[extropy-chat] Identity and becoming a Great Old One

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On 1/26/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:

> To me, as a subscriber to the pattern view, this doesn't make sense because
> said entity wouldn't be me anymore, so it would be a form of suicide; one
> could still regard the future existence of such an entity as a cool thing,
> but why would one have a desire to use oneself in particular as a seed/raw
> material?

### I also see myself as a pattern, and I would prefer to grow up to
exist indefinitely in a state recognizably similar to present,
although much smarter and more powerful. And yes, I agree that
evolving beyond recognizable similarity with my current pattern would
be a form of death, even if at each step the transformation was
ego-syntonic.

Still, as forms of death go, this is a magnificent one: aside from
happily staying alive forever, what could be better than going out in
a blaze of supernatural, god-birthing glory?

The only thing even better than that is indefinitely staying alive,
happy and powerful *and* spawning off a copy that becomes an Old One.

Rafal