Originally Posted by P A N

i just watched the doc. it was pretty interesting to say the least, but i more or less think the same as i did with my first reply to the thread.

the only thing that might change my mind is advancements in nanotech. ray kurzweil wrote a book called The Singularity, in which he described the inevitability of humanity's merging with technology based on the exponential growth rate of information. he's basically convinced that we pretty much don't have an option as a species to avoid this occurring, and he makes some pretty interesting (if not strong) arguments to support his claim.

basically (like really basically) the idea is that the more we learn about the microcosm, the closer we get to a situation where we're given the choice on a personal level to adopt a body - or a fleet of bodies - which basically house the essence of the self. he thinks we can become robots with souls, essentially, made of of materials far yet from currently imagined. he also believes that leaps and bounds will be made in relatively short time, perhaps with the first to transcend biology doing so in the next 40-60 years.

if this were the case, i might think twice about sticking around on our doomed planet. but if this were the case, everything about this idea would be different. for instance, we would likely be able to engineer and construct our physical bodies in such a way which would negate the ship altogether other than to bring resources and building equipment to "Earth 2." "body rockets." or perhaps we could take all of the souls or essences or whatever you want to call them, convert them to a digital format and simply store all of them on a giant hard drive, and the ship would then only need to house a factory of some sort to churn out robotic bodies upon arrival, aside from essential personal who would run the thing. this would also limit the risks involved in not knowing exactly what our new planet is like and so on. but that being said, if we were robots, our atmospheric limitations would greatly decrease.

but this idea sort of changes the related questionnaire regarding this hypothetical situation, because, as kurzweil states in his book (and is also blatantly obvious) humans are likely to have some reservations with the notion of abandoning our physiology as we know it, to put it lightly.

for me though, i'd definitely be down for that. it would also mean being pretty much immortal, and i am more than interested in what humanity gets up to over the course of the next million years... though i am not bent on the idea to the point of obsession as some critics of kurzweil are convinced he is.

he's the guy who is the central figure in the documentary Transcendental Man, for anyone who has seen that or is interested in getting the scoop without haveing to read an epic tome filled with scientific jargon and what might come off as either brilliance or lunacy.

Originally Posted by Trollheart

There are of course a lot of pluses and minuses to essentially becoming immortal (how threads evolve, huh?) the most important in some ways of which is the question of boredom as the years, centuries, millennia pass. HG Wells already tackled that in one form in the book "The time machine", where Man was so lazy and had everything done for him in the future that he basically became a slave to the tougher races that evolved along different lines. Star Trek of course built on this idea, but the central warning is that without anything to challenge or stimulate us, we may just bore ourselves out of existence.

There is of course, the "Vampire theory", where you get to see everything, do everything there is over the course of hundreds or even thousands of years, but again bordeom is likely to set in. Perhaps if we could manage to project our consciousnesses out into space and explore the galaxy without need of our bodies, but again, I don't know. Immortality definitely has its drawbacks.

But then, using these robot body things, certain fears and dangers are eliminated: no hunger (one would assume) no death, no disease (other than maybe rust!) and you would also hope no prejudice, though don't bet on it. Mind you, it would seem implicit that there would be no procreation and perhaps either no sex drive or unbridled sex, depending on how things worked out, so in my case I'd say the jury is spending a few more years in that hotel before coming to a verdict.

Must look for that doc, PAN, seems like it would be very interesting...

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.