Haha! Probably the whole universe will just turn into a sexbot eventually...
I thought about that too - I mean they aren't exactly trees but they do make "kelp forests" and fill essentially the same ecological niche. So I'm not sure exactly what was meant by his question, but it stood out to me as being very different from all other questions so I included it.
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organisms): The largest organism in the world, according to mass, is the aspen tree whose colonies of clones can grow up to 8 kilometres (5 mi) long. The largest such colony is Pando, in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah.
Perhaps the kelp, or other similar species for that matter, are similar to the aspen trees.
Ballpark estimate? My guess is there will be entities that self-identify as non-human by 2100 but it might be much longer before we fully lose homo sapiens. My hope would be that we still hang on to natural born humans for a long time but maybe thats idealistic.
Thank you for posting these; I appreciate that people (the quoters) generate such thoughts and questions and discussions, and that other people excellently accumulate these things and spread them (this substack).
Your welcome! I strive to do original work here (more coming soon!) but these questions are a great thought-provoking resource that should be more widely known, glad you appreciated it.
Also, another thought: where did you come across all of these? (generally speaking, e.g. "mostly books", "mixture of articles + podcasts" etc...). These questions are provocative, and I will likely be contented by trying to parse them out further in my journal, maybe through answering them directly, trying to find what emotion or assumption or social context they are embedded in, etc... I often fail at recording interesting passages from what I read, but would like to fail less in this regard. Off the top of your head, do you have any recommended readings, from the subset of what you've read, that contain these questions or remarks?
Hey sorry for the delayed response - this is a good question and I'm not sure I have a great response. I'm not sure how I found about Edge.org but it is a great resource and it is definitely worth looking at the other annual questions series (see the part 1 post), full of interesting ideas and speculations. As for your more general question, I can only say what has worked for me. When I was younger I read a lot of books on science and philosophy. As I've gotten older, I've probably shifted towards reading more articles about science/philosophy (huge Scott Alexander fan) and more fiction books. I've been an avid listener of podcasts for the last 12ish years of my life (I'm 31) and have learned a lot from various people. Two favorites are Sam Harris and Very Bad Wizards, I've learned a huge amount about psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and meditation from these two. The podcast Weird Studies is another recent favorite, eclectic discussion of art, philosophy, and the occult. As for favorite books, I'm a huge Daniel Dennett fan (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, from Bach to Bacteria and Back), I love everything by Noah Yuval Harari, and for fiction I love Ted Chiang and Jose Luis Borges and can't recommend them highly enough - full of fascinating ideas and questions that you might like. I also like the work of Thomas Metzinger, his book the Ego Tunnel is very interesting and he has some good essays (check out my post "The Blind Spot of Existence" for recommendations).
I don't have any special system for remembering things or recording passages. Sometimes I'll take a picture if I see a quote in a book that I like or I will copy interesting passages from articles into a word document. I really don't worry about it too much, if it was really that interesting then I usually remember it, and if not so be it. I'm guessing you are fairly young, the one thing I'll say is that you tend to get more efficient in you reading as you get older, it's like you have a bigger database built up so it is easier to make connections and therefore remember things, or at least that's my experience. Hope this helps!
What quirk of evolution caused us to develop the ability to do pure mathematics? Being better at pattern recognition is evolutionarily advantageous, so minds evolved to be better pattern recognizers. Math involves lots of pattern recognition.
Given the nature of life, the purposeless indifference of the universe, and our complete lack of free will, how is it that most people avoid ever being clinically depressed? Art/creativity. Music does it for me.
Are accurate mathematical theories of individual human behavior possible? Will a comprehensive mathematics of human behavior ever be created? I doubt it.
Can general-purpose computers be constructed out of pure gravity? Not even wrong.
Is the universe like an onion that will require science to keep peeling back new layers of reality and asking questions forever? Could be.
Is the number of interesting questions finite or not? Infinite. But - countably infinite?
Is the brain a computer or an antenna? Neither.
Will it ever be possible to download the information stored in the human brain? I had a college roommate who said he intended to do this. It's theoretically possible, but I doubt it's possible in practice.
What does the conscious mind do that is impossible for the unconscious mind? I doubt we'll ever know.
Would you like to live 1,000 years? Only with continued good health.
Will we soon cease to care whether we are experiencing normal, augmented, or virtual reality? I think there are some folks who are already there.
Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? Because it fills a common human need.
Can we ever wean humans off their addiction to religion? No, same reason.
Was agriculture a wrong turn for civilization? There are definitely trade-offs.
What will we do as an encore once we manage to develop technological solutions to infection, aging, poverty, asteroids, and heat death of the universe? I doubt we will find a technological solution to the heat death of the universe.
What is the most intelligent and efficient way to minimize the overall amount of conscious suffering in the universe? The repugnant conclusion - kill all sentient beings and there is no suffering.
Is the actual all that is possible? No, artists create.
That's really neat Paula! I like being photographed in the NUDE too but I like blogging about science even more!
Ultimate last question: will the internet just end up overrun by sex bots?
But seriously, regarding George Dyson's question about trees in the ocean, does giant kelp count as a "tree"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrocystis_pyrifera
Haha! Probably the whole universe will just turn into a sexbot eventually...
I thought about that too - I mean they aren't exactly trees but they do make "kelp forests" and fill essentially the same ecological niche. So I'm not sure exactly what was meant by his question, but it stood out to me as being very different from all other questions so I included it.
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organisms): The largest organism in the world, according to mass, is the aspen tree whose colonies of clones can grow up to 8 kilometres (5 mi) long. The largest such colony is Pando, in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah.
Perhaps the kelp, or other similar species for that matter, are similar to the aspen trees.
"When will "human being" cease to be a meaningful category to speak of?" - i think about this one a LOT
Ballpark estimate? My guess is there will be entities that self-identify as non-human by 2100 but it might be much longer before we fully lose homo sapiens. My hope would be that we still hang on to natural born humans for a long time but maybe thats idealistic.
Thank you for posting these; I appreciate that people (the quoters) generate such thoughts and questions and discussions, and that other people excellently accumulate these things and spread them (this substack).
Your welcome! I strive to do original work here (more coming soon!) but these questions are a great thought-provoking resource that should be more widely known, glad you appreciated it.
Also, another thought: where did you come across all of these? (generally speaking, e.g. "mostly books", "mixture of articles + podcasts" etc...). These questions are provocative, and I will likely be contented by trying to parse them out further in my journal, maybe through answering them directly, trying to find what emotion or assumption or social context they are embedded in, etc... I often fail at recording interesting passages from what I read, but would like to fail less in this regard. Off the top of your head, do you have any recommended readings, from the subset of what you've read, that contain these questions or remarks?
Hey sorry for the delayed response - this is a good question and I'm not sure I have a great response. I'm not sure how I found about Edge.org but it is a great resource and it is definitely worth looking at the other annual questions series (see the part 1 post), full of interesting ideas and speculations. As for your more general question, I can only say what has worked for me. When I was younger I read a lot of books on science and philosophy. As I've gotten older, I've probably shifted towards reading more articles about science/philosophy (huge Scott Alexander fan) and more fiction books. I've been an avid listener of podcasts for the last 12ish years of my life (I'm 31) and have learned a lot from various people. Two favorites are Sam Harris and Very Bad Wizards, I've learned a huge amount about psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and meditation from these two. The podcast Weird Studies is another recent favorite, eclectic discussion of art, philosophy, and the occult. As for favorite books, I'm a huge Daniel Dennett fan (Darwin's Dangerous Idea, from Bach to Bacteria and Back), I love everything by Noah Yuval Harari, and for fiction I love Ted Chiang and Jose Luis Borges and can't recommend them highly enough - full of fascinating ideas and questions that you might like. I also like the work of Thomas Metzinger, his book the Ego Tunnel is very interesting and he has some good essays (check out my post "The Blind Spot of Existence" for recommendations).
I don't have any special system for remembering things or recording passages. Sometimes I'll take a picture if I see a quote in a book that I like or I will copy interesting passages from articles into a word document. I really don't worry about it too much, if it was really that interesting then I usually remember it, and if not so be it. I'm guessing you are fairly young, the one thing I'll say is that you tend to get more efficient in you reading as you get older, it's like you have a bigger database built up so it is easier to make connections and therefore remember things, or at least that's my experience. Hope this helps!
Oh and I love "The Beginning of Infinity" By David Deutsch and would highly recommend checking it out.
More semi-final answers.
What quirk of evolution caused us to develop the ability to do pure mathematics? Being better at pattern recognition is evolutionarily advantageous, so minds evolved to be better pattern recognizers. Math involves lots of pattern recognition.
Given the nature of life, the purposeless indifference of the universe, and our complete lack of free will, how is it that most people avoid ever being clinically depressed? Art/creativity. Music does it for me.
Are accurate mathematical theories of individual human behavior possible? Will a comprehensive mathematics of human behavior ever be created? I doubt it.
Can general-purpose computers be constructed out of pure gravity? Not even wrong.
Is the universe like an onion that will require science to keep peeling back new layers of reality and asking questions forever? Could be.
Is the number of interesting questions finite or not? Infinite. But - countably infinite?
Is the brain a computer or an antenna? Neither.
Will it ever be possible to download the information stored in the human brain? I had a college roommate who said he intended to do this. It's theoretically possible, but I doubt it's possible in practice.
What does the conscious mind do that is impossible for the unconscious mind? I doubt we'll ever know.
Would you like to live 1,000 years? Only with continued good health.
Will we soon cease to care whether we are experiencing normal, augmented, or virtual reality? I think there are some folks who are already there.
Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? Because it fills a common human need.
Can we ever wean humans off their addiction to religion? No, same reason.
Was agriculture a wrong turn for civilization? There are definitely trade-offs.
What will we do as an encore once we manage to develop technological solutions to infection, aging, poverty, asteroids, and heat death of the universe? I doubt we will find a technological solution to the heat death of the universe.
What is the most intelligent and efficient way to minimize the overall amount of conscious suffering in the universe? The repugnant conclusion - kill all sentient beings and there is no suffering.
Is the actual all that is possible? No, artists create.