I’ve found free will! It’s hard to imagine this sentence starting a blog entry, but I had, indeed, found it!
Let’s start by taking science into consideration. According to our biology, we have no free will. We simply walk around, reacting certain ways to certain things. We think we are making choices for ourselves, but it is our experience that drives our decisions. When you are asked a yes or no question, you usually speak the truth.
Are you alive?
Yes.
However, based on who is asking the question, under what situation, and from past experience, you could answer with a lie.
You get shot by a rather dim-witted person.
Are you alive?
No.
Well, alright.
See? It was not your will that made you say no, but your experience. Obviously, this is not the best example, but it will do. Let’s try not to focus on why we don’t have individual free will, and try to get back on the real topic.
As you may have noted from the last sentence, I said “individual” free will. What I’m implying is that you do not have a will of your own, you only gain free will in groups.
Many times, police, governments, even normal citizens have noticed that people are calm, collected, and predictable when they are alone. However, you group a bunch of them together, and you get an unpredictable bunch, where anything can happen. It takes a large group of people to cause this, which is why it usually only happens with angry mobs or soccer riots, it is nearly impossible to get that many people organized, much less for the same cause. However, in that brief moment where all of those people are together, there is free will. You are no longer acting on previous experience, the group, as a whole is deciding things instantly, without thinking about the before or after. Where else do you see free will? Where else do you see this strange behavior, the unpredictability, the large group of people, acting without relying on the past or thinking about the future? I present to you, exhibit B, the internet.
That’s right. Apart from mobs, riots, or anything similar, the internet is the only thing that can generate free will. While you are online, you have the potential to meet thousands of people, within minutes, all of which will effect you differently. This already has an impact on you and your daily life. What you don’t see, however, is that you are on the borderline of free will while you are online, interacting with these people. The internet is the largest gathering of people mankind has ever known. And we all know people evolve better in groups.
We started off alone, not knowing what to do. We formed tribes, giving a bit of order, and slight unpredictability. As technology grew more advanced, people combined into larger groups, becoming more willed, and more intelligent. It only makes sense that this trend would continue. It is only a matter of time before we all join together, thinking as one. That is the point in time when our free will shall emerge. That point is when we will all think for ourselves, and no longer rely purely on the past to predict our future, when we will begin to make decisions immediately, without waiting to see what might happen, and without the brain preparing ourselves, and the world around us for our eventual response.
That is free will.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Life Revoked
I think it’s safe to say that our future is pretty well set in stone. Not literally, of course. Scientists have found the answers to many secrets that we have been asking questions about for a long time, normal people have been finding their own answers to these same questions. Even the media has figured out that something is happening that others would like to know about that doesn’t involve ruining someone’s life. The secrets I refer to may be too hard for some to grasp, for the secrets are the keys to longevity.
Allow me to simplify this term. Longevity is, in a nut shell, the ability to live for a long time. According to scientists, people being born now have a strong chance to live to be 150 years old. In that time frame, scientists will have come up with something else to increase the life span of the populace. Already, as we are now, people in their forties can, almost literally, turn back the clock to when they were twenty. So, those people living to be 150 may only seem like they are in their seventies, by that point in time. And, since there are people alive now, going into their hundreds, seventies isn’t much. In order for them to reach the new equivalent of 100, they would probably need to reach 200, and, of course, by then they would have figured out something else.
Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am happy to announce that your children will be able to live forever, with the new advances of science, and probably yourselves as well. Sure, at first we will live into eternity as old, frail beings, but, as time goes by, we will regain our youth and revert to whatever age we want. Eventually, you will be able to pick an age and stick with it for the rest of your life, for however long you think that should be.
Unfortunately, no good thing lasts forever, not even immortality. As the years drag on, you will become bored with your new existence. You will go to work, find you don’t know the job anymore, go to school, learn what you need to know, go back to work, lather , rinse, repeat. Eventually, the routine will become dull. One day, you’ll find yourself quitting your job because you will have become bored of it. You’ll go to a new place to work and you will start at the lowest level, not because you are inexperienced, but because you want to have the full experience and you’ve got enough money to last you for a while. It will be like you were a character in The Sims and someone turned off aging. After a while, your life ceases to have personal meaning.
Of course, boredom is the least of your worries. We all know how the government works. If anything is worth having, it’s worthwhile to limit it. Get used to the phrase, only the poor die young. It will get to the point where you will need a license to live forever. If you are productive, wanted, needed, or wealthy enough, you will gain a license to remain alive. This Living License will cost tons of money, and will be the most fought after card you’ll ever find, and yes, it will be a card. This card will fit nicely into your wallet, or fit on your keychain, depending on which one you bought. The smaller one will cost more than the larger one, because it will be made after the initial card, thus everyone will want it, which will raise the cost more. At some point, the card will be so expensive that only the richest people in the world could afford one, and only the most needed people would be given on for free. As this nightmare becomes reality, the ones who discovered the cure to death will be long since dead, not wanting to go on anymore, and those that bought the licensing rights will become rich men, live forever, having got their licenses before anyone else, and continue to get richer.
Seems like a strange and horrible future, doesn’t it? There will be quite a few people that won’t believe this. It may be hard to accept, but don’t come crawling to me when your license to live gets revoked.
Allow me to simplify this term. Longevity is, in a nut shell, the ability to live for a long time. According to scientists, people being born now have a strong chance to live to be 150 years old. In that time frame, scientists will have come up with something else to increase the life span of the populace. Already, as we are now, people in their forties can, almost literally, turn back the clock to when they were twenty. So, those people living to be 150 may only seem like they are in their seventies, by that point in time. And, since there are people alive now, going into their hundreds, seventies isn’t much. In order for them to reach the new equivalent of 100, they would probably need to reach 200, and, of course, by then they would have figured out something else.
Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am happy to announce that your children will be able to live forever, with the new advances of science, and probably yourselves as well. Sure, at first we will live into eternity as old, frail beings, but, as time goes by, we will regain our youth and revert to whatever age we want. Eventually, you will be able to pick an age and stick with it for the rest of your life, for however long you think that should be.
Unfortunately, no good thing lasts forever, not even immortality. As the years drag on, you will become bored with your new existence. You will go to work, find you don’t know the job anymore, go to school, learn what you need to know, go back to work, lather , rinse, repeat. Eventually, the routine will become dull. One day, you’ll find yourself quitting your job because you will have become bored of it. You’ll go to a new place to work and you will start at the lowest level, not because you are inexperienced, but because you want to have the full experience and you’ve got enough money to last you for a while. It will be like you were a character in The Sims and someone turned off aging. After a while, your life ceases to have personal meaning.
Of course, boredom is the least of your worries. We all know how the government works. If anything is worth having, it’s worthwhile to limit it. Get used to the phrase, only the poor die young. It will get to the point where you will need a license to live forever. If you are productive, wanted, needed, or wealthy enough, you will gain a license to remain alive. This Living License will cost tons of money, and will be the most fought after card you’ll ever find, and yes, it will be a card. This card will fit nicely into your wallet, or fit on your keychain, depending on which one you bought. The smaller one will cost more than the larger one, because it will be made after the initial card, thus everyone will want it, which will raise the cost more. At some point, the card will be so expensive that only the richest people in the world could afford one, and only the most needed people would be given on for free. As this nightmare becomes reality, the ones who discovered the cure to death will be long since dead, not wanting to go on anymore, and those that bought the licensing rights will become rich men, live forever, having got their licenses before anyone else, and continue to get richer.
Seems like a strange and horrible future, doesn’t it? There will be quite a few people that won’t believe this. It may be hard to accept, but don’t come crawling to me when your license to live gets revoked.
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