Do you like the idea of pain and suffering for the same reason? (Honest
question.)
>choose. Regarding meaning, those who recognize the "meaning" of life
>recognize that there is no "meaning". Joesph Campbell in addressing this
>question asks "what's the meaning of a flower", illustrating how strange
>the question is. Of course you could answer that the meaning of the
I don't think the question is at all strange. The meaning of life is
what makes life worth living, hence art, religions and children.
>flower is to pollenate, relating this to previous discussions regarding
>genes and evolution. If we find comfort in immortality why not consider
>memetic immortality. We all contribute in one way or another to the
>"meme pool", some more significantly than others. When you consider
>someone like Charlie Parker, or Plato for that matter, it's clear that
>both have achieved a very realistic immortality through there
>ideas/memes. I like the idea of my own mortality, it's challenging. I
This I agree with entirely. Personally I believe my best chances at
immortality are through my memes, partly because I have no interest
in reproducing and partly because I'm not nearly as optimistic about
longevity technology as some other transhumanists (though I do think
the technology is well within the realm of possibility).
>have no desire to live forever in any realm, and other than the comfort
>it seems to bring to consider an idealized otherworldly existence it's
How do you feel about people who kill themselves in their teens? Don't
they seem awfully naive? Maybe if people could live to be a thousand
they would consider their first century to be their childhood.
>not a very useful concept. Be here now.
How is desiring to live forever mutually exclusive with being here now?
-- David McFadzean dbm@merak.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Merak Projects http://www.merak.com