4 replies to this topic

[Bruce Klein]

I have emailed Dr. Mason about his article for Betterhumans. Seems he's making a familiar argument against extreme life extension concerning the problem of boredom. Also, he has quoted Kurzweil on the topic of boredom using the "Gambler of the Twilight Zone" example. I've looked into what Kurz was really saying below, and have hopefully clarified that Kurzweil is nothing if not an Immortalist. - BJK

**Feb 13, 2003 Correction: I've contacted Dr. Mason, and he has clarified that he was unaware of the Kurzweil paragraph. It was an editor's addition made after his submission to Betterhumans.

More importantly, Dr Mason has expressed interest in contributing an article for ImmInst concerning the prospect of immortality.


Dr. Stephen Mason is a psychologist living in Southern California. He is a former university professor, syndicated columnist, talk radio show host and comedy writer for Joan Rivers. He is a member of MENSA, a recipient of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's Citizen Sane award, and once appeared as a centerfold in Playgirl magazine. Currently, he serves as Media Affairs Director of The Lifestyles Organization. Address comments and column suggestions to him directly at DrSBMason@aol.com.

Longer Living through Science
Obsolete beliefs about immortality are alive and well, while few have noticed that technological developments are bringing an indefinite lifespan closer to reality
By Stephen Mason


Credit: Stephen Mason

[Sunday, December 29, 2002] A friend once told me that he'd purchased a stationary bicycle which, if ridden for an hour a day, would buy him a couple of extra birthdays.

When I calculated his current age, it occurred to me that the time he'd spend pedaling nowhere would almost exactly equal the additional years of life he hoped to gain. I don't know about you, but if the Grim Reaper were to tap me tomorrow morning and offer an immediate departure versus two years on a stationary bike, I'd be out of here.

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In fact, some people even argue that it's the transitory nature of existence that gives life meaning. Ray Kurzweil notes that a great deal of our effort goes into avoiding death. "We make extraordinary efforts to delay it and often consider its intrusion a tragic event," he says. "Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler of the Twilight Zone episode."

Article

[Bruce Klein]

In Answer to Dr. Mason about Kurzweil




Quotes from Kurzweil:

Ray Kurzweil-Interview
Technology Review (Jan/Feb 2000)
The Story of the 21st Century

RK: "Lately, my interest in health has intersected with my interest in computers, because they both have a bearing on the issues of longevity and immortality—keeping our biological bodies and brains healthy is the first bridge to immortality.That’ll bring us to the bioengineering revolution. Within 10 years, bioengineering will extend human life spans at least a year every year. And that’ll be the second bridge that’ll bring us to the nanotechnology artificial intelligence revolution, which gives us a real shot at immortality."
http://iranscope.gha...urzweil-Int.htm


Ray also attended the Alcor Life Extension Conference Nov 2002 where he said:

Ray Kurzweil's Plan: Never Die
By Kristen Philipkoski
08:59 AM Nov. 18, 2002 PT

"I think your own death is a profound motivator for a lot of behavior, even more than sex. As I mentioned in my talk I think that that meme is very powerful: The idea that life is short and we're only here for a short time. That's a very powerful meme in human thinking and I don't believe that. I don't think we have to die. And the technology and the means of making that a reality is close at hand."
http://www.wired.com...4,56448,00.html

[Bruce Klein]

Also I believe if you revisit the full text of Kurzweil's remarks from his book 1998, Age of Spiriual Machines, you'll see the broader point he was trying to make. His remark is concerning the current state of life in the world, the problems and challenges. He was using the death argument to make this point. He's suggesting that humans may not be able to cope with immortality now, however this will not always be the case. Kurzweil says, "Do we have the psychological capacity for all the good things that await us? Probably not. That, however, might change as well."

To be clear, Kurzweil is not pro-death. He is actually, if anything pro-longevity and pro-immortailty. He's signed up for a cryonics and he's doing everything to stay healthy.
-BJK

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Prologue: An Inexorable Emergence

The gambler had not expected to be here. But on reflection, he thought he had shown some kindness in his time. And this place was even more beautiful and satisfying than he had imagined. Everywhere there were magnificent crystal chandeliers, the finest handmade carpets, the most sumptuous foods, and, yes, the most beautiful women, who seemed intrigued with their new heaven mate. He tried his hand at roulette, and amazingly his number came up time after time. He tried the gaming tables, and his luck was nothing short of remarkable: He won game after game. Indeed his winnings were causing quite a stir, attracting much excitement from the attentive staff, and from the beautiful women.

This continued day after day, week after week, with the gambler winning every game, accumulating bigger and bigger earnings. Everything was going his way. He just kept on winning. And week after week, month after month, the gambler's streak of success remained unbreakable.

After a while, this started to get tedious. The gambler was getting restless; the winning was starting to lose its meaning. Yet nothing changed. He just kept on winning every game, until one day, the now anguished gambler turned to the angel who seemed to be in charge and said that he couldn't take it anymore. Heaven was not for him after all. He had figured he was destined for the "other place" nonetheless, and indeed that is where he wanted to be.

"But this is the other place," came the reply.

That is my recollection of an episode of The Twilight Zone that I saw as a young child. I don't recall the title, but I would call it "Be Careful What You Wish For."1 As this engaging series was wont to do, it illustrated one of the paradoxes of human nature: We like to solve problems, but we don't want them all solved, not too quickly, anyway. We are more attached to the problems than to the solutions.

Take death, for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and indeed often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we would find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler in The Twilight Zone episode.

We do not yet have this predicament. We have no shortage today of either death or human problems. Few observers feel that the twentieth century has left us with too much of a good thing. There is growing prosperity, fueled not incidentally by information technology, but the human species is still challenged by issues and difficulties not altogether different than those with which it has struggled from the beginning of its recorded history.

The twenty-first century will be different. The human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems of need, if not desire, and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future. Do we have the psychological capacity for all the good things that await us? Probably not. That, however, might change as well.

Before the next century is over, human beings will no longer be the most intelligent or capable type of entity on the planet. Actually, let me take that back. The truth of that last statement depends on how we define human. And here we see one profound difference between these two centuries: The primary political and philosophical issue of the next century will be the definition of who we are.2

But I am getting ahead of myself. This last century has seen enormous technological change and the social upheavals that go along with it, which few pundits circa 1899 foresaw. The pace of change is accelerating and has been since the inception of invention (as I will discuss in the first chapter, this acceleration is an inherent feature of technology). The result will be far greater transformations in the first two decades of the twenty-first century than we saw in the entire twentieth century. However, to appreciate the inexorable logic of where the twenty-first century will bring us, we have to go back and start with the present.

http://www.penguinpu...ue/prologue.htm

[Bruce Klein]

By the way, I've received a quick reply from the author... saying he'll reply soon.

[Bruce Klein]

Dr Mason has replied and has indicated he was unaware of the paragraph which was added after submission to the editor. More importantly, he has expressed interest in writing an article for ImmInst concerning the topic of physical immortality.