[extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?

[Damien Broderick]

>It’s not clear to me that the
>chances of being saved by future posthumans is
>increased more, or even equally much, by a Ray
>Kurzweil way of living, than/as for example by a
>Mother Theresa way of being ­ given that the
>posthumans value altruism more than anything else.

Only if posthumans are godschmucked idiots will 
they wish to retrieve Mother Teresa. I suggest 
you read Christopher Hitchens’ book The Missionary Position. Or start with

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hitchens_16_4.html

e.g.:

"One of the most salient examples of people's 
willingness to believe anything if it is garbed 
in the appearance of holiness is the uncritical 
acceptance of the idea of Mother Teresa as a 
saint by people who would normally be thinking - 
however lazily - in a secular or rational manner. 
In other words, in every sense it is an unexamined claim.

It's unexamined journalistically - no one really 
takes a look at what she does. And it is 
unexamined as to why it should be she who is 
spotlighted as opposed to many very selfless 
people who devote their lives to the relief of 
suffering in what we used to call the "Third 
World." Why is it never mentioned that her stated 
motive for the work is that of proselytization 
for religious fundamentalism, for the most 
extreme interpretation of Catholic doctrine? If 
you ask most people if they agree with the pope's 
views on population, for example, they say they 
think they are rather extreme. Well here's 
someone whose life's work is the propagation of 
the most extreme version of that.

That's the first motive. The second was a sort of 
journalistic curiosity as to why it was that no 
one had asked any serious questions about Mother 
Teresa's theory or practice. Regarding her 
practice, I couldn't help but notice that she had 
rallied to the side of the Duvalier family in 
Haiti, for instance, that she had taken money - 
over a million dollars - from Charles Keating, 
the Lincoln Savings and Loans swindler, even 
though it had been shown to her that the money 
was stolen; that she has been an ally of the most 
reactionary forces in India and in many other 
countries; that she has campaigned recently to 
prevent Ireland from ceasing to be the only 
country in Europe with a constitutional ban on 
divorce, that her interventions are always timed 
to assist the most conservative and obscurantist forces."

Damien Broderick