[extropy-chat] A sad day

Robert J. Bradbury bradbury at aeiveos.com
Mon Oct 10 16:26:52 UTC 2005


This statement came across my desk today.  It is with regard to
the Pakistan/India earthquake.  It made me cry.

It is a direct quote from the NY Times.

> Dr. Fara Shah, an ophthalmologist working a shift in the triage tent,
> said, "Life and death is in your hands. Mostly it's death in your hands."

Earthquakes are one of the hardest extropic problems to solve.
Katrina or Rita or Stan you can see coming.  Earthquakes you can't.

It is possible to engineer people to be better able to withstand
them -- but that requires that everyone install a nanotechnology
based "vasculoid" system.  (Vasculoid is desirable because it
significantly limits death due to 'crushing').  However that solution
may be difficult because it is highly likely that many would prefer
to remain more humanoid and less "cyborg".

I know that Robert Freitas is working on a book chapter where
he potentially is talking using nanotechnology to reduce our
hazard function to enable ~10,000 year lifetimes.  But it starts
getting very hard to go beyond that unless one starts discussing
either stopping plate tectonics or removing every human from the
planet.

Robert





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