From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Mon May 28 2001 - 22:32:12 MDT
Natasha wrote
>what does progress mean to you? The most necessary and immediate
>aspects of your being - your life? When we discuss our culture
>and progress, it seems that we need to look outside the
>technological box, as hard as this may seem to do inasmuch as
>we are a tool-based species.
Progress for me means knowing more about the universe, and
to have a good time acquiring that knowledge. In a phrase:
to delight in understanding.
If the Singularity turns out poorly, well, there's not really
much to tell. I will have less delight in understanding than
I do now, if I'm lucky enough to survive at all.
But if it turns out well, then I expect continued growth in
understanding, and growth in delight along the lines of David
Pearce's Hedonistic Imperative. (For those who don't know about
that, please don't be put off by the title, but rather go to
http://www.hedweb.com and read about the most important moral
revolution since cryonics).
But you have also asked about change, and how one can adapt to
it, but I cannot say. I can only add that if people want to
survive, then simultaneously they must change and not change.
Since most folks have a very hard time understanding that they
can be in two places at the same time, just as easily as they
can be at the same place at two different times, then what I
will say next may not be so easy to understand.
First, anyone who again **changes** as much as he or she has
already changed since they were one-fourth inch long, will be dead.
You will be as dead as that fetus is dead. So if you evolve into
a vast incredibly advanced creature that in no way resembles humans,
and that's all you do, then you die.
The solution: run multiple copies of yourself in the background
from each stage of your development. Anticipate being all those
who are not too advanced. Leave it to the slightly more advanced
versions of yourself to try to identify with those that are
extremely advanced, because you won't be able to.
But even so, your question makes sense for, say, the 2005 version
of Lee Corbin. How will he become as great as he can be (yet
still be the same person) and adapt? You're the expert. You
tell us. :-)
Thanks,
Lee
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