"If you wanted to talk to someone about a show you once saw on Netflix you’d have to talk to a History professor."
This is the only false note in your memoir of the future. What will actually happen is that Youtube (forced by the anti-anti-trust act to swallow up WikiVid) will merge with Internet Archive and the immortals will be binge watching everything from I Love Lucy to Apprentice XXV with Resurrected Trump (that's the one where crypto-Democrat contestants are flayed alive on the program). The data center for this combined operation will cover the former state of Iowa.
I’m in agreement with you but I think/hope immortality doesn’t skew human nature over short/medium timescales and everyone can agree to something like “normals get to keep Earth, you have to go colonize another start system.”
Well...this is just great stuff. Chortling thoughtfully all the way through...
You'd probably like Walker Percy (start with Lost in the Cosmos? Maybe "Love in the Ruins"?)
The bilirubin can be resolved by a lot of time in the sun. Happened to my son. Worked out fine. (congrats on the kiddo, btw. best part of life, afaict.)
Above all, we need finiteness, struggle/novelty'challenge. Moving through life as a well-tended feeding vacuole is no fun at all.
i keep wanting people to read olaf stapledon's last and first men + star maker but you in particular i would especially like to read olaf stapledon's last and first men + star maker! you will not regret reading olaf stapledon's last and first men + star maker! he touched on some of these themes almost a hundred years ago and he goes amazing places with them
Finished it during bath time tonight. That was a sucker punch of an ending. I’d like to think all the seeds made it to the next planet and they were being influenced by the future to do it. (I would also like there to have been less than eighteen version of men)
it's a lot of men huh? now you have context for star maker which is what i was really hoping for you to read, it's more related to the stuff in this post! it's not a direct sequel but a spiritual sequel at least and gets even crazier
With all due respect to Einstein, who I have no doubt was vastly more intelligent than I, I must insist that something which has no substance / no material / no mass, cannot be manipulated except conceptually as an idea.
Nobody believed it until there had been enough experiments. If you get two atomic clocks and put one in a jet and go very fast, less time passes. Not a lot less but less time. We can measure it. You have to account for it to make GPS systems work.
My point is that it is not actually time that is functioning differently, since Time is simply an artificial construct by which we understand occurrences relative to each other.
The only way we can have a concept for time is that we reference the movements and positions of the earth and sun relative to each other.
Time itself is not a thing that exists as a substance.
It is simply how we reference positions and movements of heavenly bodies.
Not sure I’m following. If you were shown though that two objects which both started in the same place started to experience time differently, ie moving faster for one than the other, does that fit into what you’re saying here?
Yes. If the earth started spinning much faster or much slower, we would still refer to that as one day or 24 hours because that is our calibration reference.
"like your kids maturing into the spiritual place where they know they don’t have . . . an earthly authority beyond themselves."
Funny. I got to that point when I was 4 years old. At that point I was totally aware whether I agreed with my parents, or I was just keeping quiet to prevent holy hell breaking loose. This did not make me unique or special, because this was my father's exact approach to life.
In my case I think it's basically genetic. My paternal grandfather, father, and sister also operated this way. My mother and other sister are about 80% along on the spectrum. Independence of thought was something we did without even thinking about it. But as I pointed out, we also had a fairly strong tendency to keep our thoughts to ourselves. Sure saves a lot of grief.
"If you wanted to talk to someone about a show you once saw on Netflix you’d have to talk to a History professor."
This is the only false note in your memoir of the future. What will actually happen is that Youtube (forced by the anti-anti-trust act to swallow up WikiVid) will merge with Internet Archive and the immortals will be binge watching everything from I Love Lucy to Apprentice XXV with Resurrected Trump (that's the one where crypto-Democrat contestants are flayed alive on the program). The data center for this combined operation will cover the former state of Iowa.
Well, duh!!!
lol, probably all of the Computronium Moons will have seen them too.
When parts of your body finally become immortal, we call that cancer.
I don't think a group of immortal humans will be much different to society as a group of immortal cells are to your body.
There will be bitter fights and eventually the immortals will win... and then find themselves in a void with nothing there to support them anymore.
Immortality, they will realise, is only possible on top of the foundations of a society comprised of mortals.
I’m in agreement with you but I think/hope immortality doesn’t skew human nature over short/medium timescales and everyone can agree to something like “normals get to keep Earth, you have to go colonize another start system.”
And congratulations on the new child.
This was excellent
Thanks Keenan! I know I’m behind on your stuff. Will get caught up.
Well...this is just great stuff. Chortling thoughtfully all the way through...
You'd probably like Walker Percy (start with Lost in the Cosmos? Maybe "Love in the Ruins"?)
The bilirubin can be resolved by a lot of time in the sun. Happened to my son. Worked out fine. (congrats on the kiddo, btw. best part of life, afaict.)
Above all, we need finiteness, struggle/novelty'challenge. Moving through life as a well-tended feeding vacuole is no fun at all.
thanks for great little essay...
Added to the reading list! And William Rubin seems much more pink now. Sunlight and d drops did the trick.
This makes me genuinely happy to hear!!!
i keep wanting people to read olaf stapledon's last and first men + star maker but you in particular i would especially like to read olaf stapledon's last and first men + star maker! you will not regret reading olaf stapledon's last and first men + star maker! he touched on some of these themes almost a hundred years ago and he goes amazing places with them
I will check him out.
Have you read Chris Ruocchio? Best sci-fi writer of our age and he’s super young.
i have not but the wiki article looks promising, bookmarked!
Have made it about a third of the way through the First and Last Men and can’t believe there are going to be eighteen generations of these dudes.
YESSS
Finished it during bath time tonight. That was a sucker punch of an ending. I’d like to think all the seeds made it to the next planet and they were being influenced by the future to do it. (I would also like there to have been less than eighteen version of men)
it's a lot of men huh? now you have context for star maker which is what i was really hoping for you to read, it's more related to the stuff in this post! it's not a direct sequel but a spiritual sequel at least and gets even crazier
Conceptually brilliant.
Thanks Jeanne!
I cannot accept the idea of space-time as something to be manipulated.
The reason is purely logical.
Neither space nor time have any substance by which to be manipulated.
They are both simply abstract concepts.
Everyone thought this until Einstein. You make something heavy enough and it will suck in space and time.
With all due respect to Einstein, who I have no doubt was vastly more intelligent than I, I must insist that something which has no substance / no material / no mass, cannot be manipulated except conceptually as an idea.
Nobody believed it until there had been enough experiments. If you get two atomic clocks and put one in a jet and go very fast, less time passes. Not a lot less but less time. We can measure it. You have to account for it to make GPS systems work.
My point is that it is not actually time that is functioning differently, since Time is simply an artificial construct by which we understand occurrences relative to each other.
The only way we can have a concept for time is that we reference the movements and positions of the earth and sun relative to each other.
Time itself is not a thing that exists as a substance.
It is simply how we reference positions and movements of heavenly bodies.
you'd like Henri Bergson.
Not sure I’m following. If you were shown though that two objects which both started in the same place started to experience time differently, ie moving faster for one than the other, does that fit into what you’re saying here?
Yes. If the earth started spinning much faster or much slower, we would still refer to that as one day or 24 hours because that is our calibration reference.
Coincidence: Published today, a substack post about grief bots. Creating an AI bot that can interact with your survivors.
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/griefbots-and-the-ethics-of-digital
Dang, great minds think alike. I specifically only want it if I can be useful, like curating their Amazon order history or something.
"like your kids maturing into the spiritual place where they know they don’t have . . . an earthly authority beyond themselves."
Funny. I got to that point when I was 4 years old. At that point I was totally aware whether I agreed with my parents, or I was just keeping quiet to prevent holy hell breaking loose. This did not make me unique or special, because this was my father's exact approach to life.
Similar with me. Terrifying to realize you can see further ahead than your parents.
In my case I think it's basically genetic. My paternal grandfather, father, and sister also operated this way. My mother and other sister are about 80% along on the spectrum. Independence of thought was something we did without even thinking about it. But as I pointed out, we also had a fairly strong tendency to keep our thoughts to ourselves. Sure saves a lot of grief.