[ExI] The Myth of Stagnation
JOSHUA JOB
nanite1018 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 8 07:13:08 UTC 2009
On Nov 7, 2009, at 5:48 PM, Max More wrote:
> The philosopher Bernard Williams once wrote a piece on "The Tedium
> of Immortality". Although I have long thought his view reeked of
> sour grapes, he expressed similar sentiments to those I've heard
> many times over the years. "The Myth of Stagnation" is my rebuttal
> to those sentiments.
>
> http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.com/2009/11/myth-of-
> stagnation.html
This was a very good article. What I found most interesting was the
discussion of the end-game for life, what the limits actually are on
consciousness in the Universe. There was a great novel, "Manifold:
Time" by Stephen Baxter, which deals with what life at the "end" of
the Universe would look like. We'd be squeaking energy out of black
holes, managing their coalescence so that we could have the sweet spot
between maximum survival time and our energy needs. It was both
exciting and sad, watching as life reshapes the whole of existence to
survive (exciting), and watching as entropy inexorably creeps up
across the eons (sad).
Of course, in our Universe none of that could happen. Our best
understanding of the cosmos is that its expansion is not decelerating,
as we would expect, but has been accelerating for the last 7 billion
years. Estimates suggest that we will lose contact with everything but
the Local Group within a trillion years (because all other galaxies in
the Universe will be traveling away at faster than the speed of
light). Others place an uncomfortably short timeline of 30 billion
years before a Big Rip (based on one explanation for the acceleration,
in that timescale every point of space-time will move away from every
other at the speed of light, ending any chance of life or
consciousness or structure).
But I don't feel any of these pose problems for someone who wants to
live forever. As a character in "Manifold: Time" says when faced with
the "inevitability" of the destruction of life in the Universe eons
hence, "The game itself is worth playing!" I don't think there is any
reason to think we will face any such end however. As you suggest in
your paper, we may be able to build universes (ideally then entering
them, and escaping from our present one). Depending on where physics
leads, there are some hints that we might even be able to travel to
other, already existing, universes (which will likely have other laws
of physics, which may pose a problem). I am confident that if there is
a way to escape the death of the Universe, we will find it. And if
there isn't one, than I want to have the knowledge that I survived
until the end of all existence. What more could you possibly ask for
than that?
On a psychological note: Humans are amazingly adaptable creatures, and
when we want to, we can provide meaning to our lives. It will
certainly take some major changes in our psychology and outlook to
incorporate an indefinite lifespan into our lives, but I see no reason
to think we couldn't. The most any person could argue is that everyone
would find a point at which life just isn't worth living anymore.
While I can't guarantee that is not the case, it certainly is no
argument against life-extension. There is one thing we know for sure:
age 100 certainly isn't it.
Joshua Job
nanite1018 at gmail.com
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