From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 13:31:27 MDT
On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Damien Broderick wrote:
> [snip] I can imagine a world order in which immortal
> people who insist on their `right' to have as many children as they wish
> are encouraged by hisses and boycotts to emigrate to Fertilia, formerly the
> Sahara, where they might exercise their whims for as long as it takes--but
> they're not welcome back among civilized people unless they agree to obey
> the social compact I mentioned.
Damien -- I haven't been following this thread (I'm not even sure
why it has this title) and I may be taking your point in an entirely
orthogonal direction...
But -- the Sahara is a very energy rich region -- its only lacking in
water which is in relatively close proximity (i.e. salt water). So
long as you have the energy available to tailor the salt concentrations
within cells to levels that most existing biological molecules find
tolerable -- or have the technologies to rapidly evolve new biological
molecules to tolerate altered salt concentrations (both of which seem
on our technology horizon) then this scenario isn't the "banishment"
that one might expect. In fact it might be an enabling path that
would lead to a population explosion and their subsequent distribution
through the solar system and eventually the galaxy.
It doesn't solve the problem that there may indeed be limited resources
in the universe and/or the lifetime of the universe may be limited.
It does however raise the head of the "Law of unintended consequences".
(Esp. those that extropians might find productive.)
All that glitters is not gold.
Some that is dull might be worth as much.
Robert
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