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Billionaires are not immune to the terrifying realities of life and death, they're just more likely to delude themselves into thinking that like so many rules,
by M_Grey 10y ago
Billionaires are not immune to the terrifying realities of life and death, they're just more likely to delude themselves into thinking that like so many rules, they can beat that too. The result is, on the bright side, that sometimes they do some real good by funding research. The downside is that often they blow that money on extremely expensive snake oil.
- mc32 10y agoBut Kurzweil has been banging this drum for a long time. He has means but still isn't near being a billionaire. He just believes.
- M_Grey 10y agoSure, most people bang some form of this drum, but when they do people chuckle. When someone starts swinging tens of millions of dollars whiling banging the drum though... people pay attention. For some strange reason though, they stop seeing it for what it is... dazzled by the money as they are.
- ekianjo 10y agoKurzweil actually not just believes but sells his own snake oil. http://www.rayandterry.com/ http://www.rayandterry.com/ Despite there being no evidence of any effect.
- komali2 10y agoHe still needs money to fund, for example, his cryogenic payments. He wears that little metal bracelet everywhere he goes (I got to a lot of conferences), I can't imagine the service is cheap.
- solotronics 10y agoI read that you set it up so that the cryo people get your life insurance.
- greendragon 10y agoThis is accurate. The absolute cheapest option is around $35k plus an annual membership fee (or a one-time few-k fee I believe). The more premium (but head-only) option is $80k plus annual membership fee. (A bit more if you opt for a standby team.) A life insurance policy that covers these amounts does not cost very much.
- radiorental 10y ago> real good by funding research Like the planet need humans to live longer???
- M_Grey 10y agoThe planet has no needs at all, and human longevity is unlikely to be a major issue when most of our human ventures center around efficient ways of killing each other.
- tonmoy 10y agoA ,ore appropriate question would be, "Does humanity need longevity for humans?"
- M_Grey 10y agoUnknown. There is are reasons to believe that longevity isn't necessarily a bad thing however, and many reasons to believe that it could have global value. You have to remember that in such a rosy future, we still have the oceans to colonize, and then space. Longevity would bring problems with it, but they could be solved by sensible controls on birth rates.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago>most of our human ventures center around efficient ways of killing each other. Excuse me? What planet are you living on? I thought I was already living on the dystopian-social-scifi planet.
- adventured 10y agoThat's blatantly incorrect. The radical majority of human ventures center around improving the quality of life for humans on the planet. An extremely small percentage of human ventures are focused on finding new ways to kill (less than 1%). US defense spending for example - most of which goes to human soldier expenses for pay / benefits / veterans etc - is merely 3% of US GDP. The actual amount of that 3% that goes into figuring out new ways to kill, is less than Google's revenue. In other words, you missed by greater than a factor of 100x (I'd guess greater than 1000x) in your estimation regarding how much effort/money/time humans as a whole are putting into killing each other.
- rezashirazian 10y agoAnd that when you're a billionaire you have much more to lose when you die.
- komali2 10y agoI don't understand this belief, can you expand on it? The way I see it, you don't "lose" anything when you die, because a "loss" implies the lack of ability to use something you once were able to use, and the feeling that comes from that lacking. When someone dies they'll never again be able to use stuff, so there is no loss.
- rezashirazian 10y agoI think we agree up to "a 'loss' implies the lack of ability to use something you once were able to use". Since a dead person is unable to do anything, being a billionaire or not leads to the same conclusion. Where we differ is on the feeling that comes from that lacking. A dead person feels nothing and by your definition is not losing anything since they can't feel it. this is all very true and I agree, however as humans we can sense impending events and a since death is an indisputable fact the feeling of this eventual loss can begin to haunt one before it actually sets in. So technically we can argue that a billionaire begins to feel the cost of losing it when she becomes a billionaire. (since she knows she will die and lose it).
- solipsism 10y agoYou think, when billionaires think about death, that they're bemoaning the loss of their money? That's a very strange thing to believe, and I'm very sure it's wrong.
- dwaltrip 10y agoPerhaps think of it as lost opportunity, instead. More money often provides for more opportunity. I think it is very natural to preemptively feel sorrow for some of the opportunities you will give up when you die.