X-Message-Number: 23103 Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 11:15:12 -0800 From: James Swayze <> Subject: Posted to Brights.net forum Posted to http://www.the-brights.net new forum for member discussions. [begin quoted matrial] Dear Brights, This new forum is an excellent idea and I have a special use for it for something that is long in need of discussion. Therefore I invite discussion of the need for Brights to align with the growing Life Extensionism movements that involve Transhumanism, Physical Immortalists, Extropianism and Cryonics. Most of the members of these groups, all of which greatly overlap, are Brights people. Most hold a non deist world view or if in the minority cases of being somewhat religious would for reasons of civil libertarianism hold a Brights view. The rapid pace of technology and medicine are quickly posing the prospect of banishing aging and disease, and yes even most forms of death. Some of the most extreme but very possible aspects of technologies such as molecular manufacturing and nanomedicine promise continual cellular maintenance that would alleviate aging altogether and make it impossible for disease or toxins to injure one's body or take one's life. Consider if each and every cell in your body is kept in pristine health, making allowances for cellular turnover but within that frame resetting so called biological apoptosis cell death clocks, it would be impossible to get a disease. It wouldn't matter what damage a toxin or pathogen proposed to do if such damage is repaired at a pace too rapid for harmful consequence. Consider a bite from a venomous snake such as the two step two second nerve toxin of the black mamba. Nanobots would martial axon signals around synapse sites, as these in the normal action of the nerve toxin are blocked, and likewise at the same time clear the toxin from the receptor sites that would otherwise have been blocked and caused shut down of breathing resulting in loss of life. Likewise when a pathogen invades medical nanobots would track it down and destroy it and repair any cells damaged. However, this would not protect one from dying from things such as an explosion as the medical nano robots residing within our bodies, as they are envisioned, could not keep up with that pace of cellular destruction. Still this prospect does lend itself to extremely long life spans possible as the odds for most people to be in an explosion are rather remote. Such odds will become ever more remote as more people begin to appreciate life greater realizing there is so much ahead of one to lose through foolishness of war and terrorism or petty violence. If one can expect to live a thousand or even ten thousand years, no longer tied to the biblical "three score and ten", I would think one would take care not to involve oneself and one's children in the foolishness of violence. There is more to how the future will become less violent and some if it has to do with society becoming much more transparent. This is so because as computers become ever more smaller and combined with audio visual recording devices as we now see with cell phones, PDA's, etc., soon all these devices will be so small as to make better sense to implant them within us. The question then begs asking "who watches the watchers?". Well, we all do or would. Laws now on the books for disallowing one to image a government or corporate video surveillance would necessarily need to be removed because it would be pointless to ask people not to look because now one's eyes, in effect, are the video camera and one's augmented cybernetic enhanced brain is the recording device. In this situation it becomes impossible to get away with personal violence as these augmented brains will be live connected to the net and any violence perpetrated to ones person broadcast live letting the whole world know who the attacker is. There is more to this even such as DNA sniffers that positively identify anyone one comes in contact with and so aids the prophylactic affect of transparent surveillance by all for all to prevent person to person premeditated violence. Crimes of passion may still occur but there's an answer for that too. I'll leave that and so much more open for discussion. My hope is that my fellow Brights here will see the advantage of life extending science and so embrace the wonderful and near, so very near, future we can all make for each other. All non deists should unite and embrace our own scientific rational form of making life and our world a nearly never ending paradise. FutureQ [end quoted material] James -- Member: Cryonics Institute of Michigan http://www.cryonics.org The Immortalist Society http://www.cryonics.org/info.html The Society for Venturism http://www.venturist.org Immortality Institute http://www.imminst.org MY WEBSITE: http://www.davidpascal.com/swayze/ Signature Memetic Virus--The worst enemy of those who now or will need medical care is the uninformed politician or moral fanatic who proscribe what doctors are allowed to prescribe and research, with the consent of their patients. Those who understand this are strongly encouraged to modify this to fit their personality, and add this to their signature file, and organize to recover our freedom from Big Brother. For those who wait until they are sick, it will be too late. Those who suffer from diseases which might have been cured by advanced medical research or schedule 1 drugs banned by Big Brother, have the right to hold accountable those who sat on their hands or worse, deferred their responsibility for personal and humanity's survival to unseen mystical agents, while they remained ill and dying. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23103