[ExI] hard science

[Ben]

Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com> wrote:

 >On Feb 12, 2014, at 11:17 AM, Ben <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 >> I would assume that, in tens of thousands of years, 'everything is 
digitised' would include people, and they'd have forgotten long ago what 
it was like to be embodied in frail short-lived biological bodies.
 >>
 >> I'm afraid I can't take seriously any kind of long-term projection 
where people are still wandering around in meat ape-suits.
 >
 >
 >I don't see why. Amoebas are still wandering around in single-cell 
suits, despite being immensely older than 10,000 years, and despite the 
presence of our exalted selves.
 >
 >Not everything old is extinct. Not everything new displaces what it 
replaces.


OK, what you say is correct, but not relevant to what I mean.  Let me 
rephrase:  I can't take seriously any kind of long-term projection where 
the major players are still wandering around in meat ape-suits.

I'm not saying that biological humans as they are now /couldn't/ be 
around in thousands of years (there are reasons why they might not be, 
but that's another matter), I'm saying that any that are would be 
extremely unlikely to have the same status as humans do today, and would 
be like amoebas in more ways than one, compared to the beings of 
interest that should be around then (unless, of course, something like 
Ian M Banks' idea of Sublimation is possible).


Ben Zaiboc