I’ve never managed to be friends with someone online in the absence of a strong shared activity. Sorry.
No problem, you can always try one more time, taking into account that moving around the world or even city is kinda restricted now. I live by myself in remote location, yet it doesn’t stop me from keeping in touch with friends, not due to activity but because they understand and accept me. Not sure i understand what do you mean by “strong shared activity”, we do share activity by deeply discussing lots of subjects here. Anyways, it’s up to you, imposing myself is not on my list of preferences.
Yeah, okay, technically the troll killed Hermione. Asides from that quibble, Voldemort killed Skeeter, a centaur, the real Quirrel, and a nameless Death Eater. He might have killed other people, but those are the deaths I can recall off the top of my head.
Thank you for pointing this out.
Ehh, kind of. Transhumanist might be the wrong word, but from an objective perspective, the sun is stupendously wasteful. Far better to stop the fusion reaction, extract all the hydrogen, and fuse it under controlled conditions to extract more value. Aka “tear apart the stars”. Same idea with the earth (which would, literally, end the world). This seems to be the intended interpretation, but you could be right—after all, Harry almost destroys the world at the very end of the book via unintended side effects.
Oh, i thought that was related to Hermione being witch-troll-unicorn mutant. I just though, that in case Voldemort had not brought her back, Harry in case of successful resurrection might had try to make her unable to die, even if she desires so. Agree, it is stupendously wasteful and it might be better to extract materials and create another one star under controlled conditions or surround sun with something that can absorb energy, but imho it is only from the perspective of the one who wants more energy and thinks that he’s alone and only, subjective, not objective perspective. Who knows how sun’s “wasteful” radiation and gravity affects everything around.
Also, if fear of death is the moving force for creativity, the transhumanist answer isn’t to keep death around. It’s to remove death, and find another way to solve creativity. Same with work expanding to fill the allotted time; that’s not a law like a law of physics, it’s a bug in our brains.
Removing death may well mean removing it’s opposite, birth. Also, sometimes this “bug” helps people to evaluate their actions and focus on more important stuff. Even the laws of physics, or rather their interpretation, sometimes turn out to be imperfect.
True enough. Voldemort was the first time I could really relate to a character but even I would consider him evil (and, more importantly, insanely dangerous).
True, he is evil, this is a book about the struggle between good and evil after all, as controversial as the struggle itself. It seems to me that the “interaction” to a greater extent reflects the essence of what is happening then “struggle”. Yet somehow he have forced “good ones” to unite and cooperate. Also by teaching several life lessons he played role of father for Harry. Probably, because Potter have lost his father and his step-father was not too good at parenting, nevertheless, was also able to pass on some important skills to his adoptive son. (Honestly, I find it difficult to answer who is more dangerous: Harry or his teacher).
What? Are you saying that once you turn a brain off, there’s no way to turn it back on, because everything is stored in the equivalent of volatile memory?
Wow. This is not what i said, but you might have a point. I said that structure of brain might define properties of energy it stores and this properties could mirror memory. And that destruction of brain might lead to release of this energy to the surroundings. As for your question, what do you mean by turn a brain off”? As far as i know, brain of people in coma or even frogs frozen in water not “turned off” and show slight activity. So i would call it hibernation. As for human brain freezing it will likely cause cell membranes to be torn apart by asymmetrically freezing water, as it increases its volume while turning into ice. In case of heart failure, stopping feeding of brain cells, after exhaustion of nutrients in the capillary system and intracellular fluid, will lead to the beginning of irreversible necrotic processes, it is matter of a few minutes (speed of decay depends on temperature). So yes, in some sense, brain is equivalent of volatile memory, since the life of its constituent cells strictly depends on the ability to convert ATP into energy and use of energy to communicate and store information. Also, I must confess that i don’t have official degree in medicine, physics or chemistry, it is just side effect of family traditions and my curiosity.
Which MMO? I’m playing COD from time to time, mostly because it includes several building from my home city (Stadium, Airport and several more), so event in the game on some extent mirror what’s happening on the streets of my hometown, same way as events in country mirror what’s happening around the world and vice versa. Also i used to play MUDs ages ago (that’s where does my nickname came from), but i don’t think anyone play them now.
Ah, no no, it would be kinda strange to make friends simply be declaring so. You said that you would like to have friend that would tell you to move one when you lost somebody, and explain why it might be best solution. In this case i don’t have to know all of your story from very birth to play role of friend, i just have to be a empathetic human and understand your emotions, so you could use me as a mirror. I have some experience of losing loved ones and living the struggle of acceptance. Call it not a friend but a temporary companion, if correct terminology is more required than actions. Friendship is pretty confusing concept in the age of business and social networking.
Guess, this is best solution.
Actually, i thought that removing some big object from the cluster of stars could also affect all the nearest stars entangled together by gravity field. Not sure that jamming all the hydrogen back together and restarting the reaction would fix this issue.
I not sure. Thing is human genetics works this way: male XY chromosome is prone to accumulate mutations as result to adaptation to changing environment, female chromosome due to its double nature is more stable and can fix bad mutations. So literally, process of death and birth is one of the main instruments of adaptation and evolution: men try to spread his genes, women try to pick most reliable by intuition, personal preferences or in some cases by making men confront each other. If you’re going to throw away birth-decay cycle, you will need to compensate somehow tool of nature which ensured species survival for millions of years.
So let’s call it a feature:)
It is hard to argue that humanity makes a quantum leap only on the verge of total annihilation, same way as when child facing a possible humiliating punishment from a parent.
It’s not a science at all, i just trying to find some possible scientific explanation to some unscientific stuff like “soul”, and probably i will burn in theoretical hell for doing so. Sure he is, as any living human being that put a lot of effort into building of its consciousness and adding changes into the world which will require much more time show up then human life allows. Pity he can’t join our conversation and share his valuable opinion on controversial questions we have risen here.
Some frogs have a natural mechanism called cryoprotection, it surrounds cells with glucose, which prevents them from gradual drying out, which is a side effect of instant freezing. Unfortunately, our cells lack this mechanism. Also, I could not even imagine how much pain I would feel if someone freezes my head and then fastens it to another body. I think I could even lose all of my memories and remain with unconditioned reflexes only.
Thank you for an excellent article! It is funny that they say that “Cryonics is a belief”. Looks like science and beliefs are closer to each other than ever before.