h+ Magazine

This is possibly the most satanic thing I have seen in months, and I have
only been in this site for 2 minutes. Immortality is what Satan promised
Eve in the garden of Eden, the Devil told her that if she ate she would be
like a god. Greed is the only thing I can think of when I think of immortality.
If someone is suffering, let them rest in peace.

By the way here are some prophecies for you(not my own but truth)

there are much more natural disasters to come before the end of days.
especially earthquakes.

*Well first you have to put meaning to words... What does immortality means? Is it something that will last forever?*

Well, the conundrums of immortality appear when human beings and things that were once human beings, begin to be able to live a much longer time than time period human evolved in.

Kurzweil's point that humans extrapolate phenomenon linear while the world changes exponentially is just one example of our natural blindness to different events. Another blindness is quite likely thinking only at the scale of our natural lifespan.

It is certainly true that a being which lives beyond the natural human lifespan would not be human, would have to be "self-engineered".

What I would offer is that I suspect that the act of self-engineering will involve more than "becoming smarter". For example, one could engineer a being which is smarter and better at cooperating with other beings OR one could engineer a being which is smarter and better at manipulating, controlling, and dominating other beings. The later option might close off the former option (it's hard to cooperate with lying manipulator).

Ray Kurweil and other immortalists do indeed talk about the need to understand intelligence and use the progress of simulation technology to aid in that understanding. But rather than looking at only intentions, we have to look at the way things are going. Our *understanding* of the nature of intelligence is pathetic today *in comparison* to our ability to simulate the brain and progress is going in the direction of more powerful simulations, not more understanding. The Blue Brain project is talking about creating working brain-simulation in remarkably few years and then hooking the brain to all the world's stimulus. So things look like they will actually go in the direction of re-engineering with only a relatively minute level of understanding. There is no reason to think that this will create being more inclined to cooperate with each than human beings are - indeed, considering a large portion of intelligence enhancement is for competitive purposes - better grades, higher profits, more national power etc., it seems plausible that the entire project is moving towards a "psychotic higher intelligence". Could this be a problem?

It was once said "with great power come great responsibility". In present explosion of possibilities (and potential power), how does that apply? Well, I already know few people are thinking about this...

I am sad to say that videos like this make me feel even more like the folks pursuing immortality aren't considering the implications of either immortality or the singularity.

Consider

- if the goal of a limited-life-span organism is to reproduce, what will the goal of an unlimited-life-span organism.
- Perhaps we live forever but can we stay sane forever? What would it mean to be insane and immortal? (and sorry if I don't think is merely disorder easily corrected by a dose of chemical - even a poorly programmed computer can be said to be insane, what if the logic of one's goals, drives and ambitions begins to break down?)
- Would not immortality become an invitation to conservatism in all things? Especially, would anyone skydive if accidental death was the only form of death? Would anyone even walk across the street after a while?
- If the young shake up our world, give us hope and etc., what happens when the old accumulate limitlessly?
- How would jobs, political offices, and social relations work if no ever retired?

The folks advocating immortality clearly imagine a world in which those who gain immortality will constantly grow and gain new heights of understanding. That's admirable but the average human being today doesn't have that kind of agenda past thirty. They will want immortality but probably want to live indefinitely more or or less as they are.

Perhaps the super-intelligent computers on the horizon can solve problems like these, since we haven't. But I suspect that wisdom isn't a matter of processing power but a matter of the balance between emotional drives. We aren't going to program this balance point into the new machine if we don't have it ourselves - instead, we'll program the machines to satisfy the drives we have at the level we have. Among other abilities we'll gain, we'll become *even better* than we are already at getting things that aren't healthy in the longer run.

And again, perhaps each increase in power will allow us to correct previous short-sighted actions. In twenty years, perhaps we can solve pollution in one fell swoop. But that doesn't mean that in twenty years we won't the power to do other short-sighted actions on an even larger scale. It's a matter of wisdom not power.

One thing I'd say, it's worth talking about because this coming whether we are ready or not...