From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Aug 17 2000 - 02:28:51 PDT
Dave Winer writes:
> I believe we're all barking farting chihuauhuas, no matter how much
Speak for yourself! <arf!> <arf!> <arf!> <arf!>
> money you have you die anyway, and your lifespan is incomprehensibly
> short and the space you occupy infintesmally small, even if you "own"
> the whole earth. Build your asteroid defenses, and die before they're
> needed. Better not to build them at all.
Well, I can bring on pretty good reasons that death is not
irreversible, if you (even) happen to be a simple meek
multimillionaire, especially if you don't want to die the day after
tomorrow. Unless I'm very mistaken, I don't think I'll have to die
_irreversibly_ even 30-40 years from now, though I'm certainly not a
multimillionaire. Let me mention a few keywords like "cryonics"
"nanotechnology" and "in vivo uploading, just en passant.
> People "seem" to be happy, but that doesn't mean they're
> happy. It's a lot of work to seem happy. It's also a lot of work to
> *be* happy, as an adult, but it's a totally different kind of work.
Have you ever taken MDMA? Serotonin uptake inhibitors? No, you're not
really happy on ecstasy. It's just a case of vapours.
> The root of unhappiness, imho, for rich or poor, is the desire to
> be what you can't be, to have what you can't have. What Larry Ellison
> and Bill Gates, the people, not the icons, really want is something
> their mothers didn't give them as children. Of course I don't know
> that for a fact, it's just a theory. But in that they'd be like every
> other middle aged man, which is exactly what they are.
I know a few people who have decided to become rich, because they
wanted to fund research they thought was relevant. Strangely enough,
they became rich, and funded such research. Strangely enough, the
research produced results relevant to prolonging of the life span of
said individuals, and quite a few innocent bystanders.
> I have a suggestion for you. Forget about other people for a
> moment, focus on yourself. What would want if you had a billion
> dollars? I find that if people really do that, write it down, edit it,
> revise the list, what happens is they find that the things they want
> have nothing to do with money. Something to play with, have fun with,
> if you do it, you'll solve the puzzle.
Oh, I would have some extremely nifty research to fund. In fact so
much, 1 G$ would be entry-level for me. But I'd be happy just to burn
20 megabucks, or so.
> I've done it myself. My list contains things that are a little too
> personal to disclose on a list like this, though. ;->
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 17 2000 - 03:35:00 PDT