X-Message-Number: 21659 Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 09:49:26 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #21652 - #21657 This time again for various people: For Mike Perry: Send me $15 US and I will send you a copy of TALES OF SKASTOWE. As for your other arguments, the basic problem with a symbolic world is that we made the symbols and as symbols they were arbitrary. We interpret them, IF we wish to, as another world, but they do not become any more real because of our interpretation of them. You're also explaining the importance to your ideas about the possibility of creating a language (languages are symbolic) which needs no contact with real things to be correctly interpreted as to the meaning of statements in it. I have suggested why even mathematics doesn't fit as the start of such a language: different sets of postulates can often have multiple interpretations (one actual ADVANTAGE of math, but not for your purposes), and that even at the level of counting we encounter definitions based on reality. As for my discussion of expansion, I wasn't really talking about how immortality (or extremely long life spans) would make people nicer, even though I think that would be one of its consequences. I was talking about how it would make people think differently about distances in time. Right now, without any (so far only imagined) superlight speed space drives, even going to a close star takes more years than our current lifespan. If we expect to live for a much longer time, those stars will look much closer to us. And not only the stars, but dangers coming from astronomical events: and so we'd become interested in taking steps NOW to avoid a supernova by a star which will be close to the Sun in 100,000 years. Expansion need not involve simple multiplication of the number of people: we'll want to expand to control events in a wider and wider area of the Universe, just for our own future safety. For Mike Treder: If you put such conditions on formation of institutions able to deal with molecular nanotechnology, then we can all just give up. You're not going to get anything like the agreement you speak about in the time scale you imagine. Why? Just read the daily paper about politics. Yes, I am much more optimistic than you, not just because I do not believe in a Singularity but many of the fears expressed about a technology which is (slowly) coming into play look quite silly. I will give you an analogy. When I was growing up the US and the USSR were in deep rivalry, and various thinkers were announcing that nuclear war was imminent. However neither the US nor the USSR, in their political leaders, really wanted a nuclear war. Funny thing --- despite all the simulation games which people played, which inevitably ended with nuclear war, somehow no serious nuclear war has happened (so far, the 2nd World War is the only one in which nuclear weapons were used). If you can find me a group of scientists who want to create the feared gray goo, please tell me their address, phone number, and email address. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21659