Yamaraashi-chan says, "Someday, you're gonna be a creepy old man, aren't you?"

I went out clothes shopping with Omaha and Kouryou-chan, and I have to say that if I were feeling perverse, I would write an orgy scene using just the names of different brands and makes of shoes for the characters: Kaylyn, Darla, Madison, Lauren, Sara, Jillian, Copeley, Sadie, Molly, Mellisa, Sienna, Kiera, Aspen, Kayly, Kayla, Ellen, Britt, Reanna, Caroline, Gabriella, Savannah.

Geez, the names for different releases of Ubuntu were more creative than just dipping into some interminable 1001 Popular Baby Names book.

Ron Reagan addresses transhumanism.

It's so cute listening to mainstream pundits trying to deal with Transhuman/Posthuman/H+ issues. The main thrust of his topic was this: someday, we'll all be able to live indefinitely long lives, as long as we're willing to upgrade significants parts of our body with reliable replacements.

He took about six calls in the half hour he alloted to the idea, and all of the calls had the exact same theme: it'll never work. Reagan himself seemed to think that the whole idea was preposterous and kinda creepy, and he pointed out a careful elision in Ray Kurzweil's recent essay that sparked Reagan's topic: Kurzweil never once mentions the brain.

I think that was deliberate, Kurzweil didn't want to creep us out too much. (The Telegraph only hightened the creepiness by using a photo of a stripped terminator for its accent.)

So, let's deal with the issues in order. In order to understand some of the objections, and the responses, you should probably have finished the Staying Alive quiz on your foundational views of personal identity, and understanding that my view of continuity is psychological: we believe we are the same person, moment by moment, day by day, because of some emergent property of consciousness. As long as that conviction (which is a similar conviction to the one that says "sleep is safe") remains, and as long as I receive consensus about my identity from those around me, "I" continue to exist.

There were two main objections:

Objection 1: Replace enough of me, and I won't be me.

This was Reagan's strongest objection, and two of his callers echoed it. The problem with this objection is twofold: In some ways, all of you has been replaced. Only a few of the atoms in your body are the same as the ones with which you were born. We're constantly taking food and air and water in, and passing it out the other end, changing our bodily make-up minute by minute, hour by hour. Every day we forget things; and every day we have new experiences that teach us more. It is only a conviction so strong it may as well be a truism (although some philosophers call it an illusion) that the person you are this second is the same person you remember being twenty years ago, and the same person you believe will arise in your bed tomorrow.

What's really going on in this objection is an observation of gradualism: we change gradually, and in ways for which our evolutionary history has primed us: growing, aging, disease, death. If the changes happened gradually, and most of them were hidden from sight, we'd never notice. Even the slow replacement of brain cells: no one believes that each brain cell by itself makes up "you." No single brain cell is conscious. If we could replace them with reliable, compartmentable equivalents, one at a time, would we even notice?

Objection 2: I'll get bored

So?

Really. Wouldn't you rather have the opportunity to become completely bored with life, after you've written a dozen symphonies, climbed every mountain the Solar System has to offer, sculpted, drawn, loved a thousand people, read and written every book, competed in every sport, challenged yourself in every way-- and come to assume that there are no more challenges.

Besides, what makes people think that in twenty years we won't have made enormous strides in psychological self-control, through medication or other means, such that "boredom" and "distraction" will be banished to some ancient bad time the way we now banish "female hysteria" to the 19th century?

I guess I'll just never understand people who think that their alloted three-score-and-ten is "good enough for me, and good enough for you, too."

Now, if you put this in your resume, would you EVER get hired?

Hmm... If you put this on your resume, would you ever hear from an employer again?

Note: Google, Facebook, and Twitter meet the definition of a "consumer credit reporting agency" as outlined under the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 2001, section 603(f). Conducting a search for this or any other applicant using one of the these, or similar, Internet search engines without the applicant's written permission is a violation of Federal law.

See, this is why I carry a notebook with me always. The above was found in an article on labor laws in the magazine Meat & Poultry, which happened to be left on the counter in a butcher's shop. It was advising employers to be very careful and to get applicant consent before conducting such searchers.