0
memory, imagination, far future
It was probably sloppy thinking on my part that last entry I suggested that because I felt benefits from ashwagandha, I might also from bacopa, because it was also used in the Indian tradition of Ayurvedic medicine. I mean, each substance probably works--if they do--on completely different chemical pathways. On the other hand, from my experience now I do think that the Ayurvedic tradition had something to it (even if the "vatta", "pitta", etc. distinctions have nothing to do with biology.) I haven't been convinced, in the similar way of having something work for me, that Traditional Chinese Medicine works.
Interesting discussion on implications for immortality technology suggests that the fast pace of change wouldn't stop once aging breakthroughs are reached. Through an incredibly long or even endless life one would continue to see human or post or trans-human possibilities extended.
First, all this Singularity stuff may be a pipe-dream. The longer you try to extrapolate anything for, the larger an uncertainty you're going to introduce. What seems to be an exponential curve of growth may be a logistic function. At some point the limits won't be set by our ingenuity but by laws of physics and biochemistry. I really haven't read the theoretical discussions on Singularity ideas much--I'm sure this is brought up for discussion a lot, and I'd like to read more.
Second, when I ask myself what I want or hope for from life-extension, the answer is the obvious benefit of more time. It's not the secondary benefit of all the cool stuff that may be around in the future (according to rosier forcasts!) Being human isn't a problem for me; in fact I'd like more of it.
But for an interesting take on the question of "What do you get for a species that can do anything?" try the short stories of Stanislaw Lem in The Star Diaries. Maybe some day we'll so completely run out of limits that we'll miss them in a way.
From this article on Lem:
Assuming humanity doesn't destroy itself, Lem imagines science and technology marching remorselessly forward, obliterating traditional beliefs and taboos and erasing all distinctions between what's natural and what's artificial. This will create minor quandaries:
When new psychoactive chemicals are available, how will you know whether you're really enjoying pheasant, or being fed gruel and made to hallucinate that it's pheasant? Does it matter?
When genetic engineering is perfected, what kind of body will be fashionable? In The Star Diaries, Lem imagines a planet that undergoes a series of ''body-building wars,'' in which some factions insist on adding tails, some prefer eyes set in the armpits, some are ''double-rumpists,'' and some devise sexual organs so that reproduction becomes a six-person affair. Finally, a benevo- lent dictator outlaws different genders and redesigns the brain so that a person feels sexual pleasure only while doing socially useful work. Inevitably, there are resisters who refuse to work because they don't want pleasure.
But these body-building wars are only a symptom of a more profound problem, as Tichy discovers when he finds an order of robot monks living in a catacomb. Here's how the robot prior describes life in the fourth millennium:
''Today a child can resurrect the dead, breathe life into the dust . . . and kindle suns, for such technologies exist . . . Because the bounds of human agency, marked off with such precision in the Holy Book, have been attained unto and thereby violated. And the cruelty of the old restrictions is now replaced by the cruelty of their total absence.''
