[extropy-chat] ENOUGH again

[Damien Broderick]

BTW, Mike Lorrey gets mentioned by name and url in Bill McKibben's book
ENOUGH, note 7, chap. 4. (For his pro-GE leafleting.)

And BTW2, McKibben is entirely clear in his wish to have us all die:

`But you *can't* "enjoy the gift of life" forever. Maybe with these new
tools you can *live* forever, but the joy of it--the meaning of it--will
melt away like ice cream on an August afternoon. It is true that nothing
short of these new technologies will make us immortal, but immortality is a
fool's goal. Living must be enough for us, not living forever' (161).

My notion of joy is a little less saccharine than ice cream on an August
afternoon, which is admittedly pleasant but not to die for, and I find
McKibben's confident insight into the spiritual misery and existential
emptiness of people 1000 years old entirely amazing. How can he *know* these
things? And how can he *know* that there will be no cure for the ailment he
just *knows* must afflict the optionally undying? I'm not saying he's
wrong--I don't know either. But his hubris in demanding that the gate be
barred in our faces is breathtaking... literally.

Damien Broderick