Re: Living Forever

From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 10:37:03 MDT


In a message dated 5/1/2001 1:19:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
lcorbin@ricochet.net writes:

<< t may or may not be invariant, but that has little to do
 with it "deserving" to be preserved. Does an obscure type
 of ant in the Amazon jungle "deserve" to have its pattern
 recorded for all time? Most people today would say yes.
 Well, I'd say that the pattern of Samantha Atkins is about
 10^7 times as important to preserve. Where the hell does
 this concept of "deserve" come from anyway? It almost
 sounds as though one's "worthiness" were being evaluated
 by the Almighty, or by some similarly transcended creature
 (perhaps the AI you're working on). >>

Indeed Lee! Tipler may end up being wrong on the particulars, but Hans
Moravec isn't, and basically, I am not attracted to this list for the 'ego
trip' of the ultimate narcissism, of being me; but rather, I am looking for a
rational way of engendering hope. Why should grief, and eternal death be ok,
if the human species, it's descendants or some other mind, somewhere,
alleviate this? Tipler may be wrong, but Dyson hold up fairly well, Dyson may
be wrong, J. Richard Gott lll of Princeton may be right, and Linde and
Smolin, or Tegmark, etc., ad nauseum.

I would also like to point out E. Michael Perry's book Forever, For All,
which focuses at some length with Dyson and Tipler's viewpoints. There is
little narcissism in the book, but a lot of altruism.

Mitch



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