oh hey reminder that AT (“Absolute Terror”) fields are themed from the same source as “terror management theory”
reminder that that concept is about the defenses we erect to protect us from awareness of our own inevitable mortality
so the Unit-02/Mass Production Unit fight in End of Evangelion where Asuka goes balls out and channels all her perfectionist neurosis into beating them all before her power supply ends, but then they just rise up again and break through her AT field and impale her mother/avatar/self through the face to be cannibalized
the very moment where their spears, forcing their way through the field, turn into a Lance of Longinus - the very tool by which his inferiors killed God - and she exclaims in astonishment, that second when she realizes that no matter how perfect she is she’ll die anyway
that’s also a metaphor for realizing that no matter how perfect you are you’ll die anyway
No. Immortality has been “just a few improvements on the current state of the art” away for approximately ever.
Don’t tell the most recent immortality cult about this. It would break their clichéd little hearts.
Yeah the funny thing is how the “state of the art” consistently refers to whatever field’s particularly prominent and cutting-edge at the time.
It’s been alchemy in medieval Europe and ancient China, electricity in Revolutionary France, extremely low-temperature liquid circulation in the rocket age, data storage in the computer age, now it’s biotech because of course it is.
In 16th Century Spain with the whole Fountain of Life thing it was fucking western hemisphere cartography.
“In 16th Century Spain with the whole Fountain of Life thing it was fucking western hemisphere cartography” holy shit this is 100% right
This post was one of the ones that “made me” early on
Incredibly stupid to equate biotech with any of these other things but go off I guess.
the current thing is different, you see
Kontext, you’re an idiot. An entertaining one! But you are a clown and nothing you say is worth taking seriously.
“How on earth could the field working on developing a mechanistic understanding of biological systems be different in it’s contribution to how we manipulate those systems than fucking alchemy”
If humanity does make meaningful advances in extending the human lifespan beyond where it is currently, it will absolutely be attributable to advances in medicine, biotechnology, and molecular biology.
Establishing your prior from base rates is important, but you do then have to actually look beyond the base rates.
Like, I assure you, alchemy, 19th century electricity, post-war physics and computronics were all master life sciences of their day, understood as the keys to understanding life, and our world and lives today heavily rely on insights and innovations derived from all of them.
And yet.
You’re just an idiot
I’ll believe whatever the current hype is about life extension and immortality, when it is actually demonstrated to work - consistently, in real life. Until then it’s all bullshit to me.
Why is the pro-extension/pro-immortality side always the one that gets so angry/emotive in these sorts of debates? I rarely see this level of vitriol from the side of the skeptics.
Almost tempted to make some sort of Beckerian terror-management-theory conjecture here…
If you’re going to ignore the entire premise of the debate to make a sneering comment then you can go fuck yourself.
