LONGECITY

I have found a remarkable duality between two outstanding recent books: Zeroglyph by Vance Pravat and The Transfer by Vera Tinyc.

On one hand, they are both serious hard-sci-fi books discussing the same topic: how to promote humanity up the next technological step while avoiding the Frankenstein-type AI disaster. On the other hand, the solutions they suggest are completely different.

I certainly have my preference, but believe that any person interested in the problem of immortality should read both books and make their own conclusions. I look forward to reading and discussing their opinions on this forum.

I have learned that the book by V. Tinyc is on Amazon's free promotion until may 29.

I have just finished reading one more outstanding book on this topic, “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro, and do not know what shocked me more – the tragic story itself or the shallowness of its (numerous) reviews on Amazon and GoodReads. By “tragic” I mean the fate of the robot herself. Her intellect, including the richness of emotions, is higher than those of people around her, including her owners. Still, they treat her as a slave, and nobody around (including most reviewers) notice that and/or show any compassion or even sympathy.

For me personally, this book vividly  shows one more danger of purely-artificial intelligence, complementary to that emphasized by Vance Pravat, and confirms my belief that the safest path to transhumanity is the human mind’s transfer – for example as described by Vera Tinyc. (For the links, see the basic post.)

I would be interested to learn whether my feelings are shared by others.