Reply To: Toshiba's "Micro Nuclear Reactor" – it's not fusion, but it's here now

[TimS]

Do I really need to spell this out?

I wouldn’t be involved with lots of projects If I were entirely selfish. I’m not going to live long enough to reap the entire benefit of most projects I am involved in. And I certainly won’t benefit from the life extension efforts currently underway. Others will and that makes these projects worthy of my support.

Having longer lifespans leads to inherently better stewardship. Because it is people’s own future they are caring about.

This may not be true for everyone, but it is obviously true for many. This tripe about people not wanting to leave messes for their children to inherit is obviously not true for a lot of people. Otherwise we wouldn’t be running a 1.6 trillion dollar annual deficit here in the United States. Words speak so much louder than actions And it’s obvious from their actions that many people would gladly enslave their children and grandchildren in order to live more comfortable themselves.

Yeah, life sucks sometimes. I HATE my current job. I deal with it. I also try to make the world a better place.

When you get sick do you seek medical attention? You don’t have to. Must be because you want to live longer. Others do too.

Big suprise!

This really gets into the whole memes versus genes thing we were talking about above. Thoughts regarding the 1.6 trillion dollar annual deficit, whether it is the end of the world or a temporary fact of the ongoing economic crisis, are part of our social circumstance and beliefs, basically involving our memes. This meme is causing a lot of conflict in our society, causing people not to seem to care as much about each other, essentially making them more selfish.

As I explained above, I think the extra gene pool diversity requirement for genetic evolution over memetic evolution causes genetic evolution to push individuals to try to connect with, and survive with, more other individuals than memetic evolution does. Genetic mutations are usually fatal, memetic mutations are new religions. Genetic evolution depends on larger gene pool diversity, memetic evolution can use mutational changes in the memes for necessary adaptation. The selfish gene may be selfish, but since that book was written I think the theory has gone more towards evolution of the entire gene pool, or even system of interacting gene pools, which may drive mechanisms to “unselfish” the individual gene. There is a word evolution theorists are using for “entire gene pool of a species” but it escapes me. These mechanisms may not be so driven in the case of memetic evolution, since it does not require as diverse a gene pool for adaptation, so memes are likely more selfish.

Certainly, people want to live a long, healthy life. Everybody I know wants to get to know their grandchildren (if any), maybe their greats. But in the long run, if individuals in our society evolve through their memes, not their genes, the world will become a more selfish place, according to the analysis in the previous paragraph. Would this be a good thing?

Sometimes the economic argument (ownership equals better stewardship, if people are not around in the future they can not own it, therefore infinite lifetimes will make the best possible world) is obvious, simple, and wrong because it does not account for the actual details of the mechanisms involved, such as genetic adaptation versus memetic adaptation.