[ExI] hard science

[William Flynn Wallace]

OK Ben and Natasha and everyone:  if we are not going to be wearing ape
suits in the future, what will we be like?  In my book I consider the
possibility of little green men:  skin able to convert sunlight to energy,
smallness because it's far more efficient, no digestive tract and its
disgusting products.


And if babies are made by machines, then breasts and penises and all the
rest of our sex equipment are unnecessary.  Producing the highs of all
types, orgasms, drugs, peak experiences should be fairly easy long before
the far future without  relying on sense organs.

We will no longer be human, but does that matter?  If, in fact, the best
way to go about improvement is to add chromosomes, then we will be a
different species, defined simply as being unable to reproduce with 46
chromosome humans.

I am comfortable with not being human, but I think I'd like to keep the ape
suit as long as the mental and physical diseases and disabilities are
gone.  (OK, maybe put the balls inside like women, and maybe a retractable
penis).

And all of this may be doable just with a brain in a jar, but I don't think
I'd opt for that existence even to save my life, even if I might not know
the difference.   Yeah, I know - that makes no sense at all.  bill


On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Ben <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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