There wasn’t much of a resolution to Cato Unbound’s IQ issue (if you can’t get enough Flynn, Gene Expressions has him for their latest ten questions), and now the next one is up. This time transhumanist scientist Aubrey de Grey argues for ditching all that “dying” business, or at least aging (which frequently results in death). It perplexes me that some people think that would be bad, but at the same time I don’t see it as the imperative that others do. I see that Mr. de Grey is a fellow non-cognitivist, which you might be too if you spent as much time arguing with bioethicists about the “wisdom of repugnance”. Eliezer Yudkowsky dumps on those same bioethicists here, but he and I apparently disagree (I am not sure exactly how we differ) on how we regard ethics in general. I am a well-wisher of the immortalists but I don’t know enough to have high confidence that they will be successful (I know from a Bayesian standpoint I should take their confidence as evidence, but they seem to be a small minority even among scientists which is counter-evidence) and I do not place it as high a priority as does my fellow egoist, Hopefully Anonymous (who unfortunately has been too busy to blog lately). Here’s to someday being able to earnestly say “I promise, I will never die“.
December 3, 2007
I want to achieve immortality by not dying
Posted by teageegeepea under Blinded by Science1 Comment
March 9, 2008 at 11:38 pm
[…] are focused on immortality whereas more scientifically inclined folks are skeptical even of atheist transhumanists and suggests that Jesus and other religious leaders “consciously (though non-transparently) […]