36 replies to this topic

[MichaelAnissimov]

Brian,

You are correct about the present need for a large industrial manufacturing base as a prerequisite for space colonization and upkeep. But you are also correct that molecular nanotechnology will reverse the trend. We must remember what Dr. Drexler realized in the late 70s - with the assembler, almost anything is possible. Combining the ideas of Dr. O'Neill and others with reprogrammable desktop nanofactories will open up colonization of space to creative and determined people. It's not really a question of whether it will make us rich or if it will be fun or not. We must put families in space because forces will emerge over the next few decades that put all earthly life at risk.

6 billion is a lot of people, but you can't write off the trillions, and trillions, and trillions of trillions of happy descendents we will have if we are successful in preventing our own demise. Not trillions and trillions starving and dying and suffering from disease - trillions of happy, healthy, immortal people having exciting experiences on a practically unlimited number of worlds, both real and virtual.

Of course, these trillions and trillions of people only matter to the extent that we value future lives. Even if we assign them only a meager fraction of the value of present lives, they are simply too numerous to write off. This is a philosophical problem of discounting... it is explored at some length by Jason Matheny here:

http://www.accelerat.../extinction.htm

Just because societies have been manipulated in the past by leaders justifying their actions in terms of the common good, doesn't mean that a common good exists, or that mitigating existential risk is extremely important. We cannot only save the human race one at a time. We must take blanket measures to protect against our wholesale extinction. That is why leading immortalists like Bruce Klein, Ray Kurzweil, and Nick Bostrom are all extremely concerned about such risk. Dr. Freitas, for example, divides his time between designing medical nanodevices and proposing measures to combat global ecophagy.

The cure for aging will come relatively soon, in historical terms. We just need to survive first, otherwise we will never be able to experience any of the benefits of the future.

[bgwowk]

We must put families in space because forces will emerge over the next few decades that put all earthly life at risk.

But those forces, self-replicating technologies and advanced AI, are a prerequisite for independent survival of small groups in space. If you send small groups into space before they have such technologies, they survive or die along with the rest of humanity. Once such technologies do exist, then by all means colonize space to perpetuate the species. Or colonize space for other reasons in the meantime, but let's not kid ourselves about the reasons.

With respect to life extension, it makes no sense to advocate space colonization ahead of life extension medicine because life extension follows naturally from the very technologies necessary to make independent survival in space possible (molecular nanotech and AI). Colonization prior to solution of the aging problem means colonization without technologies colonists need to mitigate species existential risks. Of course a large enough colonization could allow a low-tech civilization to persist in space just as we do now. That was the 20th-century vision of space colonization before MNT was conceived. (As you probably know, Drexler started out as a space colonization enthusiast, as did I.) But I think nowadays we expect this whole MNT and life extension business to be sorted out on a shorter timescale (less than a century) than large scale colonization would take.

Existential risks are worthy of concern for the same reason that aging is a concern, which is that they endanger lives living at the time of the risk. Beyond that, I would urge you to reconsider any moral calculus that trades off well-being of people now living against existence vs. non-existence of future beings, no matter how small the weight given to future beings. In an indefinite future in a universe of indefinite size, there may well be a googol of potential future lives to consider, thereby justifying any evil to people now living. That is a dangerous path to go down. The best way to protect a species is to protect the people that constitute the species.

Edited by bgwowk, 12 October 2006 - 06:04 AM.

[bgwowk]

By the way, I checked out the reference you gave, and it makes a serious philosophical error. It doesn't distinguish between the obligation to ensure good conditions for beings that are expected to exist in the future (a valid obligation) vs. obliglations to ensure that presently-non-existent beings will exist in the future (a faux obligation). The difference between the two is the difference between contraception and parental negligence.

I'm on a slow burn over this because assertions that people should be allowed to die to improve existence chances of non-existent future generations is a root justification of deathism. It's a variant of the old dying-to-make-room-for-future-generations argument against extended lifespans. Think about it. Any society that increases its lifespan necessarily does so at the expense of future lives. The shorter lifespans are, the more lives you can fit into any given time and space allotment. An immortal society is the worst offender of all, "killing" untold trillions of future people that could have existed if only the immortals died to make room. Such are the conclusions that result when potential people are given philosophical weight against actual people.

[maestro949]

I wish that more in the healthy life extension community would take the global view, which goes far beyond individual desires.

I can and do take the global view but I see elimination of biological aging as a critical step towards humanity's long-term existance. It's our most significant weakness that robs us of our greatest thinkers, leads to all of our fears, short-term selfish yet self-destructive behavior, contempt for each other and inability to work collectively towards solutions as effecitively as we could without such inhibitors. Granted that many of these issues are likely rooted in our biological instincts, elimination of the "i'm going to die anyway" excuse forces people to rethink the fatalistic trappings they fall into.

Space colonization is indeed important for longterm survival if for no other reason but to leave those that are resistant to progress and are hellbent on destroying others that disagree with them behind. But regardless where we go these horrible potentials go with us and as bgwowk points out, until space colonies can be 100% self sufficient, spending trillions of $ sending people and junk to distant planets and moons doesn't seem like the best use of our engineering resources.

I'm all for the relatively small investments we're making now and in the nearterm (e.g. the mars landers, etc) but any colonization that requires decades-long lifelines to earth would be premature IMO. We have an enormous challenge to untangle the proteome and reengineer ourselves for the future and it's going to take an enormous amount of human capital and organization to accomplish. Surely we can do them in parallel as we are now but I truly believe that significant LE will accelerate our ability to colonize space.

[bgwowk]

I'm still perseverating on this because the suggestion that lives on earth are less important than getting a foothold in space bothers me on so many levels. I think it's important to distinguish protecting a genome from protecting actual people. Protecting human DNA from total annihilation is a worthy objective. But protecting the world from disasters that would annihilate 6 billion people now living on Earth is even more important. A small outpost of survivors, even if they could repopulate civilization, does nothing to mitigate the latter disaster. The term "existential risk" shouldn't even be used to lump these two risks together. They are separate risks, except of course if you prevent the latter class of disaster (death of everyone now living) then you also prevent prevent the former disaster (loss of human species) at no extra charge.

The fact that some immortalists are seriously concerned with mitigating risks to 6 billion people due to things like ecophagy or AGI in itself provides no endorsement of the view that preserving the genome constitutes "existential risk" mitigation. They may feel as I do, that protection of living people is what matters, and that packaging up a small colony able to perpetuate the species does nothing to solve what we consider "existential risk" to mean.

In case this point is still getting missed, aging *is* an existential risk. In fact it is the only existential risk that without intervention will kill everyone in short order with complete certainty.

Edited by bgwowk, 13 October 2006 - 05:17 AM.

[jaydfox]

This relates to Mike Lorrey's comment from the first page.

mikelorrey:

As those of you already in Second Life can attest, there is no need to travel around the real world for work when you can travel around the world of Second Life. I just interviewed the president of one of the largest banks in SL, and he says that Fortune 500 companies are paying rather large sums to have virtual corporate centers developed in SL, which will be used in place of teleconferences and video conferencing internationally, as well as allowing a virtual office for those telecommuting.

Similarly, people are shopping "in-world", both for virtual items as well as for real world items, like a 3-D eBay.

As this becomes reality (and some of the guys at WTA are betting it will soon), it will reduce the need for vehicular commuting. The city is obsolete.

I saw this on Slashdot today:
http://it.slashdot.o...6/10/12/1634245

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IT: Sun Holds News Conference In Second Life
Posted by kdawson on Thursday October 12, @04:08PM
from the avatars-of-the-press dept.
mikesd81 writes,

"Internet News is reporting that Sun held an in-world news conference in the online game Second Life. From the article: 'Tuesday, Sun became the first Fortune 500 company to hold an "in-world" press conference to show off its new pavilion in Second Life, the popular 3D online world. Sun said it plans to invest in the Sun Pavilion as a place for developers to try out code, share ideas, and receive training.' Sun hopes to reach millions of Java developers, as opposed to the 22,000 that show up at its JavaOne conference each year."

Good luck with that goal of "millions" — the total population of SL is under 800,000. And, who knew that Sun has a Chief Gaming Officer? Good quote from him in the article. He said Second Life isn't a game, "It's an amazing platform for global communications."

[xanadu]

Lazarus, I agree 100% that population growth is the world's #1 problem right now. All the other problems mentioned are caused by or made worse by population growth. Not only that but many parts of the world are presently unable to sustain the humans living on them. There needs to be a population reduction if anything. In the short run at least. After these pie in the sky technologies come along and prove themselves, then we might be able to sustain our present populations but not add to them.

As for making room for future lives, how do you know you won't come back anyway? So the future life you are preventing may be your own future life.

Ditto to what everyone said about recycling and reducing waste. That is over half the battle right there.