13 replies to this topic

[Bruce Klein]

I shall reply to Robert and the Extropy list soon, wanted to see if others had suggestions on how best to counter this below. - BJK

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To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: How do you calm down the hot-heads?


On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, Alex Future Bokov asked about how to
spread the memes without blowing "belief" fuses...

> It's not particularly good memetics to use the L-word (life extension) in
> front of faculty members.

Well, citing an article in Science will have a pretty good impact
on any serious faculty member [1]. As will pointing out the number
of companies now working on aging [2]. And a serious attack
on the conditions associated with aging (such as Aubrey has
developed [3]) will tend to silence the objections of those
more educated in medicine. Its not a question of "if" but "when".

> Let alone make fun of Christianity... especially in
> Texas of all places. They don't believe me.

One way to spin this is to point out that we aren't talking about
"immortality" (that is what tends to blow the "belief" fuses I
think). Much better to point out that we are talking about extending
healthful life (gerotologists call this making the longevity
curve "rectangular"). As Damien pointed out in the Spike and Robert
Freitas pointed out at a recent Alcor conference [4] (and was obvious
to me back at Extro3 so many years ago...) you cannot beat the hazard
function (at least not as humans are currently instantiated). Probably
the best you can do is something like 2000-7000 years unless you
really push on the hazard function by reengineering the human body
with nanotechnology and even then it is still very very difficult
to trump the hazard function.

(So by preserving the meme that one "will" die, you don't have
to break the entire christianity/death/salvation meme-set.
One simply replaces the concept of a death that may be prolonged
and painful with the image of a much longer life -- where one gets
to enjoy ones great-great-great grandchildren and a probable end
which might be painful but will probably be quick, e.g. car accident
or something similar).

Now the thousands of years concept may be a stretch. I once did a
calculation on the best estimates I could find of loss of brain
neurons and the numbers I got were much less (hundreds of years if I recall).
So unless we get stem cell replacement of neurons on a regular basis all
bets may be off much sooner (so long as one doesn't mention "uploading").

> Anybody have suggestions on how I could communicate the need for nuance,
> diplomacy, and picking one's battles to these well-meaning but slightly naive
> youngsters? Some example, some object lesson that would resonate with people
> who overestimate the degree to which the 'normal' world gets the big picture?

A very, very long time ago, I took a course as part of my "enlightenment"
process -- one of the things that stuck in my mind was the statement:
"Never destroy someone's belief system unless you are committed to replacing it".
(Or something to that effect.) The emphasis is on your personal commitment
to *replacing* the belief system -- a very very hard thing to do -- one
must essentially reprogram a human mind which probably has years of experience.

It is a very powerful concept. People construct their lives around their
beliefs. Why? Because their beliefs have allowed them to survive until the
current day. Destroy someones beliefs and you might as well have cast them
adrift in a Class 5 hurricane [5]. So it is relatively important to present
ideas in a way that is compatible with pre-existing belief systems. As new
ideas become more commonplace (consider for example the impact the Matrix
series will have on society) then the older ideas will be discarded
(witness gay bishops being elected by the Anglican church for example).

[I'm not stating that the Matrix led to the election of a gay bishop --
they are separate vectors -- I'm simply commenting on how beliefs can
and will change over time -- but it is very difficult to "force" the
process.]

Robert

1. Martin, G. M., LaMarco, K, Strauss, E., Kelnder, K. L.
"Research on Aging: The End of the Beginnning"
Science 299(5611):1339-1341 (29 February 2003).
http://www.sciencema...y/299/5611/1339
2. http://www.aeiveos.c...gCompanies.html
3. http://www.gen.cam.a...ens/IBGcase.htm
4. http://www.rfreitas....IsAnOutrage.htm
5. http://www.nhc.noaa....aboutsshs.shtml

[Utnapishtim]

I actually agree with this and I think it is the most pragmatic angle to take on the whole subject. An excellent post in my view.

[Bruce Klein]

/me scratches his head... ok

[Bruce Klein]

Robert Said:

>So by preserving the meme that one "will" die, you don't have
>to break the entire christianity/death/salvation meme-set.

Robert, just curious, but by preserve the 'death' meme, are you suggesting an afterlife awaits us after death? Or, is death simply oblivion? Or, am I missing some other option you have in mind?

Thanks for clarifying this for me. I hope I'm not asking a question that's been asked a hundred times before.

Bruce J. Klein
http://www.imminst.org

[MichaelAnissimov]

All this goose-stepping about changing the belief systems of others doesn't give the listeners enough credit. I've had my beliefs about religion, human uniqueness, and a linear future trashed, and was able to rebuild things just fine. The reason why we are called the "Immortality Institute" is to create strategies for living billions and quadrillions of years, if not forever, not simply thousands of years. We're being bold, and it's okay if we blow a few "belief fuses" here and there - the solidarity we reap by building our organization on a more radical foundation outweighs the cost.

The hazard function is clearly surmountable - all you need is to create an environment where accidents are never large enough to cause death. This obviously involves moving to a Shock Level 3 or Shock Level 4 mentality, and therefore accepting uploading. Nanotechnologically-sustained meat puppets walking around in the year 2500 or 3000 is science fiction, not a probable reality. Everyone will eventually adopt more distributed and capable instantiations.

Please don't cross-paste this reply to the Extropians list - I've sworn myself away from that political battlefield for the foreseeable future. Utn, our disagreement on this subject is pretty classical, isn't it?

[Sophianic]

Pragmatism and fatalism can make such strange bedfellows. The fatalism that runs through the initial post is based on projections that reflect a limited present day understanding. Scientifically, there is no principle that indicates that anyone must die; practically, the so-called hazard function may only appear daunting by present day standards because of our limited understanding of what we are capable of doing now. I myself have no expectation that I will ever die, and I will retain the right to choose whether I keep my conscious mind on a biological substrate (that can forever be improved and enhanced) or move it onto a biosynthetic one if or when that becomes available as a viable option. I would pay heed to the words of Arthur C. Clarke: "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." I still view "uploading" as a kind of death, but I would respect someone's decision to go that route (at the risk of becoming defined, diminished and ultimately destroyed by it) just so long as no one imposes that decision on me. As for spreading the relevant memes, I will have much to say about that in due course ...

[DJS]

Utna,

I see your point, and up until very recently I had the exact same view. Now though, my mind is changing (yeah I know, what else is new [lol] ). Hear me out on this one.

I think advancing a main stream view of (Pro Life Extension) is much easier, and productive, than confronting the Christian establishment with an opposing Immortalist world view head on. We should dedicate most of our resources to advancing the life extension meme. I'll grant you that. When we have established the precedent of life extension, then the paradigm shift will have begun, and then we can proceed to waging complete memetic war with a fully developed Immortalist philosophy.

However, just because I believe we should aggressively advance the longevity meme does not mean that I think we should shy away from calling ourselves Immortalists. I have three reasons for saying this.

First, right now the Immortalist movement is unnoticed. It will continue to remain unnoticed by the main stream (no matter how outrageous we are) until some level of real, measurable life extension is achieved. At this point we are just not seen as a credible threat. The added shock value of using the phrase "Immortality" is a good thing because it attracts more attention, good and bad. Think about it. If a Christian is exposed to our memetics, they will probably think to themselves, "Wow, what a nut job." And then proceed to completely forget about us. If a potential Immortalist is exposed to our memetics we have just gained another head. At this point, the benefits of being audacious out weigh the potential blow back. It is just and noble to establish contact with our fellow Immortalists and bring them into the fold. And they are out there...thousands of them, just waiting to be reached. Right now we need to stop worrying about being "offensive" to the Christian majority (because it is not noticing, or doesn't care yet anyway) and start worrying about building our foundation.

More exposure for Imminst, THE IMMORTALITY INSTITUTE, is a good thing. I (we?) want Imminst to be THE official site for people of our world view. This site is where Immortalists can go to be with fellow Immortalists. It's a place where we can be ourselves.

Second point: I think that hiding one's ideology is impossible and more over, futile. Avoiding association with "Jewry" in Nazi German did not change the fact that if you were a Jew you were a Jew. Like wise, when the s**t hits the fan and life span starts to increase dramatically, the Christian majority is going to know what's up. I don't care if you call yourself a gerontologist, a life extensionist, an extropian or an Immortalist. They are going to take the position that we are all one in the same and they will label us as accordingly.

Third, at some future point when the paradigm shift begins, our movement - the all inclusive Immortalist movement - needs to be multi faceted. There are political benefits to having multiple points of attack and defense. There are major political draw backs to being monolithic.

There will be the subtle angle of "life extension". This angle will be seen as reasonable by most people. The “life extensionists” will push forward more “mainstream” efforts that deal with modest gains in life span and quality of life.

Then there will be the hard core angle of "Immortalism". This angle will not seem reasonable to most people, but will have a solid core of loyal, dedicated followers. It must be put out there because it will represent the heart of the movement. It will formulate the philosophy driving the revolution forward.

Here's the kicker. Life extension can distance itself politically from Immortalism by making evasive public statements (aka, PR campaigns). This may prove necessary during the heat of what I foresee as cataclysmic political conflicts. In reality, however, they will still be one in the same, both of them working toward the same goal. This is taking a page out of the GOP play book (ie: the Christian Right). The name of the game is seven degrees of separation.

Whoever was speaking with Robert Bradbury was, in a sense, right. Before a world view is toppled there must be an alternative ready to take its place. The way I see it, the life extension meme is the more moderate position within our movement that will gradually chip away at the old Judeo-Christian worldview piece by piece, bit by bit. Immortalism is the alternative world view, ready and waiting in the wings, that people will turn to when their old world view experiences “critical system failure”.

Sincerely
Kissinger

[Bruce Klein]

========
From Robert

In *my* mind the only real "salvation" would appear to be uploading
and then some post-singularity clever tweeking of the physics of the
universe to avoid those paths that currently do not look good.
But I am *not* suggesting that in typical conversations that one get
into these concepts or the concepts of an "afterlife". If it facilitates
the evolutionary process, let people believe in an "afterlife", let people
believe in "death", and just move people up to the lifespan-extension bar.
(We are trying to be extropians here -- more people believing in some of
the core ideas is probably better than more people rejecting all of the
ideas.)


I am simply suggesting that one not *break* existing memesets by suggesting
that "immortality" is possible to people who are unlikely to believe it --
because in its technical sense "immortality" is very very difficult to
achieve and probably cannot be "proven" using our current understanding
of physics and the hazard function of the universe, galaxies, solar systems,
etc.


Far better to leave people "part of the way there", e.g. a healthy life
for a few hundred years or a few thousand years (depending on how much
their minds may stretch). Because who knows what we may know at the
end of such periods? People are much more comfortable extending trends
that their parents and grandparents saw (e.g. "gradual lifespan extension
is accelerating") rather than replacing them with a very different meme
(e.g. "we can become immortal").


It makes it much easier to attack someone like Leon Kass, by asking
"How much healthy life is 'enough'?" Should one be forced to die at
80, 90, 120, 150...? Why not 30 (an average age of death in pre-Roman
times)? The news today noted work on a controversial therapy for Parkinson's
using gene therapy. Should we *not* attempt that? The bioethicists that
oppose lifespan extension are on a very slippery slope. But what would
be useful is to get more people on board with the idea that they can attend
the birthday parties of their great-great-great grandchildren.


> Thanks for clarifying this for me. I hope I'm not asking a question that's
> been asked a hundred times before.


I do not believe it as been discussed in detail before, certainly not
a hundred times.


Robert

[Bruce Klein]

Robert J. Bradbury said:


>But I am *not* suggesting that in typical conversations that one get
>into these concepts or the concepts of an "afterlife". If it facilitates
>the evolutionary process, let people believe in an "afterlife", let people
>believe in "death", and just move people up to the lifespan-extension bar.


Thanks Robert,


I agree with your assessment on the outset. Your experience is extensive and your judgement sound. Extropians seek to create a better world and your pragmatic advice is likely the best approach at this point in time. With a broad audience, starting from a common thread and then working outward by measured steps is logical.


On the other hand, how would you approach this topic when speaking to a group of people already in agreement that life extension is good, yet they are still not totally sure as to why living forever may be important?


As founder of the Immortality Institute, which hopes to be at the leading edge on this type of issue, I appreciate your help.


Bruce Klein
http://www.imminst.org

[MichaelAnissimov]

Even if immortality does turn out to be a difficult engineering problem, and lifespan only does increase incrementally, it will always be the immortalists trying to push to the next level. If the average lifespan becomes 1000 years, and most people are satisfied, we can rest assured that there will always be another group (immortalists) forming plans to push it all the way. Saying "you might be able to live for thousands of years", is a sort of white lie - that's not really what many of us believe. We believe in lifespans of billions of years, or quintillions+ subjective years if we're talking about uploads, or even longer if we're talking about ontotechnology or Heat Death avoidance. I just think that keeping the dialogue in the "thousand years or so" range profoundly limits the message and the philosophy.

The thing about the "life extensionist" approach, is that, those type of advocates will pop up automatically. They already have. For everyone one "immortalist" that pops up in the next 5 years, at least ten or twenty "life extensionists" of various flavors will emerge. Life extension is all over the place. But to be one of those lucky people who can grasp the notion of living for billions of years, or forever, and engage in productive dialogue on these topics, is a gift too precious to be squandered. As people who already *get it*, it's our responsibility to help others understand at the same level that we do. As Kissinger mentions, there are thousands, if not dozens of thousands, of people out there, just waiting to be discovered, who would become full-fledged immortalists if they just read a few pages of the right material and had some of their lingering questions answered. We ought to focus on them. When we see nasty articles about immortalists in the magazines and such, we might say to ourselves "oh dear, perhaps we should tune it down a bit", but we should remember the multitude of general life extension groups out there, and the growing trends in that sector, and the quantity of neutral or positive articles which exist covering those organizations. Someone has to be the radical. And incidentally, didn't Scientific American publish an article called "Cryonics Heats Up" that spoke of cryonics favorably? Sometimes I think immortalists are overly pessimistic about the powerful awakening that scientifically literate intellectuals are undergoing worldwide.

Bruce, your posts to Robert are as poignant and diplomatic as can be, nice job.

[kevin]

I totally believe that 'immortality' is the philosophy that drives everyone. It is exactly the fact that people have such closely held beliefs about immortality that makes their paradigm so hard to shift. ImmInst and it's members serve the very useful purpose of providing the philosophical equipment necessary for people to retool their perspectives on death and dying. Life-extension by itself provides a pretty surface, but immortality is the philosophy lying beneath, just as our views of it color almost every action and reaction we have.

Edited by kevin, 21 August 2003 - 12:55 PM.

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks for the reply MA and Kevin. Exceedingly gratifying and inspirational reading.

Incidentally, Kevin, you'll have to tell us more about your new scientific lab job! That's one inspirational tidbit I managed to somehow overlook over at another thread.

[Jace Tropic]

Kevin: I totally believe that 'immortality' is the philosophy that drives everyone... ImmInst and it's members serve the very useful purpose of providing the philosophical equipment necessary for people to retool their perspectives on death and dying.

This is precisely correct. Before becoming aware of immortality/ImmInst, I was already virtually 100% confident that my longevity naturally would fall in the range of 125-175 years if I maintained a healthy lifestyle and expected the expected: modest improvements in medicine. But... big deal.

Jace

[Bruce Klein]

====
From Robert:

> On the other hand, how would you approach this topic when speaking to a
> group of people already in agreement that life extension is good, yet they
> are still not totally sure as to why living forever may be important?

Well, first one has to acknowledge that "living forever" may not
*the* most important thing. Particularly if it turns out we cannot
get out of, or shift, the laws of this universe and protons & neutrons
do indeed decay. Then all bets are off.

So one seeks a life perhaps of "relative values". I would say that
one might consider three possible motivations:

a) Reproduction. This is the one most species terrestrial or alien
are probably programmed with. It is essential for a non-directed
evolution and complexification of the universe (see c. ).

b) Fun. This gets into Eliezer's "Fun Theory". How do you maximize
the amount of fun you can have in life for however long you are alive?
[For me this seems to require that I reinvent myself from time to time.]

c) Complexification. This is in line with the Extropy Institute's
principles and the desirability of defeating entroy to the greatest
degree that one can. It is perhaps an "artistic" creation (or expression)
of advanced technological civilizations. Conscious (directed) evolution
may be able to trump natural (undirected) evolution [e.g. (a)].

I don't know about others, but if I knew the Universe were going to
ultimately trump me -- I'd be placing a very high emphasis on (b) and
c). just to be able to say "neener, neener, neener" to the Universe.

The reason that life extension is good is that it would seem
to provide for greater opportunities for (a/b/c) [with some limits
perhaps on (a)].

Others might provide additional interesting perspectives -- I would
doubt that my list is complete. For example, "curiosity" might be
added to the list. I know that things that motivate me include
what the 4 probes heading for Mars will discover?, what will Cassini
discover?, what *really* are the defects that cause aging?, whether
we will really one day construct a space elevator?, whether we can
construct an inside-out MBrain that finally figures out the "meaning
of life" as it hurls itself into a Black Hole?, etc. Or one could
simplify things, e.g. Why would one *not* want learn to play every
musical instrument? Why would one *not* want to master every known
sport? etc.

I'll close with citing the very first quote (by Heinlein) from my
quote collection [1].

Robert

1. http://www.aeiveos.c...ury/quotes.html