From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 21:42:14 MDT
Tom writes
> Your questions made me grin, Lee--
Good.
> I don't think Extropian thinking dictates a stance on
> either question.
Oh, I CERTAINLY hope not! ;-) I hate being dictated to.
> But FWIW, my brief replies follow (excerpts not indicated).
>
>> I assume that you're describing your post-uploading experiences...
>> You're not, ugh, thinking of [extreme camping] in the flesh, are you?
>> Gross! What a waste of resources.
>
> A waste? One might say the same now about such things as powerful SUVs and
> expert landscaping. I prefer to describe those things, however, as choices
> allowed by relative wealth. I think much the same will apply, at least in a
> pre-singularity world, of the choice between meat and bits.
Yes, I was addressing a post-singularity world, or at least one
that won't happen for a *long* time (i.e. decades). Today I
can't see how powerful SUVs or expert landscaping could be
considered wasteful (the atoms are just sitting there, uselessly,
unless someone gets some satisfaction from them). Only someone
who imagines that magically the resources could be redistributed
would ordinarily use such language.
>> After you can edit your inborn affinities, which ones are
>> you going to keep, and why?
>
> I cannot answer that in the abstract very well, but I suspect that my own,
> very strong affinity for nature constitutes a sufficiently core aspect of my
> personality that I will not want to change it very immediately or rapidly.
> As my close friends can testify, they would think some part of me had died if
> overnight I stopped enjoying cross-country running, surfing, hiking,
> gardening, and so forth.
Yes, that's the great danger. Making too many changes would cause one
to turn into someone else. But quite a number of extropians and cryonicists
seem not to care. If one of them goes and evolves into some vast creature
that resembles him or her no more than it resembles me, then they've died.
(They might as well become me right away, yes! yes!) Controlling change,
for the sake of one's identity, is a tough issue.
Lee
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