Apropos of Nothing -3-

Josh Cryer · 2004-10-07 10:55:42

Do they make a wiggly toes in mud happy pill, only without all the sentiment?

clark · 2004-10-07 11:01:21

Yes. Vicodin is a good start. Darvacet ain't bad. Codene will get you through the day. Perkaset has it's advantages. Lithium for a short vacation. Morphine will blot it out.

Of course, matters of the heart are best resolved by a single night of tears in your beers. Any more than that and you're just pathetic.

Josh Cryer · 2004-10-07 13:02:26

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

clark · 2004-10-07 13:29:47

that's what I'm here for. words.

Palomar · 2004-10-07 13:31:58

*I miss the bakery my hometown had when I was a kid. Owned and operated by a local couple of course. Around Halloween time they'd make these large roll-and-cut sugar cookies, thin and buttery, in the shape of a Jack o' Lantern. At least 5 x 5 inches, maybe 1/4 inch thick.

Would "frost" the cookie with a thin orange (colored and flavored) candy glaze and pipe on chocolate "faces." Those were so good...

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-08 09:10:25

*Dream to some, nightmare to others?

Check out the statement regarding age deceleration in the social solutions portion of the article.

I don't relish the thought of growing old and dying any more than the next person (understatement), but is age deceleration really WISE, in the long-term? If the planet weren't so heavily populated and everyone was relatively *wealthy*, etc., it might be nice. But that's not the situation.

Frankly, I think these people have rose-colored glasses on. Life extension for most people wouldn't mean retiring at age 65 and living to be 250 putzing around on a golf course, sipping iced tea all day and playing with the great-great-great-great grandkids.

For the "average person," wouldn't this simply mean longer years to work for a paycheck? More time stuck in traffic, waiting in checkout lanes? Now adolescence extends for 2 decades at least (have fun parents!)? Added life = added reproductive capability; we already have 6.5 billion people on the planet; 10 billion in just a few decades. And as a woman, I can't image that monthly thing extending for 5 to 6 decades. Lots of people I know sure don't seem to make the most of what they've got NOW, instead squander a lot of time and energy on fighting and getting into trouble which could have been avoided if they'd used their brains...what, suddenly they're going to have their act together and we'll have 200-year-olds on Planet Shangri-La? Doubtful.

Dictators would be the first to get ahold of said technology. Cubans under the thumb of Fidel Castro for another 150 years? People in power wouldn't be happy with mere 4-year terms in office; it'd be extended to 20 years in office before the next election.

Seems to me "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" on the life extension thing. The more things change, the more they stay the same...except now it's longer.

This also reminds me of the stem-cell research debate. I'm sorry for Alzheimer's sufferers (I might be one someday), Michael J. Fox (so young with Parkinsonism), but why should embryonic humans be sacrificed and denied their potential and a shot at life because people already born and who have had their chances in life feel cheated? Ronald Reagan is often mentioned in the stem-cell research debate; Nancy is a great proponent of it. Reagan lived well into his early 80s until the Alzheimer's began, had been a movie star, a 2-term President, saw his children grow up. Nice accomplishments. Not enough, though? Why should an embryonic human be robbed of and denied their potential and the chance to even be born, for the sake of the already born?

Just some thoughts.

http://www.space.com/news/new_xprize_04 … ml]Article

--Cindy

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 09:27:54

Now there's a few things to chew on...

Hmm, last thing first I guess.

Why should an embryonic human be cheated out of their potential and the chance to even be born, for the sake of the already born?

The embryos in question wouldn't be born anyway. While one could argue at length whether a month-old embryo is a human being, these particular examples are out of the running in the game of life regardless. The choice is do we learn something useful, or just dispose of them outright.

Sounds a bit harsh doesn't it? But there we are.

As for life extension, I've given a fair amount of thought to the effects and have come to the conclusion that in order for it to work requires either rigid population controls, which will lead to a stagnant society and eventually the decay of that society; or a vigorous expansionist society constantly pushing it's frontiers outward. Extending the human lifespan can help us build a far better future, but only if we take the whole package. Empire or death, that's the choice our species will face one day given our current path.

I have a fondness for the former, of course.

Palomar · 2004-10-08 10:26:56

The embryos in question wouldn't be born anyway.

*But they could be.

While one could argue at length whether a month-old embryo is a human being

*If not human, what are they? Daffodils? Giraffes? You and I were both once month-old embryos.

The choice is do we learn something useful, or just dispose of them outright.

*Actually there are 3 choices: Availability to couples with fertility issues.

or a vigorous expansionist society constantly pushing it's frontiers outward. Extending the human lifespan can help us build a far better future, but only if we take the whole package. Empire or death, that's the choice our species will face one day given our current path.

*Empires die. Empire-building can lead to death (Third Reich). I'm not entirely anti-Empire by the way (:edit: Would depend on what type -- ideologically -- and how it is built). Again, I simply don't foresee that life expansion will lead to any great happiness for persons in a society in which it might occur. Could be wrong of course...but "the more things change, the more they stay the same" seems often too true. :-\

--Cindy

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 10:51:45

Quote
The embryos in question wouldn't be born anyway.

*But they could be.

With signficant external help. If they're out of the womb they cease their natural development. From that point on anything that happens to them must be external, for them to live requires a willful decision to make them live, which could have ethical implications all its own.

Quote
While one could argue at length whether a month-old embryo is a human being

*If not human, what are they? Daffodils? Giraffes? You and I were both once month-old embryos.

Were we ever that young? :laugh:

You're right of course, but where does one draw the line? It's a very murky issue and the answers depend more on one's own gut reactions than on any verfiable data. Is an embryo genetically human? Of course. But so is a corpse.

*Empires die. Empire-building can lead to death (Third Reich). I'm not entirely anti-Empire by the way (:edit: Would depend on what type -- ideologically -- and how it is built).

Again, I can't fault your concerns, they're perfectly valid. But here's the catch, if we discover a method of greatly extending the human lifespan it can't be kept quiet for long, it'll get out and certain rich and powerful people will get it. At that point the wide range of possible futures crystallizes into two; a stagnant caste society in slow decline or a vibrant expansionist civilization. It's only a matter of time now, we've come too far to stop. Discovery can't be held off indefinately and we can't un-invent what follows.

That said, if we extend our lives to span centuries and spread into space, we'll still have many of the same problems. But I would argue it's worth it. If our medical science forces us to settle every corner of space we can reach, so be it. If the empire we build comes crashing down leaving us scattered across a hundred worlds, so be it. I find that far preferable to wallowing in stagnant decay on this one world, even if only for a span of decades.

Palomar · 2004-10-08 11:47:34

Is an embryo genetically human? Of course. But so is a corpse.

*A corpse is dead. A viable embryo is not.

Again, I can't fault your concerns, they're perfectly valid. But here's the catch, if we discover a method of greatly extending the human lifespan it can't be kept quiet for long, it'll get out and certain rich and powerful people will get it. At that point the wide range of possible futures crystallizes into two; a stagnant caste society in slow decline or a vibrant expansionist civilization.

*Stagnant caste society is what I'd lay my money on; sorry. Could be wrong of course. But past behavior/indicative of future behavior. This in particular concerns me, because it's easy to see how humans in general are always itching to stomp on someone else's rights, or to go back to the ways of the barbarian. As a woman, that is especially UNappealing to me. Of course we can't always tip-toe around on eggshells in (nothing would get done in that case), but I do see this trend towards throwing off the ideologies and values which HAVE made this nation powerful and strong, in favor of barbarism.

That said, if we extend our lives to span centuries and spread into space, we'll still have many of the same problems. But I would argue it's worth it. If our medical science forces us to settle every corner of space we can reach, so be it. If the empire we build comes crashing down leaving us scattered across a hundred worlds, so be it. I find that far preferable to wallowing in stagnant decay on this one world, even if only for a span of decades.

*Yeah, I see your point. Generally I'm pro-medical science, but my point is that there seems to be a lot of "rose-colored glasses" attitude about it. More of something doesn't necessarily constitute happiness (might...but not necessarily).

--Cindy

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 12:10:45

A corpse is dead. A viable embryo is not.

Only if kept alive through artificial means. An embryo, a braindead coma patient, in either case if you disconnect some machinery you've got corpses of varying sizes. Admittedly there are no clear answers here, but a viable embryo outside the womb is only viable if great effort is made to cultivate it.

That sounded so agricultural. :hm:

*Stagnant caste society is what I'd lay my money on; sorry. Could be wrong of course. But past behavior/indicative of future behavior.

You may well be right, yet it's largely moot. If life extension is possible we'll probably soon stumble onto it, trying to or not. Once we have, we're locked in. Either we descend into stagnation and barbarism of a sort; or we push outward as fast as possible, seizing as much celestial real estate as we can get our grubby little "immortal" hands on.

Indeed there are plenty of "rose colored glasses" making the rounds, but there's no reason to strap on the "gloom visors" just yet. We can have a truly astounding and prosperous future if we can balance our population not by limiting our numbers but by expanding the area which contains them. Breathing room, as it were.

Not that it'll be easy, even doubling the human lifespan has implications far beyond simple population pressures. What's really going to determine the path we take is what our mindset is when that development arrives. If we're in a "too many people, overcrowding, must conserve" mood as a society we may well be doomed to the scenario you fear.

Which is why space-imperialists such as myself are out here spreading the expansionist gospel.

One of us, one of us, one of us... :laugh:

Josh Cryer · 2004-10-08 12:33:55

You need to realize that most of humanity requires machinery to live; were it also to be "disconnected," a vast majority of us would die. From a philosophical standpoint, "artificial" is an increasingly vague concept.

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 12:47:23

You need to realize that most of humanity requires machinery to live; were it also to be "disconnected," a vast majority of us would die. From a philosophical standpoint, "artificial" is an increasingly vague concept.

True, which we can take in either direction. Does it make the embryo more human, or the guy with the pacemaker less? Again, I never claimed to have the answers on this one.

Whatever the case, if humanity gets "disconnected" any time soon a whole lot of people will die before I do, and quite a few after. Is that last person in the ruins the pinnacle of humanity? Or maybe the first one to go is the most indicative of modern technological, civilized humanity? We can hash over this forever and never resolve anything.

Or we can simply "decide" that if a "potential/recoverable human life" can't somehow consent to that artificial maintenance, pull the plug and let nature do what it will. I'm not advocating policy here, just throwing something out for discussion.

clark · 2004-10-08 14:15:48

Huh?

Say a thousand years ago, people didn't live all that long. We routinely live on average twice as long now. Are we less stagnant or more than a thousand years ago?

People live longer every year, across the world- where the life spans decrease, do we see an a quickening of progress or a decrease? Africa might be a modern day example of what I am pointing out.

200, 300, 500, or a thousand years is a long time to learn. Most of us are lucky to survive the first couple decades of life with all our own limbs and emotions because of just ignorant stupidity. Perhaps we might breed like bunnies- but if we are living so long, maybe we won't want to as much anyway.

Bleh, i think it wouldn't be so bad.

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 15:09:08

Right on cue.

Say a thousand years ago, people didn't live all that long. We routinely live on average twice as long now. Are we less stagnant or more than a thousand years ago?

Which is kind of my point, during that time we always had someplace left to expand into, even when it was at someone else's expense. As it stands now we continue to advance technologically (though it's arguable how much institutional stagnation is in play) but socially we are incrementally sliding back in some cases and off the edge in others. That lack of frontiers coupled with over-arching authority is what is different now from the bulk of our history. Expansion can offset that to a degree, in an odd way bringing us closer to our "natural" social state. Don't like the local chief, leave. There's plenty of game in the fields.

Palomar · 2004-10-08 15:16:31

You need to realize that most of humanity requires machinery to live; were it also to be "disconnected," a vast majority of us would die. From a philosophical standpoint, "artificial" is an increasingly vague concept.

*Wow, Josh. Very succinctly stated. :up:

I agree.

--Cindy

clark · 2004-10-08 15:16:44

Socially we are sliding backwards? In what way? In what sense? Off the edge? Where? How?

We have no lack of fronteirs. We are also progressing in a way that removes the need for a physical fronteir to act as an outlet by which to maintain social stability and cohesion. We don't need to expel the odd religious nuts, we co-opt them. We don't need to go tame the wilderness anymore, we just strip mine it and ship it back. We don't need to convert the heathens, we just hook em on niki shoes and starbucks.

This all sounds like a lot of nothing, which is why we are probably talking about it here. :laugh:

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 16:32:12

Socially we are sliding backwards? In what way? In what sense? Off the edge? Where? How?

Clark, you have on several occasions pointed out the need for rigid controls on behavior within Martian colonies. All for the safety of the group. This quickly leads to all for the comfort of the group to one degree or another. And it doesn't happen only in enclosed colonies, but enclosed societies as well. Frontiers act as safety valves, the real hardcore malcontents can get together and go somewhere else. In time their descendents mellow a bit, the new territory grows closer to the society of origin, and a whole new batch of malcontents has to leave again. When you don't have that release mechanism you often end up with increasingly polarized societies, as we are seeing now. Sometimes it works itself out, sometimes the society in question destroys itself.

For the moment we are sliding into a more hierarchical society, centralized controls and authority in the hands of fewer people, leading to less responsibility for the use of that power, which in turn leads to less than desirable conditions for us peons at the base of the pyramid and greater difficulty in doing anything about it, within the system or otherwise.

But if you think some imported shoes and a four-dollar coffee will solve the problems in our social fabric, I'm not gonna argue with you. But if I'm right, somewhere down the line you'll be a 150 year old man sipping cappucino wondering what the hell just happened when the tension gets too tight and snaps.

Mad Grad Student · 2004-10-08 21:29:35

I dunno. No matter what I will virgorously support any reasearch, assuming it's within reasonable ethical boundaries, that extends human life because that little mushy pile of neurons sitting in every person's body is the greatest resource in the whole universe. There is absolutely nothing more valuable anywhere than a person's soul (no, I'm not trying to apply religious implication, soul just comes off of the tounge and the keyboard a lot easier than "conciousness" or "Freudian-pseudo-superego"), and prolonging life preserves this, what's not to like?

Being human puts us automatically into some interesting philisophical quandries. In a way we're no different than the other apes, the mammals, or depending on how detached you want to get even the bacteria on Earth. We have physical bodies that must be maintained under very precise conditions to keep on ticking (whatever the heck that means, we still haven't figured out) and from a biological standpoint the only real goal we can have in life is to procreate and carry on with the species. We're all made of the same stuff, cats, iguanas, e. coli, and us, and have the same needs.

But in another sense we are infinately more, because we are self-aware. Call it what you will, the soul, the spirit, the spark of Jah, we seem to have it and it looks like the vast majority of other life on Earth doesn't, which puts us infinately apart from the other animals. We are something like gods who are now stuck in a world limited by the restraints of matter, some of them we can live with, like the need to breathe, and others really cramp up our style, like that we have to die at some point. It's obviously something extrordinary to create a new life in general, but what I find really amazing is that each person's conciousness can form out of, well, nothing. We can take a bunch of inert chemicals and make them wake up, and be alive, but only for a short time. The flip side of that argument is that it's apparently just as easy to destroy a soul as it is to create one.

I don't know about all of your views on the afterlife, but it seems to me that everything, no matter how increadible, about us can be explained in the invariable laws of the universe, and as such there really doesn't seem to be any reason to think that there's someplace we go after we die. If I were talking like a true scientist I'd go out and just say that the very idea of an afterlife is as hokey and superstitious as astrology, but the very idea of a statement like that being true frankly scares the hell out of me. Every second each of us is alive is an unbelievably precious resource, and each second we can possibly obtain through our ingenuity must be taken advantage of.

Besides, if everyone lived longer the world might be better. As has been said, we are much less stagnant as a culture now than we were when the average lifespan was 35 years, and there's no reason to expect the trend to reverse. Imagine what you could learn, do, and experience if you could live for 200 years! That would definately be a bonus for society, not a detractor.

Now that I think about it, I remember a discussion in the book Sphere in which one of the scientists mentions that though octopi are extremely intelligent, perhaps the only reason why they haven't developed civilization is because they have an average lifespan of only 3 years. Right now it takes someone the first 28 years or so of their life just to be educated enough to be considered capible of adding to our current wealth of knowledge, the more time we can have after that the better.

Yar, it's very rare IMHO to end up depressed after a philosophical discussion, but it's happened to me at least here. Curel universe, though, isn't it. Any advice on what pills I should take?

Oh, never mind, I found a Hershey bar. Forget Zoloft, there's just nothing like chocolate to keep depressions away. :laugh:

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-08 22:39:31

Good post, Mad Grad. Just a quick comment:

Besides, if everyone lived longer the world might be better. As has been said, we are much less stagnant as a culture now than we were when the average lifespan was 35 years, and there's no reason to expect the trend to reverse. Imagine what you could learn, do, and experience if you could live for 200 years! That would definately be a bonus for society, not a detractor.

Increased lifespan has the potential for great things, but there are perils as well. If we double our lifespan, maintain the breeding rate and don't expand our domain, it could quickly become quite hellish. We're approaching a critical mass of humanity, we've never had that before. It changes the balance dramatically.

So let us advance on all fronts, if we can live longer and get significant settlements growing off-world, we all win.

Josh Cryer · 2004-10-08 22:44:48

The universe is big enough for a lot more humans.

Mad Grad Student · 2004-10-10 19:07:09

In case any of my previous comments on my being as close to 10 as I am to 20 year old made any one feel old, perhaps this will help put things into perspective.

At the dance I went to a week ago (Jeez, that seems like a month at least, weird) there was a giant projection screen that was running pretty much the whole time. Usually it was either playing images from a few webcams they had placed around the cafeteria or that random (but oh so mesmerising) phsycodelic gobbledygook that Windows Media Plyer puts on by default. However, at one point it did show a graphic that was somewhat interesting, an image of a spiral galaxy spinning around and around in empty space. Not having anything else to keep whatever part of the brain that does this sort of thing occupied (left hemisphere? who cares anywhoo), I figured that the galaxy was spinning at about 12 rpm. Assuming that it completes one revolution every 200 million years, this means that in the two minutes that the graphic was played 2.4 billion years elapsed, all the way back to when the most advanced life on Earth were cyanobacteria.

Assuming that the average person on these message boards will live to be 95 (that seems reasonable if you're 35-50 right now), that means that a human lifespan is, oh (buzz, whrrr, computer noises), one 22 millionth or so of a rotation. Now, ten and a half minutes on our scale is the age of the universe, so that means that a human lifespan, on this scale, is just about 250 nanoseconds. The universe is old. People are not very old at all. :;):

It certainly is a big universe out there. The funny thing is that we as a species have as much time as we want to explore it but we as indivduals have only a few decades to do so. Self-interest is not neccessarily a bad thing, too bad that many politicians have lots of financial self-interest, but only a little intellectual self-interest.

Oh, yeah, the screen also did this matrix animation that was kinda cool. It's too bad, as soon as you realized that you were on it the guy in charge of the camera would veer away from you, like in those cartoons where Bugs and Daffy never plummit away even after they've walked off the cliff so long as they don't realize they've done so. Meep-meep! :laugh:

"Don't open that door here, it's an alien planet! Is there air!? You don't know!"
-Guy, Galaxy Quest

clark · 2004-10-11 08:01:27

stick your head in the sand, or stare at something else- maybe Mars.

pretty red star, afar
afar,
how I love to gaze away
the day
With delusions of what might be
in empty sea-
Such is the effect of calamity.

Bah! and I rant to a blank white wall streaming with invisible cracks revealed by entropy and the whirl of time! Did you hear? Derrida is alive! Well, dead by our standards, but that's just an imposition of a western civilization dialectical. Worm rot will have the last say while we spend a hundred years shrugging it all into oblivion and the final say.

Who has the final say?! No one but those that come first, and the last ones that read and repeat. Just overgrown washed out jaded hijinks ill conceived meanderings hitchhiking through a thoroughfare of semi literacy. Call it what you want, but it ain't kosher. It ain't enlightenment of the inner soul? Do you have one? Want to sell it? Of course not, who wants to buy in a sellers market? Got to compete with those who have and want, those who don't and need, and those who want and need but have no qualms about taking. They don't ask, they just take and take and take and take and take... whew- and take and take till there ainn’t nothing left. Someone ought to tell the tax collector because I'm sure they ain't payin their fare share?

Are you? Am I? Is anyone anymore them? I am, therefore I think you? Around and around we go, unless of course you step off, draw a line in the sand and expound profundity as gospel declaring that the line forms here- right behind you. So very very convenient. While the multitude stare at the back of riotousness none see the smirking face giggling manically at the supreme joke of making it all up. Don't look behind the curtain! In fact, stare at the ground as we march ever onward- the daring among who go stark raving mad look up for a brief moment, realize it's just a largish oval whose followed foot prints in the dust are our own. My god they declare, or not, depending on the weather of their age and conviction! Let's march backwards, eventually we will meet back at the beginning ahead of where we lead, in the face of that which leads, back to here, but turned around, back and forth back and forth, to two polar opposites that are the same. Ah! The mind is breaking.

Broken beaten, that's what it is, we, I, me, us, what? All, alone- where? Here as in not being anywhere there. But there is not where I am here, so I hear, hahahaha.

Insanity is but a different set of sensibilities shared by very few. Thank you, I feel better now. [sets off while Ride of the Valkeries plays on a kazoo]

Cobra Commander · 2004-10-11 08:08:26

???

There's a minute or so we'll never get back.

clark · 2004-10-11 08:19:21

I zalute you mon Capi-tan! Ze plans ar proceeding az you have di-rected. Vee shall intiate Operation Snoopy soon enough.

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