From: ben@goertzel.org
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 07:53:37 MDT
On 16 Oct 2002 at 12:01, Christian Szegedy wrote:
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> > Has this list been abandoned?
> >
> > - samantha
Ah, perhaps the problem is that I spent the last week moving cross country, and am
now involved with things like house-hunting and evaluating possible schools for the
kids. Since I'm not sitting at the computer all day like usual, I haven't been inspired
to send out my usual raft of e-mails.
But it's gratifying to my petty human brain to see that SL4 just dwindles without me
;-) [Yes, I know, that's an unjustified statistical conclusion... but indulge me please
;-> ... I'm applying the Bayesian Probability Theorem without proper attention to the
"weight of evidence" involved!!]
I have relocated from beautiful rural New Mexico back to the US East Coast, where
the Novamente-related business opportunities are better... (and where my
extended family lives, so my kids will be near their grandparents again...)
On the drive out I had the opportunity to briefly visit a list member I'd never met
before, Moshe Looks (who is also a part-time member of the Novamente team).
We had a great evening's chat. It was scary to realize he was much closer to my
oldest son's age than to my own!! Damn, this *aging* phenomenon has really got to
be halted *soon* ... !!
However, yesterday I made myself quite unpopular at the life care center where my
grandfather lives, offering to give a lecture on cryonics in their seminar series.
Peculiarly enough (to me), none of these very old folks are interested in preserving
themselves for future rejuvenation. My wife and my parents feel the same way,
though my kids don't -- they feel like me, they don't want to die, ever, if it can be
avoided.
People have a very deep acceptance of death, which I have not fully
psychologically come to terms with. It seems to come about during adulthood, not
childhood, perhaps triggered by post-teenage physiological changes.... Freud
overstated things with his "death wish" but there was perhaps some kernel of truth
there.
As my father says "I'm not all that important. Why do I need to be preserved
forever?" I can sympathize with that -- none of us are all that important, in a way.
If we die, we will be replaced with others.... And as I've noted before, I feel that
even if I do survive death, once I transform my mind into something superhuman
and superintelligent, I probably won't be "myself" anymore in any real sense.
But still there's so much curiousity in me about what comes next -- that, rather than
any fear of death or sense of importance that I survive, is what mainly makes me
crave not to disappear like my human predecessors always have...
By the way -- just to give you some substantive content -- I have been reading this
book
www.allheart.com/3805566670.html
Basic Cancer Programs: Genes, Signals, Metabolites: Unified Holistic Theory
of Evolution
which is very interesting. I'll post a review on it in a couple weeks, when I get
the time. Not just about cancer, the first half of the book gives a deep,
speculative and fascinating rethinking of the nature of evolution by natural
selection, using symbiogenesis as the key concept. If any of you are really
ambitious, you can order it and read it now so you can understand my review
and comments fully when I post them!! There are also implications for anti-
aging if his theory is correct. And I don't know if it's correct, but I think I
know how to test it using microarray-derived gene expression time series...
OK ... please forgive the somewhat rambling e-mail which does not advance
the store of human knowledge particularly far... but hey... ;)
later,
ben
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