[ExI] Human extinction (correction)

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Fri Aug 15 05:26:17 UTC 2008


Yesterday I wrote

> In fact, I would upload everyone on Earth right now if I could,
> simply in order to save billions of lives should the worst
> occur. From my point of view, it would be very unethical
> to expose countless people to unknown hazards, such as
> Gamma Ray bursts, if I could do something about it.
> 
> Moreover, let's not forget that as they're presently
> constituted, and on the present hardware they're
> running on (i.e. the Earth), many are going to die
> very soon. Around 100,000 religious people perish
> every single day.

I got that very rough number by dividing 6 billion by
a factor of 2 to get the religious "types", then dividing
by 70 (three score and ten), and then by 365. 

By coincidence, tonight I began reading Aubrey De 
Grey's "Ending Aging", which appears to be a very
fine book, and on page 8 he writes

    I'll start with some numbers. Around 150,000 people
    die each day worldwide---that's nearly two per
    second---and of those, about two-thirds die of aging.
    That's right: 100,000 people.

First, it's startling that one third of today's dead people
can be classified as having died prematurely.

Secondly, I should revise my figure, since Keith stipulated
that we were uploading the religious. Seventy-five thousand
or more religious people die each day, and that's a shame.
Who wouldn't non-destructively upload them?

Lee




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