Transhumanists believe it will soon be possible to live greatly expanded lifespans, virtually forever. Ray Kurzweil has a plan that amounts to staying alive long enough for the new life extention technologies to become available. Perhaps it will happen in the unlikely event we avoid apocalypse. Yet I'm conflicted. In many ways I am no longer the same person at 50 I was when I was 20. How much more difference would there be at 500, especially in a world transformed by the Singularity. If I could see myself at that time, would I even be recognizable? Still, life is precious and fleeting...
... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
- Paul Bowles
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