A recent commenter asked:
Is it justifiable for people to be [paid for] work that doesn't actually produce anything? If Person A didn't actually contribute any more than Person B, but still worked longer, why do they deserve more?
What follows is my take on that question. I go into what I think "work" actually means, as well as some various confusions and observations regarding economy and government. And I also talk about technology a bit.
Work isn't really about objectively "producing" stuff -- after all, even work that results in the output of some tangible widget is mostly just a matter of rearranging stuff as opposed to creating something new out of thin air. As I see it, the essence of paid work is that a person is financially compensated for performing some activity that other people have decided to value.
There is no objective list sitting in Platonic space somewhere dictating which things and activities correspond with a person's "deserving" a particular salary. Culture, not "intrinsic worth", determines how much money a person is granted for doing or producing X (where X might be a product or service).
If that weren't the case, people wouldn't pay huge amounts of money for diamonds, gold necklaces, designer clothing, etc.
And look at the entertainment industry. Look at the arts. Does a person who writes a song or throws a baseball "produce" anything? Does an artist who sells a painting "deserve" to be paid?
Objectively, this question cannot be answered. But in the context of human culture, it is answered by the people who decide to (or decide not to) compensate others for their efforts in these areas.
The same is true for business endeavors that fall outside the realm of arts and entertainment. For the sake of argument, let's say Person A and Person B are software engineers working for the same company. How much each ends up getting paid will depend on what the company (and, by extension, the employees' manager) values most. When people work, there are many ways in which they might be perceived as "contributing".
For example, say Person B only works a half day (and isn't available "after hours" at all, by phone or otherwise), but does something perceived as being tremendously useful for the company while she is at work. In this case, the company may decide that Person B is effectively "contributing" as much to the company's bottom line as someone who works a full day, and pay them accordingly.
However, it is also quite possible that Person A will be perceived as adding more of what the company values than Person B merely by working longer hours -- e.g., by being present on site, even if Person A isn't always "doing something", Person A is still there and available to do things on demand. Some companies really value availability.
So, as you can see, when companies are deciding how to pay different people (particularly when the job in question involves "intangibles" like creativity, initiative, etc., as opposed to "production of X number of widgets per day"), they almost invariably take more than one single factor into account. And when you move your vantage point from looking at "what the company values in an employee" to looking at "what potential or actual customers value in their products and services", it is clear that people take more factors than mere efficiency of widget-production into consideration when seeking goods and services.
Now, before anyone gets excited, none of the above should be taken as an endorsement of "letting the market sort things out". While I find the whole laissez-faire thing very easy to understand, conceptually speaking, and while it's hard for me to imagine how a less capitalistic system (than what we presently have in the USA) would work, I simply don't think that market forces can be trusted to bring about the outcomes proponents think they should.
I'm not going to sit here and make sweeping generalizations about the personalities of economic libertarians, because I'm well aware different people come to their economic opinions along different paths (in my case, I started out as something like an economic libertarian simply because it was the easiest system to understand). But I do -- at least based on what I've observed as of this point in time -- think there are some rather curious assumptions made by some folks who would likely class themselves as "free marketeers". I'm probably going to get myself into trouble here in even attempting to write about this (and anyone can feel free to call me "ignorant" seeing as I am rather ignorant in this area), but goshdarnit, I'm going to make an attempt anyway.
Basically, what I see "government" as ideally has nothing to do with "authority", but rather to do with a system of jobs that people are hired to perform in the interest of taking care of all the annoying logistics that would otherwise bog most other individuals down. That is, you don't elect so-and-so to be Secretary of Transportation because you feel obligated to make someone The Boss Of You when it comes to transportation-related matters, but because you figure you don't want to spend all your time dealing with all the pain-in-the-butt details of making sure the airplanes you board are safe, the roads you drive on are in good repair, etc.
I'm well aware that things don't work "ideally", and that some people do take what should be a useful and practical job and behave as if it's some sort of position of great power, and that governments do act authoritatively in areas they shouldn't as a result of all the false trappings of power that have built up like layers of grime over time in the system.
I am also painfully aware of how irritating it can be to deal with bureaucracy and paperwork and budgetary categories that make zero sense -- as an engineer, I find it mind-boggling when I'm required to get a whole slew of signatures just for the sake of acquiring a small, relatively cheap bit of hardware. When I was an intern at NASA in junior college, I remember being flabbergasted that my boss had to buy a box of picture frames even though we badly needed new computer hardware, because of the "color" of the money available. I also personally find logistical stuff of any kind, as well as most "official forms" and articles of paperwork, to be so terribly confusing that my head starts to hurt when I even think of looking at that sort of thing.
But the thing is -- I don't think that inefficiency and "bloat" are inevitable consequences of the mere existence of government, nor do I think that free-market capitalism is the remedy for the headache-inducing, frustrating situation many of us technical types and scientists find ourselves in when we want to implement or try out an idea. (I actually have a working theory that a lot of the political yelling that goes on when engineers complain about paperwork probably ties back directly, at least in a fair number of cases, to actual cognitive difficulties pertaining to logistical tasks, but I'm not guessing this theory is likely to be very popular with folks who are accustomed to thinking of themselves as Very Generally Intelligent.)
I don't claim to know what the remedy actually is, but I figure with all the creative people in the world, we have to be able to do better than choosing between "a bunch of clueless guys control everything and make anyone who wants to do anything fill out loads of complicated paperwork, with the result being that someone who wants a resistor for their widget needs 80 signatures from 10 management committees before they can acquire it" or "everyone competes in a free market environment, with the result being a kind of neverending 'social Darwinism' in which anyone who isn't cut-throat enough gets stomped into the ground."
My impression is that everyone would be better off if our interdependence were acknowledged more thoroughly, and if we somehow managed to work it out such that government was a set of practical logistically-oriented job roles as opposed to a bloated, sprawling, and altogether disappointing mess of dubious authority and excess paperwork, but in order for either of those conditions to come about, people need to stop viewing government as some kind of evil "THEM". They, after all, are us -- in the sense that nobody is forcing us to sell out our principles for corporate perks, or elect dumb tyrants, or do any number of other things we seem to be pretty good at doing over and over again.
If enough people really and truly decide that government is useless, I'm sure we eventually won't have one, but at this point I'd be willing to tout the notion of reform far and above the notion of abolishing governmental bodies altogether. I don't like paternalism much, but I sure as heck don't think issues with mass transit and environmental monitoring and public works can be adequately addressed by individuals who are generally focused heavily on other things, or by corporations who are generally focused on making something and selling it. It's not a matter of thinking private individuals or even corporations are "evil" -- it's a matter of realizing that people and companies both have limited attentional bandwidth, and literally cannot properly deal with crucial large-scale logistics to the extent that such things must be dealt with.
In my estimation, a lot of what eventually manifests as what looks like callous disregard (and even disdain) for the poor or for the various and sundry concerned folks making noise about saving the whales and the ozone layer and what-have-you probably originates not in wicked intent but in the unavoidable fact of bandwidth limitations. So what we need are people who can devote their entire working bandwidth to these things, which is where I personally see the role of government. In order to assure that everyone with a stake in a given matter actually gets heard, we need people whose job it is to consistently remind companies and individuals that no, their interests are not the only ones on the planet, and that no, none of us can afford to be short-sighted or so preoccupied with "winning the game" (whatever our particular game might be) that we forget we live in a shared, precarious, and vulnerable space.
I am not, of course, suggesting that only people with the defined logistical/regulatory jobs have a responsibility to care about the diversity of interests and vulnerabilities in the world -- everyone can and should care about such things -- but it is perfectly acceptable in the kind of scenario I have in mind for people to seek and use expert assistance in actually executing the fact that they care.
I don't know what you'd call that particular "system", if it's even a system -- I don't think in a top-down fashion when it comes to this sort of thing, just because my brain doesn't work that way (i.e., I don't think this way to be a cool political rebel, it's just a function of my cognition). But it's at least an attempt to take into consideration the valid concerns of both those whose efforts are frustrated by actually meaningless bureaucracy, and those who end up suffering needlessly in poverty or extreme precarity as a result of other people's superstitions (e.g., the notion that "helping poor people makes them lazy", and the notion that accommodating disabled/atypical people constitutes not only "resource waste" but giving such people an "unfair advantage", and other similar lines of nonsense).
Getting back to the question, though, of what it means to have a job, what it means to be working, and what it means to be "earning" one's living in the first place -- I really and truly do not think that any "level" of technology (including, say, advanced molecular manufacturing) would by itself somehow change the "work culture".
I mean, come on -- most employed people (in the USA at least) frequently get paid to sit through hours upon hours of meetings, during which time we are definitely not engaging in widget-production. Are people who anticipate impressive advances in, say, nanotech really of the opinion that meetings (and, for that matter, TPS reports) are going to disappear? Honestly, now!
Mind you, I love daydreaming about the vast possibilities things like nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing could allow people to explore. That sort of thing, as far as I'm concerned, would quite literally be magic if it were to emerge from the laboratory -- myth made manifest, alchemy poured from story into life. Humans have a long and rich history of delving into the machinations of magic, even though said magic has mainly only been metaphor and chosen narrative used to weave life and phenomenon into coherence. It's certainly no wonder that some might believe that, as magic (from classical alchemy to various sci-fi tropes, such as the "universal translator") in the context of a story tends to wrap the surrounding reality around it, transforming life in very specific ways directly traceable to the particular flavor of featured magic, the emergence of nanotechnology might similarly change actual reality.
But this to me seems unlikely. If nanotech does emerge in any significant way within the next few decades, I do not see the mere existence of the technology as something capable of altering the way people think about work. Technology doesn't exist in a vaccuum -- the ways in which new devices are used are most certainly influenced by pre-existing culture even as they in turn may come to influence that culture. In light of this, it is important to consider that, far from being a forward escape from the status quo, new widgets can actually serve to solidify the status quo by making it easier for those in power to hold onto that power. (I'm reminded briefly here of the Goa'uld -- aliens from the science fiction series Stargate SG-1 -- who use the technology they acquire to "prove" that they are as gods and deserve to be treated as such by "lesser" peoples.)
How people choose what they value, much moreso than what "level" of technology ends up being developed, is therefore far more likely to influence the work environment of the future. We've certainly seen particular widgets (such as cellular phones, laptop computers, and wi-fi modules) change the work culture to some extent, however, I'd argue that people probably work more when they have these devices, as opposed to less, seeing as they are more reliably accessible to their employers more of the time.
Individual workers may find this fact either distressing or pleasing depending on how much they like their jobs, what their jobs consist of, how much flexibility they want or need, etc., so I'm not saying that the present state of affairs is categorically good or bad, but I am definitely saying that I'm confused when people suggest that technology alone will make it so people have to work less. People might work differently, to be sure, but I'm not so certain we'll work less!
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Domed, Evenly Climatized Cities of 2008
The fine folks at Modern Mechanix (one of the best things on the Internet, in my opinion, with its impressive archive of old science articles and other miscellany) bring to us this week a 1968 Mechanix Illustrated piece entitled 40 Years in the Future, by someone named James Berry.
I love this kind of thing. It's fun to see what they got right, and what they got wrong.
Probably the most accurate stuff in the entire piece had to do with commerce and/or money. I wonder why? For instance:
(I especially like the term "TV-telephone" -- that's a pretty darn fine description of how a goodly number of people use the Internet.)
And this:
(But what they didn't predict was that people would have computers capable of doing this stuff that you could fit in your pocket!)
The predictions about media and education were somewhat more marginal. They did pick up on the whole "instantaneous information availability" thing, however, they seemed fixated on things called "TV tapes" and seemed to expect that in 2008 we'd all still have to trek to the library to access media (though to be fair, this is certainly true for people who can't afford computers, and yes, such people do actually exist -- as do people who don't have flush toilets, just to keep everyone grounded here).
Also, while "distance learning" classes are actually real, they are far from the most common means of achieving formal schooling, particularly for children. I guess the people predicting computerized classes for youngsters neglected to note that the primary purpose of school is, in fact, as Paul Graham notes, "...to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done."
They also accurately predicted microwave ovens and disposable dinnerware (it seems like a lot of people in the 50s and 60s were obsessed with being able to throw things away...what was up with that?), but apparently not the fall into disfavor of the word "housewife" (or the notion that women might not always be relegated to kitchen duty...even in Really High Tech kitchens):
And then we have the stuff that manages to be funny, telling, and wrong all at once:
Oh, if only we had awesome fast self-driving hovercars and No Accidents! That's something I'd love to see, but that would require a massive change in infrastructure -- one that I don't see on the horizon anytime soon. I'm not sure about the whole "dome covered cities" thing, though...what is this, Logan's Run?
(Ha! Ha ha ha. Ahem. No. Just no.)
Go read the whole article yourself, though...it's quite a find!
I love this kind of thing. It's fun to see what they got right, and what they got wrong.
Probably the most accurate stuff in the entire piece had to do with commerce and/or money. I wonder why? For instance:
Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested. When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.
(I especially like the term "TV-telephone" -- that's a pretty darn fine description of how a goodly number of people use the Internet.)
And this:
Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities.
(But what they didn't predict was that people would have computers capable of doing this stuff that you could fit in your pocket!)
The predictions about media and education were somewhat more marginal. They did pick up on the whole "instantaneous information availability" thing, however, they seemed fixated on things called "TV tapes" and seemed to expect that in 2008 we'd all still have to trek to the library to access media (though to be fair, this is certainly true for people who can't afford computers, and yes, such people do actually exist -- as do people who don't have flush toilets, just to keep everyone grounded here).
Also, while "distance learning" classes are actually real, they are far from the most common means of achieving formal schooling, particularly for children. I guess the people predicting computerized classes for youngsters neglected to note that the primary purpose of school is, in fact, as Paul Graham notes, "...to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done."
In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term. Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously...
Best-selling books are on TV tape and can be borrowed or rented from tape libraries.
They also accurately predicted microwave ovens and disposable dinnerware (it seems like a lot of people in the 50s and 60s were obsessed with being able to throw things away...what was up with that?), but apparently not the fall into disfavor of the word "housewife" (or the notion that women might not always be relegated to kitchen duty...even in Really High Tech kitchens):
The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.
And then we have the stuff that manages to be funny, telling, and wrong all at once:
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated.
Oh, if only we had awesome fast self-driving hovercars and No Accidents! That's something I'd love to see, but that would require a massive change in infrastructure -- one that I don't see on the horizon anytime soon. I'm not sure about the whole "dome covered cities" thing, though...what is this, Logan's Run?
The average work day is about four hours.
(Ha! Ha ha ha. Ahem. No. Just no.)
Go read the whole article yourself, though...it's quite a find!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
General Announcement: Resignation from IEET and WTA
This information certainly isn't going to be relevant to everyone who reads Existence is Wonderful, but seeing as I know some readers are at least passingly acquainted with either or both of the above organizations, I figured it worthwhile to post about the situation myself so I could get it out of the way and move on.
Last week I resigned from my Intern post with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
I also resigned from my position on the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association.
Why did I resign from these groups? Well, last week something (or rather, a combination of things) prompted me to look at what I was doing and figure out where I might be able to reclaim some bandwidth. Frankly, this (or something like it) has been a long time coming.
Mind you, I haven't changed my interests or priorities -- I've just decided to rearrange my activities somewhat such that what I am doing more accurately reflects my priorities. In short, nothing much has changed, except I am now less "entangled" with organizations (and by extension, whatever the agendas of those organizations might be).
And my priorities (well, aside from my day job as an electrical engineer, and aside from things like making sure to eat properly and get enough sleep, etc.) are, in summary:
1.) Longevity advocacy - I am most certainly planning on staying involved with the Methuselah Foundation, an organization devoted to advocating for and promoting/funding research that may eventually lead to more effective treatments for age-related health problems. The Foundation's efforts have already begun to show results, along the lines of the following:
Pretty cool, huh? I certainly think so. I'm also interested in exploring what other longevity-oriented research is going on, as well as the social factors associated with aging -- one thing I see as tremendously important is acknowledging that many people today are already elderly, and could benefit from healthcare reforms and culture changes (such as those that encourage more in-home services). So I'll be paying more attention to that sort of thing as well.
2.) Morphological freedom advocacy - When I think of what morphological freedom actually implies, I think in terms of people being enabled to make highly personal, highly individualized, highly contextual choices with regard to how their bodies and brains operate. To me, this means that people should be maximally free to either change some aspect of themselves, or not change some aspect of themselves.
It also means that I believe societies and cultures need to be more inclusive of different forms -- both forms that may come into existence as a result of emerging modification technologies, and forms that already actually exist. I see the struggle to ensure that all people are valued and included in the world community (as opposed to some persons, on account of disability/atypicality being written off as a "drain" on that same community) as inseparable from the drive and struggle to enable radical self-creative forms of modification.
And: I think many of the dialogues surrounding these issues, particularly those that take place in popular media (or in response to it), are far more simplistic and prone to degrading into false dichotomies than they should be. I want to contribute in some way to helping change that.
After all, a world that cannot tolerate people who prefer to use sign language, people who communicate primarily through a computer or other device, or who use various forms of assistive technology in general, is not going to be a friendly place for would-be cyborgs or cryonicists either.
3.) Writing - I've dreamed of writing science fiction since childhood, and that dream has never really gone away, so I figure perhaps it's time to get cracking on it. I've been reading more and listening to podcasts about the current state of the genre publishing market, and for the first time in my life I genuinely feel as if perhaps this writing thing is actually something I can do. Not as a day job or anything (I already have one of those), but as a hobby that I actually put a decent amount of effort into, hopefully with something resembling worthwhile results.
So, I'm looking forward to having the bandwidth to do that. I have a few ideas for stories I'm pretty excited about, and I've been walking around for the past few days having nifty imaginary settings flesh themselves out in my head, which I know is a good sign as far as these things go.
And, in addition to the above, I certainly plan to keep writing here at "Existence is Wonderful" -- both in reference to the above subjects, and just whenever the mood strikes me to write about something I find interesting. I enjoy periodically doing things like running polls and discussing the results, for instance, and I also like bringing up random philosophical subjects from time to time and exploring them.
Last week I resigned from my Intern post with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
I also resigned from my position on the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association.
Why did I resign from these groups? Well, last week something (or rather, a combination of things) prompted me to look at what I was doing and figure out where I might be able to reclaim some bandwidth. Frankly, this (or something like it) has been a long time coming.
Mind you, I haven't changed my interests or priorities -- I've just decided to rearrange my activities somewhat such that what I am doing more accurately reflects my priorities. In short, nothing much has changed, except I am now less "entangled" with organizations (and by extension, whatever the agendas of those organizations might be).
And my priorities (well, aside from my day job as an electrical engineer, and aside from things like making sure to eat properly and get enough sleep, etc.) are, in summary:
1.) Longevity advocacy - I am most certainly planning on staying involved with the Methuselah Foundation, an organization devoted to advocating for and promoting/funding research that may eventually lead to more effective treatments for age-related health problems. The Foundation's efforts have already begun to show results, along the lines of the following:
Our teams have now cultured bacteria capable of degrading 7-ketocholestrol (implicated as a major cause of atherosclerosis and also involved in Alzheimer's disease), A2E (responsible for age-related macular degeneration) and CML, a sugar-derived protein modification which accumulates throughout the body and is associated with many of the symptoms of diabetes. The enzymes involved in A2E degradation have been identified and we are working to test them for therapeutic benefit in cellular models of macular degeneration.
Our preliminary work on 7-ketocholesterol was recently published in the international journal Biodegradation, in the March 15th 2008 issue. Our microarray program, based at Rice University, has identified a series of enzymes implicated in 7-ketocholesterol degradation which we are now characterising and cloning into E. coli to allow more extensive testing. We hope to publish these results in the near future.
Pretty cool, huh? I certainly think so. I'm also interested in exploring what other longevity-oriented research is going on, as well as the social factors associated with aging -- one thing I see as tremendously important is acknowledging that many people today are already elderly, and could benefit from healthcare reforms and culture changes (such as those that encourage more in-home services). So I'll be paying more attention to that sort of thing as well.
2.) Morphological freedom advocacy - When I think of what morphological freedom actually implies, I think in terms of people being enabled to make highly personal, highly individualized, highly contextual choices with regard to how their bodies and brains operate. To me, this means that people should be maximally free to either change some aspect of themselves, or not change some aspect of themselves.
It also means that I believe societies and cultures need to be more inclusive of different forms -- both forms that may come into existence as a result of emerging modification technologies, and forms that already actually exist. I see the struggle to ensure that all people are valued and included in the world community (as opposed to some persons, on account of disability/atypicality being written off as a "drain" on that same community) as inseparable from the drive and struggle to enable radical self-creative forms of modification.
And: I think many of the dialogues surrounding these issues, particularly those that take place in popular media (or in response to it), are far more simplistic and prone to degrading into false dichotomies than they should be. I want to contribute in some way to helping change that.
After all, a world that cannot tolerate people who prefer to use sign language, people who communicate primarily through a computer or other device, or who use various forms of assistive technology in general, is not going to be a friendly place for would-be cyborgs or cryonicists either.
3.) Writing - I've dreamed of writing science fiction since childhood, and that dream has never really gone away, so I figure perhaps it's time to get cracking on it. I've been reading more and listening to podcasts about the current state of the genre publishing market, and for the first time in my life I genuinely feel as if perhaps this writing thing is actually something I can do. Not as a day job or anything (I already have one of those), but as a hobby that I actually put a decent amount of effort into, hopefully with something resembling worthwhile results.
So, I'm looking forward to having the bandwidth to do that. I have a few ideas for stories I'm pretty excited about, and I've been walking around for the past few days having nifty imaginary settings flesh themselves out in my head, which I know is a good sign as far as these things go.
And, in addition to the above, I certainly plan to keep writing here at "Existence is Wonderful" -- both in reference to the above subjects, and just whenever the mood strikes me to write about something I find interesting. I enjoy periodically doing things like running polls and discussing the results, for instance, and I also like bringing up random philosophical subjects from time to time and exploring them.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Longevity is Lovely, but Immortality is Incoherent
I don't see longevity advocacy, or longevity medicine, as having anything to do with Infinite Invulnerable Indestructuble-ness or any other metaphysical fantasy. No matter what amazing medical technologies are developed, there's never going to be any guarantee that any person exists in a state wherein continued existence forever is somehow assured. In order for something to be truly immortal it would need to exist...well, right up until "the end of time" (beyond which the very concept of "time" would itself become incoherent).
In other words, when I talk about life being wonderful, and about the necessity of making medicine as effective as possible for old people as well as for young people -- in fact, even when I talk about the notion of mitigating things presently considered "part of the aging process" -- I am not talking about "making people immortal".
Just, you know, in case that wasn't clear.
Nobody knows how long they will live, or how long consciousness of any kind will even exist in this or any other possible universe. This is a fact. This will, as far as I can tell, always be a fact. Which means that yes, even the staunchest, most optimistic advocate for longevity research must engage with the same age-old existential question that has faced humanity since the moment we became aware of our own tremendous physical vulnerability: how can I live knowing it could end at any time?
I personally struggled a lot with this question in my late teens and early 20s. I remember one day (years ago) I was actually crying about it -- about how I had finally viscerally grokked mortality, and about how horrible and tragic it was that individuals only had the most tenuous and fragile access to this beautiful reality. And my stepmother said something that I am grateful to her for saying to this day:
"So, what are you going to do? Just crawl into a cave and wait to die?"
When I heard that, I suddenly felt very silly.
I am certainly still quite motivated to help out in any way I can to encourage the development of effective longevity medicine. This isn't likely to change. But I refuse to make this effort a desperate, maudlin one, or one that requires apologetics to justify. Longevity advocacy itself, and the reading and research that goes along with it, are joyful acts for me -- acts that I would consider worthwhile even if they did not end up panning out for me personally.
Because life, to me, isn't about "ultimate" end-goals at all. Longevity isn't about achieving immortality or the guarantee of such. There's too much uncertainty, too much noise in the lens between now and the distant future to hinge one's hopes and dreams and reason for being on some long-way-off super-metagoal. I reject the idea that life means nothing unless it is guaranteed to last forever -- that idea is no different from the religious fundamentalist's lament that "an atheist's life can have no meaning because the atheist only gets his time on Earth, and then that's that". There is nothing paltry or dismissable about this "time on Earth", regardless of how long or short a person's life ends up being.
And acknowledging that in no way negates any drive or motivation toward promoting and developing better and more effective geriatric healthcare. I see this as a medical and ethical imperative, and a function of the acknowledgment that all people are valuable and irreplaceable, and that the loss of a single individual is like the loss of a whole world.
I don't see anything magical or mysterious about the fact that human bodies don't generally fare very well after their eighth or ninth decade as things stand now, or about the idea that perhaps people could be maintained in good condition much, much longer than they presently can. I am definitely one of those people who sees no end to the potential good in life, and who can't ever imagine getting bored or tired of existence.
But I don't hinge my appreciation for life, or my ability to get the most out of a day, a week, or a minute, or a single experience, or a sunrise, or a grain of sand, on the "possibility of immortality". Life is too precious, too precarious, and too exquisite to spend white-knuckled and curled up in a cave (as my stepmom so pointedly invoked the image of), despairing at the looming spectre of death.
In other words, when I talk about life being wonderful, and about the necessity of making medicine as effective as possible for old people as well as for young people -- in fact, even when I talk about the notion of mitigating things presently considered "part of the aging process" -- I am not talking about "making people immortal".
Just, you know, in case that wasn't clear.
Nobody knows how long they will live, or how long consciousness of any kind will even exist in this or any other possible universe. This is a fact. This will, as far as I can tell, always be a fact. Which means that yes, even the staunchest, most optimistic advocate for longevity research must engage with the same age-old existential question that has faced humanity since the moment we became aware of our own tremendous physical vulnerability: how can I live knowing it could end at any time?
I personally struggled a lot with this question in my late teens and early 20s. I remember one day (years ago) I was actually crying about it -- about how I had finally viscerally grokked mortality, and about how horrible and tragic it was that individuals only had the most tenuous and fragile access to this beautiful reality. And my stepmother said something that I am grateful to her for saying to this day:
"So, what are you going to do? Just crawl into a cave and wait to die?"
When I heard that, I suddenly felt very silly.
I am certainly still quite motivated to help out in any way I can to encourage the development of effective longevity medicine. This isn't likely to change. But I refuse to make this effort a desperate, maudlin one, or one that requires apologetics to justify. Longevity advocacy itself, and the reading and research that goes along with it, are joyful acts for me -- acts that I would consider worthwhile even if they did not end up panning out for me personally.
Because life, to me, isn't about "ultimate" end-goals at all. Longevity isn't about achieving immortality or the guarantee of such. There's too much uncertainty, too much noise in the lens between now and the distant future to hinge one's hopes and dreams and reason for being on some long-way-off super-metagoal. I reject the idea that life means nothing unless it is guaranteed to last forever -- that idea is no different from the religious fundamentalist's lament that "an atheist's life can have no meaning because the atheist only gets his time on Earth, and then that's that". There is nothing paltry or dismissable about this "time on Earth", regardless of how long or short a person's life ends up being.
And acknowledging that in no way negates any drive or motivation toward promoting and developing better and more effective geriatric healthcare. I see this as a medical and ethical imperative, and a function of the acknowledgment that all people are valuable and irreplaceable, and that the loss of a single individual is like the loss of a whole world.
I don't see anything magical or mysterious about the fact that human bodies don't generally fare very well after their eighth or ninth decade as things stand now, or about the idea that perhaps people could be maintained in good condition much, much longer than they presently can. I am definitely one of those people who sees no end to the potential good in life, and who can't ever imagine getting bored or tired of existence.
But I don't hinge my appreciation for life, or my ability to get the most out of a day, a week, or a minute, or a single experience, or a sunrise, or a grain of sand, on the "possibility of immortality". Life is too precious, too precarious, and too exquisite to spend white-knuckled and curled up in a cave (as my stepmom so pointedly invoked the image of), despairing at the looming spectre of death.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Small Robot Dreams of Home (T-Shirt)
So, I recently discovered the joys of layers in the free graphics program GIMP. What's more, I finally managed to get my Wacom drawing pad peripheral working properly (I received it as a gift about four years ago but until recently didn't know how to configure it properly -- not to mention the fact that the hardware drivers have improved a lot over the past few years).
But what does this have to do with Existence is Wonderful, you might ask? Not a whole lot, honestly, except for the fact that after starting on an "experimental" drawing, I thought to myself, "Hey, I'd like that on a t-shirt".
If you would like this image on a t-shirt, you can get it here in my little (highly robot-oriented) Cafepress shop. There are several designs on several different shirt styles -- not all the styles have this particular image on them, but if you want a certain image on a particular style, let me know and I can set that up for you. (And no, I don't make any money off this -- I've left the prices at the same levels you'd pay for blank shirts, so this is most certainly not an attempt on my part to garner profit.)
I'm not assuming everyone will be clamoring to wear my highly unprofessional artwork or anything, but I figured that I'd let people know the means exists to acquire it just in case anyone is interested.
Also: as usual, I am working on several "real" posts for this blog, so hopefully I can get some of those up within the next week or so. On the agenda: some recent thoughts on longevity research and advocacy, some stuff about brains, and a writeup explaining and analyzing the perception poll I recently posted (and which I really, really enjoyed reading people's responses to...it is always fascinating to get a sampling of how different people think about and perceive things).
But what does this have to do with Existence is Wonderful, you might ask? Not a whole lot, honestly, except for the fact that after starting on an "experimental" drawing, I thought to myself, "Hey, I'd like that on a t-shirt".
If you would like this image on a t-shirt, you can get it here in my little (highly robot-oriented) Cafepress shop. There are several designs on several different shirt styles -- not all the styles have this particular image on them, but if you want a certain image on a particular style, let me know and I can set that up for you. (And no, I don't make any money off this -- I've left the prices at the same levels you'd pay for blank shirts, so this is most certainly not an attempt on my part to garner profit.)
I'm not assuming everyone will be clamoring to wear my highly unprofessional artwork or anything, but I figured that I'd let people know the means exists to acquire it just in case anyone is interested.
Also: as usual, I am working on several "real" posts for this blog, so hopefully I can get some of those up within the next week or so. On the agenda: some recent thoughts on longevity research and advocacy, some stuff about brains, and a writeup explaining and analyzing the perception poll I recently posted (and which I really, really enjoyed reading people's responses to...it is always fascinating to get a sampling of how different people think about and perceive things).
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