Technical and Spiritual Development

Rodney Kelp wrote:

If life were extended substantially the laws would change dramatically.
Having children would be banned and only birthed under strict governmental
control to keep the population from exploding.



Cut to delivery room of hospital- woman in labor, husband holding her
hand, three FBI agents taking notes.
Meanwhile, in Appalachia, another FBI agent is strapping a ten pound
charge of TNT to a screaming hillbilly.

Religion would become large groups of celibate radicals. Supression of all
things that show sex, love or thoughts of reproduction. There would probably
also be moves to castrate at birth and sewing up of the vagina. People could
not sleep together ever again.



In short, everyone would start to act like married couples do after a
few years. :-)

Pat

William Mook wrote:


Disrespect for the young and elderly, feebleness and lack of vitality
associated with extreme age - these are features of the primitive
cultures predating the sea change I'm talking about. What you view as
problems are merely projections of your limited imagination.



Didn't Doctor Frankenstein say something like this just before he took
the bone saw to the first corpse? :-D

Pat

Craig Fink wrote:


But to get true change, in several of your examples, it really takes
another generation to make the change. The old generation dies off, then
the new generation brings the better idea froward. If the older generation
doesn't die off at some point, won't human beings then stagnate as as
species? Or, will we have achieved utopia, and change will no longer be
necessary?



I'm still alarmed about those jewels in the palms of our left hands that
start flashing red when we hit three hundred. ;-)

Pat

William Mook wrote:

Person's Puppeteers are are fictional extraterrestrial species created
by Larry Niven in his Ringworld novels. They do not exist except as a
fiction.



That's just the sort of talk I'd expect from a Kzinti fifth columnist-
lets have a look at those hands....just like I thought....retractable
claws!

,..,,,.,,

Terrell Miller wrote:



Society stagnates. Nothing ever changes. Instead of learning "new"
stuff, people devote massive effort to learning everything they can
about the past. Retro is in. Read every single word that Thackeray
ever wrote many times over, and spend twenty years getting your
doctorate on the topic. Then in fifty years when you've said just
about everything you can stand to say about the man's work, move on to
another research project. Time for another Ph.D in Sumerian pottery or
whatever.


It's the world of "Groundhog Day", isn't it? :-\

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Terrell Miller wrote:

[blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera]

It's the world of "Groundhog Day", isn't it? :-\

He makes it sound so boring. As if the sum-total of all
intellectual knowledge in existence in stored form at
present were some monstrous bin of dullness. And, of
course, he pretends as if the only thing people would
have or think to do with their infinite lifespans would
be being a couch potato. Ya know, there are many people
who don't actually want to die today (many of them with
quite long remainders of their natural lifespans ahead
of them) who nevertheless engage in activities more
interesting and risky than getting to the end of their
"EverythingFlix.com" queue.

Is it just me or does it seem like this little sub-thread on
human life extension has deteriorated into little more than
intellectual masturbation? Seems like everyone has their
own little pet theory on how things will be TOTALLY, COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT AND AWESOME AND/OR HORRIBLE! Completely ignoring, of
course, that it will take a long time before people actually
start *growing* significantly older, even if they can.
Ignoring also that the average human life span has tripled
within the last few generations and things aren't too terribly
awesome and/or horrible today.

In article ,
Alan Jones writes:
On 22 Jan 2005 04:37:44 -0800, "William Mook"
wrote:

A few years back I read in one of Carl Sagan's books a comment about
the the shift in feeling towards slavery. In 1800 nearly all civilized
people thought nothing of owning slaves. By 1900 nearly all civilized
people were apalled at the thought of slavery. What happened? The
civil war? No, the civil war was the RESULT of a shift of
conciousness, not the effect. This gave Carl the great hope that
someday humanity will have a similar shift of conciousness with regard
to warfare.

The big change in slavery occurred with the invention of the Ox Yoke.
Prior to that the Ox had no economic preference over humans as slave
beasts of burden. Likewise, the industrial revolution, cotton gin,
steam power, fossil fuel engines, etc. had a huge impact on slavery.
Today, the world is so densely populated that there is no need to take
on the burden of slave ownership. Cheap labor is readily available on
demand, often from foreign nationals.

I beg to differ a bit, here - But Ox Yokes have been around for
centuries - about th same length of time as slavery, in fact. (The
ANcient Egyptians were early adopters)
What you may be thinking of is the Horse Collar. Horses, unlike Oxen
and other bovines, pull with their heads up, rather than head down.
This means that any sort of a haness that you could put into a horse
would constrict theri windpipe, throttling (as it were) their output.
A yoke won't work on a horse, because the design of the forward
"shoulders" is significantly different than that of an Ox.
The padded horsecollar allows the horse to pull with its "shoulders"
with its head up, and without choking itself.
At this point horses began to make economic sense as something other
than a mount for Cavalry. (A horse eats as much as 4-5 men, but
without a horsecollar, can do the work of about 4 men. With a
horsecollar, output reaches 10-12 manpower, and the fact that a horse
is less versatile and more fragile than a human is less of a factor in
the total economic equation.


--
Pete Stickney

Without data, all you have are opinions

Christopher M. Jones wrote:


Is it just me or does it seem like this little sub-thread on
human life extension has deteriorated into little more than
intellectual masturbation? Seems like everyone has their
own little pet theory on how things will be TOTALLY, COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT AND AWESOME AND/OR HORRIBLE!


I think the "sewing the vaginas shut" concept was about when it jumped
the shark in this regard. I liked to read old science (1870's-1960's)
and if there is one thing that you learn from doing that, it's that the
future comes out a lot stranger than most science fiction ever conceived
of. The real future? If I were to guess, it'd be a lot like the one
shown in "The Fifth Element".
As a rule, the writers who were doing parodies got it closer than the
serious ones did.

Pat

"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
news
Hogwash. Death would be seen as still beign the ultimate punishment,
even in a society that somehow figured out how to survive having a bunch
of immortals.


The Mark of Gideon.

William Mook

's

a

fictional extraterrestrial

We should be so lucky.