[extropy-chat] Uses of Religion

[Robert Bradbury]

On 9/30/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> The duller, gullible and acquiescent win that race by many furlongs.
> Reasoning: in modern times we speak almost constantly of wars.  But if we
> actually break down the numbers of those slain, 3000 American soldiers in
> the past 3 years, perhaps half as many Europeans, 20 or so a day in
> suicide bombings and related violence in the middle east.


Spike, your numbers are slightly off.   Read, the URL Eliezer posted on "Iraq:
the world's first Suicide State" (quite interesting).  At ~3,000/month its
more like 100 a day and works out to ~35,000/year and I suspect those
numbers don't include the non-public deaths carried out by militias or
gangs.

However, I do agree that the impact on the U.S., Europe (or Japan, S. Korea,
Taiwan, India or China) is relatively small in the grand scheme of things.

I shake my head at the $500 billion [1] spent as a result of the deaths of
~3000 people in comparison to the 2.478 million people per year who could be
saved if one really got serious about lifespan extension [2].  Particularly
when the estimate I did for developing a protein based system to jump start
molecular nanotechnology came out at $1+ trillion and I set the idea aside
as being an "unreasonable to hope for" expenditure in our current reality
[3].

Robert

1. This is equal to ~10 years of NIH expenditures on medical research.
2. Presumably the $500 billion is rationalized on the basis of it being
better to sacrifice ~3000 people who are getting paid to be in "harm's way"
"over there" than to have thousands (or tens of thousands) of people "over
here" die who would like to continue living their fantasy that they are out
of "harm's way".
3. The implicit assumption here is that if you demonstrate real molecular
assembly (mechanosynthesis) as being feasible, then the leap from molecular
nanoassembly to actual nanorobots capable of completely correcting or
augmenting ones genetic code to eliminate natural causes of death becomes
much smaller.  Mind you I and some others on the list can make that "leap",
but the large majority of people cannot.
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