And we're back.

[silveradept]

It was an enjoyable, restful break. Tomorrow will be readings and thinkings and a little of this and that, and then we're back into the swing of things.

What are your dreams? Are you helping someone else realize theirs? Are you making yours come true? Are you even aware of your dreams? (And are the ones you really want worth the effort - they should be...) Are you too busy trying to make your kitchen perfect when what you really want is to be a superhero? (Speaking of superheroes, here'sa bit of a blast from the past for you - Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman) In other superhero news, unfortunate Batman found headless in local crime. Going from slightly strange to definitely strange, an Amish teen has been fined for wiretapping.

From strange to aggravating (but still illegal) acts, a discourse on "A Meditation on the Speed Limit". The "Meditation" containing the illegal act, not the discourse. A very strange thing, that whole sequence of events depicted in the video.

Learning something new every day, I have run across the philosophy of Ignosticism, which requires that a coherent definition of G-d or any metaphysical concept be posited before any arguments about tse's existence can be entertained. Which means a good part of what people are raging over gets ignored because they can't provide a coherent, consistent definition. It's an interesting position, one that I'm sure gets rid of much of the hassle involved.

Also, note to self. Rabbit holes are interesting things. Falling down one will take longer than you think to get to the bottom, but hopefully you'll have learned a thing or three hundred along the way. If you want to really understand everyone, you're going to need to fall down a lot of rabbit holes. This also means that you're going to have to get over nervousness about asking questions and figure out some way of knowing which people hold information for you and which people will be nonplussed if you ask them.

Shazbot - I've got a lot of work ahead of me, if I'm going to have to figure that out. Well, I hope that both humans and gods forgive curious idiots. Otherwise I'm screwed. If the preceding makes no sense, don't worry. It might later on, it might not. If it does make sense to you, then congratulations.

Comments

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Dream(s): check. Knowledge of dream(s): check. Likelihood of attaining dream(s): ...could be better. Will keep working at it.

Nanotechnology... immortality. Only a means to many ends, a stepping stone, but instrumental in one's plans for the future. To live indefinitely, without having to worry about suddenly dropping dead one year--to live on one's own terms, indefinitely (until the next hurdle presents itself, to be dealt with after the immediate one).

*plots*

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) *follows/reads link about lucid dreaming curiously*

[silveradept]

Indefinite life could be useful for putting down long-term plans and being able to see them through. At some point, though, I think there would have to be the option to reverse the immortality, which somewhat defeats the purpose of being immortal.

[urbankotq.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...immortality through technology, and deciding when to end your life. Sounds a bit weird...

"Okay...this is getting boring. And that "only one" asshole keeps trying to chop off my head with his damn sword. I've had about enough. So long, losers! *Types "/quit" into his forearm.*"
=============
Are you sure you want to die?
[OK] [Cancel]

[ ] Do not ask me this question in the future.
=============
"...Somehow I thought this would be more dramatic."

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) 'Indefinite life could be useful for putting down long-term plans and being able to see them through.'

Exactly.

'At some point, though, I think there would have to be the option to reverse the immortality,'

*nods* If one doesn't bring spiritual powers or self-enchaining protocols into the matter, that should be fairly simple (if needed).

'which somewhat defeats the purpose of being immortal.'

Hmm... not entirely, not in the subjective means which matter. At this point in time, I don't believe that I would eventually grow bored (or similar) with life, or otherwise want to end my own existence. However, if I do indeed change such that I do desire such an end (death), at least it will be on my terms: it will be my own choice, my own decision, once I've done everything else that I want to do beforehand.

The alternative: struggling to accomplish all one's plans, experience all one's dreams, before the inevitable death that both will cut short one's struggles and mean that, eventually, one's memories will be lost, that eventually it will, to oneself, mean absolutely nothing whatever one does.

If one eventually chooses this, well, that's one's prerogative at that point. However, one wishes it to be one's own choice, made in light of circumstances and personal experience, and not a pseudo-random occurence that one would otherwise do anything to avoid.

This stage: the 'do[ing] anything to avoid' stage. If the stage later changes, then the rules will change with it. *nods slightly*

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) *smiles*

From a personal (and extremely arrogant/egotistical/self-centred) point of view, who better to decide the time of one's death? One is the one directly affected by it--one knows better than anyone else the details of the situation.

(And, by the way, you could of course program it to be more dramatic. A non-serious (and greatly paraphrased) daydream comes to mind (in which, for the record, the entire thing was actually a facade with the real mind remaining undying):

'Then you will reject me, my love? Alas! O cruel world, o cruel existence! Goodbye... goodbye, my love...

*Deus Ex Ending 1 music plays*

*writhes on the ground* Cut the music... cut the music...! damnit, why'd I have to make this so painful...

*hologram appears:* Sorry, no sacrifice of drama accepted. Really, if you're activating this protocol, what'd you expect?'

...and, yes, that was perhaps a little too long to fully justify quoting, but... it came to mind. *ponders* Hmm. Before my time, that--still in the time of the Triad, with (in the daydream) lots of yelling and 'Escape! Escape!'s. Which then brings up that entire 'reborn as creature(s) of [software] black ice' black ice... hmm. *drops off-net to fiddle with other people's daydreams*

[silveradept]

Understandable. I would like to be immortal, certainly, to know that I will have enough time to accomplish all the things I want to. Hopefully, by the time I've crossed off everything on this list, there will be new and exciting things to try and do. Truth be told, so long as the novelty entertains, I don't think many of us would want to die. And if there were some way that we could experience death and then return to life, I think we would be better equipped to handle the decision of actually dying - at the point where death becomes welcome enough to be chosen.

So, hurry up, nanotech.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) *smiles* My current 'backup plan' in the case of absolute exhaustion of interest is to seed live through a few dozen/hundred/thousand/million/billion planets/solar systems/galaxies/galactic clusters/universes (increment counter as necessary with repetition), put myself into stasis (or a more productive equivalent if available) with protocols in place to protect oneself and/or awake self in the event of anything life-threateningly interesting, and then, when woken, look about and see what civilisations/cultures had evolved in the meantime.

(Or maybe to get very, very much storage, and set something to record everything, then upon awaking go through all the archives so as to not miss anything at all... *smiles*)


I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying! *grins* (Next year, chemistry and biology... now though, once one gets past those... what lies beyond...)

[silveradept]

That would require considerable storage, and you would have to figure out a way of existing, along with your storage, across the death of universes, which would be very tough to do unless there was some sort of extradimensionality that could be harnessed, much like the Universal Computer of Asimov's.

Not to mention that goign through the entire archives of that sort would require some sort of filtering mechanism so that you got all the important data.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Hmm. *nods* The filtering mechanism--depending on the exact structure of one's mind, a sufficient filtering mechanism might not be too hard to make: just flag certain occurences that are usually indicative of intelligent (or semi-intelligent) life, then go to flags and browse randomly.

Extradimensionality and/or survival accross the death of universes: *nods* That's an area that I'm quite interested indeed--it would be rather irritating if one went to all the trouble of surpassing one's mortal restraints to then find that one's absolute destruction was inevitable. Still, it would be vastly preferable (as compared) to not even clearing the first hurdle and living only a normal lifespan, if that: first the steps in front of one, then the steps beyond that which one will then have time to contemplate. *nods*

Storage: likewise. Definitely an interesting problem, but for the details of the circumstances to become any more than daydreams, one must first clear the hurdle(s) immediately in danger of tripping one up.

[silveradept]

Random browsing might work, but you might find that all the narratives worth interest have to be watched in chronological order, or the later ones don't make any sense at all. Filter would have to be able to chain together things that require each other to be of use. Otherwise, it's just information glut, something we have enough trouble dealing with right now.

If and when Gaeans get to the point where they begin to experience the heat death of their universe, they may be able to program something as sophisticated as UC to recreate it for them and return them to their original status before their universe collapsed. This assumes the existence of a stable hyperspace that can be used for the construction of the UC, which may or may not exist. You're right, though. First, clear the hurdle of a galactically insignificant lifespan. Then worry about what you're going to do with all the time you have.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Random browsing just to find something of interest--from there, roughly chronological order (or going back to find the relevant 'beginning', then rough chronological order).

We have trouble dealing with information glut, but in that situation it might be exactly what one wants: in a situation where you feel you know everything, that everything's boring, that there's nothing more of interest out there for you to see, perhaps exactly what you need [to refresh you] is to go to sleep for a while, wake up, and have more (interesting!) data on hand than you (metaphorically speaking) know what to do with. The timescale could also be adjusted so that too big a backlog didn't build up, and that you could digest each portion as a managable chunk before going back to sleep to wait for the next one.


*nods* And another matter: if you have a stable hyperspace, why not just move there permanently yourself (in one form or another)? Definitely best to retain (or be able to regain) the ability to influence (in all means available) all the various forms of space, though, in case a previously unknown fact emerges that might require a return. (The concept of a stable hyperspace is, of course, approximately interchangable with other concepts which have similar implications.)


*nods; smiles*

[silveradept]

I dunno. If you're going to design a filter, "random" doesn't seem to cut it for me - you'd program it with your preferences so that the interesting material comees to the fore. That way, you'd at least get interesting new information before you went back to bed. Although I can imagine taking oneself out for a stroll in teh new world to see if it's worth living in realtime. If not, then going back to bed will do.

As for going into stable hyperspace permanently, it's a possiblilty, but I think most of us would like to be able to manifest into the physical dimensions, so perhaps the cradle for sleep is in a hyperspace, and one can shuttle back and forth between hyper and realspace, depending on interest.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) *nods* That's roughly what I meant about designing it to flag basic indicators of intelligent life--even in the worst-cased scenario (in terms of boredom), you'll probably at least learn or observe something new.

*nods* And of course, we have no idea what hyperspace might be like--it might be exactly like realspace, or better.

[silveradept]

Quite possibly. That would require that the immortal human evolve a method of existing beyond the four-dimensional plane of our current existence, though. Then again, when immortal, all things become possible eventually.

Flagging basic indicators, though, might mean that you get to see the primitives beating on each other. If you've already seen that before and there's nothing new about it, then you might want to skip it when it shows up for the fourteenth time.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) When one primarily exists as a neural network--one would want to make one's grey matter redundant as soon as possible, in any case--redesigning oneself and/or partially (or wholly) transferring oneself to a different medium becomes far more conceivable. *nods* (All things become possible, apart from the impossible things... *smiles*)

Maybe, yes--and one would definitely have plenty of time to refine one's filtering programs. (Even with primitives beating on each other, though, there are still the individual and unique cultural phenomena...)

The emergence of similar minds to one's own would be particularly interesting to witness and deal with.

[silveradept]

I'm inclined to think that if one can gather that kind of data, then one knows also how to manipulate it. A similar consciousness would probably not develop without permission. (God, lonely? Why not? I wonder if there's some sort of story that talks about that)

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Quite--even if it never knew that permission had been given. It's exactly the same as the human situation, except with more room to stand back and watch. Either way, one's actions would likely depend on the individual situation.