From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Wed May 03 2000 - 07:28:15 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
> > An immortal cannot hope to survive unchanged, only to maintain a limited
> > continuity over the short run. Personal death differs from this
> > inevitability only in its relative abruptness.
>
>... we see here on Earth a diverse ecology which includes organisms
>that cover a wide spectrum of rates of adaption. There are species
>which are almost unchanged from hundreds of millions of years ago,
>and others which are less than a million years old. ...
>In that case we have a choice, not between adapt or perish, but between
>adapt or stagnate. It may turn out that there is an ecological niche
>for organisms who are wedded to their past, who refuse to change.
OK. But keep in mind that if we look at *all* of the species that
existed say 400 million years ago, we would likely find very few of
them are still around. So the chances of making it to such a cozy
niche may be rather small.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:28:23 MST