Hey folks, so I'm obviously not a Technocrat but my super-admin powers give me futuristic access to the groups. I want to inquire about Technocracy and death.

It seems to me, from my limited knowledge of the ideology/philosophy/theory, that under a Technocratic future death would be limited if not completed dissolved. By digitizing the human mind and robotizing the body you effectively eliminate the living material which would otherwise perish. So my first question is: is this an accurate description?

My second question rests upon my first. If that is, in fact, a relatively accurate description of the envisioned future, then what are the psychological implications of this? I have several issues from the get-go:
- Doesn't this theory assume that there is such a thing as the 'self' which can be digitized beyond the human body?
- If there is no death, or if humans live a longer life (say, for argument's sake ~200 yrs), does this not raise a huge problem in terms of existential anxiety and depression? For as the human lifespan increases, the anxiety re: terminal illnesses and injuries increases in parallel amounts. After all, it's scarier to be terminally ill for 100 years than to be ill for 10. How do technocrats respond to this concern?
- If there is no death, where does the value of 'life' (which is also at this point non-existent) reside? Is there such a thing as 'value' in this future and how is this value determined, according to what standards?

I'll leave it there for now, and I'll state that I'm not here to troll or push buttons, I'm honestly interested in this topic.

- August

Well, firstly I think you're getting Technocracy confused with transhumanism here. Technocracy is just a model for a future socio/economic system... it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with indefinitely increasing lifespans, at least not directly (although many, many technocrats, including myself, are into that as well).

And when we speak of extending life, we mean extending healthy life. We're not talking at all about extending the elderly's final years on life support or anything. That would be pretty useless (and cruel). Imagine being 140, and feeling/looking like 25. That's more like what we're going for. So increasing lifespans do not equate to increasing terminal illnesses. By the time we're that advanced, we plan on having terminal illnesses wiped out of the equation all together. That's actually a big part of the whole "not dying" objective, because how can we stop death if we don't first take care of cancer and other deadly diseases?

And death doesn't give life value. The value of 'life' is in life itself. Friends and family, good times, memories, love, and other generic cheesy concepts, are what give life value. WE give life value. Death is the end of all that. The enemy. Fuck death.

That's my take on it anyhow.
...Force be with you.

Czad covered most of the bases, but there were a couple of things...

Why should it? If we accept that what we percieve as the "self" is an emergent phenomenon of specified physical reactions and interactions within the human body, it therefore follows that a transformation of that body (or at least the bits of it relevant to personality) into electronic format would preserve what we would percieve as the individual concerned.

Even if the process does not leave the individual in question completely unchanged personality-wise (which seems likely in light of the transition being from protein to silicon), the individual would still be the same person - there is a precedent; in the way that someone who suffers a traumatic brain injury which changes their personality would generally be considered by society to be the same person.

Vital liberty includes the right to end one's life in certain circumstances. Regardless of lifespan, if one contracts a long, drawn-out terminal illness with no chance of a cure being developed any time soon, and one cannot or does not want to go into cryogenic preservation, then euthanasia should be available on demand.

Good point, and certainly true.

Very well, I accept your point on illness. But a healthy lifestyle, as you have put it, does not hinge upon disease/non-disease. If this were an accurate description of health, then someone like myself who is happy and productive, yet has asthma, would not be healthy. Or perhaps any human who has cancer but still lives well - certainly their life is considered healthy?

I think health has more to do with one's relationship to one's life than the technicalities of illness. Would you disagree with this perspective?

But death is the natural consequence to life. Even if we hypothesize and say that we survive capitalism, then we colonize other planets and eventually survive the death of the sun, even then we can starhop until the last star dies.. but when the temperature of the universe reaches near absolute zero - there will be no life. Regardless of how you try and classify it, all life requires energy and this energy all comes at a cost. Hence you cannot continuously produce and consume energy in an infinite manner - there will be an end as the entropy takes hold.

- August

I would. Being healthy is not an on/off state - someone who had nothing worse than asthma I would consider to be reasonably healthy. Not perfectly so, but hardly suffering to the degree where there is no further point in living.

And broken legs are a natural consequence of falling from great heights, but that doesn't mean we should stop putting railings on catwalks.

Just because something does happen doesn't mean it should happen.

We'll have plenty of time to work around that problem.

Just thought I'd drop this here for the sake of discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%2...l_intelligence