[extropy-chat] MOVIE: "The Singularity"

[The Avantguardian]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> Spoilers, technically - or view this as a warning
> for anyone thinking
> of watching it.  The punchline is that "indefinite
> life and infinite
> knowledge = boring", so people start committing
> suicide the day after.

Even if this were to happen, it would still be a
beautiful thing. The view that suicide is "wrong" is a
reflection of western judeo-christian cultural mores.
Other cultures at other times, including the Japanese
and the ancient Romans, believed that suicide was the
ultimate expression of freedom and self-determination.
After my motorcycle accident, I was confined to a
wheelchair for 2 months while my broken ankles mended.
Because I could not climb the stairs to my own
apartment, I had to stay in a rehabilitation center
that doubled as an old folks home. Let me tell you,
there is nothing closer to hell on earth than one
those. 

There I truly came to understand with crystal clarity
the beauty and the necessity of the transhumanist
vision. Believe me, Kass and the rest be damned, there
is absolutely no dignity to growing old, if at the end
of a life of toil and striving you end up in a
retirement home. All hours of the night, I was kept
awake by moans, groans, and pitiful cries of "God
please kill me". Nothing is more pitiful than an
senile octagenarian calling for her daddy to take her
away. Time lost all meaning for me as days ran into
nights and days again, until every once in a while
someone mercifully died of "natural" causes. I decided
then and there that Dr. Kevorkian is a freakin hero.
And I swore, I would never let myself be put in one of
those places ever again. Hopefully SENS will be worked
out by the time I need it. If not, then cryonics,
euthansia, or taunting grizzly bears in Alaska is in
the cards for me but no retirement home ever again. 

> The counter, of course, is the truly deep and
> complex mysteries of the
> universe (and of humanity), which even an
> immediately-post-Singularity
> intelligence would need quite some time to unravel
> (and which many
> people simply can't understand the joys of
> unravelling, having never
> applied themselves to solving the vast range of
> immediately relevant
> problems that even pre-Singularity intelligences are
> capable of
> cracking - many due to the errant belief that the
> problems are simply
> beyond their ability to ever do anything about, and
> thus do not merit
> the personal investigation which might disprove that
> belief).

Neitsche was wrong, there is no ubermensch. Just
mensch and beasts. And in my opinion, it should take a
lot more than 46 chromosomes and 98% chimpanzee genome
to qualify as mensch. Not that I believe that
justifies cruelty to man or beast.


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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