<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)">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.<br>
<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)">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.<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)">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.<br>
<br>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).<br>
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(11,83,148)">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<br>
</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Ben <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bbenzai@yahoo.com" target="_blank">bbenzai@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="">Tara Maya <<a href="mailto:tara@taramayastales.com" target="_blank">tara@taramayastales.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
>On Feb 12, 2014, at 11:17 AM, Ben <<a href="mailto:bbenzai@yahoo.com" target="_blank">bbenzai@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
>> 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.<br>
>><br>
>> I'm afraid I can't take seriously any kind of long-term projection where people are still wandering around in meat ape-suits.<br>
><br>
><br></div><div class="">
>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.<br>
><br></div><div class="">
>Not everything old is extinct. Not everything new displaces what it replaces.<br>
<br>
<br></div>
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.<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
<br>
Ben Zaiboc<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
______________________________<u></u>_________________<br>
extropy-chat mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat" target="_blank">http://lists.extropy.org/<u></u>mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-<u></u>chat</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>