I'm in Oxford right now, for the Global Catastrophic Risks conference.
There's a psychological impact in walking down a street where where any given building might be older than your whole country.
Toby Ord and Anders Sandberg pointed out to me an old church tower in Oxford, that is a thousand years old.
At the risk conference I heard a talk from someone talking about what the universe will look like in 10100 years (barring intelligent modification thereof, which he didn't consider).
The psychological impact of seeing that old church tower was greater. I'm not defending this reaction, only admitting it.
I haven't traveled as much as I would travel if I were free to follow my whims; I've never seen the Pyramids. I don't think I've ever touched anything that has endured in the world for longer than that church tower.
A thousand years... I've lived less than half of 70, and sometimes it seems like a long time to me. What would it be like, to be as old as that tower? To have lasted through that much of the world, that much history and that much change?
Transhumanism does scare me. I shouldn't wonder if it scares me more than it scares arch-luddites like Leon Kass. Kass doesn't take it seriously; he doesn't expect to live that long.
Yet I know - and I doubt the thought ever occurred to Kass - that even if something scares you, you can still have the courage to confront it. Even time. Even life.
But sometimes it's such a strange thought that our world really is that old.
The inverse failure of the logical fallacy of generalization from fictional evidence, is failure to generalize from things that actually happened. We see movies, and in the ancestral environment, what you saw with your own eyes was real; we have to avoid treating them as available examples.
Conversely, history books seem like writing on paper - but those are things that really happened, even if we hear about them selectively. What happened there was as real to the people who lived it, as your own life, and equally evidence.
Sometimes it's such a strange thought that the people in the history books really lived and experienced and died - that there's so much more depth to history than anything I've seen with my own eyes; so much more life than anything I've lived.
(Sorta a poetry dump- but eh- seemed appropriate. Take it down if not so.)
Keats Quotes, 1821: Oh won't the zombie Keats be surprised to wake up!
"I have but two luxuries to brood over: Your Lovliness, and the hour of my Death."
"...Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thou express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: ... O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
"...But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time. Ah! would 'twere so with many A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any Writhed not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in ryme."
"...Though one moment's pleasure In one moment flies, Though the passion's treasure In one moment dies; Yet it has not passed- Think how near, how near! And while it doth last, Think how dear, how dear! Hither, hither, hither, Love this boon has sent- If I die and whither I shall die content."
"...Still so pale? then, dearest, weep- Weep, I'll count the tears, And each one shall be a bliss For thee in after years Brighter has it left thine eyes Than a sunny rill; And thy whispering melodies Are tenderer still. Yet--as all things mourn awhile At fleeting blisses, E'en let us too! but be our dirge A dirge of kisses."
"...And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the power Of unreflecting love!--Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone and think Till love an fame to nothingness do sink."