42 replies to this topic

[DJS]

I think there's a real possibility that life-extention could mess up the world even more, or fix it, or not affect it. Probably one of those.

What other options are there? [lol]

And I'll tell you something, you guys really need to organize better. Maybe start up a website or something. As it is right now we only get one of you maybe once or twice a year.

I mean, look at us. We've got a website, a rather large online community, research efforts underway, prize funds started. What have you got other than sour grapes?

Where's your message? Where's your organization? How are You going to stop Us?

Some revolutionary you are, Che.

[DJS]

Socialism is an old played out paradigm. Politics is irrelevant. Religion is irrelevant. Armchair philosophizing is (sadly) irrelevant.

Technological progress continues unabated. Those who recognize this fact, and who Will to Power, will position themselves accordingly.

I don't like transhumanists at all. I don't think they know anything about happiness.

I know a great deal about happiness, enough to know that it is not a worthy goal.

I don't think Utopia is possible or desireable or defineable.

On this point we agree.

Kevin

you don't see anyone living, you're hanging out with the wrong crowd.. good thing you made it here..

It won't work, Kevin. Come on, you should know this by now. Asking a Deathist to become an Immortalist is the same as trying to get an Immortalist to become a Deathist -- it's not gonna happen.

This has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with morality. This guy has created a whole system of Being that revolves around a finite existence and nothing you can say or do will change this.

[DJS]

Nietzsche and his dark, uninspired rubbish can sit gathering dust on long neglected bookshelves.

To each his own. But tell me Prometheus, what floats your boat? Or is all of this philosophy mumbojumbo just too dark and uninspired for you?

(because we all know the bible is so much more inspired [sfty] )

[emerson]

or advance AI (why? when there's a very extreme lack of REAL intelligence

That's exactly the point of it for me. Intelligence as we understand it is based almost totally on one particularly brainy species of great ape. Our species has shown a remarkable ability to reason, and use that reasoning as a method for interacting with the world. But, for how great we've done, we are just a single species. Who can really say at this point how much of what we think of as intelligence is just rationalisations thrown over instinctive behaviour. Strong AI, if we're working under the assumption that it's possible, offers up the ability to contrast our own reasoning and behaviour with something that is able to reason and form abstract thought, but which is totally removed from our own genetics. It'd be an amazing opportunity to really examine the nature of consciousness itself.

Edited by emerson, 22 June 2006 - 09:53 AM.

[Kalepha]

I am sure that DUT doesn't want to die involuntarily. Problem is, currently, he has already volunteered submission, in theatrical self-affirmation, to the ethereal backdrop of biological senescence. DUT just needs more love potion and, of course, would view it as a nice bonus if more people also could have more love potion. Love would take less work and wouldn't so much need to be religiously or politically motivated.

Although I wish I had more, here's a potent drop of love potion.

Likely, DUT, you only perceive two general types of living modes: bottom-up and top-down living. Bottom-up living is probably seen to be foolish. It basically means deciding on incoherent short-term goals with the implicit hope that they eventually represent a coherent plan. If this universe is deterministic you would at least want your decisions overall to represent coherence. Thus, you prefer top-down living.

Your default design is considered, and top-order goals are formulated on this basis, with the expectation that they're unlikely to change very much over the course of attaining them. No alternate mode is sensibly imaginable, you reason, because changing your function types is either suicide anyway or just excessively vain. Instead of thinking in those terms, however, you could think in terms of being more experimental. You wouldn't have anything to lose, except your lethargic apathy.

A third type of possible living mode is middle-down/middle-up. It is like top-down living, except that top-order goal states represent logical functionality changes, in you, others, and in the environment, with the further expectation that new function types include the design and implementation of yet more exotic function types. Thus, in a sense, it is also like dummy bottom-up living in that you permit your top-order goals, the tokens of your peak wisdom, to represent incoherent short-term goals with the implicit, though not blindly optimistic, hope that they eventually represent a coherent plan.

There is nothing about you not subject to change. Any change just need not be functional death. And if it comes anyway, in your nonchalance, you would've lost nothing.

Welcome, amorous technocrat.

[DogUnderTree]

---I'm not a romantic. I'm not a revolutionary.

---I'm not a "deathist" because there's no such thing. That's about as stupid as calling someone a Lifeist. I'm not against life extention.

---"As far as I'm concerned choosing immortality is simple, I ask myself "Do I have enough time to do what I want to do in the 60-80 years I've got?" Answer... "No," therefore I chose transhumanism as the means to giving me more life. Simple really."---
You'd be surprised what a person can do, how much life can be packed into, 60 years if they make an effort to live without dead time. If you weren't majoring in business management you would learn a lot more about life.

---"And I'll tell you something, you guys really need to organize better."--- There's no proving one way or the other what effect radical life-extention technologies would have on the world, and some very knowledgeable people think it's dangerous. Once some real progress is made regarding these technologies the debate will heat up.

---"This guy has created a whole system of Being that revolves around a finite existence" --- Everyone's existence is finite, sooner or later, you're going to die, get over it, use it.

---"Instead of thinking in those terms, however, you could think in terms of being more experimental. You wouldn't have anything to lose, except your lethargic apathy."--- Bright stuff (not sarcasm). I'm not an ideologue, I'm not Che, and this is what I mean when I said socialism is at least what needs to happen. That is, beyond getting the world to the point where people can eat, have shelter, and get access to a college education, I am rather given to experimentation, that's exactly right. If my understanding of what you have written is correct - I'm middle-down (people need to get taken care of) and from there, I'm middle-up, with experimentation as the goal, and no utopian goal in sight.

---"Where's your message? Where's your organization? How are You going to stop Us?"--- I affiliate myself with the Situationist International and it's current manifestations.

[Kalepha]

It is unclear what you aim to accomplish, then, besides essentially digging a few holes in the ground and filling them back in with each other's dirt.

Although you may have a logical utility function that apparently isn't internally self-defeating, it may not be all that effective. But you resist being any more effective because you somehow feel duty-bound to the preservation of arbitrarily demarcated simple patterns.

If you want to stop us it looks like you're going to need to be uncomfortably effective. The first relatively minor thing you'll need to do is forbear associating everyone here with particular ideologies.

[DJS]

I think I'm starting to get a better feel for what DUT is all about.

Everyone's existence is finite, sooner or later, you're going to die, get over it, use it.

I believe you are making unjustified definitive statements. My lifespan may very well be finite, but there is no way for me to know this, nor is there any reason, with this lack of knowledge, for me not to desire an indefinite extension of life span. One can embrace his present life while still "raging against the dying of the light."

I agree with you that life is about the journey and not the destination, but can not one extend the journey or set hir sights on a new destination?

However, there is no doubt that a balance must be reached. One of the things that has started to disgust me about the futurist movement IS an over focus on the future. Too many individuals have I watched live their lives for the future without realizing that, in life, there are no guarantees. To live only for the future is to will against life by prostrating oneself before an ideal.

At the same time, to live only for the present moment and willfully embrace ignorance is just as bad, imo (should I really take the time to get into the reasons?)
--------------------------------------------------

DUT, life is constant change - there is no permanence. Every moment we risk ourselves. Every moment there is the chance (or inevitability?) that one instantiation of ME will be replaced by a newer version. Is this a form of death? Where has the Don of 1983 gone?

[DJS]

DUT

I affiliate myself with the Situationist International and it's current manifestations.

Never heard of it...guess I've got problems... [lol]

[Kalepha]

. . . I'm middle-up, with experimentation as the goal, and no utopian goal in sight.

At the same time, to live only for the present moment and willfully embrace ignorance is just as bad, imo (should I really take the time to get into the reasons?)

You help me recall another point, Don. One can be just as ignorant in despair as in hope. Dog incorrectly assumes how some of us perceive time. Human subjective time is not the Holy Grail of the fourth dimension. On the contrary that we couldn't make good use of 60-80 years, some of us plan to turn 60-80 years, or fewer, into practical infinity, or at least not ignore that possible direction. More is not always better; we already know that, so we're the beneficiaries of no new insight.

Optimization is what Dog wants to apply in his own loopy cause. But it's lost with nonpositive bootstrappings. Despite that, I don't wish that such behavior be prevented. After all, optimality, if relevantly optimal, isn't negatively affected by suboptimality. Eventually, Dog may just run out of people to save. Hopefully he can save himself too – but perhaps I should despair on this last point!

[biggee]

DogUnderTree posted

I'm not a Marxist. I'm not a Socialist.

And you are not a capitalist... so what then are you?

I'm don't think Utopia is possible or desireable or defineable.

Utopia (which would have to include having achieved youth perpetrating immortality instead of death), is impossible in the strictest sense in that once acheived there would be nothing greater to be strived for and only degradation could enter in any "death based" utopia. Because evolution of life and consciousness can never really end, utopia can never really be attained. Only the mind that "believes" in the finite or "alternate realities" masquerading as truth desires to accept ones own extinguishment and its spiteful disregard for all potentiality here and now. However if one sees utopia as a never ending intention/effort to extend life and consciousness based on no level of "acceptable dishonesty" from the basic constructs of where life and technology are at any given time are truly inspired to keep on GROWING. To always keep on moving forward then we have a model that can never be extinguished because it is built from the "bottom up" (foundation of all reality, physical universe, the individual, honesty, life focus, etc...) instead of the current orientation/paradigm, "top down" , (higher reality, existentialism, altruism, god, death focus, etc... ). Anything that bastardizes reality bastardizes life.

  I wouldn't call myself a philosopher. I don't think anyone I've mentioned had any desire to become famous or be an icon so much as inspire everyone else to be what they could be and change the world, and moreover there's nothing to suggest they would make life extention any kind of a priority whatsoever.

That is such a oxymoron; "inspire everyone else to be what they could be and change the world"/" there's nothing to suggest they would make life extention any kind of a priority whatsoever." It is the same old cope out really. Then they would aspire to do everyone a huge disfavor and most certainly be the "Dr Death" to the masses. So you are suggesting then that these people you mentioned were not desiring of perhaps, the greatest potentials of humanity. I think you are very confused with all the rubbish that permeates and further aspires to keep humanity under wraps in this life with destructive altruism and its contentions most have accepted that the individual should lie down for the betterment of life by sacraficing it. Terrorist mentality on any level.

I don't believe every death is "tragic" if you mean they're all equally terrible.

It is the most extreme of tragities because we can absolutely, given time make death unnecassary and raelly get down to the business of actualising ever more potential. And if that doesn't inspire you then you see no need for a paradigm shift. No matter how much you try to justify mortality, it will never result in anything more than altruism that attempts to ruin and bury anything contrary to its desired perceived supremacy, doing the most destructive disfavor for all individuals that compose humanity.

The quality of your life determines the quality of your death.

So then why not strive for the highest potentials in life instead of trying to get everyone believing it is of no value?

I agree that it's better to live than to die, I just don't see anyone living.

So how does your belief system that strives to denounce (destroy as in death) the great visionaries in pursuit of youth perpetrating immortality attain a better way of quality living, when conquering death isn't included?
as Nate Barna wrote

you resist being any more effective because you somehow feel duty-bound to the preservation of arbitrarily demarcated simple patterns.

[Infernity]

To the original poster, people who commit a suicide, know they would anyway die someday.

Suicidal people will no longer kill themselves as easy, they an eternity to lose.

And let us walk through one bridge to get to another one, accidents, diseases, wars etcetera. Aging must first be taken care of, since this is the ultimate death. Read the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant.

-Infernity