Quote from: JoyceChin on April 24, 2011, 09:20:02 AM
Here by perfection I refer to the biological body only. Our greatest obstacles to well-being and happiness are diseases and aging, if these cures are found, then perfection of the biological body can be achieved. Our impetus for biological change (not by evolution's impetus) is for bodily perfection. Thus I said imperfection is impetus for change (or "evolution" as mental impetus is equally biological in the sense the the mind is evolved biologically).
Our greatest obstacles to well-being and happiness aren't diseases and aging, as you will find that the happiest person on this planet don't care about both of these. True happiness comes from the realization of what you actually have and is something which is very personal to every single person. There are loads of people who are young and healthy, but yet feel incredibly unhappy and depressive. How would you explain to those people that living their
>-bleeped-<ty lives forever are guaranteed to make them "perfectly" happy and well?
Quote from: JoyceChin on April 24, 2011, 09:20:02 AM
Civilization is equally subject to various interpretation, as long as there is evidence of crime, or motive of war, be it individual level or national level, we are not civilized. An ideal civilization does work toward "perfection" for its communities. We are not there yet, but it is an optimistic goal that we can do it, at least if we can start to think like that ourselves, that will goes a long way than if we are leading the wrong example ourselves.
Unless you find a way to tune the brain of every single person on this planet so that they don't feel any greed or desire for power, you will always have people who will rise to bring war and fear. Don't get me wrong, I really believe that we have some power into making things better. We can chose to help each other and try to make life easier for everyone. But I also believe that there will always be people who will choose not to. There is no such thing as "ideal" world. Wherever you are, there are going to be people who will be unhappy about the system and will seek to change it. The world is in constant motion, it is not still. Ideas collide all the time and sometimes this raise war and sorrow. I don't want to see wars, but I know are part of what being humans means. The goal is not perfection, the goal is balance. The world isn't organized, it just
is. An ideal civilization is a civilization that can adapt to whatever happens to allow it to survive, but inside the civilization, there will be individuals who
will rise and fall.
Quote from: JoyceChin on April 24, 2011, 09:20:02 AM
The term "immortality" shouldn't be use when speaking of perfection of the human organism, it should be "agelessness" instead, as immortality is not possible with biological stuff we are made of.
You can have a young body and still be an old fart. Do you really think all those left people who turn to the right when they grow older do so because of dementia? Experience in life is as poisonous as a lack thereof. When you grow older, you get encrusted into old ideas and patterns. Unless there are some younger people to get new ideas on the shelve, the collective mind becomes progressively more and more conservative, leading to a lack of adaptability which can only prove fatal to a civilization when the world is changing.
Quote from: JoyceChin on April 24, 2011, 09:20:02 AM
Just as engineering is about manipulating environment to adapt to conceptual design, thus the difference to some is the ability to manipulating biological stuff rather than adapting to its nature process.
If you've ever met anyone who does engineering, you'll see that reality is always very far from what you'll see on paper. Try to think about the ideal bridge. Chances are hight that you will think about a bridge that, once built, will stay there indefinitely and that can be so strong it doesn't need any work done on it. Now, think of that bridge in terms of real life. Is there any material that can withstand everything? A stream can dig a hole trough a mountain if you give it enough time, and to my knowledge, there is no material that can withstand everything. But let's say we do find that material, will that bridge be the perfect bridge we want it to be? What if the river stops flowing under, what do you do then with an indestructible bridge? Or what if, after using it for decades, you realize that it was too small, or too big. When you built it, it really was perfectly suited to its job, but now that the world around it has changed, the bridge is no longer as "perfect" as it was.
The same goes with a civilization. Even if, somehow, you manage to create a civilization that can perfectly accommodate every single of its inhabitants, when the world around the civilization change, so will the civilization have to. And even if you create a biological being that is perfectly suited to its environment (and evolution has already created an incredible amount of highly specialized beings), those biological beings would still have to change if the environment was to, or else they'd simply vanish. There is no such thing as perfect, there is just "stuff that works for now". And if the "work for now" is enough for you to call perfect, then life as it is now is just as perfect as it can be.
Quote from: JoyceChin on April 24, 2011, 09:20:02 AM
In theory it is possible to shift position, thus achieved the solution we sought. The key here is the knowledge of the existence of agelessness of some cells, which in theory give the possibility to achieve agelessness in human genes.
I gave that example of cancer to illustrate how death is a process that is absolutely essential to the well being of the organism as a whole. The same goes for the ecosystem we live in. If some organisms were to "cheat" death and start living forever, this would quickly lead to a change in the balance that could very well kill the ecosystem along with the "agelessness" organisms. Unless of course your perfect organism doesn't have any bodily need like breathing, keeping a constant body temperature, feeding, having access to medicines, base materials...
Quote from: JoyceChin on April 24, 2011, 09:20:02 AM
I agreed that our food source are biological based, and that the evolution of some plant/animal necessitate living and dying process. But being the top of the food chain, we are entitled to feed on them without ourselves [being necessary forced to] become subject to the chain of evolution (of living and dying). It would be illogical that on one side we are master of food chain, on the other side, we are slave to chain of evolution (of living and dying). For the time being, we have no choice as we have not attain the stage of mastery over evolution (of living and dying), but it doesn't mean this is what we supposed to be.
Being on top of all of this means that we are utterly dependent on it. So the perfect beings that we are will still be vulnerable if the ecosystem that supports all of it were to collapse.