.
Lem Skall: so we only improved on some of the causes for early death but the natural lifespan is still about the same
Louisa Bourgoin: Ataraxia, and 4) what happens if you want to die after unfreeze?
Extropia DaSilva: I am wondering if abolishing death equates to the posthuman era?
Lem Skall: Rhi, they’ll find new loved ones
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, at first, but the law will catch up with them
Rhiannon Dragoone: Lem, oh, that’s cold (no pun intended)
Louisa Bourgoin: beeing the last mortal generation, I would turn my death into an act of art
Lem Skall: Rhi, it’s real
Athena Maeterlinck: Well Ata I’m getting the impression that Cryonics really isn’t important to this scheme. So far evidence suggets that we will continue to increase our llifespans. If this trend continues apace we will break the 100+ life expectancy within the next fifty years. We’ve already go societal drage because of the aging issue not being accounted early on and people retiring with many years of healthy life left.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I would partially disagree with our inability to prolongue lifespan, Lem. For instance, even “maturity” in humans takes longer in the Western world these days
Khannea Suntzu: I hope so Rhiannon but since I am there to experience all the transition age fun, I anticipate to have to put up a big fight (or not since I’d be dead but ok)
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I agree with Athena.
Rhiannon Dragoone: They will form new relationships true, but they will still be faced with loss
Louisa Bourgoin: expanding above 100+ doesn’t solve the hassles of beeing over fourty
Extropia DaSilva: They made a mouse live to 1000 in mouse years, albeit with some pretty heavy duty genetic inteferring.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Presumably Job got his family back with the general resurrection, but it still was a loss
Lem Skall: Gwyn, what is “maturity”?
Khannea Suntzu: We won’t get people aged 1000 plus overnight… It will take a while, d’uh
Extropia DaSilva: or was it 900? Long time, anyway..
Gwyneth Llewelyn: In my country, it’s not unusual (or wasn’t, before the financial crisis) for people to retire around 55 years of age, and enjoy some healthy 40 years on top of that. The consequence? The complete meltdown of the welfare state.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, presumably 900 years
Louisa Bourgoin: how long is one mouseyear?
Anna Tretiak: I think that “a longer life” simply means “more of the same”
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Lem: the ability to form a family, for example 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: Anna, well, one will have to bae creative to face immortality without tedium
Anna Tretiak: /me nods
Lem Skall: meh, that’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about, Gwyn
Gwyneth Llewelyn: And I agree, Khannea. We’ll have “average lifespans” of, say, 120 years becoming standard; then 150, then 200, and so forth…
Miroirs Hax: it’s mostly dying, suffering and painful deaths which are bad, death itself most likely is not. death in contrast to life gives a greater appreciation for life, goals, quality of quantity etc. and death is a type of fulfillment, positive.
Khannea Suntzu: No, I have a list of things I need to do and it’s fucking already several millenia
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Lem: yes — a longer lifespan means longer time to reach maturity too
Miroirs Hax: quality over quantity*
Athena Maeterlinck: Yes it will take a while but since techonolgy is advancing and increasing lifespan for humans at the same time as we age then the current younger generation may see continued life extending benefits. I believe the term given for this immortality escape velocity was “live long enough to live forever”.
Extropia DaSilva: I once said that the problem is not having too little time to live, but not being able to make the most of the time you have. If you cannot solve that problem and you get immortality, I doubt you would enjoy it.
Louisa Bourgoin: it’S sad childhoods woun’t expand in duration accordingly
Anna Tretiak: that is something that bugs me terribly though
Lem Skall: no, women still are able to conceive until about the same age they used to 200 years ago
Extropia DaSilva: what is?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Wow Extie; you know, my teachers tend to use the exact quote!
Anna Tretiak: Well, we keep prolonging our lives, and the pace of change of technology keeps accelerating. The combination of both things means that the amount of change that one person is exposed to during his/her lifetime is becoming larger.
Lem Skall: at least naturally
Rhiannon Dragoone: And hopefully we are talking eternal youth; we don’t want to age to the point of total incompetence at age 900
Extropia DaSilva: Do they?
Anna Tretiak: A couple of generations ago, the things that a kid would see around him/her would be still around when he/she was old; nowadays, that’s barely true, and this will be less and less valid if we keep moving this way. Cryogenics will be the last straw.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s the whole point, Lem — “naturally”
Khannea Suntzu: You can doubt all you want Trophy, I’d be perfectly ine lazying about a few centuries as a toital useless bum
Gwyneth Llewelyn: It’s not “natural” to give birth after, say, 40 years of age, but medical science certainly achieved that
Extropia DaSilva: If it makes you happy, K, why not?
Louisa Bourgoin: there is still a small chance of all this rubble about “prolonged livespan” beeing statistical hoax
Lem Skall: Gwyn, but they haven’t changed nature
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, what is natural is artificial in a species that has technology as its natural means of survival
Scarp Godenot: We don’t have enough resources on earth to continue our population growth as it is. Expanding lifespans will complicate that even more. It might not be in the interests of humanity to extend life too much.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, most likely you’ll be working hard all those centuries until your last day 😀
Khannea Suntzu: Correctly – and since we can engineer happyness soon after life extension, what’s the problem?
Lem Skall: they just found a way AROUND it
Athena Maeterlinck: Yes Anna there was a well known book called Future Shock about that in the 1970s. When I read it in the early 00ts It already seemed dated and its notions somewhat flawed since technology has continued its rapid progress and people are not only keeping up but thriving in the ever chaning world.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Rhi 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: Nonsense Gwynneth
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, *my* generation will most definitely die on the workplace 😉
Khannea Suntzu: Heya ArchMage 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: hi Arch!
Anna Tretiak: Athena, I am not sure if people are “thriving” in the world, if we look at the global picture
Gwyneth Llewelyn: … at 90+ years of age
Khannea Suntzu: My new most virulent critic.
Khannea Suntzu: I need more of those
Extropia DaSilva: Athena, yeah people quickly become blase about technology and it just disappears into the background of our lives.
Miroirs Hax: eternal youth would kind of let you not appreciate youth anymore, (let alone leave out 2/3rd of a “full” life and fulfillment) the trouble with immortality, high health and youth is that most contrast disappears, drives to do stuff go, societies would be
Miroirs Hax: become ever more shallow, etc.
Extropia DaSilva: unless it fails. Then you notice it!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Ah, eternal *youth*… 😉
Archmage Atlantis Hiya K, Rhi, et al
Louisa Bourgoin: we tend to eagerly believe promises of long life
Rhiannon Dragoone: We take technology for granted; i jut heard that people used something called a tpewriter even a generation aqgo. Can you believe it? I always associated typewriters with the 19th century
Athena Maeterlinck: Perhaps Scapr but ocnsider that people living longer have the opportunity to take all that additional knowledge gained and put it toward even more impressive innovation for sustainability and perhaps things like seasteading and space travel. Plus people who live longer healthier lives in modern society seem to have a lower propensity toward more children. As the third world benefits from this we will see even further decreases in population growth. Maybe not to the negative growth rates seen in Europe but a fair reduction.
Scarp Godenot: Miroirs: to quote a famous person “Youth is wasted on the young…” Ataraxia
Azemus: Hi Arch
Rhiannon Dragoone: Scarp, I bet an old person said that
Extropia DaSilva: helo Arch
Miroirs Hax nods
Khannea Suntzu: The current world we are in actually.. is *precisely* the kind of simulation I’d expect one would find in the future, to teach immortals growing up the realities iof death, suffering, poverty. disease, war, taxes.
Louisa Bourgoin: maybe we *are* isnide a learning environment!
Khannea Suntzu: Taking notes here
Miroirs Hax: true Khannea
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, I personally see a huge gap emerging in the first decades, among the haves and the have-nots…. where the have-nots will have to work hard until they die from exhaustion until they’re a hundred year olds, with idle rich doing nothing for a few centuries, until the technology becomes universally affordable — then people can work centuries after centuries and die from exhaustion 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: err … that thesis is a little bit self centric
Athena Maeterlinck: Well Anna looking at the global picture are people worse off as a whole across the globe before we brought the technology on board? And those who you are referring to who are suffering are generally the ones with little access to the advances in technology. One of the service project type things that keeps coming up at the university is bringing electrical power to villages. The One Laptop Per Child initiative is intended to bring better education via techonology. Clearly higher tech is beneficial overall.
Extropia DaSilva: The real problem with life is that time runs backwards. If you began really old you might appreciate going out to work, and you might appreciate the long holidays school kids have after your years of growing young in employment. And you would never die but just end up going back in your mummy.
Khannea Suntzu: : Or ironic
Louisa Bourgoin: the have-nots will get all the toxic work places
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Yep 🙂
Anna Tretiak: I don’t necessarily agree, Athena
Miroirs Hax: atleast, if you’re lucky, life starts and ends in diapers
Anna Tretiak: I believe there are pockets of improvement
Khannea Suntzu: Oh I know a few who spend some time in diapers in between (looks sideways)
Rhiannon Dragoone: Well, Gwyn, like anything else; the rich will have the longivity first, but the poor will have it eventually
Anna Tretiak: and areas of very big improvement, such as public health in the western world
Rhiannon Dragoone: /me resists putting an angel on Aziel’s antlers
Anna Tretiak: but technology also has brought sophisticated instruments of domination and submission
Anna Tretiak: don’t get me wrong: i am all excited about technology and cryogenics! 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: Aubrey de Grey thinks longevity will be free, like education. And for the same reason: It costs society less to provide it for free than it does to withhold it and have to pay for all the consequences.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There was an interesting science fiction novel where the main character was a scientist that discovered a way to allow cells to continue to repair themselves and effectively create immortal people; to make sure that everybody would benefit from the ‘treatment’, he published the formula on the Wikipedia, and placed it on the public domain 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: Europe in 2050 – dead poor since everyone gets life extension from common resources.. The US in 2050 – a country riddled by crime and darwinian conpetiution as a ruthless corporate system of achivements decides who gets ife extension, and less than a fourth actually get it.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Extropia, i doubt it; it will trickle down like everything else.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Of course it’s just a story; if that technological breakthrough ever became true, it would be a heavily patented thing 😉
Anna Tretiak: but i also think that us academics are an intellectual elite that accounts for a tiny percentage of the people in the world 🙂
Dizzy Banjo: this is a fascinating discussion, but alas I cant stay. Just wanted to say hi to everyone before I say bye 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: I mean, if you were eternally young, you would not have to retire and could work and pay taxes forever! But if you grow old and infirm you cannot work and become a burden to society.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, it sounds plausible
Khannea Suntzu: …and I’d be on a roof shooting the patent holders in the head
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, likelty there will be several pattens, and different ways to have life extension
Rhiannon Dragoone: TC Dizzy
Scarp Godenot: Khannea: both Europe and US in 2050: Trying to adapt to the collapse of agriculture due to climate change.
Extropia DaSilva: Bye Dizzy! Good luck wijh the inceptions thing! Dizzy Banjo: thx cyas 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: All heavilly protected by the industry, RHi :
Rhiannon Dragoone: And remember to stay forever young.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: (see you, Dizzy!)
Khannea Suntzu: World 2050 – 99% of agriculture is done in agricologies.
Khannea Suntzu: Pfft.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, the industry is not likely to be a monolith or without democratic regulation
Athena Maeterlinck: Well it is the same as what Rhi was saying Anna. It goes from Rich to poor. It has to be developed and built and not everyone has everything at the same time. However I saw a rather interesting YouTube video the other day charting general welfare trends over the course of the last 200 odd years and overall even the poorest countries have improved their lot. And along the lines of poor countries improving just look at the economic position of India and China, Two billion people, who are seeing huge economic and welfare impovements. Sure it is centered in the cities and the big wigs are making it rich but that doesn’t really differ too much from the western societies they are emulating anyway.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: We can only hope so, Rhi!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Athena, that’s quite true.
Athena Maeterlinck: Khannea that sounds like a lovely 1950s National geographic article on the future in 2000 ^_^.
Anna Tretiak nods
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, well unless there is radical change, business, government and society will be in their present equilibria, so yeah, i think it will happen that way
Khannea Suntzu: Life extension MUST, at any cost, become open source, noncorporate, affordable and massproduced. If some fuckhead sits his big ass in front of life extension and STOPS poeple, for whatever asshat reason – that person Must Die.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm
Gwyneth Llewelyn: The older I grow, the more sceptic I become, Rhi…
Louisa Bourgoin: patenting means disclosureing product internals … and times out after some centuries … and there are offshore medical productions
Anna Tretiak smiles and nods at Gwyn
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, how will you *enforce* that? 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, funny, the less i become, but people tell me i should wait until i get old
Khannea Suntzu: Ay attempt to kartelize life extension is murder in my book. Kill them by any means.
Lem Skall: wow, one of the worst misuses of the term open-source I’ve seen
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Rhi!
Rhiannon Dragoone: Cryogentic will help that
Athena Maeterlinck: That would be ideal in some ways Khannea but terribly impractical in the larger scheme of things.
Miroirs Hax: i think we have become so shallow we should actively shorten life, to really hammer some appreciation in there, quality over quantity, shift some values, but no one will vote for me if it’s my main point on the banner.
Extropia DaSilva: One of the transhumany books I read talked about a new organ that would maintain your body and keep it young indefinitely. It replaced your reproductive organs. I guess that would answer the popularion explosion problem;) Would that appeal to anyone here?
Archmage Atlantis Wow, what a chat example of linear extrapolation….. impressive all
Rhiannon Dragoone: MIr, that would be a great party–“The Short LIfe Span” party
Miroirs Hax nods!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe Extie 🙂 Not having any kids, and not planning to have any, my answer would be “sure, why not?” 😉
Anna Tretia is in too
Khannea Suntzu: Oh for sure we live in exponential times, however greed is also exponential Archie
Rhiannon Dragoone: But Asimov, in one of his novels which transitioned the robot novels to the Foundation novel had a 200 year old woman convinced short lived earthmen that they were the lucky ones
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Right, Khannea!
Extropia DaSilva: I would sign up for a Blue Brain virtual baby! I could wait long enough for the tech to become affordable, after all!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: And that’s what I meant, Rhi — greed grows exponentially as more and more moral and ethical values are discarded.
Athena Maeterlinck: It would appeal to me after I have successfully reproduced. Until such time as I have grandchildren though I’d rather keep my options open. There are no guarantees about life extension after all and using an unproven technology is a much better ideas after you hedge your bets by producing some genetic legacy.
Louisa Bourgoin: Rhi, inside “Aurora”
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very wise, Athena 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, well, until they reacdh a ;point where it all becomes meaqningless–then why not be moral?
Khannea Suntzu: Mortalist propaganda. Hey if things would get overcrowded and expensive, I’d spread mortalist propaganda too… the more relinquish life extension because of some idiotic reason, the more cake left for me at the end of the day.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: A good question, Rhi.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I have no answer!
Rhiannon Dragoone: Luisa, may have been, the were all Bailey’s World in the 2nd way of galactic colonization
Lem Skall: ironically, I see more of a need for legal euthanasia than for prolonguing life indefinitely
Gwyneth Llewelyn: ha Lem!
Athena Maeterlinck: Heh Rhi that sounds much like Tolkiens view taken in the silmarillion. The gift of Eru to man above and beyond that of all the other gifts given even the Aratar -was death. “A gift that in time even the powers shall envy”
Rhiannon Dragoone: Lem, both are important; but one will be a *lot* more popular
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Actually you have a good point, Lem J
Khannea Suntzu: Rhiannon, well, until they reach a point where it all becomes meaningless–then why not be gamers?
Louisa Bourgoin: mortalist propaganda seems to be a pretty new term! or did you stole that from greek history?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Rhi — indeed
Archmage Atlantis I lile cake, tho it melts in the rain
Rhiannon Dragoone: Athena, i bet Asimov was inspired by that
Athena Maeterlinck: It would not surprise me in the least Rhi.
Extropia DaSilva: No maybe Lem has a point. Maybe the worst thing would be to exist in a world that just will not let you die, ever, no matter how fed up with living you are?
Anna Tretiak: But death should be optional, not forbidden, right?
Rhiannon Dragoone: I also read a science fiction story where humans were the only short lived species in the galaxy, and an ancient myth said that when the gods asked the spaient races whicdh they would want–long lives or glory, the humans cd-hose glory, the others long lives
Miroirs Hax: i think euthanasia will become more and more a taboo in societies ever more driven on life-extention and “shallowification”, as will any setbacks be because life will be ever more “creatable” and own responsibility. and on that note, will i then still have
Khannea Suntzu: Ancient Greece didn’t exist. It’s fiction, all inventedin the 1950s.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/historians-admit-to-inventing-ancient-greeks,18209/
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, most Western countries make taking your own life a crime…..
Rhiannon Dragoone: Anna, i can see a time, with immortality, where they will outlaw death
Miroirs Hax: the right to denie life-extention?
Louisa Bourgoin: there is no law against death. matter of factly … death is a bussiness
Gwyneth Llewelyn: LOL Khannea!!!!!
Scarp Godenot: Does joy of life have a direct correlation to possibility of death?
Rhiannon Dragoone: ‘shallofication,’ i love the word, Mir
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, it did exist, we discovered it after the Moon launch; oh, wait, that was a myth too
Anna Tretiak: Why outlaw death? Can’t see the reason
Rhiannon Dragoone: Well, you must be insnae or self destructivfe to want to die–and as a State, we need to act paternalistically and portect you from yourself
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well Scarp, if nobody had at leasta bit of joy of life, none of us would be here discussing how to prolongue it… 😉
Lem Skall: can’t outlaw death, you’ll just be able to buy a ship and launch yourself into space without any resources
Louisa Bourgoin: why exactly does society forbid killings again?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Rhi — and kill you. LOL
Athena Maeterlinck: That would be an unfortunate thing. However, that seems like an issue that could easily be avoided by current society. After all there will probably be people preaching the virtues of death and those that are always willing to let the other guy kill himself. Assuming we don’t lose that greedy side of humanity than outliving folks has its benefits. I would be more worried about friends and family holding onto those who are ready to end it. If we are all living forever how much harder would it be to not only watch a loved one die but essentially choose voluntary suicide?
Anna Tretiak: Rhi, i think that only holds from certain western perspective
Extropia DaSilva: Well it is a doctor’s duty to do all he or she can to keep you alive. Well, if the tech was good enough, maybe anyone and everyone could be bought back to life? Not everyone might want that.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Lem, i have to laugh; i read a SF story where two families resisiting immortaqlity did just thaqt
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Athena. So true
Archmage Atlantis Even with infinite life extention, personality regeneration, whaterver….ending seems to be inevitable……of course beginning does also
Gwyneth Llewelyn: /me is agreeing a lot with Athena today
Khannea Suntzu: 2097 – the UN declares all human minds part of the collective legacy of mankind and disallows permanent death – all minds are equipped with recording devices for archiuval purpioses – “we cannot allow a few selfish deathists to steal parts ogf our collective heritage and burn it on the pires of undocumented history”
Extropia DaSilva: Is that rare, then?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I don’t know hehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Khannea
Gwyneth Llewelyn: you’re inspired today, girl!
Anna Tretiak: In our society there is a tacit assumption that everyone wants to live as much and as long as possible; hence doctor’s deontic codes and prohibition of euthanasia, etc.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Anna, western perspectives tend to be imposed on the world, in cdultural imperialism
Extropia DaSilva: God… GoogleResurrect.
Lem Skall: Rhi, I didn’t read that but I’m not surprised that others thought of it
Khannea Suntzu: I get a lot of sex these days… very inspiring
Athena Maeterlinck: Sure Khannea that might happen I wouldn’t be surprised but does your mental data require you to maintain an effective and mobile sense of self awareness? Do you actually have to exist or just your knowledge memories and ideas?
Scarp Godenot: What I’m saying Gwyn is that opposited define each other, and if there was no death, would we appreciate time? If there is time for everything, would choosing something lose its value?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, yes, i can see tht happeing–but then the NRA will come to our rescue–our rieght to keep and bear arms–so we may kill ourselves if we wish
Extropia DaSilva: OO good questions scarp!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Good questions, yes, although I’d be a pragmatist…. “eternal life” means working forever.
Anna Tretiak: more of the same
Gwyneth Llewelyn: After a few centuries it gets a BIT boring….
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, not so bad if you love your work
Khannea Suntzu: “we must stop suicide emigration to the asteroid belt, every deathist emigrant is another neurological library loost!!!” (pope Asimov III at the 2114 lunar vatican consilia)
Lem Skall: how about life like in Groundhog Day, just repeating itself over and over?
Archmage Atlantis Wonders where K bought her orgasmitron
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Few love their work to continue to do it for a few millenia…
Khannea Suntzu: Mexico
Athena Maeterlinck: Yes Scarp I think that it would. Time continues on and as they say you cannot change what is past. Events will still happen and there will be no going back on them. Even millennia on it is likely that you can’t undo what was done or redo that thing so taking time to pause and reflect before making major choices will still have an impact.
Extropia DaSilva: We would still change through experience. Currently we do not live long enough to change too much, but if we lived for centuries and millenia, we might change so much in that time that the person you are today is ‘gone’. So…is that the same as saying ‘you’ are dead?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I think that the overall population on Earth would decrease after a few millenia, though
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Which might be good for the environment…. Scarp will be happy!
Louisa Bourgoin: no fears about working forever! if people don#t die, we probably get rid of construcing wares to expire after guarantie span
Archmage Atlantis Now the sombrero in the shape of a fig leaf makes more sense
Rhiannon Dragoone: Extropia yes, the problem of ‘Methuselah’ in Dennet’s problem cases
Khannea Suntzu: Tsk. As if I won’t be a 40 ton tentacled mass of nanoids in a few centuries. Like I am gona stay a stupid monkey fot long. Jezus how shortsighted people can be.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Extie, we change from day to day; the Gwyn of today is not the Gwyn that attended Thinkers last week 🙂
Lem Skall: if you could live and have children forever, then how many children would be enough for you?
Athena Maeterlinck: Well the lifetime warranty will be a much larger deal at any rate
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, hah! So you admit it!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Athena!!!!! Aziel Sigall: life insurance companies would go out of business
Rhiannon Dragoone: Athena, lmao
Extropia DaSilva: .
Gwyneth Llewelyn: And so am I…
Extropia DaSilva: You have not changed enough to seem like someone else, though.
Khannea Suntzu: /me sheds a tear for all those lost whale oil businesses
Louisa Bourgoin:: not just insurances .. I see trouble for whole growth based economy patterns
Rhiannon Dragoone: But if you live long enough so there isn’t memory continuity between say 900 and 30, are you the same person?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s because you’re used to a set of patterns that you call “gwyn”, Extie 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: …
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Depends, Rhi. Everybody else might think so.
Scarp Godenot: Rhiannon, you aren’t the same person this week as last
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Like Scarp said.
Rhiannon Dragoone: luisa, not to mention innovation; look what happens to universities that have too many tenured faculty
Extropia DaSilva: Rhi if A implies b and b implies C, then A implies C:)
Louisa Bourgoin: well live would slow down
Rhiannon Dragoone: Scarp, well, that would depend on the prindciple of personal identity you adopt
Khannea Suntzu: Rhiannon, you mean with this current 1350 gram brain? Or the brain I will keep iteratively upgrading every year for the next few million years, till me and my quadrillions ot galactic mind children merge with the ephemeral black matter ether of the cosmos?
Louisa Bourgoin: and expand in duration 🙂 … maybe the bottomline is rather frustrating
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Not really, Rhi. There has been a lot of experiences you went through since last week, so you’re clearly not the same person.
Anna Tretiak: Maybe what we recognise as one person widens up to acommodate larger variability of the individual
Athena Maeterlinck: Aye Scarp something like that. And on the boredom issue I tend to think you only get bored if you let yourself. Even lacking the new frontiers and ideas opened by new technology I could spend 100 current lifetimes just travelling the world and seeing everything in it. If that continues to change over the course of 10,000 years how manifold would that fascination be.
Archmage Atlantis Galdiators,Monachs and Manufacturers of whale bone corsets went out of biz, why not insurance, banks and presidents?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Extropia, stop all that high fallutin mathematical stuff about transitivity; it hurts my deliecate little brain
Scarp Godenot: Would the ‘you’ of 12 or 15 be recognizeable by the you of 30 or 50 if they met?
Louisa Bourgoin: “It’s better to burn out than fade away”
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Gwyneth Llewelyn doesn’t have a “bored” gene
Khannea Suntzu: MUAHUAHUA?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Well, are we taking a physical continuity or mental continuity criteria for personal identity Ataraxia Azemus: As long as we remember last week, and other people remember us last week, we’re the same person
Extropia DaSilva *giggles*
Khannea Suntzu: Nuns, no sense of humor
Athena Maeterlinck: I also see some definite benefits to long life for things like colonizing space. Mars is only two years away but it would certainly help in the long term if the initial colonists could live much longer and not have to worry about transit back so soon or reproduction in the short term. For places further out we might not need such huge world ships if the initial crew lives through the entire one thoursand year journey.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: A pragmatic criterium, Rhi 😉
Ataraxia Azemus After 1000 years, it gets fuzzier I guess, so who knows?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh good point, Athena
Scarp Godenot: I’m asking if the 12 year old would recognize the 50 year old?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Atari, that’s clearly not true and you know it 🙂
Archmage Atlantis I think without audio, MUAHUAHUA really loses a lot of impact
Khannea Suntzu: Will I be allowed to fuck 200 year olds with a 15 year old body?
Lem Skall: Athena, I would volunteer to go to Mars even with the expectation that I could live only for a couple of years after getting there and would nver get back
Archmage Atlantis Though even in text, the manic phase is fun
Rhiannon Dragoone: A pragmatic criteria would go against my inution that i’m the same person I was 20 years ago and will be 30 years from now
Athena Maeterlinck: Well Gwyn when I was 12 years old I tended to just think of anybody over twenty as ‘another random adult’. And not worry too much about specific agres.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, sure, lots of countries allow 15-year-olds to fuck whomever they like 😉
Rhiannon Dragoone: Now, 1000 years from now–it gets fruzzier; the intuition isn’t as clear
Extropia DaSilva: ..
Khannea Suntzu: 🙂 Ataraxia Azemus: I don’t know what else we are, except a continuity of experience, Gwyn!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oooh very good, Atari 🙂
Lem Skall: Gwyn, I want a list of those countries
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Lem
Louisa Bourgoin: Lem (!)
Gwyneth Llewelyn: you’re not 15 years old!
Khannea Suntzu: Is fucking as a cloned mind copy myself a form of incest?
Louisa Bourgoin: it is. next question?
Louisa Bourgoin: …you can be so provocative !
Archmage Atlantis The weird thing for me is that there is a group of gay 20 year olds that finds quite older men preferable……even if they have no money and can’t be sugar daddies
Extropia DaSilva: Can be? She always is!
Scarp Godenot: Khannea: It gives new meaning to the phrase “Go fuck yourself”. ha ha
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Rhi, in 20 years you’ll be the person you’re now plus all the changes of those 20 years; so how can you say you’re the “same” person? It doesn’t make any sense.
Athena Maeterlinck: So would many people Lem. I’d go even if there was a 75% chance of blowing up on the way. Finding folks to go isn’t that hard but the mission can be improved if those people with those attitudes and yearnings and especially knowledge are still around to keep building. We don’t get New Salt Lake City on Mars within just a few years.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Atai, by a continuity of expereince, do yuou mean memory? Then that raises the Methusalah question again Ataraxia Azemus: 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: J
Rhiannon Dragoone: Can there be any memory that goes from 12 to 900
Rhiannon Dragoone: I have many that go from 12 to 25
Archmage Atlantis Define memory
Louisa Bourgoin: we could shoot salt lake onto mars perhaps?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Arch, don’t have to for my point; just the cdommon sense experience of remembering would be enough
Scarp Godenot: Most people block their memories of Jr. High school…. ha ha
Khannea Suntzu: I’ll send a copy of this talk to Audrey de Grey. He’ll get a kick out of that one 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: I got myself a Khannea Clone / I bring her out when I’m alone/ And now my skills are so well honed / My neighbours don’t sleep, for the way she moans.
Khannea Suntzu: Oh!
Athena Maeterlinck: Intriguing idea Luisa but since we can’t even get humans into space right now with the shuttle program being cut I think that is an extreme long term goal.
Archmage Atlantis Listening to 50s music on the digital feed, and realizing that asking the young man to dance was the right (and moral) thing to do
Extropia DaSilva: Immortals have time on their hands;)
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I believe they would be as busy as we are now
Athena Maeterlinck: Now if they could just get their hands on time.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Athena!!!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: so well put 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: shuttlecuts beeing a bummer! that really ruines my euphemistic views on technology … we aren’t even there where we brag to be
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm we’ll have to wait a few more decades, Athena
Athena Maeterlinck: Yeah I know the feeling Luisa. I’m really pinning my hopes on what we saw with the successful SpaceX dragon flight. That private industry will take up the slack and deliver us a spacefaring human future.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: The interesting bit about the “memory” question is to answer if our capacity to remember things is finite or infinite 😉
Extropia DaSilva: Ahh the robot explorers are doing OK. Space belongs to them, not meatbags!
Lem Skall: Extie, is this discussion posted to your blog? uncensored?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Until then, Extie is right. Robots win the race.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Usually, yes, lem!
Extropia DaSilva: Yes Lem (=lie)
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, except those who remember what a joke is
Lem Skall: oh
Extropia DaSilva: why?
Lem Skall: lol, not PG
Rhiannon Dragoone: /me marvels how we went from the question of immortality to the principles of personal identity seamlessly
Athena Maeterlinck: Sadly, yes. But there is another reason I want to try and live forever. The future may be a bit slow in coming and I want to see every bit of it. I’ve always dreamed of travelling in space and if it won’t be an option until I’m fifty then some life extension and youth enhancing agents may be just the ticket.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: So what, Extie’s blog is not necessarily PG 😛
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very good, Rhi 🙂
Archmage Atlantis PG? pornographic greatness?
Extropia DaSilva: The thoughts that went through my mind when I saw my sis in that dress she wore for our aniversary were not necessarily all PG;)
Khannea Suntzu: Now Athena is starting to get it
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe Athena. We live in the future already, though 😉 For *some* people, the dream ofhaving 100 Mbps Internet connections at home *is* the future, and as sexy as travelling to the Moon 😉
Khannea Suntzu: Current world == boring
Extropia DaSilva: Do you think it will always be so, Khannea?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hA! I’m sure *all* generations think that, Khannea!
Scarp Godenot: Rhiannon, the questions are intimately linked. Is someone immortal if they are constantly changing? Where then is the continuity?
Khannea Suntzu: Upgrade the whole damnn circus
Athena Maeterlinck: Sure but I want a petabye a second ON the moon ^_^
Archmage Atlantis The fundamental element of Extie’s blog, and presentations, is a brilliant rational mind, tempered by a reality of temporal and physical existence
Athena Maeterlinck: Plus full immersion virtual reality. SL is great but I still can’t smell the other avatars.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Athena, it will be on the MOon that we will discover thatn ancient Greece did exist
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There is no intrinsic continuity, Scarp 😉 And it’s good there isn’t any, or we would be unable to change the way we think, aprehend new experiences, learn things… constantly changing is the key for all the fun!
Extropia DaSilva: That and the fact I am a real windbag. 70,000+ word essays!
Athena Maeterlinck: I thought we would find the secret Nazi rocket base…
Gwyneth Llewelyn: The Iron Sky movie will reveal that, Athena… 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: http://www.ironsky.net/
Khannea Suntzu: Seriously – the word aristotle – they came up with that in scrabble
Scarp Godenot: Gwyn, if there is no continutiy, then there is no immortality.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very wisely put 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: But there can be a VERY long time.
Khannea Suntzu: BG strikes again, so eloquent 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: BG?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: A few billion years is pretty good for me, thanks!
Khannea Suntzu: Bee Gee’s
Khannea Suntzu: Andy gibb
Extropia DaSilva: Oh.
Louisa Bourgoin: secret space stations?! war propaganda always exaggerates about enemy’s capabilities to shake up congress people
Khannea Suntzu: Not Ben Goertzel
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol
Scarp Godenot: Bene Gesserit
Khannea Suntzu: hehehehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hahahahahahahahahaha
Extropia DaSilva: Blue gene?
Khannea Suntzu: 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: Bald Gwyn?
Rhiannon Dragoone: well, we’re talking about having all the time in the world, Gwyn
Scarp Godenot: Baby God
Gwyneth Llewelyn: not yet, not yet, Extie 😉
Rhiannon Dragoone: Which alwasys made me wonder–what about the time that is *not* in the world?
Louisa Bourgoin:: where exactly has our thread been gone lost now?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: How so, Rhi?
Khannea Suntzu: Well this is surely all immortal slapstick
Athena Maeterlinck: It got lost in the mists of time. We’ve lived so long since the thread began that it has become a hazy distant memory.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Athena!!!!!
Scarp Godenot: Not much to say about cryonics….. that is the reason…. so the topic is immortality and what that implies interms of personality.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm
Louisa Bourgoin: lost in the mists of time … that summarizes well
Extropia DaSilva: You know, there is some talk that the microwave background might show evidence of eternal inflation. That means infinite universes, which means infinite copies and alternate histories, which means somewhere in the multiverse you always exist;) So ‘we’ are immortal already, maybe!
Rhiannon Dragoone: luisa, i mentioned where a few lines ago–we’ve gone from immortality and cryogenics to Parfit’s questions of personal identity
Khannea Suntzu: Cryonics is a poor atheist statement that comes down to ‘saving money through creative decapacitation’….dunno
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, people change, obviously, but they’re also affected by their habits and tendencies, and living thousands or millions of years will just give them opportunities to repeat the same errors, over and over again
Louisa Bourgoin: or it measn microwave oven door not closing properly
Anna Tretiak: i think that waking up after being cryonized would be similar to relocating across the world, getting a divorce and having cosmetic surgery, all at once, on steroids
Extropia DaSilva: Reasons and Persons, great stuff, a must read.
Archmage Atlantis immortal slapstick….that isn’t pattented is it……on well, posted on enuf sites, it won’t matter
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Nice analogy, Anna 😉
Rhiannon Dragoone: /me hugs Extropia–finally someone who has read Parfit!
Lem Skall: can the brain keep memories of an infinite life?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s a good question, Lem, but it requires answering first: “where are memories stored?”
Louisa Bourgoin: “I can’t feel my legs … wait, my stomach too!”
Scarp Godenot: The Multiple universe theory is the exact opposite of Occam’s Razor.. And the danger of not following it as a guide in logic.
Anna Tretiak: yes, because you don’t need to recall the original moment when the memory was formed
Rhiannon Dragoone: And i love to add to that with SL experience; like the one avi i know that has two ppk’s
Khannea Suntzu: Anna twenty years later re-awakening from Cryo might be less of a change than a heavy flu
Extropia DaSilva: …Actually no. But I have read so many books that reference him, I figure it must be good.
Anna Tretiak: it’s enough to recall the fact that you recalled the memory the day before
Anna Tretiak: Khannea, may be, yes
Khannea Suntzu: Hopefully twenty years AFTER current waiting lists and NOT current vitrification.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: When I was younger I tended to explain my lack of memory (when remembering people, for instance) saying that I had to save up some brain cells for my future life, since the brain mass was finite, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to remember everything 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: memories of childhood got constructed when you tell them. experimentally proved by tricking people with photos into remembering places that did never existed
Extropia DaSilva: Occam’s razor begins..’All else being equal’…but what does that caveat MEAN? What if all else is NOT equal and is that the case with multiverse theories?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: heh Extie 😉
Extropia DaSilva: No seriously what does it mean?
Gwyneth Llewelyn loves unprovable theories
Scarp Godenot: Some say your first memory is when you performed an act of will in opposition to your parents wishes. That formed you as a person who was not your parents. My first memories are of taking candy from a stranger and dropping a birthday cake….. ha ha
Khannea Suntzu: Now we are getting into that tar pit, can we also specuate on what is happening inside a black hole? Inquiring minds like to know.
Anna Tretiak looks up searching for a teapot
Athena Maeterlinck: All else never really is equal in any case. What they really mean is assuming we don’t change the outside variables.
Extropia DaSilva: ‘This theory is not provable under your Formal System’.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Gödel
Khannea Suntzu: BONK whale falls on head
Extropia DaSilva: Mhmmm!
Extropia DaSilva: My Gwyn is learned!
Rhiannon Dragoone: hmm, either there is super lag, or you are all talking about me behind my back in IM’s
Gwyneth Llewelyn: that was easy 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Rhi
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There is lag, yes
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There is always lag, and always will be; the universe runs on lag.
Khannea Suntzu: I love those Gödel sandwiches, especially the ones with cottage cheese and spinach.
Louisa Bourgoin: err if it doesn’t make sense always, that#s because … it doesn’t frankyl said
Extropia DaSilva: Oh I never talk about your BACK in IMS. The front though…boy oh boy yes! *Giggles*
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I’m sure it’s the fundamental particle of the universe
Athena Maeterlinck: Well given that I am sitting behind you…
Extropia DaSilva: Well how time flies…This discussion is about to end. Or, die, if you like..Any final comments folks? Can we live without death?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I think we can, it will just be hard.
Scarp Godenot: At least we are stopping with Goden and not Solipsism…. ha ha
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Then again, nothing in life is easy 😉
Scarp Godenot: Godel
Gwyneth Llewelyn: We’ll get there, Scarp 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: we can’t. we will always need death. if even just for some folks
Rhiannon Dragoone: Scarp, unless we are all Godel and therefore are solipsistic
Gwyneth Llewelyn spent 5 days discussing solipsism and had a huge headache afterwards
Rhiannon Dragoone: Luisa, and yes, we will all know who those are
Extropia DaSilva: Always good to meet a fellow solipsist. It is so rare….
Gwyneth Llewelyn: LOl Extie!!!!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hahahahahahahaha
Anna Tretiak frowns
Gwyneth Llewelyn: that was very good!
Athena Maeterlinck: Wel Yes I think it is ultimately possible to live without death and we should strive to make that a viable choice. Some people will want to live forever and others won’t but if we can maintain a free society it will allow another important life choice to all persons who have access and in time that should be most people.
Gwyneth Llewelyn applauds
Scarp Godenot: How can you be a solipsist Extie, when I am dreaming you?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, did you ever read Bertrand Russel, who got a letter from a unviersity professor in which she said she was a solopist and wondered why more ppl weren’t
Extropia DaSilva: Anyway…NEXT WEEK carries on this morbid topic of death with….RIP DP…
snickers
Lem Skall: since when do you consider all of us mortals?
Athena Maeterlinck: Well in many ways modern Cryonics isn’t really solving the death issue in any case. It is a gamble whether they will ever be revived.
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Extropia DaSilva: As I said, I mention Cryonics but bare in mind this is about the importance (or not) of death…
Extropia DaSilva: anyway..
Extropia DaSilva: Cryonics is profoundly disruptive of the hard core of contemporary civilization. It erodes the need for a mystical afterlife, radically redistributes capital, and it prevents closure by removing the finality of death. Is it inevitable that this and any potential means of obsolescing death would not be popular?
Khannea Suntzu: Interesting… your topic implies a new dynamic… while we all assumed darwinism was dead now we might get a new darwinism. As soon as there is any measure iof actual life extension,m even a very small margin of such will increase the percentage of life extensionists in society significantly – ‘defectors’ will die quikcker and the values of life extension will propagate more.
Scarp Godenot: Extended life does not lead to the absence of death….
Athena Maeterlinck: It is a new thing. A fundamental shift in society. Such things are never popular.
Rhiannon Dragoone: “Death is good; death is fun; death is good for everyone”–Brave New World
Khannea Suntzu: The trick is however – measurable success
Lem Skall: I think that everyone would like to prolongue their lives even if it’s not for eternity
Extropia DaSilva: But cryonics is the absence of finality. Them popscicles might come back to life one day!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, we *have* prolongued life to three times its average in less than two centuries…
Scarp Godenot: Not everyone Lem, The depressed and suicidal want to shorten their lives.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Yes, prolonged life doesn’t mean that we conquer death
Rhiannon Dragoone: And if there is a malallocation of resources; well, if we left that to the free maket, that would right itself
Lem Skall: Gwyn, only the average, but there were enough people who lived for a long time before
Rhiannon Dragoone: hi Mir!
Athena Maeterlinck: Probably Lem. The earlier mention of the afterlife philosophies is a strong suggestor that death is rarely something people want. An afterlife is a valuable coping mechism with something that connot be avoided.
Miroirs Hax: hi Rhiannon, all
Khannea Suntzu: No. Cryonics is creatig clones with at best hazy memories. Or thats what lawmakers will argue for a looog time. Rekindling the deceased does not inply legal or societal recognition of continued identity.
Louisa Bourgoin: I’m boored to death by this topic. Can’t we make an end to all of this 😀 …
Khannea Suntzu: It would be ’emulated’ identity
Extropia DaSilva: Already?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Of course, Lem! But the “average” just shows that life-prolonging methods have slowly become commonplace, not only available to a “selected few”….
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, i’m sure we are assuming the perfection of the technology
Louisa Bourgoin: no! I’m kidding! matter of factly I know there are situations where one would embrace death
Rhiannon Dragoone: luisa, we will freeze it for you and make it into soup for later
Ataraxia Azemus: I’m stupid laggy and probably won’t get to say much, so I’ll try to cram everything I have in one go: 1) cryonics is expensive, 2) there’s no guarantee that Future Science will be able or want to revive anyone and 3) most people think it’s kind of kooky, and most people also care what others think about them, too :p
Extropia DaSilva: How would you feel if you were of the last mortal generation?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Yes, for the sake of teh argument, Rhi 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: So in that case, we revive people and they resume their lives
Rhiannon Dragoone: Except–
Lem Skall: Gwyn, we’ve only improved health but we haven’t really changed the natural lifespan of a human
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Atari, I believe that Extie means not only cryonics; but gradual replacement of all organic parts, for example, with infinite ability for self-reconstruction, for example
Rhiannon Dragoone: Their loved ones will be dead, they will be in a futgure world that they will have to adapt to; do they really want to do that in order to postpone the inevitable
Rhiannon Dragoone: Hi Aeris!
Aeris Betsen waves
Gwyneth Llewelyn: So what IS the “natural lifespan” of a human, Lem? 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: Those that don’t all die. Those that doe live on in some form, but probably for some time in a ‘legal limbo’.
Lem Skall: so we only improved on some of the causes for early death but the natural lifespan is still about the same
Louisa Bourgoin: Ataraxia, and 4) what happens if you want to die after unfreeze?
Extropia DaSilva: I am wondering if abolishing death equates to the posthuman era?
Lem Skall: Rhi, they’ll find new loved ones
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, at first, but the law will catch up with them
Rhiannon Dragoone: Lem, oh, that’s cold (no pun intended)
Louisa Bourgoin: beeing the last mortal generation, I would turn my death into an act of art
Lem Skall: Rhi, it’s real
Athena Maeterlinck: Well Ata I’m getting the impression that Cryonics really isn’t important to this scheme. So far evidence suggets that we will continue to increase our llifespans. If this trend continues apace we will break the 100+ life expectancy within the next fifty years. We’ve already go societal drage because of the aging issue not being accounted early on and people retiring with many years of healthy life left.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I would partially disagree with our inability to prolongue lifespan, Lem. For instance, even “maturity” in humans takes longer in the Western world these days
Khannea Suntzu: I hope so Rhiannon but since I am there to experience all the transition age fun, I anticipate to have to put up a big fight (or not since I’d be dead but ok)
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I agree with Athena.
Rhiannon Dragoone: They will form new relationships true, but they will still be faced with loss
Louisa Bourgoin: expanding above 100+ doesn’t solve the hassles of beeing over fourty
Extropia DaSilva: They made a mouse live to 1000 in mouse years, albeit with some pretty heavy duty genetic inteferring.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Presumably Job got his family back with the general resurrection, but it still was a loss
Lem Skall: Gwyn, what is “maturity”?
Khannea Suntzu: We won’t get people aged 1000 plus overnight… It will take a while, d’uh
Extropia DaSilva: or was it 900? Long time, anyway..
Gwyneth Llewelyn: In my country, it’s not unusual (or wasn’t, before the financial crisis) for people to retire around 55 years of age, and enjoy some healthy 40 years on top of that. The consequence? The complete meltdown of the welfare state.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, presumably 900 years
Louisa Bourgoin: how long is one mouseyear?
Anna Tretiak: I think that “a longer life” simply means “more of the same”
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Lem: the ability to form a family, for example 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: Anna, well, one will have to bae creative to face immortality without tedium
Anna Tretiak: /me nods
Lem Skall: meh, that’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about, Gwyn
Gwyneth Llewelyn: And I agree, Khannea. We’ll have “average lifespans” of, say, 120 years becoming standard; then 150, then 200, and so forth…
Miroirs Hax: it’s mostly dying, suffering and painful deaths which are bad, death itself most likely is not. death in contrast to life gives a greater appreciation for life, goals, quality of quantity etc. and death is a type of fulfillment, positive.
Khannea Suntzu: No, I have a list of things I need to do and it’s fucking already several millenia
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Lem: yes — a longer lifespan means longer time to reach maturity too
Miroirs Hax: quality over quantity*
Athena Maeterlinck: Yes it will take a while but since techonolgy is advancing and increasing lifespan for humans at the same time as we age then the current younger generation may see continued life extending benefits. I believe the term given for this immortality escape velocity was “live long enough to live forever”.
Extropia DaSilva: I once said that the problem is not having too little time to live, but not being able to make the most of the time you have. If you cannot solve that problem and you get immortality, I doubt you would enjoy it.
Louisa Bourgoin: it’S sad childhoods woun’t expand in duration accordingly
Anna Tretiak: that is something that bugs me terribly though
Lem Skall: no, women still are able to conceive until about the same age they used to 200 years ago
Extropia DaSilva: what is?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Wow Extie; you know, my teachers tend to use the exact quote!
Anna Tretiak: Well, we keep prolonging our lives, and the pace of change of technology keeps accelerating. The combination of both things means that the amount of change that one person is exposed to during his/her lifetime is becoming larger.
Lem Skall: at least naturally
Rhiannon Dragoone: And hopefully we are talking eternal youth; we don’t want to age to the point of total incompetence at age 900
Extropia DaSilva: Do they?
Anna Tretiak: A couple of generations ago, the things that a kid would see around him/her would be still around when he/she was old; nowadays, that’s barely true, and this will be less and less valid if we keep moving this way. Cryogenics will be the last straw.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s the whole point, Lem — “naturally”
Khannea Suntzu: You can doubt all you want Trophy, I’d be perfectly ine lazying about a few centuries as a toital useless bum
Gwyneth Llewelyn: It’s not “natural” to give birth after, say, 40 years of age, but medical science certainly achieved that
Extropia DaSilva: If it makes you happy, K, why not?
Louisa Bourgoin: there is still a small chance of all this rubble about “prolonged livespan” beeing statistical hoax
Lem Skall: Gwyn, but they haven’t changed nature
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, what is natural is artificial in a species that has technology as its natural means of survival
Scarp Godenot: We don’t have enough resources on earth to continue our population growth as it is. Expanding lifespans will complicate that even more. It might not be in the interests of humanity to extend life too much.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, most likely you’ll be working hard all those centuries until your last day 😀
Khannea Suntzu: Correctly – and since we can engineer happyness soon after life extension, what’s the problem?
Lem Skall: they just found a way AROUND it
Athena Maeterlinck: Yes Anna there was a well known book called Future Shock about that in the 1970s. When I read it in the early 00ts It already seemed dated and its notions somewhat flawed since technology has continued its rapid progress and people are not only keeping up but thriving in the ever chaning world.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Rhi 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: Nonsense Gwynneth
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, *my* generation will most definitely die on the workplace 😉
Khannea Suntzu: Heya ArchMage 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: hi Arch!
Anna Tretiak: Athena, I am not sure if people are “thriving” in the world, if we look at the global picture
Gwyneth Llewelyn: … at 90+ years of age
Khannea Suntzu: My new most virulent critic.
Khannea Suntzu: I need more of those
Extropia DaSilva: Athena, yeah people quickly become blase about technology and it just disappears into the background of our lives.
Miroirs Hax: eternal youth would kind of let you not appreciate youth anymore, (let alone leave out 2/3rd of a “full” life and fulfillment) the trouble with immortality, high health and youth is that most contrast disappears, drives to do stuff go, societies would be
Miroirs Hax: become ever more shallow, etc.
Extropia DaSilva: unless it fails. Then you notice it!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Ah, eternal *youth*… 😉
Archmage Atlantis Hiya K, Rhi, et al
Louisa Bourgoin: we tend to eagerly believe promises of long life
Rhiannon Dragoone: We take technology for granted; i jut heard that people used something called a tpewriter even a generation aqgo. Can you believe it? I always associated typewriters with the 19th century
Athena Maeterlinck: Perhaps Scapr but ocnsider that people living longer have the opportunity to take all that additional knowledge gained and put it toward even more impressive innovation for sustainability and perhaps things like seasteading and space travel. Plus people who live longer healthier lives in modern society seem to have a lower propensity toward more children. As the third world benefits from this we will see even further decreases in population growth. Maybe not to the negative growth rates seen in Europe but a fair reduction.
Scarp Godenot: Miroirs: to quote a famous person “Youth is wasted on the young…” Ataraxia
Azemus: Hi Arch
Rhiannon Dragoone: Scarp, I bet an old person said that
Extropia DaSilva: helo Arch
Miroirs Hax nods
Khannea Suntzu: The current world we are in actually.. is *precisely* the kind of simulation I’d expect one would find in the future, to teach immortals growing up the realities iof death, suffering, poverty. disease, war, taxes.
Louisa Bourgoin: maybe we *are* isnide a learning environment!
Khannea Suntzu: Taking notes here
Miroirs Hax: true Khannea
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, I personally see a huge gap emerging in the first decades, among the haves and the have-nots…. where the have-nots will have to work hard until they die from exhaustion until they’re a hundred year olds, with idle rich doing nothing for a few centuries, until the technology becomes universally affordable — then people can work centuries after centuries and die from exhaustion 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: err … that thesis is a little bit self centric
Athena Maeterlinck: Well Anna looking at the global picture are people worse off as a whole across the globe before we brought the technology on board? And those who you are referring to who are suffering are generally the ones with little access to the advances in technology. One of the service project type things that keeps coming up at the university is bringing electrical power to villages. The One Laptop Per Child initiative is intended to bring better education via techonology. Clearly higher tech is beneficial overall.
Extropia DaSilva: The real problem with life is that time runs backwards. If you began really old you might appreciate going out to work, and you might appreciate the long holidays school kids have after your years of growing young in employment. And you would never die but just end up going back in your mummy.
Khannea Suntzu: : Or ironic
Louisa Bourgoin: the have-nots will get all the toxic work places
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Yep 🙂
Anna Tretiak: I don’t necessarily agree, Athena
Miroirs Hax: atleast, if you’re lucky, life starts and ends in diapers
Anna Tretiak: I believe there are pockets of improvement
Khannea Suntzu: Oh I know a few who spend some time in diapers in between (looks sideways)
Rhiannon Dragoone: Well, Gwyn, like anything else; the rich will have the longivity first, but the poor will have it eventually
Anna Tretiak: and areas of very big improvement, such as public health in the western world
Rhiannon Dragoone: /me resists putting an angel on Aziel’s antlers
Anna Tretiak: but technology also has brought sophisticated instruments of domination and submission
Anna Tretiak: don’t get me wrong: i am all excited about technology and cryogenics! 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: Aubrey de Grey thinks longevity will be free, like education. And for the same reason: It costs society less to provide it for free than it does to withhold it and have to pay for all the consequences.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There was an interesting science fiction novel where the main character was a scientist that discovered a way to allow cells to continue to repair themselves and effectively create immortal people; to make sure that everybody would benefit from the ‘treatment’, he published the formula on the Wikipedia, and placed it on the public domain 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: Europe in 2050 – dead poor since everyone gets life extension from common resources.. The US in 2050 – a country riddled by crime and darwinian conpetiution as a ruthless corporate system of achivements decides who gets ife extension, and less than a fourth actually get it.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Extropia, i doubt it; it will trickle down like everything else.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Of course it’s just a story; if that technological breakthrough ever became true, it would be a heavily patented thing 😉
Anna Tretiak: but i also think that us academics are an intellectual elite that accounts for a tiny percentage of the people in the world 🙂
Dizzy Banjo: this is a fascinating discussion, but alas I cant stay. Just wanted to say hi to everyone before I say bye 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: I mean, if you were eternally young, you would not have to retire and could work and pay taxes forever! But if you grow old and infirm you cannot work and become a burden to society.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, it sounds plausible
Khannea Suntzu: …and I’d be on a roof shooting the patent holders in the head
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, likelty there will be several pattens, and different ways to have life extension
Rhiannon Dragoone: TC Dizzy
Scarp Godenot: Khannea: both Europe and US in 2050: Trying to adapt to the collapse of agriculture due to climate change.
Extropia DaSilva: Bye Dizzy! Good luck wijh the inceptions thing! Dizzy Banjo: thx cyas 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: All heavilly protected by the industry, RHi :
Rhiannon Dragoone: And remember to stay forever young.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: (see you, Dizzy!)
Khannea Suntzu: World 2050 – 99% of agriculture is done in agricologies.
Khannea Suntzu: Pfft.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, the industry is not likely to be a monolith or without democratic regulation
Athena Maeterlinck: Well it is the same as what Rhi was saying Anna. It goes from Rich to poor. It has to be developed and built and not everyone has everything at the same time. However I saw a rather interesting YouTube video the other day charting general welfare trends over the course of the last 200 odd years and overall even the poorest countries have improved their lot. And along the lines of poor countries improving just look at the economic position of India and China, Two billion people, who are seeing huge economic and welfare impovements. Sure it is centered in the cities and the big wigs are making it rich but that doesn’t really differ too much from the western societies they are emulating anyway.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: We can only hope so, Rhi!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Athena, that’s quite true.
Athena Maeterlinck: Khannea that sounds like a lovely 1950s National geographic article on the future in 2000 ^_^.
Anna Tretiak nods
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, well unless there is radical change, business, government and society will be in their present equilibria, so yeah, i think it will happen that way
Khannea Suntzu: Life extension MUST, at any cost, become open source, noncorporate, affordable and massproduced. If some fuckhead sits his big ass in front of life extension and STOPS poeple, for whatever asshat reason – that person Must Die.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm
Gwyneth Llewelyn: The older I grow, the more sceptic I become, Rhi…
Louisa Bourgoin: patenting means disclosureing product internals … and times out after some centuries … and there are offshore medical productions
Anna Tretiak smiles and nods at Gwyn
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, how will you *enforce* that? 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, funny, the less i become, but people tell me i should wait until i get old
Khannea Suntzu: Ay attempt to kartelize life extension is murder in my book. Kill them by any means.
Lem Skall: wow, one of the worst misuses of the term open-source I’ve seen
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Rhi!
Rhiannon Dragoone: Cryogentic will help that
Athena Maeterlinck: That would be ideal in some ways Khannea but terribly impractical in the larger scheme of things.
Miroirs Hax: i think we have become so shallow we should actively shorten life, to really hammer some appreciation in there, quality over quantity, shift some values, but no one will vote for me if it’s my main point on the banner.
Extropia DaSilva: One of the transhumany books I read talked about a new organ that would maintain your body and keep it young indefinitely. It replaced your reproductive organs. I guess that would answer the popularion explosion problem;) Would that appeal to anyone here?
Archmage Atlantis Wow, what a chat example of linear extrapolation….. impressive all
Rhiannon Dragoone: MIr, that would be a great party–“The Short LIfe Span” party
Miroirs Hax nods!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe Extie 🙂 Not having any kids, and not planning to have any, my answer would be “sure, why not?” 😉
Anna Tretia is in too
Khannea Suntzu: Oh for sure we live in exponential times, however greed is also exponential Archie
Rhiannon Dragoone: But Asimov, in one of his novels which transitioned the robot novels to the Foundation novel had a 200 year old woman convinced short lived earthmen that they were the lucky ones
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Right, Khannea!
Extropia DaSilva: I would sign up for a Blue Brain virtual baby! I could wait long enough for the tech to become affordable, after all!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: And that’s what I meant, Rhi — greed grows exponentially as more and more moral and ethical values are discarded.
Athena Maeterlinck: It would appeal to me after I have successfully reproduced. Until such time as I have grandchildren though I’d rather keep my options open. There are no guarantees about life extension after all and using an unproven technology is a much better ideas after you hedge your bets by producing some genetic legacy.
Louisa Bourgoin: Rhi, inside “Aurora”
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very wise, Athena 🙂
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, well, until they reacdh a ;point where it all becomes meaqningless–then why not be moral?
Khannea Suntzu: Mortalist propaganda. Hey if things would get overcrowded and expensive, I’d spread mortalist propaganda too… the more relinquish life extension because of some idiotic reason, the more cake left for me at the end of the day.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: A good question, Rhi.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I have no answer!
Rhiannon Dragoone: Luisa, may have been, the were all Bailey’s World in the 2nd way of galactic colonization
Lem Skall: ironically, I see more of a need for legal euthanasia than for prolonguing life indefinitely
Gwyneth Llewelyn: ha Lem!
Athena Maeterlinck: Heh Rhi that sounds much like Tolkiens view taken in the silmarillion. The gift of Eru to man above and beyond that of all the other gifts given even the Aratar -was death. “A gift that in time even the powers shall envy”
Rhiannon Dragoone: Lem, both are important; but one will be a *lot* more popular
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Actually you have a good point, Lem J
Khannea Suntzu: Rhiannon, well, until they reach a point where it all becomes meaningless–then why not be gamers?
Louisa Bourgoin: mortalist propaganda seems to be a pretty new term! or did you stole that from greek history?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Rhi — indeed
Archmage Atlantis I lile cake, tho it melts in the rain
Rhiannon Dragoone: Athena, i bet Asimov was inspired by that
Athena Maeterlinck: It would not surprise me in the least Rhi.
Extropia DaSilva: No maybe Lem has a point. Maybe the worst thing would be to exist in a world that just will not let you die, ever, no matter how fed up with living you are?
Anna Tretiak: But death should be optional, not forbidden, right?
Rhiannon Dragoone: I also read a science fiction story where humans were the only short lived species in the galaxy, and an ancient myth said that when the gods asked the spaient races whicdh they would want–long lives or glory, the humans cd-hose glory, the others long lives
Miroirs Hax: i think euthanasia will become more and more a taboo in societies ever more driven on life-extention and “shallowification”, as will any setbacks be because life will be ever more “creatable” and own responsibility. and on that note, will i then still have
Khannea Suntzu: Ancient Greece didn’t exist. It’s fiction, all inventedin the 1950s.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/historians-admit-to-inventing-ancient-greeks,18209/
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, most Western countries make taking your own life a crime…..
Rhiannon Dragoone: Anna, i can see a time, with immortality, where they will outlaw death
Miroirs Hax: the right to denie life-extention?
Louisa Bourgoin: there is no law against death. matter of factly … death is a bussiness
Gwyneth Llewelyn: LOL Khannea!!!!!
Scarp Godenot: Does joy of life have a direct correlation to possibility of death?
Rhiannon Dragoone: ‘shallofication,’ i love the word, Mir
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, it did exist, we discovered it after the Moon launch; oh, wait, that was a myth too
Anna Tretiak: Why outlaw death? Can’t see the reason
Rhiannon Dragoone: Well, you must be insnae or self destructivfe to want to die–and as a State, we need to act paternalistically and portect you from yourself
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well Scarp, if nobody had at leasta bit of joy of life, none of us would be here discussing how to prolongue it… 😉
Lem Skall: can’t outlaw death, you’ll just be able to buy a ship and launch yourself into space without any resources
Louisa Bourgoin: why exactly does society forbid killings again?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Rhi — and kill you. LOL
Athena Maeterlinck: That would be an unfortunate thing. However, that seems like an issue that could easily be avoided by current society. After all there will probably be people preaching the virtues of death and those that are always willing to let the other guy kill himself. Assuming we don’t lose that greedy side of humanity than outliving folks has its benefits. I would be more worried about friends and family holding onto those who are ready to end it. If we are all living forever how much harder would it be to not only watch a loved one die but essentially choose voluntary suicide?
Anna Tretiak: Rhi, i think that only holds from certain western perspective
Extropia DaSilva: Well it is a doctor’s duty to do all he or she can to keep you alive. Well, if the tech was good enough, maybe anyone and everyone could be bought back to life? Not everyone might want that.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Lem, i have to laugh; i read a SF story where two families resisiting immortaqlity did just thaqt
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Agreed, Athena. So true
Archmage Atlantis Even with infinite life extention, personality regeneration, whaterver….ending seems to be inevitable……of course beginning does also
Gwyneth Llewelyn: /me is agreeing a lot with Athena today
Khannea Suntzu: 2097 – the UN declares all human minds part of the collective legacy of mankind and disallows permanent death – all minds are equipped with recording devices for archiuval purpioses – “we cannot allow a few selfish deathists to steal parts ogf our collective heritage and burn it on the pires of undocumented history”
Extropia DaSilva: Is that rare, then?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I don’t know hehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Khannea
Gwyneth Llewelyn: you’re inspired today, girl!
Anna Tretiak: In our society there is a tacit assumption that everyone wants to live as much and as long as possible; hence doctor’s deontic codes and prohibition of euthanasia, etc.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Anna, western perspectives tend to be imposed on the world, in cdultural imperialism
Extropia DaSilva: God… GoogleResurrect.
Lem Skall: Rhi, I didn’t read that but I’m not surprised that others thought of it
Khannea Suntzu: I get a lot of sex these days… very inspiring
Athena Maeterlinck: Sure Khannea that might happen I wouldn’t be surprised but does your mental data require you to maintain an effective and mobile sense of self awareness? Do you actually have to exist or just your knowledge memories and ideas?
Scarp Godenot: What I’m saying Gwyn is that opposited define each other, and if there was no death, would we appreciate time? If there is time for everything, would choosing something lose its value?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, yes, i can see tht happeing–but then the NRA will come to our rescue–our rieght to keep and bear arms–so we may kill ourselves if we wish
Extropia DaSilva: OO good questions scarp!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Good questions, yes, although I’d be a pragmatist…. “eternal life” means working forever.
Anna Tretiak: more of the same
Gwyneth Llewelyn: After a few centuries it gets a BIT boring….
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, not so bad if you love your work
Khannea Suntzu: “we must stop suicide emigration to the asteroid belt, every deathist emigrant is another neurological library loost!!!” (pope Asimov III at the 2114 lunar vatican consilia)
Lem Skall: how about life like in Groundhog Day, just repeating itself over and over?
Archmage Atlantis Wonders where K bought her orgasmitron
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Few love their work to continue to do it for a few millenia…
Khannea Suntzu: Mexico
Athena Maeterlinck: Yes Scarp I think that it would. Time continues on and as they say you cannot change what is past. Events will still happen and there will be no going back on them. Even millennia on it is likely that you can’t undo what was done or redo that thing so taking time to pause and reflect before making major choices will still have an impact.
Extropia DaSilva: We would still change through experience. Currently we do not live long enough to change too much, but if we lived for centuries and millenia, we might change so much in that time that the person you are today is ‘gone’. So…is that the same as saying ‘you’ are dead?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I think that the overall population on Earth would decrease after a few millenia, though
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Which might be good for the environment…. Scarp will be happy!
Louisa Bourgoin: no fears about working forever! if people don#t die, we probably get rid of construcing wares to expire after guarantie span
Archmage Atlantis Now the sombrero in the shape of a fig leaf makes more sense
Rhiannon Dragoone: Extropia yes, the problem of ‘Methuselah’ in Dennet’s problem cases
Khannea Suntzu: Tsk. As if I won’t be a 40 ton tentacled mass of nanoids in a few centuries. Like I am gona stay a stupid monkey fot long. Jezus how shortsighted people can be.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Extie, we change from day to day; the Gwyn of today is not the Gwyn that attended Thinkers last week 🙂
Lem Skall: if you could live and have children forever, then how many children would be enough for you?
Athena Maeterlinck: Well the lifetime warranty will be a much larger deal at any rate
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, hah! So you admit it!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Athena!!!!! Aziel Sigall: life insurance companies would go out of business
Rhiannon Dragoone: Athena, lmao
Extropia DaSilva: .
Gwyneth Llewelyn: And so am I…
Extropia DaSilva: You have not changed enough to seem like someone else, though.
Khannea Suntzu: /me sheds a tear for all those lost whale oil businesses
Louisa Bourgoin:: not just insurances .. I see trouble for whole growth based economy patterns
Rhiannon Dragoone: But if you live long enough so there isn’t memory continuity between say 900 and 30, are you the same person?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s because you’re used to a set of patterns that you call “gwyn”, Extie 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: …
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Depends, Rhi. Everybody else might think so.
Scarp Godenot: Rhiannon, you aren’t the same person this week as last
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Like Scarp said.
Rhiannon Dragoone: luisa, not to mention innovation; look what happens to universities that have too many tenured faculty
Extropia DaSilva: Rhi if A implies b and b implies C, then A implies C:)
Louisa Bourgoin: well live would slow down
Rhiannon Dragoone: Scarp, well, that would depend on the prindciple of personal identity you adopt
Khannea Suntzu: Rhiannon, you mean with this current 1350 gram brain? Or the brain I will keep iteratively upgrading every year for the next few million years, till me and my quadrillions ot galactic mind children merge with the ephemeral black matter ether of the cosmos?
Louisa Bourgoin: and expand in duration 🙂 … maybe the bottomline is rather frustrating
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Not really, Rhi. There has been a lot of experiences you went through since last week, so you’re clearly not the same person.
Anna Tretiak: Maybe what we recognise as one person widens up to acommodate larger variability of the individual
Athena Maeterlinck: Aye Scarp something like that. And on the boredom issue I tend to think you only get bored if you let yourself. Even lacking the new frontiers and ideas opened by new technology I could spend 100 current lifetimes just travelling the world and seeing everything in it. If that continues to change over the course of 10,000 years how manifold would that fascination be.
Archmage Atlantis Galdiators,Monachs and Manufacturers of whale bone corsets went out of biz, why not insurance, banks and presidents?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Extropia, stop all that high fallutin mathematical stuff about transitivity; it hurts my deliecate little brain
Scarp Godenot: Would the ‘you’ of 12 or 15 be recognizeable by the you of 30 or 50 if they met?
Louisa Bourgoin: “It’s better to burn out than fade away”
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Gwyneth Llewelyn doesn’t have a “bored” gene
Khannea Suntzu: MUAHUAHUA?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Well, are we taking a physical continuity or mental continuity criteria for personal identity Ataraxia Azemus: As long as we remember last week, and other people remember us last week, we’re the same person
Extropia DaSilva *giggles*
Khannea Suntzu: Nuns, no sense of humor
Athena Maeterlinck: I also see some definite benefits to long life for things like colonizing space. Mars is only two years away but it would certainly help in the long term if the initial colonists could live much longer and not have to worry about transit back so soon or reproduction in the short term. For places further out we might not need such huge world ships if the initial crew lives through the entire one thoursand year journey.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: A pragmatic criterium, Rhi 😉
Ataraxia Azemus After 1000 years, it gets fuzzier I guess, so who knows?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oh good point, Athena
Scarp Godenot: I’m asking if the 12 year old would recognize the 50 year old?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Atari, that’s clearly not true and you know it 🙂
Archmage Atlantis I think without audio, MUAHUAHUA really loses a lot of impact
Khannea Suntzu: Will I be allowed to fuck 200 year olds with a 15 year old body?
Lem Skall: Athena, I would volunteer to go to Mars even with the expectation that I could live only for a couple of years after getting there and would nver get back
Archmage Atlantis Though even in text, the manic phase is fun
Rhiannon Dragoone: A pragmatic criteria would go against my inution that i’m the same person I was 20 years ago and will be 30 years from now
Athena Maeterlinck: Well Gwyn when I was 12 years old I tended to just think of anybody over twenty as ‘another random adult’. And not worry too much about specific agres.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Khannea, sure, lots of countries allow 15-year-olds to fuck whomever they like 😉
Rhiannon Dragoone: Now, 1000 years from now–it gets fruzzier; the intuition isn’t as clear
Extropia DaSilva: ..
Khannea Suntzu: 🙂 Ataraxia Azemus: I don’t know what else we are, except a continuity of experience, Gwyn!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Oooh very good, Atari 🙂
Lem Skall: Gwyn, I want a list of those countries
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Lem
Louisa Bourgoin: Lem (!)
Gwyneth Llewelyn: you’re not 15 years old!
Khannea Suntzu: Is fucking as a cloned mind copy myself a form of incest?
Louisa Bourgoin: it is. next question?
Louisa Bourgoin: …you can be so provocative !
Archmage Atlantis The weird thing for me is that there is a group of gay 20 year olds that finds quite older men preferable……even if they have no money and can’t be sugar daddies
Extropia DaSilva: Can be? She always is!
Scarp Godenot: Khannea: It gives new meaning to the phrase “Go fuck yourself”. ha ha
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Rhi, in 20 years you’ll be the person you’re now plus all the changes of those 20 years; so how can you say you’re the “same” person? It doesn’t make any sense.
Athena Maeterlinck: So would many people Lem. I’d go even if there was a 75% chance of blowing up on the way. Finding folks to go isn’t that hard but the mission can be improved if those people with those attitudes and yearnings and especially knowledge are still around to keep building. We don’t get New Salt Lake City on Mars within just a few years.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Atai, by a continuity of expereince, do yuou mean memory? Then that raises the Methusalah question again Ataraxia Azemus: 🙂
Khannea Suntzu: J
Rhiannon Dragoone: Can there be any memory that goes from 12 to 900
Rhiannon Dragoone: I have many that go from 12 to 25
Archmage Atlantis Define memory
Louisa Bourgoin: we could shoot salt lake onto mars perhaps?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Arch, don’t have to for my point; just the cdommon sense experience of remembering would be enough
Scarp Godenot: Most people block their memories of Jr. High school…. ha ha
Khannea Suntzu: I’ll send a copy of this talk to Audrey de Grey. He’ll get a kick out of that one 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: I got myself a Khannea Clone / I bring her out when I’m alone/ And now my skills are so well honed / My neighbours don’t sleep, for the way she moans.
Khannea Suntzu: Oh!
Athena Maeterlinck: Intriguing idea Luisa but since we can’t even get humans into space right now with the shuttle program being cut I think that is an extreme long term goal.
Archmage Atlantis Listening to 50s music on the digital feed, and realizing that asking the young man to dance was the right (and moral) thing to do
Extropia DaSilva: Immortals have time on their hands;)
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I believe they would be as busy as we are now
Athena Maeterlinck: Now if they could just get their hands on time.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Athena!!!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: so well put 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: shuttlecuts beeing a bummer! that really ruines my euphemistic views on technology … we aren’t even there where we brag to be
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm we’ll have to wait a few more decades, Athena
Athena Maeterlinck: Yeah I know the feeling Luisa. I’m really pinning my hopes on what we saw with the successful SpaceX dragon flight. That private industry will take up the slack and deliver us a spacefaring human future.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: The interesting bit about the “memory” question is to answer if our capacity to remember things is finite or infinite 😉
Extropia DaSilva: Ahh the robot explorers are doing OK. Space belongs to them, not meatbags!
Lem Skall: Extie, is this discussion posted to your blog? uncensored?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Until then, Extie is right. Robots win the race.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Usually, yes, lem!
Extropia DaSilva: Yes Lem (=lie)
Rhiannon Dragoone: Khannea, except those who remember what a joke is
Lem Skall: oh
Extropia DaSilva: why?
Lem Skall: lol, not PG
Rhiannon Dragoone: /me marvels how we went from the question of immortality to the principles of personal identity seamlessly
Athena Maeterlinck: Sadly, yes. But there is another reason I want to try and live forever. The future may be a bit slow in coming and I want to see every bit of it. I’ve always dreamed of travelling in space and if it won’t be an option until I’m fifty then some life extension and youth enhancing agents may be just the ticket.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: So what, Extie’s blog is not necessarily PG 😛
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very good, Rhi 🙂
Archmage Atlantis PG? pornographic greatness?
Extropia DaSilva: The thoughts that went through my mind when I saw my sis in that dress she wore for our aniversary were not necessarily all PG;)
Khannea Suntzu: Now Athena is starting to get it
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hehe Athena. We live in the future already, though 😉 For *some* people, the dream ofhaving 100 Mbps Internet connections at home *is* the future, and as sexy as travelling to the Moon 😉
Khannea Suntzu: Current world == boring
Extropia DaSilva: Do you think it will always be so, Khannea?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hA! I’m sure *all* generations think that, Khannea!
Scarp Godenot: Rhiannon, the questions are intimately linked. Is someone immortal if they are constantly changing? Where then is the continuity?
Khannea Suntzu: Upgrade the whole damnn circus
Athena Maeterlinck: Sure but I want a petabye a second ON the moon ^_^
Archmage Atlantis The fundamental element of Extie’s blog, and presentations, is a brilliant rational mind, tempered by a reality of temporal and physical existence
Athena Maeterlinck: Plus full immersion virtual reality. SL is great but I still can’t smell the other avatars.
Rhiannon Dragoone: Athena, it will be on the MOon that we will discover thatn ancient Greece did exist
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There is no intrinsic continuity, Scarp 😉 And it’s good there isn’t any, or we would be unable to change the way we think, aprehend new experiences, learn things… constantly changing is the key for all the fun!
Extropia DaSilva: That and the fact I am a real windbag. 70,000+ word essays!
Athena Maeterlinck: I thought we would find the secret Nazi rocket base…
Gwyneth Llewelyn: The Iron Sky movie will reveal that, Athena… 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: http://www.ironsky.net/
Khannea Suntzu: Seriously – the word aristotle – they came up with that in scrabble
Scarp Godenot: Gwyn, if there is no continutiy, then there is no immortality.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Very wisely put 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: But there can be a VERY long time.
Khannea Suntzu: BG strikes again, so eloquent 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: BG?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: A few billion years is pretty good for me, thanks!
Khannea Suntzu: Bee Gee’s
Khannea Suntzu: Andy gibb
Extropia DaSilva: Oh.
Louisa Bourgoin: secret space stations?! war propaganda always exaggerates about enemy’s capabilities to shake up congress people
Khannea Suntzu: Not Ben Goertzel
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol
Scarp Godenot: Bene Gesserit
Khannea Suntzu: hehehehe
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hahahahahahahahahaha
Extropia DaSilva: Blue gene?
Khannea Suntzu: 🙂
Extropia DaSilva: Bald Gwyn?
Rhiannon Dragoone: well, we’re talking about having all the time in the world, Gwyn
Scarp Godenot: Baby God
Gwyneth Llewelyn: not yet, not yet, Extie 😉
Rhiannon Dragoone: Which alwasys made me wonder–what about the time that is *not* in the world?
Louisa Bourgoin:: where exactly has our thread been gone lost now?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: How so, Rhi?
Khannea Suntzu: Well this is surely all immortal slapstick
Athena Maeterlinck: It got lost in the mists of time. We’ve lived so long since the thread began that it has become a hazy distant memory.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: lol Athena!!!!!
Scarp Godenot: Not much to say about cryonics….. that is the reason…. so the topic is immortality and what that implies interms of personality.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Hmm
Louisa Bourgoin: lost in the mists of time … that summarizes well
Extropia DaSilva: You know, there is some talk that the microwave background might show evidence of eternal inflation. That means infinite universes, which means infinite copies and alternate histories, which means somewhere in the multiverse you always exist;) So ‘we’ are immortal already, maybe!
Rhiannon Dragoone: luisa, i mentioned where a few lines ago–we’ve gone from immortality and cryogenics to Parfit’s questions of personal identity
Khannea Suntzu: Cryonics is a poor atheist statement that comes down to ‘saving money through creative decapacitation’….dunno
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Well, people change, obviously, but they’re also affected by their habits and tendencies, and living thousands or millions of years will just give them opportunities to repeat the same errors, over and over again
Louisa Bourgoin: or it measn microwave oven door not closing properly
Anna Tretiak: i think that waking up after being cryonized would be similar to relocating across the world, getting a divorce and having cosmetic surgery, all at once, on steroids
Extropia DaSilva: Reasons and Persons, great stuff, a must read.
Archmage Atlantis immortal slapstick….that isn’t pattented is it……on well, posted on enuf sites, it won’t matter
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Nice analogy, Anna 😉
Rhiannon Dragoone: /me hugs Extropia–finally someone who has read Parfit!
Lem Skall: can the brain keep memories of an infinite life?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: That’s a good question, Lem, but it requires answering first: “where are memories stored?”
Louisa Bourgoin: “I can’t feel my legs … wait, my stomach too!”
Scarp Godenot: The Multiple universe theory is the exact opposite of Occam’s Razor.. And the danger of not following it as a guide in logic.
Anna Tretiak: yes, because you don’t need to recall the original moment when the memory was formed
Rhiannon Dragoone: And i love to add to that with SL experience; like the one avi i know that has two ppk’s
Khannea Suntzu: Anna twenty years later re-awakening from Cryo might be less of a change than a heavy flu
Extropia DaSilva: …Actually no. But I have read so many books that reference him, I figure it must be good.
Anna Tretiak: it’s enough to recall the fact that you recalled the memory the day before
Anna Tretiak: Khannea, may be, yes
Khannea Suntzu: Hopefully twenty years AFTER current waiting lists and NOT current vitrification.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: When I was younger I tended to explain my lack of memory (when remembering people, for instance) saying that I had to save up some brain cells for my future life, since the brain mass was finite, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to remember everything 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: memories of childhood got constructed when you tell them. experimentally proved by tricking people with photos into remembering places that did never existed
Extropia DaSilva: Occam’s razor begins..’All else being equal’…but what does that caveat MEAN? What if all else is NOT equal and is that the case with multiverse theories?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: heh Extie 😉
Extropia DaSilva: No seriously what does it mean?
Gwyneth Llewelyn loves unprovable theories
Scarp Godenot: Some say your first memory is when you performed an act of will in opposition to your parents wishes. That formed you as a person who was not your parents. My first memories are of taking candy from a stranger and dropping a birthday cake….. ha ha
Khannea Suntzu: Now we are getting into that tar pit, can we also specuate on what is happening inside a black hole? Inquiring minds like to know.
Anna Tretiak looks up searching for a teapot
Athena Maeterlinck: All else never really is equal in any case. What they really mean is assuming we don’t change the outside variables.
Extropia DaSilva: ‘This theory is not provable under your Formal System’.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Gödel
Khannea Suntzu: BONK whale falls on head
Extropia DaSilva: Mhmmm!
Extropia DaSilva: My Gwyn is learned!
Rhiannon Dragoone: hmm, either there is super lag, or you are all talking about me behind my back in IM’s
Gwyneth Llewelyn: that was easy 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn: haha Rhi
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There is lag, yes
Gwyneth Llewelyn: There is always lag, and always will be; the universe runs on lag.
Khannea Suntzu: I love those Gödel sandwiches, especially the ones with cottage cheese and spinach.
Louisa Bourgoin: err if it doesn’t make sense always, that#s because … it doesn’t frankyl said
Extropia DaSilva: Oh I never talk about your BACK in IMS. The front though…boy oh boy yes! *Giggles*
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I’m sure it’s the fundamental particle of the universe
Athena Maeterlinck: Well given that I am sitting behind you…
Extropia DaSilva: Well how time flies…This discussion is about to end. Or, die, if you like..Any final comments folks? Can we live without death?
Gwyneth Llewelyn: I think we can, it will just be hard.
Scarp Godenot: At least we are stopping with Goden and not Solipsism…. ha ha
Gwyneth Llewelyn: Then again, nothing in life is easy 😉
Scarp Godenot: Godel
Gwyneth Llewelyn: We’ll get there, Scarp 😉
Louisa Bourgoin: we can’t. we will always need death. if even just for some folks
Rhiannon Dragoone: Scarp, unless we are all Godel and therefore are solipsistic
Gwyneth Llewelyn spent 5 days discussing solipsism and had a huge headache afterwards
Rhiannon Dragoone: Luisa, and yes, we will all know who those are
Extropia DaSilva: Always good to meet a fellow solipsist. It is so rare….
Gwyneth Llewelyn: LOl Extie!!!!
Gwyneth Llewelyn: hahahahahahahaha
Anna Tretiak frowns
Gwyneth Llewelyn: that was very good!
Athena Maeterlinck: Wel Yes I think it is ultimately possible to live without death and we should strive to make that a viable choice. Some people will want to live forever and others won’t but if we can maintain a free society it will allow another important life choice to all persons who have access and in time that should be most people.
Gwyneth Llewelyn: applauds
Scarp Godenot: How can you be a solipsist Extie, when I am dreaming you?
Rhiannon Dragoone: Gwyn, did you ever read Bertrand Russel, who got a letter from a unviersity professor in which she said she was a solopist and wondered why more ppl weren’t
Extropia DaSilva: Anyway…NEXT WEEK carries on this morbid topic of death with….RIP DP…