williatw wrote:Would the "immortal" elites really be ready to risk the wrath of the "breeders" if their plan to exterminate us fails? They literally have everything to lose (their quasi-immortal) lives if we win and nothing really much practical to gain by wiping us all out.Diogenes wrote:More like a Devonian extinction. What use do the elite have for us breeders when machines will eventually be able to serve them better?
Rationality is not a necessity in these sorts of deliberations, and that is assuming your premises are even correct. The worshipers of Gaia are filled with religious zeal, and arguments of risk vs. benefit will very likely have no effect.
Prosperous Humanity seem predisposed to debauchery for it's own sake. We see this again and again through history in examples of individuals, and examples of larger social groups as well. For all we know, they might find killing the rest of us to be "fun".
We see that happening, but would any of us have predicted it? Japan too. Something strange is happening all across the world. It seems that Societies, like flowers, bloom and die.williatw wrote:
Easier to follow a slow patient plan of giving immortality to the breeders over time and watching their fecundity fade away, just as it is now among those groups with the longest life expectancy. Like the demographic collapse happening in Europe now.
I am reminded of what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said. "Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened. "
williatw wrote: An "immortal" doesn't need to take big risks like that, easier to get what they want on the slow plan; after all they have the time. And again is it really worth killing 150,000 people a day just to supposedly make sure they don't? And even if "immortality" is never invented, the Gaia worshiping ruling "elites" you speak of could try to wipe us out with their drone/robotic/cyborg military (or some kind of germ like the movie the 12 monkeys) anyway.
Yup. That's halfway around what I was thinking when I started the "Skynet is coming" thread. It doesn't have to make sense. A lot of human behavior throughout history doesn't.