Physics of creating a "deliver-to-Earth-in-future" signal

Jon Richfield

Oh sure, but I am not primarily ER-oriented. Mainly incompetence-obsessed. IMO we don't need any ER; we are doing very nicely on our own thank you.

No?

Jon

Frame Dragger

Yeah, I would have to agree with that asessment. Saldy, that also tracks with my notion that attempts to preserve our "legacy" for the sake of uncertain future being highly unlikely. I think we're going to have to settle for extinction frankly, and just hope we don't take too much (more) with us.

Alas.

Jon Richfield

I can't answer for everybody, but I suspect that it has something to do with reproductive drive in some form or other. Some people go no further than reproduction. Some wish to live forever, even if only because people remember their name (Think: burning of temple of Apollo?) Some wish to live on in their monuments, which is futility that we need no Giza, no Ozymandias to illustrate; just pay a visit to any abandoned cemetery, usually not more than decades old. It giffs to tink!

Me? I reflect that the human world has progressed in many ways, though nauseatingly wastefully, messily and increasingly worryingly insecurely. But that "progress" implies that in at least some ways the average human has left behind more that was constructive than negative. The best form of immortality I can see for myself is such a contribution. It beats the hell out of an eroding chunk of funerary kitsch!

Are you familiar with Piet Hein's Grooks? My candidate for the 20th Century's greatest epigrams.

Giving in is no defeat
Passing on is no retreat
Selves were made to rise above
You shall live in what you love.

Immortality of one's positive contributions might not be as good (or as bad?) as living forever, but it beats hangovers, cirrhosis and putrescence.

As I see it anyway. I do not urge my arguments as cogent, but they work for me.



Jon