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Death is an Outrage
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Death is an Outrage
Each year, we allow a destruction of knowledge equivalent to three Libraries of Congress with an average value of about $2 million dollars for each human life lost. The solution: "dechronification"--nanomedicine tools that can arrest biological aging and reduce your biological age.
Based on a lecture by the author at the Fifth
Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension, November 16, 2002
in Newport Beach, CA. Published on KurzweilAI.net Jan. 9, 2003
While you were reading this sentence, a dozen people just died,
worldwide. There. Another dozen people have perished. I think this
is an outrage. I want to tell you why I think so, and what nanomedicine
can do to help.
Figure
1: Worldwide Death Toll in 2001
Let's look at the dimensions of the human holocaust that we call
"natural death."
The death toll in the Year 2001 was worst in India. Almost 9 million
casualties. The bodies were piled nearly as high in China. The United
States fell in third, with 2.4 million fatalities. 21 nations lost
over half a million lives, each. These 21 countries represented
all cultures, races, creeds, and continents. The human death toll
in the Year 2001 from all 227 nations on Earth was nearly 55 million
people, of which about 52 million were not directly caused by human
action, that is, not accidents, or suicides, or war. They were "natural"
deaths.
Figure
2: Natural Disasters
Even the most widely recognized greatest disasters in human history
pale in comparison to natural death. For example, the typhoon that
struck Bangladesh in 1970 washed away a million lives. In 1232 AD,
Genghis Khan burned the Persian city of Herat to the ground. It
took his Mongol horde an entire week to slaughter the 1.6 million
inhabitants. The Plague took 15 million per year, World War II,
9 million per year, for half a decade each. The worldwide influenza
pandemic of 1918 exterminated less than 22 million people –
not even half the annual casualties from natural death. But natural
death took 52 million lives last year. We can only conclude that
natural death is measurably the greatest catastrophe humankind has
ever faced.
Figure
3
Of course we're outraged by natural death because of the obvious
personal consequences. But the cost to humanity of our individual
deaths is rarely appreciated, truly staggering, and equally heartbreaking.
Each one of us carries within us a complex universe of knowledge,
life experience, and human relationships. Each individual is gifted
with unique insights possessed by no one else. Almost all of this
rich treasury of information is forever lost to mankind when we
die. This lost treasury is truly enormous. If the vast content of
each person's life can be summarized in just one book, then every
year, natural death robs us of 52 million books, worldwide. But
the U.S. Library of Congress, the world's largest collection of
physical books, holds only 18 million volumes. So each year, we
allow a destruction of knowledge equivalent to three Libraries of
Congress.
It is as if in 2001, somebody burned the Library of Congress to
the ground. Once in January. Then again in May. Then again in September.
52 million books go up in flames. And then in 2002, they burn it
down again. Three more times. And then again in 2003.
What's even worse is that if you agree with me that the sum total
of each human mind would really fill many, many books, and not just
one, then you must accept that the devastation of knowledge is actually
far greater than I've suggested here.
Figure
4: U.S. Value of Life, by Age, 2000
Besides this staggering sacrifice of information, natural death
also destroys wealth on a grand scale. According to the Lasker Foundation,
a dozen or so studies since the mid-1970s have found the value for
human life is in the range of $3 to $7 million dollars, using many
different methodologies. More recently, Murphy and Topel at the
University of Chicago drew this chart (which I've updated to Year-2000
dollars) showing the value of human life at every age. It recognizes
that fewer years remain to us at older ages. But this is only half
of the equation.
Figure
5: Number of Human Deaths by Age, in 2000
This chart shows estimates from the Census Bureau of the number
of people that died in the United States in the Year 2000, in each
age cohort, year by year. If you multiply the death rate at each
age, from this chart, by the dollar value at each age, from the
previous chart, you get the economic loss at each calendar age,
due to natural death. The sum of these economic losses divided by
the total number of deaths gives you the average economic value
of a human life lost.
Figure
6
The result is an average value of about $2 million dollars for
each human life lost. If we conservatively assume that the population
age structure and the age-specific mortality is the same worldwide
as in the United States, then the worldwide natural death toll of
52 million people in the Year 2001 represents an economic loss of
about $100 trillion dollars. Every year.
How big of an economic calamity is this? Taking Federal Reserve
figures for the total tangible wealth of the United States, including
all financial assets, all real estate, and all consumer durables,
net of debt, and applying the ratio of U.S. to world GDP gives us
an estimate of total global tangible net worth of $91 trillion dollars.
So this means that every year, natural death robs us of human capital
equivalent in value to the entire tangible wealth of the world.
It is as if in the Year 2001, someone took out a giant broom and
swept up all the physical assets of human civilization into a cosmic
trash can, and then threw it all away. That's $100 trillion dollars
of financial assets, real estate, and durable goods. Gone. And then
in 2002, the giant broom sweeps again. Another $100 trillion dollars
of human capital is destroyed, or three times larger than the $33
trillion dollars of annual economic activity represented by world
GDP. Then it happens again in 2003.
But the economic disaster caused by natural death is even worse,
if you go back through history. Since the modern human species first
emerged, perhaps 25 millennia ago, 34 billion people have ever walked
the Earth, and 28 billion of us have already died. The equivalent
total information waste is more than 28 billion books, enough to
fill almost 2000 Libraries of Congress. The equivalent total economic
waste is about $60 thousand trillion dollars, enough to rebuild
our current tangible civilization 600 times over. If you carry the
tally back a million years, to the very dawn of man, all these figures
about double. Natural death is a disaster of unprecedented proportions
in human history.
So ... what's being done about this? Let's take a statistical look
at the progress to date.
Figure
7: Expected Age at Death (EAD) in the U.S.
This chart, compiled from Census Bureau data, shows that for the
last one-and-a-half centuries, life expectancy at birth has risen
dramatically in the United States. A newborn child in the Year 1850
could only expect to live to 38 years, but should reach almost 75
years today. To measure longevity, I'm using the Expected Age at
Death, which is just your current age plus your remaining life expectancy.
But 20th century medical technology has mainly improved the longevity
of the very young. Since 1850, the Expected Age at Death of a 40-year-old
has only improved from 68 years to 77 years. The Expected Age at
Death of a 70-year-old has only improved from 80 years to 83 years.
In other words, a 70-year-old's chances of living another 10 years
were about as good in 1850 as they are today. Not much progress.
But let's take a closer look at the data.
Figure
8: Decadal Increase in U.S. Life Expectancy at Birth
This chart shows the rate of Change in Life Expectancy at birth
since 1850, as measured in years of extra life expectancy achieved
by medical technology per decade of calendar time. If we could get
to a rate of 10 years of life extension per decade, then medical
technology would be extending life exactly as fast as we're aging,
postponing natural death, on average, indefinitely. We see from
the chart that the Change in Life Expectancy improved at only 1
year per decade up until 1890. After 1890, the Change in Life Expectancy
of newborns jumped dramatically, reaching more than 6 years per
decade at its peak in 1925. This was due to the rapid introduction
of several basic medical breakthroughs, like public sanitation,
comprehensive vaccination programs, and later, antibiotics.
Note that the rate of Change jumped from 0.8 to 4 years per decade
during 1890 to 1900, a fivefold increase in a 10 year calendar span.
The rate soared from 2 to 6 years per decade during 1910 to 1925,
a threefold increase in a 15 year calendar span. So we know it's
possible to see very rapid increases in the rate of Change in Life
Expectancy, when new technology is brought to bear on the problem.
In other words, history tells us that the current 2.3 year per decade
rate of progress could plausibly quadruple to the "magic"
10 years per decade threshold, in the space of just 10-20 years
from today, if new resources and new medical technologies are focused
on improving longevity.
Figure
9: Death Rate (DR), U.S. Males, All Ages
Worried parents and life insurance salesmen often complain that
the young think they're immortal. Well, in a sense, the young are
almost right! There are age groups for which it can validly be said
that extreme life extension has already been achieved, using existing
medical technology. To better appreciate this accomplishment, we
need to talk about death rates for a few minutes.
The chart shows the aggregate death rate for all males, at all
ages, in the United States, from 1850 to 2000. In 1850, each male
had a 2 percent chance of dying in the next year. By 2000, each
male had a 1 percent chance of dying in the next year. So over this
150-year time span, the death rate was cut in half. As a result,...
Figure
10: Estimated Vs. Actual Expected Age at Death (U.S. Males, at Birth)
...the life expectancy from birth has approximately doubled, from
38 years in 1850 to almost 75 years in 2000, as shown by the black
curve.
A very simple formula, written in red below, can be devised for
estimating the Expected Age at Death. This formula encodes the simple
truth that, roughly speaking, cutting the death rate in half doubles
the life expectancy, as measured from the current age of the individual.
The formula assumes a single net death rate, for a whole population
of mixed ages. This is an important point, because the natural death
rate in humans depends on our physiological age. Death rates typically
rise with advancing age, except at the oldest ages.
Figure
11: Death Rate, U.S. Males, Age 1-4
Medical technology has had its greatest impact to date in preventing
infant mortality, especially between the ages of 1 to 4. In the
Year 1850, a young child in this age cohort had a 2.4 percent probability
of dying in the next year. Today, the probability of dying in the
next year for these children has been reduced from 2.4 percent to
0.04 percent. That's a phenomenal 60-fold reduction.
What if future medical technologies permit us first to arrest,
and later to reverse, the biological effects of aging? In such an
era, our bodies would no longer tumble down a staircase of degeneration
and frailty. Instead, our statistical death rate would take on some
approximately fixed value that's appropriate for our physiological-age
cohort, not our calendar-age cohort. Biological age would no longer
march in lockstep with calendar age. So, how much longer might we
live, if we could just keep the bodies we had when we were young?
Figure
12: Expected Age at Death, Assuming Age-Invariant Death Rate (males,
age 1-4)
Well, in the Year 1850, the death rate for a U.S. male between
the ages of 1 and 4 implied an Expected Age at Death, according
to our formula, of only 31 years. That is, in 1850, a child that
could remain perpetually 1-4 years old physiologically, would have
died, on average, after 31 calendar years. Early childhood was still
very unhealthy and dangerous in those days.
As medical technology slowly improved, childhood became far less
dangerous. Most of the specific medical causes of early childhood
death have now been analyzed, and conquered. As a result, a child
that could remain perpetually 1-4 years old biologically today would
not die, on average, until he or she reached the calendar age of
1800 years. Death would usually come from some form of non-medical
accident, which is the leading cause of death up to age 44.
Of course, most of us aren't 1-4 years old. How long would we live
if we could halt any further biological aging of our bodies right
now, at our current age?
Figure
13: Expected Age at Death. Assuming Age-Invariant Death Rate (males,
age 1-44)
Here's the answer for various biological age cohorts up to 44 years
old.
The 10-year-olds among us would fare the best, reaching an average
Expected Age at Death exceeding 3000 calendar years. The 20-year-olds
would make it to 600 calendar years. Life has even become less dangerous
for the 40-year-olds, who could survive to an average calendar age
of 300 years in today's medical environment, if further biological
aging could be immediately halted. These are remarkable achievements
of medical technology compared to the Year 1850, a time when none
of these groups would have survived more than 80-100 calendar years.
Note that all of these curves – and most especially the youngest
cohorts – began their steep climbs into extended longevity
during the latter half of the 19th century.
Figure
14: Expected Age at Death, Assuming Age-Invariant Death Rate (males,
age 35-84)
If you're over 45, the picture is not yet so bright. Non-aging
biological 50-year-olds would live to a calendar age of 178 years.
Non-aging 60-year-olds could only expect to survive to 113 calendar
years in the current medical environment.
But the news is not all bad for the elders. The death rate for
80-year-old U.S. males fell by 45 percent during the last century.
So some progress is definitely being made. The problem is that the
absolute natural death rate is still so high among the elderly that
the Expected Age at Death has not yet significantly improved.
Figure
15: Age Distribution of U.S. Population, 1850-2030
Now, you remember those Expected Age at Death curves for the youngsters
that began their steep climb into extended longevity in the late
19th Century? The biggest gains were in the 1-10 year old cohorts,
where death rates fell 30- to 60-fold. These gains began at a time
when this age cohort made up 20 to 30 percent of the U.S. population.
Early deaths in this gigantic demographic bulge were of great concern
to medical researchers at the time, who lavished their resources
on solving this problem.
I think history is about to repeat, this time at the opposite end
of the age scale. In the United States, people over 60 years of
age already make up the single largest cohort at 16.5 percent, and
this cohort grows to 20 to 30 percent of the U.S. population after
2015, and for decades beyond. As before, this demographic bulge
will focus research scientists and research dollars towards solving
the problem of premature death among the very old.
Figure
16: Birth/Death Ratio, Developed Countries
And there's another societal motivation to reduce death rates.
As nations become more industrialized, their birth rates go down.
In the developed world, the birth-to-death ratio has been declining
for decades. In many countries, there are already more deaths each
year than births, which, in the long run, is a prescription for
national extinction. To avoid a Population Implosion, these nations
must get busy and reduce their death rates to below their falling
birth rates.
Figure
17: What is Nanomedicine
The greatest advances in halting biological aging and preventing
natural death are likely to come from the fields of biotechnology
and nanotechnology. That is, nanomedicine. Nanomedicine is most
simply and generally defined as the preservation and improvement
of human health, using molecular tools and molecular knowledge of
the human body.
In the near term, say, the next 5 years, the molecular tools of
nanomedicine will include biologically active materials with well-defined
nanoscale structures, such as dendrimer-based organic devices and
pharmaceuticals based on fullerenes and organic nanotubes. We should
also see genetic therapies and tissue engineering becoming more
common in medical practice.
In the mid-term, the next 5 or 10 years or so, knowledge gained
from genomics and proteomics will make possible new treatments tailored
to specific individuals, new drugs targeting pathogens whose genomes
have now been decoded, stem cell treatments to repair damaged tissue,
replace missing function, or slow aging, and biological robots made
from bacteria and other motile cells that have had their genomes
re-engineered and re-programmed. We could also see artificial organic
devices that incorporate biological motors or self-assembled DNA-based
structures for a variety of useful medical purposes.
In the farther term, perhaps somewhere in the 10 or 20 year time
frame, the first fruits of molecular nanorobotics should begin to
appear in the medical field. My own theoretical work in nanomedicine
has concentrated on medical nanorobotics using diamondoid materials
and nanoparts. This area, though clinically the most distant, and
still mostly theoretical, may hold the greatest promise for health
and life extension.
Figure
18: Dechronification
The end result of all these nanomedical advances will be to enable
a process I call "dechronification" – or, "rolling
back the clock." I see no serious ethical problems with this.
According to the volitional normative model of disease that is most
appropriate for nanomedicine, if you're physiologically old and
don't want to be, then for you, oldness and aging are a disease,
and you deserve to be cured. After all, what's the use of living
many extra hundreds of years in a body that lacks the youthful appearance
and vigor that you desire? Dechronification will first arrest biological
aging, then reduce your biological age by performing three kinds
of procedures on each one of the 4 trillion tissue cells in your
body.
- First, a nanodevice will be sent to enter every tissue cell,
to remove accumulating metabolic toxins and undegradable material.
Afterwards, these toxins will continue to slowly re-accumulate
as they have all your life, so you'll probably need a whole-body
cleanout to prevent further aging, maybe once a year.
- Second, chromosome replacement therapy can be used to correct
accumulated genetic damage and mutations in every one of your
cells. This might also be repeated annually.
- Third, persistent cellular structural damage that the cell
cannot repair by itself such as enlarged or disabled mitochondria
can be reversed as required, on a cell by cell basis, using cellular
repair devices.
We're still a long way from having complete theoretical designs
for many of these machines, but they all appear possible in theory,
so eventually we will have good designs for them.
We're still a long way from having complete theoretical designs
for many of these machines, but they all appear possible in theory,
so eventually we will have good designs for them.
Figure
19: Expected Age at Death After Dechronification
Using these annual checkups and cleanouts, and some occasional
major repairs, your biological age could be restored once a year
to the more or less constant physiological age that you select.
I see little reason not to go for optimal youth – though trying
to maintain your body at the ideal physiological age of 10 years
old might be difficult and undesirable for other reasons.
A rollback to the physiology of your late teens would be easier
to maintain and more fun. That would push your Expected Age at Death
up to around 900 calendar years. You might still eventually die
of accidental causes, but you'll live ten times longer than you
do now.
Figure
20: Nanomedical Limits to Biological Life Extension
How far can we go with this? Well, if we can eliminate 99 percent
of all medically preventable conditions that lead to natural death,
your healthy lifespan should increase to about 1100 years. It may
be that you'll find it hard to coax more than a millennium or two
out of your original biological body, because deaths from suicides
and accidents have remained stubbornly high for the last 100 years,
falling by only one-third during that time.
However, one can hope that the rate of suicides might be greatly
reduced, with so much to look forward to, and with new nanomedical
treatments for unhealthy mental states. Nanotechnology can also
improve the overall safety of our material environment, leading
to far fewer deaths from accidents.
Finally, genetic modifications or nanomedical augmentations to
the human body may extend healthy lifespans still further, to a
degree that cannot yet be accurately predicted.
In closing, I hope you'll agree with me that natural death is an
outrage. Indeed, it is humanity's, and history's, greatest outrage.
Now, at long last, maybe we can finally do something about it. So
let's get on with it!
Thank you.
For more information about my writings on nanomedicine, please
visit the following websites:
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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Well meant, well written, and very informative ... but ...,
Extending life, and retarding age, will not change "human nature", and I tend to agree with the Existentialists, the Gnostics, and even with some of Nietzsche's writings, that "human nature" was flawed from the beginning, is flawed now, and will remain flawed no matter what kind of technology we develop.
In fact, the flaw is in nature iteslf, so we are using a flawed system, to try and correct a flawed system.
The most that I can see this technology acheiving, is the lessening of human suffering ... and that is no small acheivement ...
There has been far too much suffering in human history, and in the animal world.
I too am sick of being a victim of mother nature's "biological fascism", and "cruel tyranny", so I agree with Dr. Freitas's basic premise.
I say lets use this flawed system as best we can against itself, to make our lives less miserable.
The universe is a very cruel place, and it must be conquered.
But ..., the infamous but,
What are all these ageless 20 year old's going to do with a thousands of year of life? What are most of them doing with their lives, now? With all the advanced technology we have today, why don't we have present day equivalents of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Ravel, etc.? Why is pop and high culture such a wasteland of medocrity in our ultra advanced technological society?
It could be that we will end up with a kind of immortality, but the social structure may be montrously decadent, and corrupt, a kind of "Fun and Games" global civilization, that would make the ancient Roman Empire look like a nunnery in comparison.
Nietzsche's book, "Human, All Too Human", has to be on the Foresight reading list.
Even so, ... I say let's develop the technology anyway, and see what happens, what the heck ...
but, I am not optimistic; a bit hopeful, but not optimistic.
The only part of Dr. Freitas's essay that gave me a fright, was his brief comment on suicide, and mental illness.
Some forms of mental illness might be the price we have to pay for human advancement, and especially in the art world. Many artists are on the borderline between sanity, and "madness".
And suicides; sane people commit suicide too ... they get fed up with living in an insane universe, and check out. Why not?
Why was the universe created the way it is, so that we have to struggle like crazy to live even marginally decent lives.
The whole setup is nuts.
I would have checked out a long time ago, but I am a stubborn mule, and like Beethoven I shake my fist at fate, or rather wave my middle finger at it, and say, "nyahh", I'll beat you yet."
My tiny contribution to all this, are my nanobot images. I hope they will inspire at least one smart kid, into choosing a career as a nanotechnologist.
In this respect I am not a complete pessimist.
One thing I am certain of, is that nanomedicine will help lessen human/animal suffering.
Hey wait a minute ...
What about the human soul?
The chorus sounds, "The what?"
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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In fact, the flaw is in nature iteslf, so we are using a flawed system, to try and correct a flawed system.
This seems to imply that we are outside of nature, but how could we be? Everything about you and me is state-of-the-art NATURE, including the judgment you have made about how it works.
As such, from what frame of reference can you conclude that it is flawed? If nature is flawed, and you and I are the result of its processes, and indeed, manifestations of Nature itself, then your conclusion can be no less flawed than that which brought it forth.
Would it not be better to view life and death and pleasure and pain as part of the continuing process of evolution? After all, it is those very aspects of life that have inspired the great works of artists and children from the beginning of recorded time.
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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"What's even worse is that if you agree with me that the sum total of each human mind would really fill many, many books, and not just one, then you must accept that the devastation of knowledge is actually far greater than I've suggested here."
Ummm ... this can't be right surely! For starters, there is a huge amount of redundancy in informational content among human brains - whether they belong to members of the same or a different culture. And of course, 90% of the human population's minds are not only almost completely redundant, they are empty!
In fact, if you're looking for knowledge you probably don't even want to waste your time searching for it in human heads: you should be accessing the internet, and going through scientific literature.
If we live in a state of prebiotic informational soup, then we are mainly processors, enzymes, that serve to transform parts of the huge body of knowledge - but this body is not to be found inside our heads anymore, since our value is more in processing rather than in storing. Sure, such a processor requires internal information in order to produce (transform) external information, but on average each one of us contributes only a small amount of useful (creative) metabolic changes.
I don't know why this article seems to start from such a misguided point of view. It seems to completely ignore the fact that there is a much larger superorganism and that we are merely its humble constituent 'cells'. |
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Additions; Atheism?
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The following are playful "buts, and what-ifs", to Freitas's use of the term "outrage", and his statement that death is an outrage.
The "Outrage", to me at least, would be suitable for an radical atheist.
But, what if your are religious, and know/believe that there is a soul in each human being, and maybe in all life forms?
What if it is true that we are, at the deepest core of our being, "souls trapped in matter"?
A real crazy twist to all this would be that extending human life, for thousands of years, would merely being extending our "souls" imprisonment in matter.
What if there is an afterlife, that might be a step up the ladder into a dimension far superior to this one.
What if millions of human beings having extended lives, merely creates the type of stagnation, and boredom, that we see in films like, "Zardoz".
It might be true that the price for progress is death.
If this universe is all there is, then a couple of hundred years is about enough for me, and if there is something finer after death, then why stick about here?
Speculations all; so please don't flame me.
These questions have to be asked, by someone, so it might as well be the house loon who asks them.
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Re: Additions; Atheism?
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Unfortunately, like most fanciful speculation, we can never know the truth. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ask the questions though. Sure the leaf falling in the jungle may cause drought in the heartland of America, you just can't count on it.
The inverse is true as well though. Just because the falling leaf has no discernable effect does that mean it should not fall?
Oh, this is stupid. How the hell does one get off on these metaphorical trips?
It's not the question that's important, it's the discussion generated. Sure fairies don't exist but you can spend a good evening in the bar talking about a lot of related subjects, and people will go home the better for it, probably having forgotten the original question.
In this case one might have to ask when might some glorious heavenly existence be paralleled by a glorious earthly existence. If you die and your soul is released or transported to another plane of existence, isn't it possible that through continued life and continued growth in knowledge and spirit (not be confused with soul) you'd reach the same exhalted plane of existence. Different roads, same bed and breakfast. And finally, isn't the long and winding road a lot more interesting than the 20 minute helicopter ride?
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Drunken Bar Talk; An evening with Wild Turkey
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Cybermynd wrote:
"In this case one might have to ask when might some glorious heavenly existence be paralleled by a glorious earthly existence. If you die and your soul is released or transported to another plane of existence, isn't it possible that through continued life and continued growth in knowledge and spirit (not be confused with soul) you'd reach the same exhalted plane of existence."
I would say no.
No matter how far we extend ourselves
technologically, and how far we evolve physically, we are still trapped in the physical realm. ( Hiccup )
Even if we became non-coporeal information creatures, with ultra intelligence, we would still be trapped in matter/energy.
I respect the scientific enterprise, but what irritates me so much about it is the persistent category error that scientists, and technologists continually make.
Science is fine in it's own domain; matter/energy; but when it thinks it can storm the spiritual domain, it is commiting a foolish category error.
We cannot become God by reaaranging the universe of matter/energy. Thinking that we can is the height of ego arrogance. My little ego extended like a giant ballon to fill the universe; absurd.
( Another full fifth of Wild Turkey is placed on the table)
(Glug, glug, glug, ahhhh)
Why are so many people ruffled by the scenario that we come from God, and return to God; a God that existed before matter/energy...
The arguements against this scenario continually use matter/energy as ammunition against God's existence. But, God is beyond matter/energy for Christ's sakes, so all those arguments are reduced to absurdity.
( Hiccup, burp )
Then, the inevitable question arises;
"So what is God make of, if there is no matter, or energy, or space-time?", [ usually said by a person with their hands on their hips, and brandishing a checkmate expression. ]
"Spirit, that's what"
"Spirit, spirit, ... what's that, hmmm, so what is this, this, Spirit made of."
"God sees through yours eyes, and my eyes, and through the eyes of all living beings in the entire universe; that spark of awareness that is in all of us, is the closet most of us can come to touching, and experiencing, what God/spirit is. The mystics go further into this Awareness, much further, and try to reach pure Awarenees in union with God."
Both participants in the discussion crash to the floor, dead drunk, but still aware at the deepest level.
Translation: you can't get there from here, but you can get closer, but to get there all the way you must die, and no back up copies please of mind/body; erase the lot.
By all means the entire Foresight club must extend their egos like balloons, out, and out, till they fill the entire universe, as information creatures, with million year lifespans...
Maybe the big bang is the sound of all those balloons popping.
God is having a grand time, being me, and you, and everyone else.
Damn, I went and spoiled it.
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Are we worth it?
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Moving away from the religious speculations...
I respect the work that Robert Freitas is doing, but at the same time I do not believe that a kind of technological utopia is possible for the human race.
Whether or not, you choose to believe that something, or nothing, created the universe, the fact is that the universe is constructed in such a way, that misery, fear, pain, is the predominant existential state, for all life forms.
And for humans it is worse, because the misery is not only physical, but mental/emotional, too, and even spiritual, for some.
This misery is at the heart of creation, and it is everywhere.
Yes, there is happiness, and joy, too, but come on, now,... at most maybe 20 percent of our lives are filled with happy moments.
The rest is drudge work, emotional turmoil, fear, loathing, etc.
Those of us reading, and writing this stuff, are a very small, and priveledged, few, in comparison to the billions of human beings who have lived crummy, misreable, lives.
Human beings have had to struggle like crazy, for thousands of years, to create the comfort we now experience in the modern world.
But even so, with all our comfort we all know that the H-Bombs can be launched in the next international crisis. So the damn fear is still there.
I would call this, "The Universe is an Outrage".
Those of you who are atheists, can get a good laugh of agreement, reading the writings of some of the Gnostics, who claim that the universe was built by a malicious fiend, a kind of devil, or shadow of God, in the Jungian sense.
It sure seems that way to me.
Even if the universe is a "vacuum flucuation", the whole thing is still botched up, and miserable, a kind of giagantic "bad luck" fart from the "vacuum." The place stinks.
I feel that we must use technology to make a "safehaven" from the maliciouness of nature, but nature has a way of tricking us, of pulling a dark rabbit out of a hat, and tripping up anything we do.
It is so damn frustrating.
What I am trying to say is that we must be prepared, and make contingency plans, for all the stinkin boobytraps that nature/universe will use to wreck any major technological steps we take.
The flaw of nature is within us too, and not just in the outer world. We are treacherously self-destructive. Does nature hate itself?
For instance; what if every person in my city, L.A., were given perfect health, youth, and a lifespan of 10,000 years? Think about that.
What about having children, if you are going to live for 10,000 years?
What about marriage, for 10,000 years?
Can the Earth support 6 billion immortals?
What about all the existing institutions, that are geared towards human beings having a 70 year lifespan. We are talking about trillions of dollars for restructing all this.
What would I do with 10,000 years?
I would like to steal a Tardis, a "space and time travel machine", and explore the universe.
But what if everyone in L.A. had a Tardis, or everyone on Earth?
Is the cure worse than the disease? Are we wise enough to handle immortality?
What about my favorite artists who are dead? They can't be resurrected, and even if they were, the times we live in would provably drive them back to the grave, willingly.
Who amongst us us really, really, worthy of immortality? The Alcor members? I will remain silent on that issue.
My gut level feeling is that we can lessen some kinds of suffering, but nature will introduce some different form of suffering, such as a world of bored, jaded, immortals. And bored persons are usually angry, and mean.
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Re: Are we worth it?
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Personally, I'm of the opinon that we'd all contribute to a huge drain on natural resources (more than we are now), provided that the rate of reproduction remains relatively constant. Even a trickle of the current population reproducing would begin the process of crowding the world if no one died. Plus, there would be no more innovation of any kind, just a blinding mass of petty, bickering, immortal humans who enjoy suing each other over the slightest thing. No, we're all far too insignificant to keep around for more than 100-150 years. If we try to transcend our physical forms and physical boundaries, I fear creating another Frankenstein's monster, but on a larger scale. Something that we created but cannot control which will end up being the end of our race. Anyone here ever seen the anime show called "Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex?" A world of cyborgs with the ability to completely change bodies at will, take over others' bodies, or destroy their minds completely.
I also imagine that the technology for extending one's lifespan will likely be expensive or will be restricted by the government. After all, they have to prioritize, right? Who's going to be first? The richest people. And politicians, unworthy though they are. Most of us will never be offered the opportunity, even if we were inclined to take it.
Being a devil's advocate is, unfortunately, something I am fairly good at. I expect my opinion to be viciously torn to pieces when I return. :) I've definately spent too much time on Slashdot. You all seem very level-headed from what I've read here. I joined just for the purpose of debating this topic.
-AC |
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Conflict and Struggle
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Human existence, and non-human animal existence has been, is, and will always be based on conflict, and struggle.
Our human ancestors had to struggle against the tremoundously hostile forces of nature, including of course disease, in which old age could be included.
Behind all cultural relativety there is the human body, or if you like, biology.
The human body, and brain, are structured in a particular, specific way. There is variation on the theme, but only within a very restricted, biological envelope.
In a sense, we are prisioners of biologcal forces.
In the case of humans, we are predators, and we are equiped with all the mental and emotional parameters of a predator.
Cultural relativety modifies these parameters to a very limited degree.
War was, war is, and war will always exist, sadly.
Watch out for inflated egoism, and especially the New Age variety of ego inflation, and it's twin, New Age guilt-tripping.
Suffering is not just a mental state, which can be eradicated by positive thinking. Millions, and millions, of animals are suffering everywhere, on this planet, at this moment. Are you going to tell an animal that it is it's own fault that it is suffering, and that if it only thought positively it would no be so stupid as to allow itself to suffer?
Those of us living in comfy situations today, forget that this comfy modern world was built by blood, sweat, and tears, by the agonizing labour of millions of human beings, struggling against the forces of nature.
A modern city is a fortress to keep nature at bay, and to tame it to some extent. Every single day millions of "maintenance" workers, in every major city in the world, are required to keep nature at bay. Remove this vast army of maintenance workers, and nature will move in and destroy all these cities.
Modern medicine is literally a war against nature, using nature itself to defeat nature, in the areas of sickness, deformity, mental illness, and now aging.
This is struggle, and conflict, against an adversary; nature.
Many of you are thinking, "there he goes again giving intent to nature".
Yes, I am giving intent to nature, but even if I were not, in a phenomenological sense it is as if nature is against us; the effects are the same, with, or without, intent.
We can work with nature, of course, but it is like making friends with an untrustworthy dragon; watch out, and always keep your gun loaded.
Another factor in all this is choice.
We cannot be everything, and be everywhere, and do all that we want to do, as human beings. We have to make choices, and making a choice means that another choice, or alternative, was not chosen.
There is sadness in this, and frustration.
You cannot be a top scientist, a top musician, a top actor, a top politician, a top artist, all at the same time, or be in a hundred different places at once, or marry a thousand beautiful women at once, on, and on, and on.
We desire many things, but most of them, we cannot have. And if you think you are really satisfied, go deeper, and recall al the missed chances, the decisions that meant you had to sacrifice this thing, for that thing, or this person, for that person, this career, for that career, etc.
If you are very young then of course you will think you can do everything; that is only natural. But as you get older, you will learn and experience, limitations, and the fact that you can't have everything.
The intent behind all this "gee-whiz" techie speculation is that we will be able to create a world, or situation, where we "can" be everything, and anything, that we desire.
Ego inflation maximized into infinity, is what I call it.
Go ahead and try, but nature will continue to throw a spanner in the works, and technology will not be able to end conflict, struggle, choice, and limitation.
The new "gee-whiz" technologies we creat a whole new set of problems.
The best we can do is to create a comfy place where we can suffer, but the andvantage will be that the suffering will no longer be physical, but mental/emotional. That is some compensation.
Suffering is not a state of mind, but an existential condition of a dualistic universe.
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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>>Even stars die. Why should we want to live forever? The only real question is "How long is long enough?" and that depends on the kind of life you're living.
Grant<<
Of all the transhuman ideas, the idea of immortality seems silliest to me.
A. Even if the Universe is open (will expand forever), immortality is probably foreclosed. If protons eventually decay, a fair possibility, there is eventually no matter substrate upon which for life to base itself, immortality is impossible. And even if that "death" comes 85 octillion years from now, it's no different conceptually from dying 85 years from now. Both 85 years and 85 octillion years are infinitestimal fractions of eternity. If the Universe is closed, it eventually recollapses on itself, meaning game over, too.
Voltaire wrote a satire of this concept back in the mid 1700s. In it, a denizen of Sirius and a citizen of Saturn both complain about the shortness of life (one has a lifespan of 900 years, and the other has a lifespan of 9000 years.) Subjectively, no degree of life expansion will probably make much difference.
However, it might change the calculus of how one lived one's life, which brings me to point
B. The longer one lives, the more likely it is that certain fatal accidents will occur (this even if it is possible to "port" the human mind to a non-biological platform). If one lives 9000 years one has to think about the risks of certain events which are extremely unlikely in a current human lifespan (gamma ray pulses from the center of the galaxy, supernovae in the general neighborhood, asteroid strikes, etc.). In fact, at some point, odds are that one will be wiped out by some accident or another.
BC
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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>Of all the transhuman ideas, the idea of immortality seems silliest to me. <
Immortality is simply the control of ones own lifespan. Why is that silly?
>A. Even if the Universe is open (will expand forever), immortality is probably foreclosed. If protons eventually decay, a fair possibility, there is eventually no matter substrate upon which for life to base itself, immortality is impossible. <
This assumes a Big Bang or Expanding Universe scenario which is HIGHLY improbable.
> And even if that "death" comes 85 octillion years from now, it's no different conceptually from dying 85 years from now. <
There is a tremendous difference in the amount of experience, knowledge, wisdom and growth that can be achieved in such a long lifespan. To me that is the whole point of life extension.
> Both 85 years and 85 octillion years are infinitestimal fractions of eternity. If the Universe is closed, it eventually recollapses on itself, meaning game over, too. <
Correct, there is no inherent "goodness" to life extension except that we WANT it. That is definitely a good enough reason for me!
>Voltaire wrote a satire of this concept back in the mid 1700s. In it, a denizen of Sirius and a citizen of Saturn both complain about the shortness of life (one has a lifespan of 900 years, and the other has a lifespan of 9000 years.) Subjectively, no degree of life expansion will probably make much difference. <
One benefit of gaining an indefinite lifespan is that we won't feel like ticking time-bombs and then we can relax a bit.
>However, it might change the calculus of how one lived one's life, which brings me to point <
> In fact, at some point, odds are that one will be wiped out by some accident or another. <
This all depends of the defense mechanisms that we create for ourselves and more information on just how dangerous our galactic neighborhood is.
subtillioN
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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Subtillion,
>>Immortality is simply the control of ones own lifespan. Why is that silly?<<
Immortality, by definition, is living forever. As I demonstrated in my last post, objective immortality is probably impossible, in both an open and closed universe.
>>>A. Even if the Universe is open (will expand forever), immortality is probably foreclosed. If protons eventually decay, a fair possibility, there is eventually no matter substrate upon which for life to base itself, immortality is impossible. <<<
>>This assumes a Big Bang or Expanding Universe scenario which is HIGHLY improbable.<<
The current, most accepted model of the universe assumes both the big bang and expansion. This explanation fits the data better than any other interpretation, consistent with what we know today. Upon what data do you base your assumption that an expanding universe is "highly unlikely?"
>>There is a tremendous difference in the amount of experience, knowledge, wisdom and growth that can be achieved in such a long lifespan. To me that is the whole point of life extension.<<
I didn't address the desirability of life extension...just the possibility of immortality. I might not mind living 1000 years, if it were possible; I do not expect to live forever.
>>>Voltaire wrote a satire of this concept back in the mid 1700s. In it, a denizen of Sirius and a citizen of Saturn both complain about the shortness of life (one has a lifespan of 900 years, and the other has a lifespan of 9000 years.) Subjectively, no degree of life expansion will probably make much difference. <<<
>>One benefit of gaining an indefinite lifespan is that we won't feel like ticking time-bombs and then we can relax a bit.<<
I wonder. Again, never-ending life is, in my opinion, practically impossible. If one knew that an accident could wipe one out at any moment, and thereby wipe out millions of years of possible future life, one might be even more scared of death. And, the subjective view of the "shortness" of a lifespan is in the eye of the beholder. If one gets used to the idea of living 10,000 years, that may start to seem like too short a time, when compared with eternity.
>>This all depends of the defense mechanisms that we create for ourselves and more information on just how dangerous our galactic neighborhood is.
subtillioN<<
It's not just the dramatic dangers I listed. It's mundane things like getting hit by a bus. The longer one lives, the more likely it is that one will be affected by any number of accidents. Run the numbers. After a certain point, the probability of death from even extremely rare accidents is close to one, if one lives long enough.
BC
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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BC,
>Immortality, by definition, is living forever.<
Yeah. I think the definition is silly because infinity holds no practical purpose when dealing with finite beings.
>The current, most accepted model of the universe assumes both the big bang and expansion. <
The current model is flawed in many ways.
>This explanation fits the data better than any other interpretation, consistent with what we know today. <
nope. There are MUCH more realistic models, but they don't see the light of day buried under the politics of the scientific establishment.
>Upon what data do you base your assumption that an expanding universe is "highly unlikely?" <
Upon observational evidence and books describing more realistic alternate scenarios. We could go waaaay into it if you wish.
>I didn't address the desirability of life extension...just the possibility of immortality. I might not mind living 1000 years, if it were possible; I do not expect to live forever. <
forever is meaningless for us finite humans
>>>>...Subjectively, no degree of life expansion will probably make much difference. <<< <
>>>One benefit of gaining an indefinite lifespan is that we won't feel like ticking time-bombs and then we can relax a bit.<<<
>>I wonder. Again, never-ending life is, in my opinion, practically impossible. If one knew that an accident could wipe one out at any moment, and thereby wipe out millions of years of possible future life, one might be even more scared of death. <<
That is a very good point, but with the upgrade I imagine will come a wisdom upgrade as well. This should help us to deal with such fears.
>>And, the subjective view of the "shortness" of a lifespan is in the eye of the beholder. If one gets used to the idea of living 10,000 years, that may start to seem like too short a time, when compared with eternity. <<
It very much depends on the subjective experience of time, which depends on the function of the brain. I suspect that an upgrade will alter that drastically.
>It's not just the dramatic dangers I listed. It's mundane things like getting hit by a bus. The longer one lives, the more likely it is that one will be affected by any number of accidents. <
That is assuming that everything else would remain the same. I suspect that life will get much safer, though it could get much more dangerous as well.
>Run the numbers. After a certain point, the probability of death from even extremely rare accidents is close to one, if one lives long enough.<
True, but again obviously under the assumption that everything else would remain the same.
subtillioN |
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The "scientific establishment"
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>>>The current, most accepted model of the universe assumes both the big bang and expansion.
>>The current model is flawed in many ways.<<
>>>This explanation fits the data better than any other interpretation, consistent with what we know today. <<<
>>nope. There are MUCH more realistic models, but they don't see the light of day buried under the politics of the scientific establishment.<<
I always find it interesting when I read the opinion that the "truth" about the structure of the Universe, or what have you, is being kept from people because of politics in the "scientific establishment."
I have been a professional academic for 23 years, and I know a couple of things about the politics of the scientific establishment, but I guess I don't get my invitations to the meetings where the truth is suppressed.
I think it would be fair to say that certain ideas have touble getting heard in the professional literature, but, over the long haul, science is self-correcting, because observations and experiments pile up. I'm sure all of our present models of the universe are wrong. The models that we come up with 100 years from now will be wrong, too. Following Kant, I would say that we can never know the "truth" about ther world with 100% certainty. But like Achilles in Zeno's paradox, we inch closer and closer.
Sometimes you get an inkling that something is correct, but the state of knowledge doesn't allow you to prove it. I can give you an idea of how things work from what is perhaps a somewhat boring aside based upon my own career. For a number of years, I have suspected that much of the cosmology revealed in the classical Mayan texts is based upon an earlier, pre-classical mushroom cult, similar to those found elsewhere in Meso-america. Unfortunately for my suspicions, there isn't enough evidence to demonstrate it to what you call the "establishment's" satisfaction. Since I'm a cultural anthropologist and not an archaeologist, I'll never be in a position to unearth that evidence myself, and archaeology in Central America is a difficult business anyway...but that's the way it goes. It's not anywhere close to being the main thrust of my work, and I don't have another lifetime to work on it. I have mentioned it to a couple of other people, however, and they found the idea interesting enough to do some work on it. Maybe someday we'll know. Or again, maybe not. I may be completely off base. That's how science works.
BC
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Re: The "scientific establishment"
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>>>nope. There are MUCH more realistic models, but they don't see the light of day buried under the politics of the scientific establishment.<<<
>I always find it interesting when I read the opinion that the "truth" about the structure of the Universe, or what have you, is being kept from people because of politics in the "scientific establishment." <
I didn't mean that this "suppression" was a conscious conspiracy. It is simply in the nature of the establishment to form an inflexible belief system centered around the currently accepted model.
This is a sort of congealing memetic immune system to maintain a social cohesiveness and positive image around the collection of theories. These unconscious
psychological "belief" tendencies can tend to get "religiously" intense especially around metaphysically charged zones such as cosmology. The scientists tend to form a very inflexible social barrier that alternative models usually find extremely difficult to penetrate.
>I have been a professional academic for 23 years, and I know a couple of things about the politics of the scientific establishment, but I guess I don't get my invitations to the meetings where the truth is suppressed.<
Of course there are no such lectures because there is no such conscious plot against the "dissenters" (AFIK). The belief barrier is unconsciously reinforced in virtually every physics classroom and or lecture hall when the professor or speaker says that such and such theory has been "proven" by the latest evidence. I hear it ALL the time. There is never the discussion (and it would be very confusing to new students) that these theories, for the most part (physics in particular) are NOT proven and that the whole model is merely one out of MANY interpretations of the data. The professors have no clue about the alternatives, some of which are clearly (if one can see it 8) better than the established ideas.
There is currently no method for weighing the truly novel alternative ideas, especially in Physics, because in order to even comprehend a qualified and detailed alternative model you have to suspend your current "belief" system long enough to accept (if temporarily) an entirely new set of premises and constructions. The process of "suspension of belief" proves to be virtually impossible for all but those very few people actively searching out the alternative theories because they are dissatisfied with the current model.
Even if the mainstream physicists COULD temporarily suspend their belief systems it could take many months of intense study and internal mental adjustments just to begin to understand the new model long enough to make an accurate judgement. Who can afford to "waste" such time on a weird, unproven idea, especially in professional academia?
>I think it would be fair to say that certain ideas have touble getting heard in the professional literature, <
It is probably a bit fairer to say that ONLY certain types of ideas DON'T have trouble getting heard.
>but, over the long haul, science is self-correcting, because observations and experiments pile up. I'm sure all of our present models of the universe are wrong. The models that we come up with 100 years from now will be wrong, too. Following Kant, I would say that we can never know the "truth" about ther world with 100% certainty. But like Achilles in Zeno's paradox, we inch closer and closer. <
I would agree. That is why I see this change as inevitable. We will accept more realistic models eventually, the core ideas of which, may be, and almost certainly are, around right now. How long was copernicus's idea around before it caught on?
I know of one Unified Field Model that has a very good chance of supplanting (and Unifying) the very foundation of current physics. It is based on a compressible fluid-dynamic ubiquitous matter continuum to replace the current Kinetic-Atomic indivisible-particle-in-the-void foundation which was entirely unable to deal with the new observed wave-nature of matter and the Michelson Morely Data. This alternate model gives a very detailed and entirely causal explanation and unification of all the forces and mechanisms of Physics. It's very cool. Some of the alternatives can be EXTREMELY enlightening and I don't believe that one can truly understand any particular model without knowing some alternatives. It helps to get some perspective.
www.anpheon.org
We'll see if this one holds up to the test of time. I am betting on it though or at least something very like it.
subtillioN |
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Re: The "scientific establishment"
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>>One of the functions of a meme pool is to exclude memes that do not fit into the structure that already exists. Examples include professors who defend their world view against all others. Religious figures who defend their beliefs against all others. Ideas of what is polite. lawful, acceptable, etc. New ideas that do not fit into these estabished systems are routinely rejected. <<
Grant,
I don't doubt the basic thrust of your argument; but the memepool gets an occasional flushing, in science, politics, business and other pragmatic disciplines, because individuals working in those areas look for what works. When I got to graduate school in the '70s, Claude Levi-Strauss and the structuralists were the kings of the roost in anthropology. Today, structuralism is viewed by most folks as a kind of historical curiosity. Levi-Strauss' views do not "fit" well with the data accumulated since his era.
I came into Subtillion's debate a little late...I've been working on organizing field notes from my last trip and I haven't had much time to surf this site. It would take more than just a novel idea, however, to supplant quantum mechanics in physics; it would take a novel idea that fits the data better. I don't think he's there, but, I'm not a physicist, either.
>>An idea or a belief is like a territory. We are programmed to defend it. I will defend to the death my home, my wife, my children, my beliefs, etc. What I'm defending them against are yours. G. W. Bush realized that when he accused the Al Quaeda and the Taliban of attacking our way of life. He knew we would rally to defend it. Our nature leaves us little choice. It's an emotional hot button. <<
Years ago, I had a professor who required each student in the class to write a paper defending a proposition that we didn't actually believe, in order to keep the brain channels from ossifying around the conventional wisdom. I had to defend the Inquisition. It required a quick immersion in the world of the scholastic philosophers of the late middle ages. Interesting exercise. I urge everybody to occasionally take a stroll down somebody else's reality tunnel.
BC
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Re: The "scientific establishment"
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>>One of the functions of a meme pool is to exclude memes that do not fit into the structure that already exists. Examples include professors who defend their world view against all others. Religious figures who defend their beliefs against all others. Ideas of what is polite. lawful, acceptable, etc. New ideas that do not fit into these estabished systems are routinely rejected. <<
Grant,
I don't doubt the basic thrust of your argument; but the memepool gets an occasional flushing, in science, politics, business and other pragmatic disciplines, because individuals working in those areas look for what works. When I got to graduate school in the '70s, Claude Levi-Strauss and the structuralists were the kings of the roost in anthropology. Today, structuralism is viewed by most folks as a kind of historical curiosity. Levi-Strauss' views do not "fit" well with the data accumulated since his era.
I came into Subtillion's debate a little late...I've been working on organizing field notes from my last trip and I haven't had much time to surf this site. It would take more than just a novel idea, however, to supplant quantum mechanics in physics; it would take a novel idea that fits the data better. I don't think he's there, but, I'm not a physicist, either.
>>An idea or a belief is like a territory. We are programmed to defend it. I will defend to the death my home, my wife, my children, my beliefs, etc. What I'm defending them against are yours. G. W. Bush realized that when he accused the Al Quaeda and the Taliban of attacking our way of life. He knew we would rally to defend it. Our nature leaves us little choice. It's an emotional hot button. <<
Years ago, I had a professor who required each student in the class to write a paper defending a proposition that we didn't actually believe, in order to keep the brain channels from ossifying around the conventional wisdom. I had to defend the Inquisition. It required a quick immersion in the world of the scholastic philosophers of the late middle ages. Interesting exercise. I urge everybody to occasionally take a stroll down somebody else's reality tunnel.
BC
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Re: The "scientific establishment"
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subtillioN,
Sorry for being away so long, much hectic stuff surrounds me at present :)
Here are some of my thoughts/concerns regarding the "compressible uni-fluid" as the basis of all reality...
First, it occurs to me that if everything (EVERYTHING) is "made of" this same uni-fluid, there is really no reason to attempt to make it "concrete", for it is effectively indistinguishable from a total abstraction, in any case.
Put most simply, "What it IS = How it BEHAVES". If you really think about it, this is true of everything, no matter what formulation one posits.
(Being a bit silly, one could posit that everything in the universe is fundamentally a form of strawberry jam, which happens to produce all manifest of reality given the requisite "exigent conditions".)
Which is not a criticism of the "Sorce-Fluid-Theory", but just an observation, made in the hope of avoiding "religious" debates about whether or not "it" exists, or "it" is just a better explanation. At root, it seems futile to enter into such debates.
Second, (a concern or general question): If I understand the intent of the "Sorce" fluid concept, this fluid cannot itself be possessive of any internal structure. That is to say, it must be both "infinitely divisible" and (in essence) "indivisible".
That is to say, it cannot reveal itself to hold any "internal detail" that is dependent upon scale. (Otherwise, it would be "made" of things that reside at one scale, as opposed to another scale.)
This makes it very mysterious (to me, at least) how it can serve to manifest the (apparent) discreteness of particles, at the scales they seem uniformly and consistently to inhabit.
Another question: Does this theory posit a universe of infinite extent? Finite? Something else? :)
At first, it seems that it could not be infinite, since an (initially) perfectly uniform and structureless (and scale-less) fluid, of infinite extent, would seem unable to manifest anything that could be "size-distinguishable". What event could every initiate a "scale" by which size could become a measure of things?
Alternately, if it is finite in extent, then "how much is there", and why just that much?
(and how would "much" be measured? meters? milligrams? Hertz? ... ? )
Just curious, as I do find these to be "natural" questions. (Not that the "standard model" answers them to my satisfaction, either.)
Cheers! ____tony b____
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The Strawberry jam Theory of Matter ;)
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>Sorry for being away so long, much hectic stuff surrounds me at present :) <
I've been hoping you'd join back in!
>Here are some of my thoughts/concerns regarding the "compressible uni-fluid" as the basis of all reality... <
>First, it occurs to me that if everything (EVERYTHING) is "made of" this same uni-fluid, there is really no reason to attempt to make it "concrete", for it is effectively indistinguishable from a total abstraction, in any case.<
Very good point. However, once you understand it you will see that this concept is not nearly as abstract as it would at first seem. (It is certainly not nearly as abstract as the concept of the "curvature of space".)
Continuous matter is physically observable and testable (e.g. casimir effect, gravitational refraction, wave-nature of matter etc.). It has a direct causal analog in the observed phenomena of molecular fluids. It is therefore visualizable and causally understandable because the laws governing fluids such as Fluid Dynamics the Venturi effect and Wave Mechanics (refraction, reflection, interference, harmonics, resonance etc.) apply at all levels of matter and are most easily seen where the organization of matter does not interfere with fluid motion and the propagation of waves.
>Put most simply, "What it IS = How it BEHAVES". If you really think about it, this is true of everything, no matter what formulation one posits. <
This is true, but it is only one half of the circle of cause and effect. Action or motion is a very important part of what something is, but action alone cannot fully explain anything because action requires a physical something to do the acting.
The universe is therefore best simplified as 'matter in motion'. This is a less abstract replacement for the common notion of 'space-time'. How an object behaves, nevertheless tells you a great deal about what an object is and how it is made.
>(Being a bit silly, one could posit that everything in the universe is fundamentally a form of strawberry jam, which happens to produce all manifest of reality given the requisite "exigent conditions".) <
(BTW "Silly" in Old English, means "holy". )
Not to criticize your Strawbery Jam Theory of Matter, but... ;)
...it makes no difference what you call raw matter except that calling it "strawberry jam" implies that it has a high degree of viscosity, therefore it doesn't transmit waves very well, it is made from fruit and sugar, is sweet, and contains small seeds and lumps of fleshy fruit.
We have direct knowledge of the attributes of matter, however, and these "strawberry jam" attributes are not (AFIK ) observable in amorphous matter. ;)
>Which is not a criticism of the "Sorce-Fluid-Theory", but just an observation, made in the hope of avoiding "religious" debates about whether or not "it" exists, or "it" is just a better explanation. At root, it seems futile to enter into such debates. <
Thank God ;) we don't have to go there!
>Second, (a concern or general question): If I understand the intent of the "Sorce" fluid concept, this fluid cannot itself be possessive of any internal structure. <
First of all it is important to recognize that 'sorce' is the expansive pressure aspect of raw fluid continuous matter ('matter' or 'substance' herein refers to the universal fluid substance, we will use 'atomic matter' to distinguish the atomic configurations of fluid matter).
Matter is a fluid which is continuous, compressible and bodily movable at all scales therefore it can form pressure and density gradients and organizations at all scales. These gradients ARE structure itself and they occur at all levels.
If you mean by 'internal structure', a level of structure out of which matter is constructed, then yes you are correct, there is no 'internal structure' in this sense. Matter is constructed of nothing other than itself, because if you assume that everything is ALWAYS made out of something else then ultimately there is nothing left, out of which to make anything. You would, therefore, be infinitely 'passing the buck' of what things are made out of, it would thus never get paid and therefore nothing would ever be made out of anything. Nothing would exist. Or perhaps existence would be nothing. (both of these last statements are metaphysical contradictions.)
Therefore our advertising slogan will now read: "The buck stops with matter!" ;)
>That is to say, it must be both "infinitely divisible" and (in essence) "indivisible". <
This is in a sense true. However, it is more accurate to say that the STRUCTURES formed from matter are infinitely divisible. Matter itself is not ever divisible because there is nothing else to place between matter and itself to form such a division. The structures are always organizations and complexes of stabilized density gradients of this one continuous medium. 'Division' is therefore an illusion of scale, because when you zoom in to the edges of 'objects' you can see that everything is made of continuous density gradients. The 'fundamental' particles and atoms are all interconnected by a 'wave-nature'. In quantum experiments you are always dealing with interconnected harmonics and resonances of this 'fundamental wave-nature'.
Sorce Theory merely shows that by assuming the causal necessity that a wave, being a propagated action, requires a physical medium which actually DOES this acting. Once this assumption is accepted then all sorts of shapeless mysteries begin to congeal and everything begins to make sense. Ultimately what happens is that all of the 'fundamental forces' are united and explained by a simple net pressure and consequently all of the current 'mysteries' that Physics deals with are disintegrated, as the properties of this currently unknown material substrate explain the mechanisms behind those mysteries.
>That is to say, it cannot reveal itself to hold any "internal detail" that is dependent upon scale. (Otherwise, it would be "made" of things that reside at one scale, as opposed to another scale.) <
Matter is THE fundamental physical level. In a sense, therefore everything that exists would be its internal and external detail (depending on your scale and point of view).
>This makes it very mysterious (to me, at least) how it can serve to manifest the (apparent) discreteness of particles, at the scales they seem uniformly and consistently to inhabit. <
This gets very complicated, and a full account is not appropriate here. I will instead give an abstract overview (though I can go into much more detail if asked).
The properties of this fluid (think viscosity) determine at which level certain harmonic 'standing wave' systems (atoms) can arise. It is due to the very precise and consistent qualities of the properties of fundamental matter that under 'identical' physical conditions (pressure , temperature, magnetic/electric fields etc.) the harmonic resonances will form into atoms with 'identical' resonance patterns, sizes, masses, shell structures etc..
>Another question: Does this theory posit a universe of infinite extent? Finite? Something else? :) <
The problematic philosophical issues aside: based on the consequences of the observable physical properties of matter, causality seems to necessitate a universe infinite in extent and duration. Basic matter possesses an intrinsic expansive pressure. If the universe was not infinite in extent (or not causally looped in some unimaginable way (watch out for Occams razor!))) then due to the expansive property of matter the material finite extent of the Universe would forever expand into the non-physical, infinite, surrounding expanse of nothing(?).
Just trying to make sense of a finite universe, seems to me, riddled with metaphysical problems and inconsistencies. For instance How can something expand into nothing?: Because in order for anything to interact with anything else both things must have the same underlying 'rule system' or "nature", thus they would both be manifestations of some deeper level of infinite reality.
The simplest answer to me is therefore to accept a universe of infinite duration and extension.
>At first, it seems that it could not be infinite, since an (initially) perfectly uniform and structureless (and scale-less) fluid, of infinite extent, would seem unable to manifest anything that could be "size-distinguishable".<
This is a very good point. It directly shows that there never could have been a time when matter was perfectly uniform and structureless. There was thus no beginning to 'time' (or motion).
>Alternately, if it is finite in extent, then "how much is there", and why just that much? <
If matter is all there is then what could limit the extent of matter?
>(and how would "much" be measured? meters? milligrams? Hertz? ... ? ) <
Having denied a universe of finite extent I will answer the question under the un-assumed conclusion.
Quantity of raw matter can be measured in density per unit volume. This density of raw matter is not some abstract intangible notion. It can be directly observed through the phenomenon of refraction. This property can be seen in its most raw state via the bending of starlight around a large density gradient such as the sun. An atom itself is a VERY STEEP density gradient in which electromagnetic energy is refractively "trapped" (e=mc2), circularly refracting and harmonically interacting to form standing-wave shell-layers at square of the distance intervals from the spinning nucleus. (see images of the electron density clouds.)
Refraction in atomic matter is essentially the same thing as refraction through raw matter. The speed of light is simply an inverse function of the density of raw matter.
>Just curious, as I do find these to be "natural" questions. (Not that the "standard model" answers them to my satisfaction, either.)<
These questions bring up very important foundational concepts, which are good to get out of the way up front so that we can focus on the further synthesis of the observable structure of the universe.
subtillioN
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More Sorce-Theory Questions
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subtillioN,
On the finite/infinite issue:
----------------------------
The "finite vs infinite" universe issue is a curious one. Ordinarily, we would assume that a "finite anything" would thus have a boundary, or an "outside" to (potentially) "expand into".
Where do we get such a notion? A "finite universe" would have no "outside" to expand into, and no "surface" to distinguish itself from anything else.
In our local size perspective, we distinguish the (mathematical notion of) independent, orthogonal directions for up/down, east/west, etc. Perhaps the idea that a finite universe would have an "outside" comes from the sense that to travel in "one direction" indefinitely, one must reach a boundary, an "edge" to the universe. In a closed finite universe, you would instead simply retrace your path (eventually). Head "up" long enough, you finally return from "below".
The universe could be finite, but large enough that definitive evidence of its "directional cyclicity" has yet to be seen.
This directional cyclicity might seem to violate the flat geometric orthogonality of direction. "How could you return from behind yourself, unless you took a turn somewhere, etc." But this is really only a violation, if one assumes that the universe "obeys" these orthogonal directions of translation, as if they "pre-exist" the universe, which is somehow "laid on top" of them. But we reject the notion that there is an "empty space possessing directions, orthogonal or otherwise", so there is no violation in a finite universe exhibiting cyclicity in any direction.
Finite, or infinite, a universe made of Sorce-fluid can only support relative motions and displacements anyway, as there can be no fixed "milepost" from which to measure absolute motion, or direction.
On the (apparent) uniformity of "Quanta":
----------------------------------------
I can fully appreciate the notion that standing resonances can be responsible for the manifestation of what we would consider "ordinary discrete matter". And I can also appreciate the notions of density gradients and refraction as a way to explain the "curvature of space" phenomena".
But if we also are to use these "fluid properties" to explain what we percieve as quanta, then this fluid seems to become enormously complex.
On the "very large scale", we might posit that "Sorce" is very dense in and near a neutron star, and "very thin" in regions we perceive to be (as if) empty "flat" space. But given this huge disparity in densities, one is hard pressed to explain why (say) proportions of nuclei, or their relative rates of decay, or any of many other properties, seems to remain constant while manifesting in such disparate regimes. If such density-properties of the fluid are to explain why it takes some 1800 electrons to equal the weight of a proton, why does this not vary, given the radically different Source-gradients in which they may be measured?
In short, how can (what we typically think of as) a fluid, manifest both such enormous gradients in density, tension/pressure, torsion, etc, yet give rise to such uniformly identical "particles"?
On Causality:
------------
Lastly, I question the import of the (absolute?) "causality" you expect this model to retain. Specifically, do you think that your response to this post reveals anything that could be said to "originate with you", idea-wise? Or was every keystroke you made absolutely determined eons ago, and simply a manifestation of strict causality? If the latter, would anything "matter" (heh) in such a universe?
The strong QM view can be taken either that there are truely "acausal" events, or that "causality" is holographic, that "everything causes everything", irrespective of our ordinary notions of distance and proximity (i.e., non-locality).
You seem to argue against non-locality, and yet to do so, does this not posit the notion that "spacial displacement" is a quality independent of substance? Are you not presuming that the "Sorce-fluid" somehow "exists in a pre-conceived space" supporting distance and direction? If not, then why should "locality" be a fundamental?
(Sorry for so many questions, trying to be "though provoking" :)
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: The "scientific establishment"
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>>Which way is the ONE way that the established views have not been warped?< <
>Bull, I'm not
lol. :) I am completely lost on this one ... I wasn't saying you were or are anything ... though I know that you are something ... if you know what I mean ... (I don't ... but you might)
>>>I was wrong; a compressible fluid-dynamic ubiquitous matter continuum -- does not match my metaphysics, I thought you were describing an abstraction. Unless its harmonic and fully explains the harmonic tie-ins... << <
>>I believe it does, but just to be sure, what are the "harmonic tie-ins"?<<
>Which harmonic is defined by hydrogen?
>If you can answer that one, email me!!!<
Here is a very general and imprecise explanation of what I perceive you are getting at.
Every atom can be viewed loosely as a sort of fluid-dynamic, harmonic resonance pattern. In wave terminology, each element has a specific standing-wave "resonance pattern" which IS its identity-defining structure. This can be seen in the specific spectra of the different chemical elements. Different types of harmonic equilibria for each specific element can form under different environmental conditions. This fluid-dynamic, harmonic complexity and flexibility is why there is so much detail, substructure and variation in the spectra of the different states of each specific element. Furthermore it is the effects of the specific resonance patterns of the outer shells of the different atomic elements that interactively define the selective ability to form chemical bonds between different types of atoms. When the outer shells 'resonate' they can merge to form a bond. The outer shell of the two atoms is then shared and a new harmonic, fluid-dynamic inter-equilibrium is reached.
I will email you with some specifics.
subtillioN
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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>>Isn't this what they call "The Gambler's Fallacy?" No matter how many times one flips a coin, the chance of getting heads or tails is 50%. The number of times one flips it doesn't change the odds. Why does living longer change the odds of being killed by any specific accident?<<
No. In the gambler's case, he is attempting to predict one in a series of independent events, based upon the results of an earlier independent event. Each time I roll a pair of dice, the odds are the same, and no roll of the dice is connected to the last. So at every instance, my odds are the same that a 12 will come up. However, at the same time, if I stand at the crap table for a year, and roll the dice every two minutes, it is a certainty that I will roll a 12 at some point. When that 12 will come is completely unpredictable, however, and, of couse, that knowledge is useless to me in trying to make money at the table.
When insurance companies write flood insurance, they are using similar reasoning. If I build a house outside the normal flood plain, but within the risk zone of the most catastrophic known floods, the insurance company can calculate the exposure to risk, based upon the historical evidence. Perhaps floods great enough to destroy my house will happen, on average, once every hundred years. That flood may happen next year, or it may happen a century from now.. At any given point, the insurance company is unable to predict when, but, if the historical evidence is indicative of the future, the insurance company's exposure to risk over the long term can be calculated roughly.
In the case of an extended lifespan increasing one's risk of dying from an accident, it works kind of like the flood. I don't know when the asteroid is going to strike, but I do know that, on average, the asteroid hits every 65 million years or so. My exposure to risk is much greater if my lifespan is 4,000,000 years than if my lifespan is 80 years. If in any given year, the chance of a gamma ray burst sterilizing my part of the galaxy are 1 in 65,000,000 (I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air), the odds of it happening in any given day don't change from day to day, but my exposure to the risk increases the longer I live.
At some point, the exposure to risk from a combination of individually low probability events bring about almost certain mortality.
BC
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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To understand death is to understand life and the process of living thru freedom. Most people are incapable of fully living in the now and moving forward without carrying the burden of the past, and death arrives without exception to relive your soul of such burden. Death makes way for the new, which is only a reset, evolved version of something already in existence. It?s like truly emptying your glass. A Genius design for our young souls, which is why Earth is such a popular place. I think only now are there individuals who may possess the intelligence, skill and understanding of life necessary to successfully live long into the future. The whole however has a very long way to go, but as in all things they will accelerate as acceleration in that department becomes necessary. I know how Kurzweil longs for this extended life and he will probably find it, and more over he may even be at a point in his souls life to sustain a very long life. Most people would choose this option from a human growth standpoint, not a spiritual one. As for Roberts view on the information loss due to death, well I suppose for someone living in the past or depending on past information to sustain a part of his or her life that would be a bad thing. Most people I suspect can easily sustain a beautiful and creative life without ever missing any of that so-called knowledge. Walking in this world with less is sooo much greater than more. Besides, how many people ever relay all the information in their life and if they did it would only be one experience out side of your own. |
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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>>>Some people, maybe most people, end up not being so opposed to death because of all the health problems that go along with old age. Suicide rates are higher among the elderly. But then even, with all the pain and disability that comes with aging, the majority do not kill themselves. If the elderly had the option of living a lot longer in restored, youthful bodies I bet most of them would abandon the half hearted justifications for death and go right on living.<<<
I don't think most people "end up not being so opposed to death"; most humans eventually come to terms with death because it's obvious to all but the most obtuse at least by midlife that the cosmic lottery isn't rigged in their favor. Learning to deal with death helps make the life that one is given more meaningful, at least IMHO. I don't want to die, unless I find myself in unberable, incurable suffering. However, my desires are not that important here. Everybody will die. Whether one's lifespan is the biblical "three scores and ten", or whether science finds a way to extend it for several thousand years or more, in a biological or non biological body, or, even in the most optimistic transhuman scenario, millions of years, every person alive today and who will ever live will eventually have to come to terms with the fact of mortality.
BC
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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In all this discussion, we must think about the evolution that a much longer living and conscious "ego" will know : learning processes, "natural evolution" and all the future technological revolutions that will change the kind of living forms ( "bodies" ) and cognitive capacities we are. If we consider evolution of life in the past, and the accelerated transformation of mankind culture, we must expect a strong change in human biological, psychological and social "morphologies" : what will be the kind of interactions between our "egos" if in some centuries ( or less ) we can "connect" and "disconnect" us so that "we" are one "consciousness" or several ones as "we" will ? It's possible that the question of "individual" immortality as we think now will soon ( in few centuries or less ) have other meanings if the experience of individuality will be very different with other kinds of communications between our future evolved "brains". We do'nt actually know all the possible future kinds of "biotechnological" transformations that can totally change what we call in our current human "experience" : "I", "you", "we", "my body", "my life", etc. and therefore also what we call "my death", "your death".
Sorry for my english ... I'm french |
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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Dyson has shown that death is not inevitable for an open universe, and Tipler has made the same proof for a closed universe. For the open universe, all intelligence has to do is to awake for briefer and briefer periods of time. Since there is an infinite number of times one can go halfway from point a to point b, civilization can go on infinitely long by staying awake halfway from point a to point b. During shutdown there is no energy consumption. For the closed universe, as the cosmos come crashing down in three dimensions, intelligence takes advantage of the differential sheer stress in the different rates of geometric collapse. This difference born from original asymmetries provides a way to preserve information when it is otherwise being lost in the big crunch. The preserved information space becomes a living space for civilization.
Of course we all have to understand that immortality requires representing matter, including squishy biomatter, as information. But that will make no difference as emulated reality will be indistinguishable from objective reality.
Finally, there is a funny hubris about the notion that we understand the laws of physics so well now as to foreclose the possibility of immortality. How many times do we have to be proven wrong about our knowledge of the laws of physics? Kurzweil's supposition that with adequate information, and with a nanotechnology-based self-replication-driven technological capability to manipulate every atomic (or if need be sub-atomic particle) in the universe, it is likely to presume intelligence will trump cosmology and find the solution to immortality. In other words, once we can technologically and intelligently manipulate all of the matter and energy in the universe, we can probably start finding loopholes in the laws of physics, as currently understood, that enable immortality.
Given the bet, billions of years of intelligence and technology outwitting contemporary understandings of physics, versus, the mortality imposed by contemporary understandings of physics, I would bet on the billions of years. So far, intelligence has trumped "fate" every time. |
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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>>Dyson has shown that death is not inevitable for an open universe,<<
Sorf of. What Dyson said was that in an ever-expanding and ever-cooling universe, there would be enough energy for a far-future civilization to continue operating, provided it was able to A, organize itself on the basis of "post-baryonic matter", to coin a phrase, and, B, go to sleep for increasingly long times to make up for the ever decreasing amount of energy. As Dyson says in his book "Infinite in All Directions", this is hardly a rigorous proof, and even if this is possible, it says nothing about personal immortality.
>> and Tipler has made the same proof for a closed universe.<<
I assume you're talking about Tipler's "Omega Point" theory. Tipler assumes that in the final instants of a collapsing universe, a far-future intelligence will be able to manipulate the asymetries in the collapse. In order for Tipler's scheme to work, his far future AI must find a way to process an infinite amount of information in a finite period of time, to give intelligence a subjective senese of immortality. Tipler also assumes that his future AI will "resurrect" the rest of us to enjoy subjective immortality. When I read Tipler's "Physics of Immortality" in 1994, it seemed to me that his logic was circular, and he makes huge leaps of faith in reaching his conclusion. In any event, it doesn't seem like the Universe is cooperating with him...it doesn't look like there's enough mass in the universe to cause a big crunch, anyway.
In any event, personal immortality requires that all fatal accidents be avoided...both small and large. Given enough time, the probability is almost one that some mishap will finish you off, regardless of how advanced your technology.
BC
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Topic Questions
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I have been straying too much from the main topics, so here are some questions, and musings, that relate to those topics.
What if everyone chose to be twenty years old, for hundreds of years?
Now, imagine walking down a city street, and everyone you see looks likes a twenty year old.
Not one old, or older, face in the crowd, or any crowd, not even a middle-aged face, or body in any crowd.
What about children seeing their parents as perpetual 20 year olds?
Does aging create changes in the human brain that are necesssary for developing, and enhancing, human civilzation, both technically, and culturally; and would keeping a brain at the 20 year level deprive us of these changes?
How are actors going to play older characters, convincingly (make-up) if they are all 20, and would audiences begin to loathe watching any movies, or reading books with older characters in them?
A kind of public disgust with aging, and old age might develop, and viewing films with older persons might seem like watching films of deformed cripples, or freaks.
One way out of this is to let persons age naturally, but to save/dupe their minds, on a daily basis, and when they die, then move their minds into a younger bodies.
But then, who wants to die of a heart attack, or whatever, if they don't have to.
Bottom line; for me, living in a world where everyone is in their early 20s, and everyone looks like a movie star, would be like living in a Twilight Zone episode; a nightmare.
It sounds good at first, but really think about it.
There are two excellent Twilight Zone (1960s) episodes that deal with these issues:
"The Trade-Ins", and "Number 12 looks just like you".
And I feel the film, "Zardoz" is a great lesson on how immortality can go wrong.
I read the book, "Magister Ludi", by Herman Hesse, many years ago, and I recall that in the book civilization had a reached a stage where everyone could have all the knowledge accumulated throughout history, in their brain/minds. The characters in the novel would spend their time reaaranging all this knowledge, into different patterns, utilising what they called the "glass bead game".
That would be a fun, and worthy, game for immortals.
If I were one of those characters, I would like to try and dream up a completed version of Beethoven's unfinished 10th symphony.
But there is the problem; is the music of Beethoven time bound; can we ever recreate that kind of marvelous music, in a different time/cultural/political setting, even with all the knowledge of the world, inside our heads?
And maybe Beethoven's brain was so unique that we won't have another like it, ever.
Beethoven grew older, of course. What would have happened if he had stayed 20 years old all his life, and had perfect hearing?
Is death, and aging, the price we pay for progress?
Well, we are still in the aging scenario at this moment, and there are no Beethoven's anywhere, or even close equivalents to him. The same could be said for Mahler, Ravel, Tchaikovsky.
I brought that up because it asks another question:
Technology alone, no matter how fantastic it becomes, does not guarentee that the cultural setting within which it exists, will be of the highest quality, or even close to high quality.
Yes?
America has been on a vast pop and high cultural decline since the mid 1960s, with no end in sight for the flood of dreck. And yet we have all this high technology, in fact technology that was Science Fiction, in the 1960s.
Robert Freitas's compassion for the human race is admirable, and I agree with him completely that we must try to end as much suffering as possible, but even so;
we could, and probaly will end up with an ultra advanced techonological society, but within a cultural setting that is nauseatingly sleazy, kiddie-oriented, and barbaric.
We win in one way, but lose in another way.
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Method Musical Composition
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Technology will, at some point, allow us physically youthful immortality. What a wonderful thing!
No one has any right to ask another human to just chill, stop advancing and please just die like a good boy. This would be like demanding we take steps to insure the pre-industrial revolution, average life expectancy will be honored and maintained.
An easy or long life certainly doesn't insure a quality life. But certainly being dead would offer a significantly smaller chance of a quality life for a given corpse.
Dying, often means that right when we are finally glimpsing wisdom, our brains stop working and die. This is like practicing hours a day with all your heart on the violin and just as you are starting to make some early expressions of real music in your last year in Jr. High school' you smash the violin and leave music for good and feel really neat that you had that cute little experience.
Actually this metaphor is grossly understated.
All the figures of value Robert Freitas gives are interesting to a point but fully miss the point of value. If you give a mortal creature anything of value, it will only be of temporary value, because they will be dead eventually. If you give something to humanity you are only giving to beings that will die anyway. The life can be great but it's temporary.
So the value of extending life is much more than those dollars he listed etc. The given value would be life it's self. The real gift would literally be finally having something of true value. If we die and go on to total nonexistence, then we may as well have really only lived 5 seconds. Or zero seconds.
I'm completely for extending life indefinitely and permanently as soon as possible for anyone who wants it.
Boredom will be self correcting and people can chose to leave life if it's too torturously boring for them. Though I would suggest they instead just sleep a million years and come back and see if the new changes add any excitement. Or just ask some sincerely happy person how they keep happy at age 2,348. I'm sure they'll be putting on seminars for such valuable knowledge and open it up to questions. They will have something really cool to show you that you are likely overlooking.
I'm gonna sound rude here but, frankly I think people who would find youthful immortality repulsive or boring are dead already. No offense intended but seriously now. They are people hypnotized by the daily acts of maintenance they do to subsist in a life they don't think should even last.
I can't imagine anything more wonderful than indefinite learning, experiencing, exploring and sharing life with beloved friends forever.
And I find it amazing that most people seem happy to be a few decades from death. It's like walking up to a guy with a lit bomb on his back and saying, 'I can lengthen that fuse' or maybe even put it out'' and having him say' 'please don't' I'm scared to mess with it' it's against nature' I am happy with my future and at peace''
Naturally there will be all kinds of ethical issues and organizational changes needed. We can handle it. It's not like those obstacles are going to kill us. Ha! They may be tough but we will find a way. Population explosion is an issue and we'll find a way to morally and ethically deal with it. When we left caves and made cities we had to grow up and make changes best we could. This is the same.
I will definitely agree that it won't be bliss and won't get rid of sorrow and suffering. This is part of life and is even a contrast that makes life appreciable. We are happy when we learn, when we overcome obstacles and when we create progress and give to others.
To Tim Fonseca' You've said so much and I love the directions of thought you are opening us up to. You have a cool mind and are submitting valid issues we do need to face. Still, I must say that in general' most of the opinions you raise on this I find to be excellent reasons to actually prolong life and reach immortality.
As you show so well'we will never outgrow suffering, conflict or outgrow all obstacles; in fact as we expand mind and life, we will find vastly more of all of these. But we will also have more joy and more intelligence and more consciousness and more capacity to bear the suffering and enjoy the happiness.
If we all had flawless, perfect '20 year old bodies' there would still be the same scope and variation of beauty and ugliness, only it would likely be more valid since it would be much more a matter of the inner glow of personality showing in their eyes, manner and chosen appearance.
If there is a life after death, theologically speaking, I still feel the same way. Any God I could imagine would want us to experience life to the fullest extent knowing this would only add to our progression and overall joy. If people feel strongly enough about dying, it is their personal right to let their cells deteriorate and die as currently programmed to do. But I don't think God needs us to hurry and die so we can go be cheer leaders for Him. If God does have great stuff in store for us in the next world, no worries, we will get to it eventually and in good time. If we take too long, I am sure we'll get a memo.
I wouldn't even rule out crossing over to that by way of reaching a few Singularities on top of the shoulders of a few more 'next order' Singularities, so to speak ' God would be impressed and not feel offended or threatened in any way and simply say, 'Great job! Wow, you really did something unusually impressive! Ok, now lets move on to more such things on this new level' I need your help and input in reaching an order of Singularity I have been aspiring to' etc'' (orders of omniscience?) Reminds me of the last chapter of Contact by Carl Sagan and the postulated endeavors reached toward by the high beings mentioned in the story.
At any rate'
Our culture, vision and structure of being will change beyond our imagination and we will advance. I do look forward to this greatly. Maybe in the unfathomably distant future we'll even figure out a way to reach back and offer these benefits to others already passed on just to make it fair.
I do want to hear what a 4,000 year old Carl Sagan or Richard Feynman (talent equivalent) has to say about science and life and the obstacles presented by immortality.
I do want to hear what a 29,000 year old Debussy or Beethoven (talent equivalent) will come up with. Don't worry, he would still have plenty of sorrow and drama of life-events to be inspired by and so there will be great amounts of joy to be extracted from his newest works whether we use ears to experience them or other methods or both.
If life is too easy for him and he's a serious musician I am sure he'll just temporarily block his knowledge of the current state of life and science and voluntarily put himself through a difficult, 70 subjective year, ancient-style, life of struggle 'simulation' so he can have an emotional point of reference for the piece he's currently stumped on.
Mark Steiner
'Strange as the Singularity may seem, there are times when it seems much more reasonable, far less arbitrary, than life as a human. There is a better way! Why rationalize this life? Why try to pretend that it makes sense? Why make it seem bright and happy? There is an alternative!
I'm not saying that there isn't fun in this life. There is. But any amount of sorrow is unacceptable.
The time has come to stop hypnotizing ourselves into believing that pain and unhappiness are desirable! Maybe perfection isn't attainable, even on the other side of Singularity, but that doesn't mean that the faults and flaws are okay. The time has come to stop pretending it doesn't hurt!
Our fellow humans are screaming in pain, our planet will probably be scorched to a cinder or converted into goo, we don't know what the hell is going on, and the Singularity will solve these problems.
I declare reaching the Singularity as fast as possible to be the Interim Meaning of Life, the temporary definition of Good, and the foundation until further notice of my ethical system.'
' From The Low Beyond.
'1996-'2001 by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky. All rights reserved.
The address of this document is http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html.
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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>And even if that "death" comes 85 octillion years from now, it's no different conceptually from dying 85 years from now.<
Indeed, I sometimes boggle at the concept of living 80 years.
>"How long is long enough?" and that depends on the kind of life you're living.<
A child of 13 really can't appreciate the struggle of living so old. If one's life is not particularly happy, when they realize what it is going to mean to live so old, one can dispair of living so old. That's where our instinct to live on and hope for a better future comes in handy.
This is true except that in one situation (current one) we have life expectancies. In another, we live "indefinitely".
>>If one gets used to the idea of living 10,000 years, that may start to seem like too short a time, when compared with eternity.<< (forever)
>>One benefit of gaining an indefinite lifespan is that we won't feel like ticking time-bombs and then we can relax a bit.<<
Yes, but then again,
>The longer one lives, the more likely it is that certain fatal accidents will occur ... (gamma ray pulses from the center of the galaxy, supernovae in the general neighborhood, asteroid strikes, etc.)<
which means we would just have something new to worry about. Of course, this would change our relationships toward each other. Just think, if the vast majority of deaths were to occur because of accidents and intentional slayings instead of "natural" death (opposite of current situation) where would we start putting our attention? The vast resources of humans (who now live longer and are able to learn more over a life-time) would turn toward social reform and scientific mastery (just as we see actually happening already).
There are positives and negatives at every turn, however, and this whole article (what I could stand to read) I find to be a ridiculous over-simplification of life in general.
>There is never the discussion (and it would be very confusing to new students) that these theories, for the most part (physics in particular) are NOT proven and that the whole model is merely one out of MANY interpretations of the data.<
That is not really true. When I was in high school we had as part of lecture the idea that science is continually proven wrong and that the current model is a "theory". But, yes, they have a current model, not "models".
>Unified Field Model...fluid-dynamic ubiquitous matter continuum to replace the current Kinetic-Atomic indivisible-particle-in-the-void foundation<
It certainly "feels" more right. - energy is ultimately indivisible and everywhere - that is the essence of eternity. Only time (change) ruins our experience of eternity. |
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Re: Death is an Outrage
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I believe it is death that keeps us motervated.
A more basic level of this would be that we are motivated to see the progression of our enviroment, it's enhancement, and through it the gain of knowledge. Death puts a timescale to this.
I am 3 years older than you and of the other kind to a number of posters here who would see extended life as a postive thing rather than something neutral or even negative. I am 99% non-religious, which is probably the grounding of this.
You will find that as you age over the next 5 years of your life, that years suddenly disappear as if they are weeks. I never thought this would happen to me but it does. And it WILL happen to you as well. Your perception of time alters almost uncomprehendably from 0 - 30, perhaps reaching it's apex during 15 - 25. It is during these 10 years that the most is expected from you under the smallest time scale. Exams are months away, months that pass as if weeks. Something special may be happening in a couple of weeks and it will appear as if it's only been a few days. Finally, you find you have left school behind and are now expected to fend for yourself and you can still remember the first few days when you started in your last grades. You must take each day as it's own day and do your very best not to look forward months in advance.
As the events get bigger, the time they take to occur gets greater, and the perception of that times gets much smaller due to your brain effectively compressing all the stuff that's leading to the event. A life times worth of work can seem like it's only just started to some and it takes a great deal to reflect on it and see how much it has progressed. There are few people who can die and feel happy that they have completed all that they wish to have done, if even a fraction of it.
Living forever is really extending this beyond our current ability to perceive time, as no one here could even imagine a million year time scale, let alone the billions our galaxy has been alive for. An infinity is something very dangerous to start thinking about which causes many problems.
So... to put it back into an acceptable figure, a thousand years. Yes, I would like to be alive for this. I do not believe I will be happy with my understanding within the next 50 years. From the last 1000 years we have seen humans go from living in wood huts with almost no knowledge of their world to what we are now. Again, the growth often shows an exponential pattern. I think the greatest problem with such an extended life may be the greater pain in leaving behind such development.
What if we could live forever? To assuming knowledge is in some way bound to physical laws would also bind it to Hisenburg's evil doings in quantum mechanics. Dualist interactionalism would like to suggest that our conciousness is in someway linked in these ways.
Much of what we do is to see the bettering of ourselves or enviroment. I would have thought that the eutopia for one person could only be created by that person alone, not a group effort. And that this will only be reached through unlocking the mind of everyday restrictions imposed by the physical world, maybe by perception altering hollucinagens; or a more tamed and productive, controllable version, through a human - computer interface.
But braking away from all the deep, brain chewing questions you can ask about this, all I know right now for sure is that if someone said I could live for another 1000 years as I am now I would accept it very heartfully.
Now I'm off to right my biology essay. :)
[With an aim to a Neuroscience degree] |
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A Biotech Singularity?
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The idea that "natural death" is costly beyond our wildest imagination in terns of the lost information and experience is one of the reasons I posted my post, A Biotech Singularity? The idea here is that, were humans allowed to grow much older, there is no telling how intelligent, or even superintelligent they might become. I am willing to wager that the development of knowledge throughout a lifetime is NOT a linear progression but an exponential progression, especially prior to age 45. Were life extension technologies to allow ages of 180 - 900 years and beyond with good health, I bet a human being's intelligence would grow exponentially. Thus, the Singularity may very well be ushered in through life extension.
In reading Robert Freitas' article, DEATH IS AN OUTRAGE, as inspiring as it was, I note that he fails to mention the word "telomere". Since he doesn't mention this word, it is likely that he may not be aware of exactly what kind of biotechnology will be instrumental in life extension. The vital technology will probably be REGENERATIVE CLONING. It has been discovered by Michael West, Ph.D. that cloned cells reinstate the telomeres in their original length, and even in increased length. Telomeres are the ends of the DNA molecule, actually the ends of each chromosome, that cause you to age because they wear down with successive cell divisions. When the telomere is worn down, the DNA can't make an accurate copy of itself, thus imperfections in cell structure occur and multiply when new cells are created by the DNA program. As these write errors accumulate throughout the trillions of cells in your body you start to fall apart and then die. This is the only reason you die. You're as old as your telomeres are short. Thus addressing telomeres is THE key technology at this time -- and this is what therapeutic cloning is all about.
It is true that such things as sending in nanobots to clean up cells of toxins may also happen, but this is basically science fiction at this time. Read the most important book written to date entitled, THE IMMORTAL CELL, and you will get the fuller picture of life extension and WHY we all must pull together to develop this technology ASAP.
James Jaeger
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