[extropy-chat] Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

Rik van Riel riel at surriel.com
Sat Nov 20 18:01:15 UTC 2004


On Thu, 18 Nov 2004, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:

> I heard my grandmother's words and thought: she has been through this
> before.  This isn't the first loved one my grandmother has lost, the way
> Yehuda was the first loved one I'd lost.  My grandmother is old enough
> to have a pattern for dealing with the death of loved ones; she knows
> how to handle this because she's done it before.  And I thought: how can
> she accept this?  If she knows, why isn't she fighting with everything
> she has to change it?

You need to accept reality; whether or not to fight it is a
decision to make after having accepted reality.  I would
guess that everybody will have picked their own things they
want to change in reality, but nobody has tried to change
absolutely everything.

Some people want to change capitalism, others want to change
healthcare, many people are content to change just their own
family and make a difference in their children's upbringing.
The number of people who have chosen to change mortality is
probably much smaller...

In order to change reality, you need to have traction with
it, accept contact with it, etc.

> What would it be like to be a rational atheist in the fifteenth century,
> and know beyond all hope of rescue that everyone you loved would be
> annihilated, one after another, unless you yourself died first?  That is
> still the fate of humans today; the ongoing horror has not changed, for all
> that we have hope.  Death is not a distant dream, not a terrible tragedy
> that happens to someone else like the stories you read in newspapers.

Not sure about the fifteenth century, but with the advent
of biology and natural selection I realise that one day
the carbon atoms in my body will need to be recycled for
use in our descendants.

Would I want to live forever?   Maybe.

Would I want to live forever if it meant holding up
evolution and the spreading of life ?   No.

For me, it is the totality of life that is special.
That peculiar ordering of matter and energy that spreads
consciousness through the universe.

Some things are more important than my own life.  I still
would like a very long lifespan, but immortality might
prove to be a drain on life itself...

Rik
-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan



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