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Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010)

bbc.com

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Re: Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010)

#61
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post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming it is possible (which I don't think), would you really want to be a disembodied computer program? (Being in a robot doesn't count, since you'd merely be exchanging one body for another.) [The following is intended philosophically, not religiously] There is an old, I believe Jewish, tradition that demons are spirits without a body. Their whole goal is to regain a body (hence demonic possession). In one interp…

Interesting take that I had not considered. I was not familiar with the story from Mark. I have thought about this topic as well but from a completely different direction. My question about uploading consciousness is in the transition point. As I sit here in front of my computer could I click a button and upload my memories and consciousness to a computer? Would they for some reason leave my body at the same time? Wo…

There's no reason to believe anything happens with your consciousness if you "upload" it to a computer.

There's no reason to believe we'll find a way to transfer the consciousness rather than make a copy of it (or something that is indistinguishable from it to an outside observer).

When you upload your consciousness, you're left behind to die. When you use a transporter, the transporter kills you. Your consciousness ends with your body. Lt Barclay in Star Trek was right to be afraid of the cloning death machines.

The question, I guess is, whether the knowledge that an exact replica of yourself will live on for eternity is good enough for you. Or whether you're religious enough to forego our understanding of the physical world and believe in the existence of a non-physical "soul" that will automatically attach itself to the copy when the host is destroyed (though this creates all kinds of questions if the host isn't instantly destroyed during the process of the "upload").

Re: Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010)

#62

Americans don't need to travel so far to see an ocean being born. The block-fault zone from the Sea of Cortez up through most of Nevada is pulling apart rapidly and has already created 500 miles of inlet between Baja California and mainland Mexico. Much of the next few hundred miles north through the Salton Sea and Death Valley is already under sea level and all of Nevada has thinning crust that will eventually fall…

So, cheap seafront property in Nevada right now?

If you're in it for the long haul, yes.

Re: Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' (2010)

#63

TL;DR a split in Ethiopia is about 65km long. It'll eventually split the African Continent in 10 million years. Hold off the oceanfront land speculation. Article is from 2010 btw.

For a quick ROI in less than a hundred years you could just buy land further inland in places like Florida, North/South Carolina, even London. Once Greenland goes and the ice sheets in Antartica you'll have beachfront.
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