[extropy-chat] A future fit to live in?.

[John K Clark]

Robert Bradbury Wrote:

> Would I want to wake up in an environment where I am clearly obsolete

If you could point to someone smarter that you would that make life no
longer worth living? Even with enhancements you'll never be the smartest kid
on the block, but you could be far smarter than any human alive today.

> and where the material in my body (or the computer hosting my mind) might
> clearly be dedicated to purposes more useful than that which I am likely
> to manifest?

Then why would Mr. Jupiter Brain bother to reanimate you in the first place.
Mr. Jupiter must have some goodwill toward you (even if it's only nostalgic
value) or you'd still be taking a dirt nap.

> Pointless would be the question one confronts.

If Mr. Jupiter thinks the little activities that amuse me are pointless then
that's just tough, Mr. Galaxy Brain probably thinks the same of him. My life
is only pointless if I think it's pointless, Mr. Jupiter's opinion of me is
irrelevant.

> We tolerate the Amish currently because we are not up against the limits.

Yes, there may be cosmological reasons that limit what intelligence can
accomplish, but we are a very long way from bumping into those limits. I
once saw a Woody Allen movie where a little boy must visit a child
physiologist because he was in a deep depression ever since he read that the
proton might be unstable and the entire universe might evaporate in a few
hundred trillion years. I still think that's funny.

  John K Clark