From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed May 22 2002 - 01:23:30 MDT
At 11:57 PM 5/21/02 -0700, Hal wrote:
>Bending the paper in this way is an empty mathematical transformation that
>is unobservable and has no real effect. It does not turn a limited life
>into immortality. Living with a finite supply of resources is limited
>in much the same way. The immortality you achieve is an illusion.
This anxiety about literal immortality seems to me entirely absurd, except
as a thought experiment of some highly remote kind. The trouble is, the
sorts of expectations we tend to share on this list already seem to beggar
credulity and push limits, so it's hard to tell the difference between
fears of eternal recurrence cycling and living safe from decay, malice and
accident for the next million years, the next 5 billion years, and then
perhaps the next 10^100 years. Once we're homing in the far marches of the
latter realm, we can fruitfully start to dedicate our enhanced minds to the
horrors of being stuck in a loop.
Damien Broderick
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