From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sat Feb 14 2004 - 13:15:18 MST
The concept of "natural law" in itself is a strange one.
"Laws" in society are legislated by humans... but nature doesn't have a body
of legislators associated with it... I think the "law" metaphor is a bit
whacky
What we see in the universe are patterns. Patterns that seem universal to
us -- based on our experience and extrapolation therefrom -- we sometimes
call "natural laws." But our experience is limited -- VERY limited -- and
we should be very aware that the best patterns we perceive now may appear
limited-in-scope and highly-approximate to beings with a more diverse
experience base
I apply this to energy conservation and the speed of light limit and the
Beckenstein bound, just as surely as to "we must get old and die" and "we
can't go to the moon." Compared to the latter, the former are more
sophisticated extrapolations from somewhat larger experience sets -- but not
qualitatively different...
-- Ben
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of Tomaz
> Kristan
> Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2004 12:19 PM
> To: sl4@sl4.org
> Subject: Re: Encouraging a Positive Transcension
>
>
> On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:52:22 -0800 (PST), Tommy McCabe
> wrote:
>
>
> > That I thought of in five minutes
> > at my desk- imagine what a transhuman could do!
>
> The question, whether or not we can smash through some
> barriers, is of course important.
>
> Can we ignore the Energy conservation law? Or the speed
> limit c? Or Beckenstien bound? I am quite sceptic, we
> can.
>
> Of course it is a chance, that those limitations will
> be put behind us, but we can't count on that.
>
> There was never a natural law "you can't fly", "you
> can't go to the Moon", "you must grow old and die" ...
> and so on. That is why we have overcame them - or we
> can do it in the future.
>
> But some constrains (most probably) do exist and they
> are the boundaries and the very fabric of our to be
> Paradise. Or Hell, depends how clumsy and silly we are.
>
>
>
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