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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, James Brown writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Actually, the whole immortality thing is something I have thought about a fair
> bit. I hadn't considered the 'recognized as human' angle before, but it's
> IMHO irrelevant to the main thrust - I wouldn't want to be immortal.
You say that as a mortal. :-) I don't want to .debate this, but I do want to
highlight (and I guess I may be spoiling some of the plot here) that this
character already WAS immortal, practically. He was faced with the choice of
trading it away for what *I*, in my value system, consider scant payment... the
acknowledgement of others. He already had the right to own property. Who cares
what other people think? Not me. It was a bad trade.
I repeat, given the choice, I'd choose immortality. I could always change my
mind later and kill myself if I got bored. No one is ever actually "immortal"
no matter how old, just "immortal so far" because even immortality isn't
defense against someone getting your ICBM coordinates exactly right.
You're welcome not to choose it, of course, just as you should be able to make
whatever other choices you wish about your own body...
But here's a key point. Don't get in my way if I want to make that choice
because you happen to think that it's morally wrong. The only person who has
the right to make decisions about how long I live (subject to being able to
provide for myself, I'm not talking about being a ward of the state here...) is
me.
Not saying you personally would do that but do want to stress the point.
> > Yes it's a rag but I can't fault their analysis. We are THIS close to
> > unwinding the entire genetic sequence around aging in cells.
>
> I'm not so sure that's a good thing - we already have a surplus population
> problem.
Among the poor countries. My thesis is, of course, (and this is a .debate item
too, maybe we BETTER go over there) is that once your country becomes
sufficiently advanced from a freedom and economic standpoint, population
increase rates go down. I think the US and western europe are already at
negative growth, discounting immigration.
> IMHO, technology that extends life expectancy is a good thing, but
> only when it doesn't increase (our population) significantly past our capacity
> to expand.
Agree. So we best get all our eggs out of this poor overcrowded basket, and
start exploiting the rest of the universe.
On reflection, I set FUT lugnet.off-topic.debate ...
Net Net though is that IMHO this is a great movie, worthy of your custom and
worthy of some reflection when you get out of it. It may be Robin's best work
so far, and he's done some good stuff. Very little Asimov stuff has ever made
film (Fantastic Voyage is the only thing that comes readily to mind, and didn't
he adapt the movie script to a novel rather than the other way round? I forget)
and I was very pleased at how well this movie hewed to the spirit of the Robot
Stories. Too bad it didn't happen while Isaac was alive.
++Lar
Contrast with Stuart Little, which I felt was pretty much a waste of rendering
time and celluloid. Hackneyed material and not very true to the book. Little or
no motivation for the characters to do what they did and some consistency
issues to boot.
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