I agree with Mr Bider. Humans get their terminal values from a combination of genetic transmission and cultural transmission. The former has been recently called on this blog the thousand shards of desire. Most people, even most extremely intelligent people, use their intelligence pursuing the values that have been transmitted to them genetically and culturally. What I find more virtuous than raw intelligence is the willingness of the person to turn his intelligence on these values, to question every one searchingly and to be prepared to throw them all out if that is what his intelligence and his studies instruct him to do. (Actually, if you throw them all out, you run into a problem staying motivated, but this is not the place . . .)
How I choose to conquer death is to redefine “me” to include not only my intelligence but also the effects of that intelligence on the world, so that when my body dies and my intelligence ends, “I” continue. The death of a mind is not the end of the world.
I don’t think you can define your way into immortality.
You can say that you care more about the world going on than about your own existence, and that may well even be true; but that isn’t conquering death, it’s just putting the problem in a box and writing “Not Death” on the label.
I agree with Mr Bider. Humans get their terminal values from a combination of genetic transmission and cultural transmission. The former has been recently called on this blog the thousand shards of desire. Most people, even most extremely intelligent people, use their intelligence pursuing the values that have been transmitted to them genetically and culturally. What I find more virtuous than raw intelligence is the willingness of the person to turn his intelligence on these values, to question every one searchingly and to be prepared to throw them all out if that is what his intelligence and his studies instruct him to do. (Actually, if you throw them all out, you run into a problem staying motivated, but this is not the place . . .)
How I choose to conquer death is to redefine “me” to include not only my intelligence but also the effects of that intelligence on the world, so that when my body dies and my intelligence ends, “I” continue. The death of a mind is not the end of the world.
I don’t think you can define your way into immortality.
You can say that you care more about the world going on than about your own existence, and that may well even be true; but that isn’t conquering death, it’s just putting the problem in a box and writing “Not Death” on the label.