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While I can agree with the author's point I think it was poorly expressed (your summary is better) and the way he suggests embodying the point seems contradicto
by Jach 15y ago
While I can agree with the author's point I think it was poorly expressed (your summary is better) and the way he suggests embodying the point seems contradictory to making an effort against Death. Though I think if people did have a certain expectation to live billions of years we wouldn't have very many hurried people around, though that's just my own speculation.
> Not to mention the disappointment you might feel if you die before the onset of the much hyped biotech revolution, having placed your hopes for happiness in its arrival.
At least the disappointment would be brief since by the time you're close enough to death to feel it you won't be alive much longer. Though I would find it pitiable that a person refuses to be happy their entire life and would only be happy being essentially immortal; it seems like many 'immortalists' are actually quite content in their current lives but want that to go on as long as possible.
- kiba 15y agoThey would also take great effort to find black swans and long shot. Living a really long life can make you ambitious. If you're an old 75 years old, than you might be predisposed to the short term. The young don't know they have it, and the old don't care. If you're going to live on the average lifespan of a 100,000 thousand years and improving, than 50 years is no problem to be wasting your time on big projects. You can wait for your space probes to report to you, make big colonization effort that span centuries, and solve scientific questions that will take decades to unravel.
- tejaswiy 15y agoWow. This reads like a Neal Stephenson novel.
- say_ 15y agoIronically, such a world would have to be populated by people born after the epoch, not before, to fully take advantage of the conceptual freedoms it would have to offer.
- pjscott 15y agoPeople change. And they would have plenty of time to get used to it.
- nitrogen 15y agoThe unfortunate, but probably avoidable downside: the rich old people most interested in and capable of affording life extension therapy give so much inertia to the status quo that humanity's progress is thrown to a screeching halt.