Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Friday, May 25, 2012

You Are All Going To Die

According to a poll of Very Serious Futurologists:
34.8% of IEET poll responders selected “Cryonics and Resurrection” in a recent survey that inquired about life-after-death preferences. 27.7% selected, instead, the category, “Uploaded in a Non-Biological Medium,” and 24.1% chose “Either is Fine.”
Nevertheless, every single one of these responders is going to die and not one of them will be resurrected in sexy genetically tweaked comic-book super model super hero bodies or in shiny immortal robot bodies or in angelic digital post-bodies in cyber-heaven or whatever nano-digi-cryo-3D Printer scenario happens to be preoccupying their fancy at the moment. In this, they share of course in the mortality without a prospect of resurrection of everybody else, including countless billions of other people of faith who dreamed and dream otherwise, and think they will go to fluffy cloud heaven or seventy two virgins in sensual paradise or your own personal planet or revenge fantasy judgment day or what have you.

Although I am a crusty atheist myself, I am happy to grant that this sort of thing is probably mostly comparatively harmless, or at least not inevitably devastating to those who indulge in it. I think this is true rather in the way a preference for Coke over Pepsi is also comparatively harmless though certainly not good for you whatever your taste may be. At any rate, it remains harmless so long as one doesn't become so obsessed or denialist about mortality through one's faithful fancies, whether conventional or futurological, that one becomes more death-dealing or dead in life before one dies than one otherwise would have done, which, I have to say, does sadly seem to happen sometimes.

4 comments:

jimf said...

> [I]t remains harmless so long as one doesn't become so
> obsessed or denialist about mortality through one's faithful
> fancies, whether conventional or futurological, that one
> becomes more death-dealing or dead in life before one dies
> than one otherwise would have done, which, I have to say,
> does sadly seem to happen sometimes.

Not just "sometimes". It happens a lot! To paraphrase Bertrand Russell
(slightly out of context), "It's one of the diseases of the mind
to which human communities are subject."

> 34.8%. . . selected “Cryonics and Resurrection”. . .
> 27.7% selected. . . “Uploaded in a Non-Biological Medium,”
> and 24.1% chose “Either is Fine.”

Heaven or Hell, "either is fine". Non-existence, not so much.
These folks are, of course, very selective in their taste for SF.
Iain Banks is not on the approved list; otherwise they might
have been given pause by _Surface Detail_ (if prior reading hadn't
already given them reason for hesitation). Be careful what you
wish for. . .

Dale Carrico said...

I agree with you that it happens a lot, to be quite honest. A whole lot.

jimf said...

> You Are All Going To Die

I've decided I'm not going to die, after all. ;->

Protandim on PBS Healing Quest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2V7ex0X30I

ABC Primetime and Protandim Update
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvuNo6RwSx8

http://www.amazon.com/LifeVantage-Corporation-891714001045-Protandim-caplets/dp/B000VUIK9W

But don't forget your:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XQ9A2K
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I4C19G
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007DZLZVS
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SI5QW4
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002FJY3H0
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GTFOBA
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JKREXM
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GTFOBA
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000052YTE

Not to mention your
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OP1W0S

and your
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004F9L4EI

;->

jimf said...

> > You Are All Going To Die
>
> I've decided I'm not going to die, after all. ;->

And neither, apparently, is Donny Osmond. (Darn, where
was this stuff when Dick Clark needed it?)

Gee, is Donny Osmond a Mormon transhumanist?

Donny Osmond talks Protandim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TDNFrqpND0