[extropy-chat] FUTURE: More Unsolved Riddles

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Harvey Newstrom <mail at HarveyNewstrom.com> wrote:
> Why is sushi Extropian?

Ironic contrast: people accuse us of being
anti-religious, and yet we celebrate soul food.

> If I'm so damn smart, how come I'm not rich?

Wealth often requires patience and luck as well as
intelligence.  Many of us would not be displeased were
the Singularity to happen today.

> If technology keeps getting better and better
> exponentially, why does my PC
> still crash regularly?

Mine doesn't.  ;P

-or-

You're using the cheap (in $ and time) solution, and
it's getting cheaper for the same performance.

> Why don't people converge on the single correct
> answer more often instead of
> holding millions of different unsupportable belief
> systems?

Memetics.  It's like the reason there are still
influenza viruses that can infect - and, on rare
occasion, even kill - humans after all these years.

> Why aren't more people interested in life-extension?

Because most people think it's not actually possible,
and there is a long history of fraud in this field.

> Why can't all our brilliant minds working together
> accomplish more that what
> we are doing now?

They could, in theory.  But how to get to that state?

> How do we capture all our great knowledge from all
> these chats and utilize
> them so we never have to have this conversation ever
> again?

One possibility: create a software agent capable of
understanding typed conversation (at least as well as
a human), but with much more memory resources.  Create
a memory coprocessor, that can upload understanding of
predigested facts to human brains.  Use the first to
create upload packages for the second.