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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I am so sorry to hear of this news. </FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2>I know what you are going through Eliezer, when I was fourteen
I lost my sister who was 19. I always wonder what she would have become.I stood
amid my family saying things like "God takes the good" or "God has
something for her to do" and sensing their calming effect in the belief
system that I did not embrace. I too, was wide awake to the truth of the matter,
and I wanted her here. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>To this day I am
struck by the biological errors that mother nature has dealt to us, leading to
disease and finality, and of course also the importance of theories and
research needed to overcome these problems. As you know, my husband is currently
undergoing chemotherapy so I grapple with the frustration of advanced
technologies such as nanotech and others, not yet being readily available to
avoid this type of suffering. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The concern also grows when I see the fear well up
in the general population when it comes to current advances such as stem
cell research. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>As far as the religious afterlife (or
other) comfort, I think the problem is, no one has cheated death yet, so
the meme continues (at least for some - well probably most) as a way to
propagate suppressing the fear of the end. </FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2>When we show <EM>scientific</EM> immortality is possible as opposed to
<EM>religious</EM> immortality, there may be more for them to contemplate. I
can't wait for the day that death is not inevitable. </FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2>I am deeply touched by your words and emotions and I
completely validate you. The emotions won't go away, but it will at
least become more bearable over time. Perhaps what remains will help guide
you even further down the road you have already begun to travel,
with all of our future(s) in mind. I'd like to thank you for
that. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>My condolences to you, as well as my
constant support for humanity to move beyond this barrier. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Again, I'm so sorry, warmest regards-</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Gina "Nanogirl" Miller<BR>Nanotechnology Industries<BR><A
href="http://www.nanoindustries.com">http://www.nanoindustries.com</A><BR>Personal:
<A
href="http://www.nanogirl.com/index2.html">http://www.nanogirl.com/index2.html</A><BR>Foresight
Senior Associate <A
href="http://www.foresight.org">http://www.foresight.org</A><BR>Nanotechnology
Advisor Extropy Institute <A
href="http://www.extropy.org">http://www.extropy.org</A><BR>My New Project:
Microscope Jewelry<BR><A
href="http://www.nanogirl.com/crafts/microjewelry.htm">http://www.nanogirl.com/crafts/microjewelry.htm</A><BR>Email:
<A
href="mailto:nanogirl@halcyon.com">nanogirl@halcyon.com</A><BR>"Nanotechnology:
Solutions for the future."<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=sentience@pobox.com href="mailto:sentience@pobox.com">Eliezer
Yudkowsky</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=sl4@sl4.org
href="mailto:sl4@sl4.org">sl4@sl4.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=wta-talk@transhumanism.org
href="mailto:wta-talk@transhumanism.org">World Transhumanist Association
Discussion List</A> ; <A title=extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">ExI chat list</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:36
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [extropy-chat] Yehuda Yudkowsky,
1985-2004</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>My little brother, Yehuda Nattan Yudkowsky, is dead.<BR><BR>He
died November 1st. His body was found without identification. The
<BR>family found out on November 4th. I spent a week and a half with my
family <BR>in Chicago, and am now back in Atlanta. I've been putting off
telling my <BR>friends, because it's such a hard thing to say.<BR><BR>I used
to say: "I have four living grandparents and I intend to have four
<BR>living grandparents when the last star in the Milky Way burns out."
I <BR>still have four living grandparents, but I don't think I'll be saying
that <BR>any more. Even if we make it to and through the Singularity, it
will be <BR>too late. One of the people I love won't be there. The
universe has a <BR>surprising ability to stab you through the heart from
somewhere you weren't <BR>looking. Of all the people I had to protect, I
never thought that Yehuda <BR>might be one of them. Yehuda was born July
11, 1985. He lived 7053 days. <BR> He was nineteen years old when
he died.<BR><BR>The Jewish religion prescribes a number of rituals and
condolences for the <BR>occasion of a death. The rituals are pointless
and tiring; the condolences <BR>are religious idiocies. Yehuda has
passed to a better place, God's ways <BR>are mysterious but benign, etc.
Does such talk really comfort people? I <BR>watched my parents, and I
don't think it did. The blessing that is spoken <BR>at Jewish funerals
is "Blessed is God, the true judge." Do they really <BR>believe
that? Why do they cry at funerals, if they believe that? Does it
<BR>help someone, to tell them that their religion requires them to believe
<BR>that? I think I coped better than my parents and my little sister
Channah. <BR> I was just dealing with pain, not confusion. When I
heard on the phone <BR>that Yehuda had died, there was never a moment of
disbelief. I knew what <BR>kind of universe I lived in, and I knew what
I planned to do about that. <BR>How is my religious family to comprehend it,
working, as they must, from <BR>the assumption that Yehuda was deliberately
murdered by a benevolent God? <BR>The same loving God, I presume, who arranges
for millions of children to <BR>grow up illiterate and starving; the same
kindly tribal father-figure who <BR>arranged the Holocaust and the
Inquisition's torture of witches. I would <BR>not hesitate to call it
evil, if any sentient mind had committed such an <BR>act, permitted such a
thing. But I have weighed the evidence as best I <BR>can, and I do not
believe the universe to be evil, a reply which in these <BR>days is called
atheism.<BR><BR>Maybe it helps to believe in an immortal soul. I know
that I would feel a <BR>lot better if Yehuda had gone away on a trip
somewhere, even if he was <BR>never coming back. But Yehuda did not
"pass on". Yehuda is not "resting <BR>in peace". Yehuda is not
coming back. Yehuda doesn't exist any more. <BR>Yehuda was absolutely
annihilated at the age of nineteen. Yes, that makes <BR>me angry.
I can't put into words how angry. It would be rage to rend the <BR>gates
of Heaven and burn down God on Its throne, if any God existed. But
<BR>there is no God, so my anger burns to tear apart the way-things-are,
remake <BR>the pattern of a world that permits this.<BR><BR>I wonder at the
strength of non-transhumanist atheists, to accept so <BR>terrible a darkness
without any hope of changing it. But then most <BR>atheists also succumb
to comforting lies, and make excuses for death even <BR>less defensible than
the outright lies of religion. They flinch away, <BR>refuse to confront
the horror of a hundred and fifty thousand sentient <BR>beings annihilated
every day. One point eight lives per second, fifty-five <BR>million
lives per year. Convert the units, time to life, life to time. <BR>The
World Trade Center killed half an hour. As of today, all cryonics
<BR>organizations together have suspended one minute. This essay took
twenty <BR>thousand lives to write. I wonder if there was ever an
atheist who <BR>accepted the full horror, making no excuses, offering no
consolations, who <BR>did not also hope for some future dawn. What must
it be like to live in <BR>this world, seeing it just the way it is, and think
that it will never <BR>change, never get any better?<BR><BR>Yehuda's death is
the first time I ever lost someone close enough for it to <BR>hurt. So
now I've seen the face of the enemy. Now I understand, a little
<BR>better, the price of half a second. I don't understand it well,
because <BR>the human brain has a pattern built into it. We do not
grieve forever, but <BR>move on. We mourn for a few days and then
continue with our lives. Such <BR>underreaction poorly equips us to
comprehend Yehuda's death. Nineteen <BR>years of life and memory
annihilated. A thousand years, or a million <BR>millennia, or a forever,
of future life lost. The sun should have dimmed <BR>when Yehuda died,
and a chill wind blown in every place that sentient <BR>beings gather, to tell
us that our number was diminished by one. But the <BR>sun did not dim,
because we do not live in that sensible a universe. Even <BR>if the sun
did dim whenever someone died, it wouldn't be noticeable except <BR>as a
continuous flickering. Soon everyone would get used to it, and they
<BR>would no longer notice the flickering of the sun.<BR><BR>My little brother
collected corks from wine bottles. Someone brought home, <BR>to the
family, a pair of corks they had collected for Yehuda, and never had <BR>a
chance to give him. And my grandmother said, "Give them to Channah, and
<BR>someday she'll tell her children about how her brother Yehuda collected
<BR>corks." My grandmother's words shocked me, stretched across more
time than <BR>it had ever occurred to me to imagine, to when my
fourteen-year-old sister <BR>had grown up and had married and was telling her
children about the brother <BR>she'd lost. How could my grandmother skip
across all those years so easily <BR>when I was struggling to get through the
day? I heard my grandmother's <BR>words and thought: she has been
through this before. This isn't the first <BR>loved one my grandmother
has lost, the way Yehuda was the first loved one <BR>I'd lost. My
grandmother is old enough to have a pattern for dealing with <BR>the death of
loved ones; she knows how to handle this because she's done it
<BR>before. And I thought: how can she accept this? If she knows,
why isn't <BR>she fighting with everything she has to change it?<BR><BR>What
would it be like to be a rational atheist in the fifteenth century, <BR>and
know beyond all hope of rescue that everyone you loved would be
<BR>annihilated, one after another, unless you yourself died first? That
is <BR>still the fate of humans today; the ongoing horror has not changed, for
all <BR>that we have hope. Death is not a distant dream, not a terrible
tragedy <BR>that happens to someone else like the stories you read in
newspapers. One <BR>day you'll get a phone call, like I got a phone
call, and the possibility <BR>that seemed distant will become reality.
You will mourn, and finish <BR>mourning, and go on with your life, and then
one day you'll get another <BR>phone call. That is the fate this world
has in store for you, unless you <BR>make a convulsive effort to change
it.<BR><BR>Since Yehuda's body was not identified for three days after he
died, there <BR>was no possible way he could have been cryonically
suspended. Others may <BR>be luckier. If you've been putting off
that talk with your loved ones, do <BR>it. Maybe they won't understand,
but at least you won't spend forever <BR>wondering why you didn't even
try.<BR><BR>There is one Jewish custom associated with death that makes sense
to me, <BR>which is contributing to charity on behalf of the departed. I
am donating <BR>eighteen hundred dollars to the general fund of the
Singularity Institute, <BR>because this has gone on long enough. If you
object to the Singularity <BR>Institute then consider Dr. Aubrey de Grey's
Methuselah Foundation, which <BR>hopes to defeat aging through biomedical
engineering. I think that a <BR>sensible coping strategy for
transhumanist atheists, to donate to an <BR>anti-death charity after a loved
one dies. Death hurt us, so we will <BR>unmake Death. Let that be
the outlet for our anger, which is terrible and <BR>just. I watched
Yehuda's coffin lowered into the ground and cried, and <BR>then I sat through
the eulogy and heard rabbis tell comforting lies. If I <BR>had spoken
Yehuda's eulogy I would not have comforted the mourners in their
<BR>loss. I would have told the mourners that Yehuda had been absolutely
<BR>annihilated, that there was nothing left of him. I would have told
them <BR>they were right to be angry, that they had been robbed, that
something <BR>precious and irreplaceable was taken from them, for no reason at
all, taken <BR>from them and shattered, and they are never getting it
back.<BR><BR>If there should be a monument someday, somewhere on it will be
"$1800, in <BR>memoriam Yehuda Nattan Yudkowsky, 1985-2004." It will not
restore him to <BR>life. No sentient being deserves such a thing.
Let that be my brother's <BR>true eulogy, free of comforting lies.<BR><BR>When
Michael Wilson heard the news, he said: "We shall have to work
<BR>faster." Any similar condolences are welcome. Other
condolences are not.<BR><BR>Goodbye, Yehuda. There isn't much point in
saying it, since there's no one <BR>to hear. Goodbye, Yehuda, you don't
exist any more. Nothing left of you <BR>after your death, like there was
nothing before your birth. You died, and <BR>your family, Mom and Dad
and Channah and I, sat down at the Sabbath table <BR>just like our family had
always been composed of only four people, like <BR>there had never been a
Yehuda. Goodbye, Yehuda Yudkowsky, never to return, <BR>never to be
forgotten.<BR><BR>Love,<BR>Eliezer.<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>extropy-chat
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