Bobiverse

Twice within the last few days, someone that I was conversing with from the Transhumanist community mentioned a far future technology that I had originally learned about from the Bobiverse science fiction book series by Dennis E. Taylor.  The two technologies recently discussed were O'Neill cylinders and von Neumann probes.  This hard science fiction series introduces readers to many more future technologies in an accessible and entertaining manner including a couple of my favorites, cryonics and uploading.

I have recommended this series to my friends in the Church of Perpetual Life multiple times as it frequently relates to topics discussed in our Zoom parties before and after the main service.  Although not part of the Bobiverse series, I am looking forward to listening to the author's latest book, Flybot, available in audio format from Audible.

Cryonics Institute

I have been talking about moving to Michigan for a couple of years now because it is too hot in Texas and it is getting hotter.  Many of my family members have moved to the Great Lakes region in the last few years and I would like to join them.  I am up in Michigan this week checking it out.

Specifically I am exploring the area around Lake St. Clair because of the opportunities for recreational sailing.  I participated as crew in a regatta again a couple of weeks ago and we came in second place.  I am hoping to buy another sailboat after my next move.

This area is also home to the Cryonics Institute (CI).  I am currently signed up with Alcor but I will switch to CI if I make the move.  My thanks to Andy Zawacki and Joe Kowalsky, pictured below with me, for the tour of the CI facilities.

Expert Advice

I just finished listening to the audiobook 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans by Karl Pillemer, Ph.D.  After gathering data from interviews with over a thousand older Americans, whom the author refers to as the "experts", Dr. Pillemer provides the advice of the elders in a consolidated form.  I appreciated that the author ended the book with a list of ten questions for readers to use when conversing with their senior relatives and neighbors.

I am always on the lookout for good advice, especially if it is something timeless that I can share with future generations.  What I found in this book is nothing that I have not heard before.  It did remind me, however, that one of the keys to a long life is to eliminate chronic stress.

When I was younger, I used to hear stories from World War II and Vietnam War combat veterans.  I had noticed a trend in that most of them seemed to have been very lucky in escaping close calls.  Then one day it dawned on me that I had been only speaking with the survivors.

I see some of the same data bias in this book.  The main criterion to be considered an expert by the author was to have lived a long life.  Many of the interviewees had enjoyed stress-free lives for multiple decades due to not having significant responsibilities since retirement.

I started thinking about this bias because one of the lessons was that people get out and see the world while still young instead of waiting until later when they might be too old for travel.  This contradicts the make hay while the sun shines philosophy of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement.  Until one has actually achieved financial independence, as almost by definition most retirees have, one will not have the hindsight to know whether any travel experiences leading up to that point were life-enriching or just doom spending.

Uncle Jim

James Rawls Williams, my Uncle Jim, passed away last month at the respectable age of seventy-nine.  My Uncle David died at age sixty-seven from a brain tumor that changed his personality before he passed.  My Uncle Donald passed at fifty-nine from the same type of blood cancer that took Uncle Jim.

For most of my life, I always felt not quite grown up, even well into middle age.  I used to say that a man is not fully an adult until he has raised a child and buried his father.  Thankfully my father still lives.

Cadets at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs are often paired with volunteer sponsor families living in the area.  When I was a cadet, I was fortunate to have my actual family members as my sponsor family.  From that four-year period, I learned to love my Uncle Jim as someone who gave good advice and lived a life of dignity.

I did not see much of Uncle Jim and family after I graduated.  When Aunt Janie and Uncle Jim last visited us here in Dallas over a decade ago, Uncle Jim recounted his experience during the University of Texas tower shooting when a man with a brain tumor became a mass murderer.  As he concluded, I could tell that Uncle Jim was still moved by that event even though it had transpired nearly a half century earlier.

From that visit, I have a picture of Uncle Jim and Aunt Janie with my wife Shannon just after I gave them a tour of my backyard pumpkin patch.  In that picture, you can see that Shannon was pregnant with the last of our six children.  My youngest son, James, is Uncle Jim to my two grandchildren.

Parental Basic Income

I think that Universal Basic Income (UBI) is inevitable as technology makes more jobs obsolete.  When enough voters lose their jobs, they will seek political change.  That change will stabilize when UBI becomes law.

People will then shift from finding meaning in their work to finding meaning in spending time with each other.  Whether those people are mostly old friends or mostly new family depends on the affordability of housing.  Raising children is meaningful work but it requires an extra bedroom.

I propose Parental Basic Income (PBI) as a first step towards UBI.  Since the invention of birth control, many potential parents have chosen to reduce the risk of childhood poverty by not having children.  PBI will create a future in which parents are confident that they can raise a happy family.

Bernie Sanders

I really like Senator Bernie Sanders.  I have been watching his speeches on YouTube recently and I generally like what I am hearing.  I also started listening to his latest book It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism.

What I am hoping to find in his book is something describing what I have been seeing in those countries that have adopted the Nordic Model.  Those countries seem to be doing better across the board in multiple categories.  I think we should start adopting some of their policies to see if those would also work for us.

I think I voted for Bernie some years ago in a primary election.  When I tell people that I am a libertarian that wishes Bernie Sanders were President, I know I am telling a bit of a joke as most will perceive that there is some cognitive dissonance there.  I am still trying to figure out what the common appeal is for me between libertarianism and the Nordic Model as they seem to be opposed.

 

Like my parents, Bernie is his mid-eighties now so I imagine he will be retiring soon.  I am hoping to learn what I can from him while he is still politically active and distill those lessons into some general principles.  I will also be looking for the "Bernies" of succeeding generations.

 

Optimism is Effort

I love the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell.  I frequently reference their animated educational videos in my weblog entries.  To support the production of more of their edutainment, I ordered some of their merchandise for my youngest children who are also fans.

I watched their new video Tired of Doomscrolling? in which they conclude with a message of optimism for the future of humanity.  It reminded me of their older video in which they describe their philosophy of Optimistic Nihilism in which they remind us, like stoicism, that that nothing really matters since everyone eventually dies.  Ending on a positive note, they say that knowing this liberates each individual to choose their own meaning of life.

I think, however, that this philosophy contradicts billions of years of evolutionary history in which life gravitates toward increasing complexity.  Furthermore, similar to those who believe in divine providence and the assurance of an eternal hereafter, adoptees of the philosophy could use it as a justification for passivity in the face of long-term challenges to humanity.  To clarify that that the optimism in Optihumanism is active rather than passive, I made the following update to my Optihumanist Principles:

Optimism is effort. We support our belief in the future through our endeavors.

 

Morris Stischer

Earlier this month I drove down to Houston and attended the Veterans Day ceremony hosted by the Galveston Naval Museum.  I was especially interested in touring the World War II submarine preserved there because my maternal grandfather Morris Stischer served as a U.S. Navy Fireman First Class on a submarine back in the early 1930s.  By coincidence on that same road trip, I was given an old photograph of him standing between two of his fellow sailors.

Baby Skylar

Congratulations to my daughter Ada and my son-in-law Coleman on the birth of their daughter Skylar.  Skylar is my second grandchild.  The joke that I tell my friends is that all of that investment in my children is finally paying off.

PAPA 2024

Since 2020, I have been adding to my website Papa's Anthology of Paternal Advice (PAPA).  From listening to the audiobook First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living by Richard Bode, I was inspired to go through my tips for living that I have been collecting in my notes over the last year and publish them to the PAPA website.  The new updates include the following:

• Maintain line-of-sight when supervising young children
• Drive safely for yourself and others on the road; you have no right to put the lives of others at risk without their consent
• The best way to learn is to teach
• Consider postponing a boat project until retirement
• Be wary of forming friendships or partnerships with the litigious
  
• Your spouse is your best friend
• Do not take on too many projects at the same time
• Have two of everything, but not three
• Simplify your life as you get older
• Consider self-publishing; when your message is being published by others, it might not be delivered the way you want it to be
• A little redundancy is a good thing
• Just before you open your next big box of rice, put it on your shopping list
• Keep a new pair of shoes in your closet for when you need them
• When you buy a new vehicle, consider holding onto your old one just in case

World Religions

I recently watched the presentation "The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure" by Irving Finkel.  When he described the extreme reaction of George Smith upon discovering that the story of Noah's Ark was an adaptation from a much older Babylonian mythology, I recalled how I had also immediately spotted the obvious similarities when I was first introduced to the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Dr. Finkel has a number of other good presentations on related subjects available on YouTube.

As a youth being raised as a Southern Baptist in a city which was said to have had the most churches per capita in the Bible Belt and in which all three of the universities in town represented different shades of Christianity, I was not cognizant of world religions.  The 1980 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) book Deities & Demigods, which included a section on the "Babylonian Mythos", might have been my first introduction to religions beyond Judeo-Christian.  When you are first introduced to the idea that many different peoples in many different places have had many different religions over many millennia, you start to realize that your assignment to the religion that you were taught to believe in as a child is a circumstance of when and where you were born.

I remember that the late Daniel Dennett, my favorite philosopher, proposed teaching world religions in public schools.  The Unitarian Universalists (UUs), which teach their children about different religions in Sunday school, recognized that their children, upon adulthood, often adopt the religion of their spouses rather than continuing on with UU.  The joke about this is that when the children are taught about the different varieties of religion outside of UU, they then think that they are expected to pick one.

It is clear to me that Dennett's proposal to teach world religions in taxpayer-funded schools, if enacted, would upset many parents.  My thinking on this has been influenced by my new understanding of Terror Management Theory from listening to the audiobook The Worm at the Core.  By providing entertaining illustrated books about ancient myths from other cultures, parents can inoculate their children against subjugation by modern myth-based religions.

Beacon

In a Christian church, deacons assist the pastor with the duties required to keep the church running.  They might not be paid but their status is recognized by the honorific "Deacon".

"Beacon" might be a recognizable title for the equivalent position in a Religious Humanist or Religious Transhumanist organization.  Since a beacon is a guide in the dark such as a lighthouse, this term fits nicely with the theme of the Brights, those who identify as having a naturalistic worldview free of supernatural or mystical elements.