[ExI] No gods, no meaning? (was: Re: Existing as stored data)

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of The Avantguardian via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] No gods, no meaning? (was: Re: Existing as stored data)


On Tuesday, April 21, 2020, 01:23:18 PM PDT, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: 
 
>>...  If they don’t leave something to somehow be visible from the outside, they are irrelevant.  Humans blasted out a signal into space in 1974.  That signal is the brightest object in the galaxy at that frequency.  If we end up going extinct, we could argue that signal differentiates us from complete irrelevance...spike

>...Worry not, Spike, the universe remembers.... Think about the impact that the age of dinosaurs has had on modern culture. If we were to go extinct tomorrow, then imagine the impact that finding the Statue of Liberty would have on some none-human archaeologist in a few billion years... Stuart

Cool idea, but your example fails in the numbers:  the statue of liberty is made of a material sufficiently reactive with oxygen, catalyzed by sea salt that in a billion years there would be no indication of a statue.  The site would be anomalously high in copper and zinc.

The 1974 radio blast is our most persistent signal, but outside of that, we have very little that would remain after even a few million years.  We modern humans are very plentiful, but we dispose of ourselves in a manner not conducive to making fossils.

>...Consider your life to be your message to the world.... Stuart LaForge

My most persistent message to the world will be the stuff I posted on this site.  

Now there's a scary thought.

Heeeeeeyyyy, that's an idea: create a business for those who want to be million year-fossils, as a message to future generations and life forms.  It could even work with cryonics: your body, pay someone else to let them use their head after they are done with it (they could even have it on there at their funeral) then afterwards put it with your body, fill the thing with some kind of stable acrylic polymer resin (like the stuff they use to make a souvenir (such as those who get a later-life circumcision and have a sense of humor (put it in that stuff, keep it in your desk, bring it out when your company won't go away, that sorta thing.)))  Make a big rectangular box, fill it with that stuff, in ya go, someone else's head (preferably someone better looking than I am) put an ID plate in there, the stuff hardens, into the ground near the sea where some future lifeform might want to build something that needs a parking structure so their bulldozer finds you.

We might be able to put together a viable business with that.  

Better idea: same notion, preserve your remains in acrylic polymer but we charge extra to remove adipose and insert silicon prosthetics to make the corpse look great for the next several million years.

Stuart forget those hangars over there at Moffett.  We could make a buttload off this notion.  Or rather I could, then I would say nice things about your giving me the idea, by mentioning the Statue of Liberty, which of course leads directly to the notion of preserving cosmetically enhanced corpses in resin blocks for future archaeologists for insane profits.

spike

(Note, that last part is a joke.  There is no such thing as insane profits.  All profits are sane.)