X-Message-Number: 21772
From: 
Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 03:52:38 EDT
Subject: very long life

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Francois and Mike Perry for example have argued about eternity. I think some 
actual concepts such uploading, cryonics,... may extend life or survivability 
up to the technological civilization duration. This in turn may be limited 
only by the species life expectancy, given that we get ride of all religious 
groups.

Now, what can we hope from our species? Modern man is some 100,000 years old, 
it would be astounding if it could survive more than one million years. Some 
time ago, an astronomer has pointed out that time must be Copernican, that 
is, all epochs are similar. Here is an example:

Assume we are in 1980, you come in Europe and visit some monuments. There is 
no causal link between the monument building and you or your visit. You come 
to Paris and visit the Notre Dame cathedral, built 800 years ago. You go to 
Berlin and visit the wall built 20 years ago. Now, there is very few 
probability you see these architectural madness right at the time of their 
building or destruction. The largest probability is that you see them in the 
middle of their life span. So your guess is that ND-paris will be here for 
some centuries and that the Berlin wall may well not see the 21st century. At 
least on the second account we now you would have been right.

What that tell us about man? First, our life expectancy as a species is at 
most in the 100s thousand years. Second, given the actual population 
explosion and the low population level in most historical times, we can 
predict a drastic population reduction. The sustainable population level may 
be only in the tens thousands, far too low for a technological civilization. 
So this one must collapse with the high population level. Given that that 
level is only century old, this give the time span for the technology.

The overwhelming probability is that some fanatic group will succeed in 
imposing something that will reduce the civilization to dust and the 
population to 30,000 or so. Call it Al'Qaida, Saddam revenge, scientology, 
roman church...

What would be the way out?
Assume we pick out another species with historical large population and a 
common ancestor with us far in the past, may be 150 millions years or more. 
We could take some of their genes and give them some of ours, so they would 
get bigger with a large brain able to sustain a technological civilization. 
Slowly, more and more genes would be put in common until there would be only 
one life form. That could be done on a very long time, may be 100 millions 
years. Because the process would start soon, we could count that the root of 
that common species would be right now at the time of the last common 
ancestor, that is 150 million years. For most of that time, the population 
could have been in the millions, so that, this level could be sustained for 
the coming 100 million years at least, without too much strain.

Ready to make "cause commune" with some rat-like species?
Now, tell to religious people or politicians (this is the same group) we need 
some "inferior" species to survive an watch their reactions...

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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