
Why I Want to be Transhuman - Anon84
http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Why-I-Want-to-be-Transhuman.html&Itemid=29
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robertk
This quote in particular reaffirms something I noticed since I was 12.

 _I was once giving some lectures on longevity and immortality. I noticed that
people didn't like the idea much, so I actually took a poll of a couple of
audiences. I asked how many of you would like to live for 200 years. Almost no
one raised their hand. They said because you'd be so crippled and arthritic
and amnesiac that it would be no fun. So I changed the question. How would you
like to live 200 or 500 years in the same physical condition that you were at
half your age. Guess what, almost nobody raised their hand. But when I tried
the same question with a technical audience, scientific people, they all
raised their hand. So I did ask both groups. The ordinary people, if you'll
pardon the stereotype, generally said that they thought human lifetime was
just fine. They'd done most of the things they wanted to do. Maybe they wanted
to visit the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, but they could live without
that. And surely another 100 years would be terribly boring._

~~~
lionheart
I'm definitely one of the technical/scientific people, but I'm having a lot of
trouble believing this.

How can anybody NOT want to live longer if they were in good health? How can
you possibly get that bored?

Maybe its just me, but I can't conceive it.

~~~
umjames
Try working a shit 9-5 job for years on end. You can get bored almost
immediately. If people started living for 200 years, do you think they'd keep
retirement age at around 65?

The problem is the question makes no guarantee of the total quality of those
extra years. Health is only part of that quality, actual happiness is another
big part that wasn't assured.

200 years where 70%+ of it is spent in a crap job where you're ready to go
home before you even show up? No thanks.

80 years where 70%+ of it is spent doing things that you actually like and can
be proud of (not always necessarily at work)? Bring it on.

~~~
lionheart
But don't people do things that they enjoy with their free time, even if they
work shit jobs?

I mean, people seem to like their lives. They aren't committing suicide.

But if you have a choice between living 100 years or living 200 years, and you
pick the first option, how is that not exactly like committing suicide.

------
puzzle-out
Gulliver on the immortal Struldbruggs: "whenever they see a Funeral, they
lament and repine that others have gone to a Harbour of Rest, to which they
themselves never can hope to arrive."

------
Allocator2008
Beautifully said. Elton John sings, "there's more to be seen than can ever be
seen, more to do than can ever be done". As long as there are more things to
discover, life is a proposition worth having.

Though, not to be a wet blanket, even the computers, trans-human
intelligences, etc. won't be "immortal" in the sense of living forever. The
universe herself will expand so much that her galaxies will all collapse into
mega-black holes, which, over the eons, will decay via Hawking radiation,
until there will be nothing at all anywhere except photons, at which point
time itself will cease since there will be no material particles to measure
it, time effectively becomes spacelike at that point.

But between now and that doubtful date, I do wish the transhumanists and their
robot companions all the best of luck! :-)

~~~
inklesspen
Who knows; maybe we'll find a way out, or into a "next" universe, like Tau
Zero.

~~~
thwarted
Or Time Ships ( [http://www.amazon.com/Time-Ships-Stephen-
Baxter/dp/006105648...](http://www.amazon.com/Time-Ships-Stephen-
Baxter/dp/0061056480/) ), a continuation of H.G. Wells The Time Machine.

------
unrealwh
more like "why i want to be a pseudo-intellectual". the author seems obsessed
with name and meme dropping with the intent of dazzling us with the contents
of his browser bookmarks, few of which he probably even understands, but he
knows enough to drop it into a blog post. why hasn't he done the obvious and
cited "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity" by Sokal? if you don't know the significance of this paper,
don't reply or mod me.

~~~
alexandros
I do know what the paper is but I am sorry to say, it's still a strawman in
this case.

