[ExI] Human extinction

[Stefano Vaj]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 6:53 AM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> I sounds like you meant to write "(In fact, I tend instead to
> consider that the perception of diversity [or difference] can
> only be based on everybody's love for their own identity.)"

Yes, much better put than I did. Just add "the perception and the
desire to protect"...

Reference is obviously made here to both biodiversity and cultural identities.

> If I have not put words into your mouth :-)  then while you
> are making a very valuable point that had not occurred to
> me (nor have I read anywhere), namely, that it's our self-
> love that makes some of us want to stay dissimilar from
> others,

... something which also requires that the others be allowed to stay
different from us. :-)

> For example, someone could avidly hate himself, be on the
> verge of committing suicide, and yet note objectively and
> without emotion that one of his friends has ears that don't
> quite match, or that he has never before seen a person of
> a certain peculiar intellectual cast or ethnic description. It
> would be possible for him to make these objective
> discernments regardless of his own sense of identity.

Absolutely. But it would appear to me that if he hates himself he is
positively indifferent to, say, a progressive homogeneisation of the
world...

> In short, we can have our cake and eat it too. I *do* want
> to attain an IQ of 175, and then later of 200, and then later
> of 400 and so on, but I ought to be able to do that without
> in any way increasing the IQ that I currently have. The solution
> is very simple: future versions of me continue to keep alive and
> run (in the background, as it were) previous versions of me.

Interesting idea... However, this is not the literally the case
nowadays for our small, incremental, individual changes...

> Right. But hopefully my explanation above satisfies that:
> in short, we do not keep every subsequent specimen
> as similar as possible, we only keep some of them as
> similar as possible.

OK, yes. In fact, I personally find the Lucy Genome project, and the
idea of resurrecting living pitecanthrops as absolutely fascinating...

> Yes, I see. But your views do seem odd to me. Ah, what about
> this? Our sun novas and we are completely extinguished, but in
> a galaxy far, far away, a billion years from now a non-DNA
> lifeform evolves, and is subsequently entirely and totally replaced
> by its own very advanced intelligent software. Just why do you
> view (if you do) software that arose from *us* as prefereable
> to identical software that arises elsewhere?

Mmhhh, I think this is a psychological consequence, albeit of a very
metaphorical and indirect nature, of my "gene whisper" that tells me
"reproduce! reproduce! leave something behind!".

Secondly, don't we all want to leave something behind, even when this
cannot by any means considered as "reproduction"? Say, from the
pyramids to some immortal poetry to a fundamental scientific discovery
to a political or business empire or revolution? An equally good and
time-defying achievement that happens somewhere else and in no way
related to me does not sound as satisfactory as one where I brought my
own brick.

Stefano Vaj