nature's plan

Old topic, but I found this in my drafts, and still wanted to input
somethings.

from Selvaraj Message #7978, jun 4
Subject: Re: Africa (was ...10 trillion people in thissolarsystem?)
>All that Vega is trying to say is that there is a natural cycle we should
>try to respect. Having too many old people around is not a very good idea,
>since according to nature's plan the young replace the old.

And according to "nature's plan", we're supposed to be hairy apes just
coming down from the trees. We interfered with this, thinking this kind of
existence isn't good enough. Imagination and technology (even stone knives
and skin clothing) let us re-set the part of the "plan" which relates to
what we're supposed to be.
"If we were meant to fly, we'd have been born with a brain capable of
figuring out how to do it without being born with wings."

>It is good to live long, but there comes an age when we must be prepared to
>move on.

Nobody says that the grim reaper won't have the last word. I doubt you'd
find the most enthusiastic transhumanist who'd say that we can out-plan fate
and truly live "forever" (as if "forever" or eternity or infinity of any
kind were a real thing, instead of a construct of human imaginations). Even
those in favor of braintaping and downloading the last known copy of an
intellect into the newest synthetic super-body, or even having multiple
diverging copies of a "person" (in whatever form that particular copy
prefers). Even if there's nothing beyond the death of the brain besides
oblivion, there must surely be room to imagine and accept dying.

Good quote from Robert
>a man should live as long as he wishes, and wish to live as long as
>he does. respect the cycle, but dont expect it to stay the same size.

And James Dean said "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die
today." Sure, the Hindu life cycles are good to remember, but why accept
that we can't use healthy living and the technology we have the ability to
invent, to make the productive adulthood last longer than the average 40-60
years?
What kind of dreams and works would we allow ourselves if we weren't under a
century-or-less death sentence? Yes, we stumble over the occasional
sociopathic megalomaniac, but I like to try to plan for the creators.

Still, it might be interesting to persist beyond this body, and crash the
Omega Point party in the restaurant at the end of the universe. If the
universe is closed, with no possibility of persisting in some form beyond
the "big crunch", then there's a definite finishing point. If it's open,
we've got uintil proton decay in 10^10^76 years (by some estimates), and
maybe there's a possibility for memory in some form to go on past that
limit.
Might it be interesting to see what it's like then? (if we don't go extinct
in ~50 years when the oil runs out)
I'd at least like to see space opened up, and humanity seeing the potential
and accepting that while we may not be the total reason for the existence of
the universe, we can do a lot to bring some of it to life, Out There. Like
fusion, it's only about 20 to 50 years off, for the last ~30 years.

John S. Lewis From 'Mining the Sky'
As long as the human population remains as pitifully small as it is today,
we shall be severely limited in what we can accomplish. Human intelligence
is the key to the future: human beings are not, as some would have it, a
form of pollution.
Having only one Einstein, one Hokusai, one Mozart, one daVinci, one
Shankara,... is not enough. We need -and can have- a million times as many.
We need intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and excellence. These godlike
traits are manifested in the physical universe only by life, and in the
biological universe, only by intelligent life.
Life is not a cancer of matter; it is matter's trancendance of itself.
The fulfillment of time & space is matter; the fulfillment of matter is
life; the highest fulfillment of life is unbounded intelligence &
compassion."
We would be quite wrong to conclude that the asteroid belt, or solar
power... is the ultimate resource. Intelligent life, once liberated by the
resources of space, is the greatest resource of the solar system.
The material and energy resources of the solar system allow mankind an
infinite future: we can not only break free of the surly bonds of the Earth,
but break free of the Sun and escape its fate.

"There is no way back into the past.
The choice is the universe -or nothing.
-- H.G. Wells