Immortality is a primary goal of many transhumanists, but not all. How many do or don’t want eternal life, and why? I recently conducted a survey - funded by Terasem Movement Inc., and fiscally sponsored by World Future Society - that queried hundreds of transhumanists on this question.
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Posted by
Hervé Musseau on 08/02 at 09:11 AM
Several questions, including this one, were strangely worded or incomplete. When addressing transhumanists, it’s probably better to refer to immortality as indefinite lifespan.
On another note, even though the Singularity and SENS were mentioned throughout the questionnaire, neither Vernor Vinge nor Aubrey de Grey were listed as prominent transhumanists to worship, er I mean look up to. I forgot to write them in, as I responded quickly.
Posted by
hankpellissier on 08/02 at 05:25 PM
Herve—thanks for your feedback. You are right, both of those individuals should have been mentioned. I hope that their names were written in, because they deserve considerable praise.
In regards to being “strangely worded”... this question perhaps seems that way because it follows two other questions on the same topic. When read as the third question of a sequence, I believe it is not confusing.
Posted by
advancedatheist on 08/02 at 11:19 PM
>3.7% said they didn’t want immortality because they wanted “to go to an afterlife.”
Hmm. so you can get a walk-in role on one of those foolish ghost-hunting show on cable?
I don’t see how an afterlife solves the problems that people expect it to solve. Suppose you die, enter an afterlife and still feel that your existence lacks meaning & purpose?
Posted by
dobermanmac on 08/10 at 04:10 PM
I have surveyed (informally) tons of people I meet, and only one person (my best friend) wants to live longer than a “normal” life-span. In particular, my parents (and uncle), who are set financially and live a pretty good life, are in the depth of senescence, and say they look forward to death. Yeah, some seem to think if you live forever it will be in a old decrepit body, but others just want to get to heaven (but their religion bans suicide).
In other words, living and dying is viewed as a natural thing by a overwhelming majority of the people - but then, so was Smallpox. I estimate that the cultural resistance to radical life extension will be massive.
One other thing, soon we will have virtually unlimited energy so cheap we won’t bother to meter it, and it will dramatically change our culture from a Paradigm of Scarcity to a Paradigm of Abundance (overpopulation and scarcity is one main reason cited by people who advocate a “normal” lifespan):
“A volume about the size of a #2 pencil eraser of water provides as much energy as two 48-gallon drums of gasoline. That is 355,000 times the amount of energy per volume – five orders of magnitude.” ( http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-LENR-Machine-is-the-Best-Yet.html ).
This phenomenon (LENR) has been confirmed in hundreds of published scientific papers: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf
“Over 2 decades with over 100 experiments worldwide indicate LENR is real, much greater than chemical…”—Dennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center
“Total replacement of fossil fuels for everything but synthetic organic chemistry.”—Dr. Joseph M. Zawodny, NASA
By the way, here is a survey of all the companies that are bringing LENR to commercialization: http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/08/the-new-breed-of-energy-catalyzers-ready-for-commercialization.html
For those who still aren’t convinced, here is a paper I wrote that contains some pretty convincing evidence: http://coldfusionnow.org/the-evidence-for-lenr/
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