Posted on 09/06/2001 4:07:20 PM PDT by blam
You don't know about fruit-flavored K-Y?
I forgot to tell you that of the millions of planets populated with conscious beings, of them (conscious beings) 99.999999% are immortal.
Yes, we're all going to die -- it's just a matter of time.
Widespread biologic immortality with optimum health will be a reality on this planet in time for half the population to achieve it. That of course assumes that a man-made holocaust doesn't occur first.
What I find interesting, especially with cosmology is the fact that scientists claim to "know" how everything happened from the beginning until the present. However, they also make the claim that they understand very little of the matter we can see in the universe and have absolutely no idea about the strange matter they cannot see. Gotta love 'em!
Correct me if I'm wrong but I recall reading an interesting article 15 billion years ago where so-called experts predicted that in approximately 15 billion years the universe was going to disintegrate.
Does anyone here remember that article? I've been searching the internet for the past hour and there is no record of it. Will keep trying, I don't have to be to work till 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning so I've got lots of time.....
I suppose it would. It would mean a lot of the things we've observed about the Universe were, in fact, simply local vagarities. I find this to be unlikely, but certainly possible.
Tuor
You mean the *current* population?
Can I have some of your drugs? They seem to be wonderfully good at divorcing one's self from reality. Usually, I'd have to get so drunk I'd pass out to achieve that effect. Your way seems far cheaper.
BTW: Have you considered what immortality would do to the population and morals of this planet. It wouldn't be pretty -- at all.
Tuor
I've been suspecting as much ever since the Gary Condit mess started.
If it gets down to the last proton decaying, 15 billion is a drop in the bucket.
And how can a vacuum disintegrate?
Fill up with stuff?
Human population grows exponentially (at least, it has this century). The interesting thing is that, as long as the mechanism of immortality doesn't increase the lifetime fecundity of women, the exponent remains the same. That is to say, the population curve doesn't change shape, it just gets shifted forward by about 15 to 20 years. In other words, the abolition of death has the same effect on population growth as a finite, one-time addition of breeding women.
As for the morals, I'd expect that, paradoxically, the problem would probably be that life would become too precious. If you thought you were going to live 10,000 years, you'd be extremely careful at age 25, knowing that one false move could lose you almost all of your time. People would stop taking risks, and mankind would begin to stagnate.
No drugs. No insults. Just do a fair amount of research on both topics.
BTW: Have you considered what immortality would do to the population and morals of this planet. It wouldn't be pretty -- at all.
Unimaginative. Status quo forever -- Not! Just one tiny example; with BI, no criminal escapes responsibility for their crimes -- have to live with it forever. Restitution is the only means to rectify their failure/crime and conscience. Population? Use your imagination to think outside the box. Nanotechnology is but one place to look. Man's nature is creative. If it were destructive, man would have already annihilated the species -- he has the power to do it. The irony of Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings is that there's a high probability that those events cut-short a future nuclear holocaust. Perhaps it would have been the Cuban missile holocaust.
It gets worse. According to Victor Borge, in times of
high inflation we go from stagnate to stagnine.
Yeah, you almost wonder why they call them that. And why does a vacuum need a cleaner, anyway?
The preciousness of life would have several scientists and businesses working to capture the "contents" of the human mind so that in case of a fatal accident the person's "I-ness", sense of self and all memories could be integrated with the dead person's clone. Seems pretty much the opposite of stagnation.
Of course, they could take ten minutes cutting around the world showing the Eiffel Tower, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Pyramids, etc. getting jellied. And a separate few second's cut for each main character that has survived the preceding 110 minutes only to become Smucked.
OK, I'm starting the novelization tomorrow.
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