Apparently a lot of people want to live forever.
Last week I read an article about cryonics company, Alcor, and their founder. Apparently he passed away. A couple of years ago I read the book “Frozen”. (Alcor has been fighting that book for some time.) I’ve also read / watched stuff from Aubrey De Grey and all the stuff from Ray Kurzweil. I’ve had conversations face to face with “singularists”. And, of course, the efforts to get humans to mars I watch with extreme curiosity.
All of these are modern equivalents of the search for the fountain of youth, religious salvation and belief in the afterlife.
Do you, dear reader, want to live forever? Do you want to preserve some specific way of life, your way of life, humanity? It’s maddening to me that a large number of humans want to make some basic version of this existence go on forever. It seems insane to me to want to promote this specific way of life considering how little we actually know and how frequently we kill each other and the planet.
Personally I’d find it miserable to live forever or to be reanimated in the future with my current form. One lifetime, as a human, is enough. A couple of years ago I read this book, Forever, by Pete Hamill. It depressed me a great deal. The main character lives forever. He watches many generations and friends live, suffer and die. All the joy and up moments were dwarfed by knowing it was an endless cycle – living forever wasn’t all there was! It was a similar lesson I pulled from Man from Earth and Moon. Maybe I need to read and watch more hopeful views of living forever.
Chasing immortality strikes me more as fear than some aspirational ideal. If not the fear of death or regret over something not done in the life time, it must be some ridiculous belief that one or humanity SHOULD live forever and promote this particular formation of life. Whether it’s fear or some anthropocentric imperative the pursuit of immortality seems like a big fat cop out.
People die. Species go extinct. We have limited time and resources at our disposal. We should stop looking for infinite sources of energy and life and start learning to live better (in whatever way you take that) with less. Stop damaging other things in pursuit of a cop out. It’s a waste. In fact, it appears to me to be a HORRIBLE strategy for ultimate survival of whatever it is we’re trying to protect.
But is the pull of survival of genes, the body, the species so great we can’t help ourselves but to spread the human and our own gospel? I don’t think so. Thousands of other species of life execute a variety of other strategies that don’t seem so damn selfish and fated. Insects, fish and the dinosaurs have about 100x+ the longevity as humanity and as far as history suggests, none of the creatures in those phylums chased immortality.
Could “intelligence” be at the root of this? Hard to give a truthful argument for this idea. I conjecture that it’s actually a horrible side effect of “intelligence” in the same vein as the illusion of free will. Intelligence conjures these things up by accident and they seem to fit conveniently into a world view that keeps the intelligent being going – being fruitful and multiplying. It might also be the case that this is an evolutionary mutation where a strategy extinguishes itself.
We’ll never know… or maybe some will find a path to immortality and they will come to know. or maybe we’re actually creating these immortal versions of ourselves in all these Web based things we keep inventing. If any of that comes to pass I hope whatever carries on has a far better grasp of reality and what’s worth carrying on.
And please oh please don’t let immortality be born out of freezing our heads and reanimating them in some weird duct taped, half baked future. It’s just creepy.
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I even used an index card.
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“I don’t want to talk about politics.”
“Please don’t bring that up.”
“Ugh, I hate this conversation”
These are pretty common statements in my life in regards to politics. On one level, I get it. Talking politics to friends, family, co-workers and neighbors can be very frustrating, disturbing, confounding and lead to “relationship problems.” BUT. If we’re not talking politics – how we all agree to organize ourselves – what are we talking about? what else is at all worth talking about between people of various pursuits that has any actual impact on anything?
The point of politics and discussing politics is figuring out how we want to be. It’s the practical implementation of philosophy. It’s where the rubber meets the road with science and our understanding of the world.
Certainly there are others ways to organize ourselves and implement various ways of living. Maybe this democratic way of doing it isn’t the best. As far as I can tell though kings, tyrants, feudal states, anarchy and the such didn’t seem like such good approaches. Sure, we have corrupt politicians, flaws in this system, way too much corporate influence and more. Yet, in the end, we all still get a say – we get to vote.
So… why bother bringing any of this up? So what, Russ? So everyone doesn’t like to talk politics. Leave it alone. Well, I think the general lethargy or disgust with the conversation leads to low levels of civic engagement, as signified by the pathetic voter turn outs over the last half century, and this has lead to unchecked corporate and political actions and a highly confused society.
This is a remarkably informative paper. http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2373&context=utk_chanhonoproj
I point you to this amazing chart:
And this astounding little fact:
A 2002 study by the Institute for Democracy and
Electoral Assistance compared voter turnout in 169 countries that had at least some
degree of voting rights. Unfortunately, that study ranked the United States 138 out of
169 in voter turnout rates (Pintor et al 83)
Whoa! For a collection of peoples that generally praises itself for being the land of the free, we don’t seem to cherish that freedom all that much. (you DO what you VALUE….)
Might as well dig up local election information too. http://www.sarasotagov.com/InsideCityGovernment/Content/CAC/PDF/UofCalifornia.pdf
Moreover, trends over time suggest that voter turnout in local elections is declining just as rapidly as it is in national elections (Karnig and Walter 1983, 1993)
Additionally, I compiled more detailed data on recent federal election voter turn out for further inspection. It’s really tough to pinpoint why there is such a decline over time. The papers referenced above show a variety of facets and this data I compiled indicate some possible explanations. There’s no easy answer. (hence the need for discussion!)
Perhaps a valid argument against talking politics and voting is “I just don’t care” and “my vote doesn’t matter.” On a certain level no individual vote matters that much, nor any particular conversation. The problem happens when too many people think that. Duh. On the i-dont-care front, well, at the very least one should protect their right to not care. In some countries, you don’t get a choice to care. You care about what they tell you to care about or you die (or other unpleasant things). So not voting is actually sort of saying not only do you not care you actually don’t mind if someone else decides what you care about.
Now, do I personally vote in every municipal, state and national election? No. Over my voting history I’ve probably participated in 70% of elections I was eligible. I’ve worked/managed polling places for two elections. I regret not voting in 100% of all elections. It’s too important.
So why do I care so much beyond the basic premise of caring about my civic rights?
My mom and dad, despite jobs, 6 kids at home, and a variety of things that get in the way, managed to always be civically engaged. In the mid 80s my mom ran for State House Representative for House District 49 in Auroro, CO. She won a tough primary and then went up against Bill Owens.
I was maybe 10 years old and I remember canvasing neighborhoods with flyers and going to speeches and to the colorado democratic convention. It was a very formative experience. I remember one day I went to a door and rang the doorbell. I was very nervous. A person opened the door suspiciously. I stammered through my opening lines and ended up just handing the person a flyer. Walking down from the door to the sidewalk I heard laughter and out of a window I couldn’t see through someone shouted “Donna Smith sucks!”. I was, at first, crushed. I freaked out and ended up dumping the rest of my flyers in a nearby creek. I got home and went to my room, devastated and hurt and feeling horribly guilty.
Eventually I got back out there and the campaigned culminated in election night. We had a party that night and everyone stayed up late for results. My mom didn’t win, as I found out in the morning after falling asleep before it was all said and done. It was a bummer and yet it was such a huge accomplishment. I learned a great deal about what it means to really participate, to really discuss and engage. It’s not about winning elections or being a politician or owning a platform. It’s about talking about how we all want to be, together. How do we want to put our collective energy to work. And if a working mom with a bunch of kids and obligations can find the energy to run for office I sure as hell can get to the polls and discuss the issues of our lives with people.
[It should be noted I was able to use my mom’s campaign materials to forge the basis of my own 5th grade student class council bid. I lost despite a superior campaign because our ballots listed candidates alphabetically and Al Anderson led the way. I successfully argued for a case against the biased ballots and was appointed co-president. I never ran in an official election again but was voted class clown as a senior in high school, for what it’s worth.]
Politics: that’s the point.
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I’m obsessed with big questions. What is life? Why are we here? How did we get here? Why do we experience time the way we do? Why haven’t we seen another planet teeming with life? What is mathematics? What is currency? Why does learning work the way it does? How do we come to understand each other or anything at all? Is there free will? How should we live? If not democracy, then what? and so on!
We all start our intellectual life focused on the big questions. As children we’re unconditioned to censor our questioning of how and why things work. We are also natural experimenters of theories and are able to quickly absorb new views/ideas.
We’re such good learners as kids that it doesn’t take too many years before the process of turning kids into responsible adults destroys most of our original questioning and critical thinking ability. Instead of taking advantage of the amazing sponge like years, we teach our children not to think, not to question, not to risk. We teach them to follow rules, not think and write their own rules. Our culture is so adept at squashing original, inquisitive thinking that many of us then need 4 years+ in higher education to “learn how to think.”
It happens moment by moment. From TV, movies, books, our schools, our homes, our politics, the things we say, the way we are. (Ever caught yourself telling your child, “That’s just the way it is. You ask why a lot.” …
It happens because we get tired. and having dogma and previously used answers keeps it simple and saves energy, in the short term.
Big Questions take energy. Lots of energy. And kids have a lot of that. Adults don’t, in general. Adult life seeks order. Keep the disturbance to a minimum.
If you stop asking the big questions your actions become small, orderly, understandable. but! the engine of progress is mutation. Exploring strange intellectual places. and, I believe, those strange places can only be reached in ones lifetime by never ceasing to ask and attempt to answer the big questions through thought and deeds.
Kids make big strides quickly for many many reasons, and I believe fearlessly asking big questions and not looking for intellectual order is one of the bigger reasons.
As I watched some of the Republican National Convention, gear up for the DNC, get through my own daily work, read essays, strategize about business, talk to friends and family and synthesize all the data, I just come back to this question What Are We So Afraid Of?
I decided to write this post today specifically because I saw this ridiculous commercial yesterday for ADT Pulse. http://www.adtpulse.com/ This commercial made it clear that if you aren’t monitoring your home in real time with video all the time everything you know and love was in grave danger! So, I’ve decided to figure out just how afraid of everything I should be.
Here’s some of what we seem to be afraid about as a culture.
Our jobs:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29275784/People_Fear_Losing_Job_the_Most_Poll
Our economy:
Our government:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html
http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/
People different than us:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/853.short
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/unfounded-fears-167413105.html
Murder:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissus-in-all-us/200903/mass-murder-is-nothing-fear
Food:
http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Food-History-Worry-about/dp/0226473740
http://shop.forksoverknives.com/Forks_Over_Knives_The_DVD_p/5000.htm
Technology and Media:
http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307269647
Cancer, Disease:
http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2960610-1/fulltext
Medicine, Shots, Vaccines:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/
God, Heaven and Hell:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-08-07-love-wins-afterlife-hell_n.htm
Terrorism:
Our Children’s Safety:
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_16725742
Tattoos:
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933404577505192265987100.html?mg=reno64-wsj
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/when-tattoos-hurt-job-prospects/
Large Hadron Collider:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1838947,00.html
Everything else:
Nothing to Fear?
So is there anything to fear? are the fears valid? well, I guess they are valid fears if you don’t have information. So here’s some information.
Most fears drilled into us aren’t founded on evidence – at least not at the level we fear them:
http://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Truth-About-Epidemic/dp/0471678694
http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates/dp/0452295467/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_2
Unemployment isn’t really that high in this country (or most western countries), especially if you get an education:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=unemployment+rate+USA%2C+England
You’ll probably have 5-10 employers in your working lifetime so assume you’ll get laid off, fired or go out of business. There will be other businesses to hire you or you can just make something yourself:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468162805877990.html
Economy will have short term blips but ultimately continues to churn ahead:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gdp+usa
You’re unlikely to be murdered
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=crime+rates+in+austin%2Ctx
Children aren’t taken very often (at least in Colorado)
http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=3433817
In fact, violence has long been on the decline:
http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
It’s ok if you forget to pray, chances are it probably doesn’t change outcomes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032302177.html
And humans have been getting tattoos for a long time and the world hasn’t ended:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/tattoo.html
Oh, and, humans aren’t that different from Bonobos or Chimps, much less other humans. So, maybe we should rethink that worrying about people that aren’t just like us:
Almost every one of common fears are unwound through perspective changes aka education aka realizing it’s not black and white. Again, see the S. Pinker History of Violence link above to get an idea of the real impact of just literacy and access to information and what it does to fear.
Is it a big deal that people fear the wrong things? Yes! Especially if it leads to suicide bombing, racial profiling, not getting an education and so on.
But, c’mon, aren’t there some things we should fear?
Maybe…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ropeik/fear-of-climate-change-ma_b_1665019.html
and maybe this too
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2010/09/20/student-loan-debt-surpasses-credit-card-debt/
well maybe this too
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-628194.html
In the end, methinks fearing too much is a waste of time because in the end we just don’t know what’s going to happen, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
Knowing you can’t predict it all (thus prevent it) what’s the point in worrying to the point of being truly scared?
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComputationalIrreducibility.html
So, no, ADT, I won’t be buying your Pulse product.
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Some people hate buzzwords, like Big Data. I’m ok with it. Because unlike many buzzwords it actually kind of describes exactly what it should. It’s a world increasingly dependent on algorithmic decision making, data trails, profiles, digital finger prints, anomaly tracking… not everything we do is tracked, but enough is that it definitely exceeds our ability to process it and do genuinely useful things with it.
Now, is it because of the tools/technology that makes Big Data so challenging to businesses? I suppose somewhat. I think it it’s more behavioral than anything. Humans are very good at intuitive pattern recognition. We’re taking in Big Data every second – through our senses, working around our neural systems and so on. We do it this without being “aware”. With explicit Data Collection and explicit Analysis like we do in business we betray our intuitions or rather our intuition betrays us.
How so?
We often go spelunking through big data intuiting things that aren’t real. We’re collecting so much data that it’s pretty easy to find patterns, whether they matter or not. We’re so convinced there’s something to find there, we often Invent A Pattern.
With the ability to collect so much data our intuition tells us if we collect more data we’ll find more patterns. Just Keep Collecting.
And then! we have another problem. we’re somewhat limited by our explicit training.
We’re so accustomed to certain interfaces with explicitly collected data – Spreadsheets, Relational Database GUIs, Stats programs, that we find it hard to imagine working with data in any other way. We’re not very good at transcoding data into more useful forms and our tools weren’t really built to make that easier. We’re now running into this “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words” or some version of Computational Irreducibility. Our training has taught us to go looking for shortcuts or formulas to compress Big Data into Little Formula (you know take a dataset of 18 variables and reduce it to a 2-axis chart with an up and to the right linear regression line).
Fact is, that’s just not how it works. Sometimes Big Data needs a Big Picture cause it’s a really complicated network of interactions. Or it needs a full simulation and so on.
Another way to put this… businesses are so accustomed to the idea of Explainability. Businesses thrive on Business Plans, Forecasts, etc. so they force a overly simplistic reductionist analysis of the business and drive everything against that type of plan. Driving against that type of plan ends up shaping internal tools and products to be equally reductionist.
To get the most out of Big Data we literally have to retrain ourselves against our deepest built in approaches to data collection and analysis. First, don’t get caught up in specific toolsets. Re-imagine what it means to analyze data. How can we transcode data into a different picture that illuminates real, useful patterns without reducing it to patterns we can explain?
Sometimes, the best way to do this is to give away the data to hoards and hoards of humans and see what crafty things they do with it. Then step back and see how it all fits together.
I believe this is what Facebook has done. Rather than analyze the graph endlessly for their own product dev efforts, they gave the graph out to others and saw what they created with it. That has been a far more efficient, parallel processing of that data.
It’s almost like flipping the idea of data analysis and business planning on its head. You figure out what the data “means” by seeing how people put it to use in whatever ways they like.
State routes cutting through fields of home grown generations
lives lived in desolate desperations
pull up to a driveway, to a home, brimming with life
completely contained within this acreage
the woods, a garden with a full year of food, a pond
100 years of fond memories of raising kids, corn, horses, birds, bees
trees grown and felled and turned into a barn and house and fire
and a town square, usually empty, but on thursday nights and some saturdays
the homes release their owners into the restaurants and community fare
sharing stories and catching up on those no longer there
gone off to school or war or a career
likely one day to return to repair
broken hearts and spirits
as only a self reliant existence can
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“I’m saving a dollar a day to throw a party on the day he fries.”
This was whispered to me on my walk between the witness room and the courtroom during the trial by someone hurting for a loved one of the 1993 Chuck E Cheese murders.
Gulp.
Was she wrong? was she justified? was she just saying that? What did I believe? Should we kill another person to make things “right?” What is justice? will this bring peace to anyone?
Over the last 19 years this is just one of many contradictions I hold in my head. It’s like some sort of gnarly moral entanglement that is so often the source of the anger, guilt, distress I feel at times like this.
After an event like this your world is very quick to attempt to soothe away the gnarliness. It’s God’s plan. It was fate. Everything happens for a reason. Memorial services. Vigils. TV specials. Therapists. Help lines. “Get back up on that horse.”, Why Bad Things Happen To Good People readings, commemorative T-Shirts.
Some of these sentiments and activities are temporarily helpful. However, what was in my head and still hangs about there sometimes in the darkest ways…
nothing matters. it’s all random. why bother.
After I stew on that for awhile I usually flip over to…
everything matters. make it matter. live like you are dying. get after every moment.
Obviously after 19 years the more positive outlook that making it matter has won out more times than it’s lost. By no means though do I have resolution. You almost feel forced into the positive. If one goes all in on nothing matters, why bothers, you get your answer clearly. Unfortunately, it feels, if you go all in on everything matters, make it matter you may not get a clear “yup, this is right. it all does matter!”
I think the easy resolutions of these big questions is what leads to the profound loneliness I feel occasionally. Hanging on to one of these resolutions like “it was all part of the plan” despite everything in your experience suggesting otherwise makes you afraid to be upset, to disagree, to wail against this comfort. To this day I’m very upset at the idea that 4 of my coworkers should have been killed because that was part of some grand design for my life or the greater good. That always sounds so good in abstract when it’s not you having to live with this unknown plan or your not related to one of those that died. Want pressure? that’s pressure. having people tell you and make you believe that your life is somehow worth more than someone else’s and then you go on living without some obvious sign that it is.
I didn’t go to the memorial service, didn’t go to any vigils, could barely speak to Bobby. Maybe I didn’t want to feel the implied pressure or the pressure I was putting on myself.
Everyone’s life is worth the same. Whether that’s everything or nothing, I don’t know.
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Social Mode 