=P I finally got around to working the numbers on the size I've spent most of my time fantasizing about recently... They actually come out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 tons........... each; assuming I'm using Google's unit conversion feature correctly and that I'm using the correct approximations and general parameters.

Hi Alonzo, Very interesting way of thinking about things. It's very fun to discuss such stuff with people that have thought about this to the level you have. You asked: "If you reject this set of desires for some reason, then you are immediately confronted with the problem of what to replace them with, what goal and motivational structure would be better? This is probably the most profound question of all." Yes, very fundamental questions. Evidently your base desires aren't too bad, enough to think you may not want to change them, once you are free to do so, which is good. But some people have baser desires that are very bad. For example, some people are masochistic. In that God/Evolution, hard wired them to want to hurt other people. Thankfully, most people have this under control, but obviously occasionally, peoples wiring gets effed up, and they go postal, and so on. Obviously, those types of people don't really want to want, what god/evolution wired them to want, so surely they'll want to change themselves to want something better than that. As far as what might we want to do, other than base desires, for starters, there is plenty to keep us busy. In fact, we've started a [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/120 survey topic to prioritize things] to 'canonize' just such a prioritized list. It includes things like finding out what everyone wants, first. It includes things like achieving an ability to understand the mind, so we can 'upload' and change things like what we want. This is very high on the priority, because it solves most other problems, like solving the problem of people that want to hurt other people, and so on. It solves the problem of death. And most everything else. Then, once we do all of those kinds of things, for ourselves, we need to solve the problems of everyone that is less than us. And this, of course, includes people that didn't make it to the millennium. In other words, we've got to work on resurrecting our ancestors, to pay them back for being our creator, and doing all the work to create what the immortals freely inherited. I'm betting doing all of that, for everyone, is all going to take way more than 1000 years. And once we get all that done I bet we'll know what we want to want, as you also indicated, right? Surely, at least exploring the rest of this huge universe, resurrecting any alien life forms that didn't or haven't yet made it, and so on, will be high on any list. Brent Allsop, "Hey, Robot, get out of the way, it's my turn to take out the garbage!!!"

This is probably one of the greatest, and most fundamental questions in all of transhumanism. I posit that the "freedom" you propose is illusory. My claim is that my emotional/spiritual identity derives a large part from these desires, such as they are. Obviously, this is a question of values of the first order. In my story Orange Sky, I had an upload who had edited himself so much that he didn't really want anything, was almost completely dispassionate and was basically a tool. If you reject this set of desires for some reason, then you are immediately confronted with the problem of what to replace them with, what goal and motivational structure would be better? This is probably the most profound question of all. Realizing this, I re-evaluated my base programming and realized that it's not all that bad. --> it has successfully motivated me to remain very active in transhumanism for many years. (I have other motivations but they're a bit more difficult to explain; are even more embarrassing) --> It is still sufficiently far remote that I can expect it to be a healthy and beneficial motivator for many decades in the future before the eventual point of stagnation. So until I reach the point of stagnation, there is no harm in allowing the motivational circuit to operate as is. At the point of stagnation, I will be forced to face this question. One aspect of which is the fundamental nature of my being; whether this is it's fundamental limit or whether there could be some higher goal that should be pursued. I would expect myself to be much better equipped to address that question at that point than I am now.

Hey Alonzo, Very interesting "experimental" camp you created, entitled [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/63/10 logically extrapolated mastophilia] under the hedonism camp you support. (Note, nobody is yet supporting this camp, so if you want to see it, other than via such a link, you need to turn the filtering off or set it to zero.) I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this. The way I look at it, these 'joys', such as "mastophilia" of something like a one ton breasts are currently hard wired into our brain. In other words, evolution wanted us to love very large breasts, so it wired our pleasure centers to get big rewards, when we successfully seduced a large breasted woman. But, having such joys hard wired, to what evolution wants, isn't being completely free. The only way we can truly be free, is if we can rewire such pleases to reward us for what we want to want, not what evolution, God, or anyone else wanted us to want. So, in other words, just like we are about to achieve the ability to have robots supply us with anything we want, including possibly 1 ton gentilea, we'll also be able to rewire such joys to be rewards for something like contributing to society, or other beneficial to us and everyone behaviors. So, in other words, we'll probably be able to rewire 'mastophilia' to being something more productive, like maybe tacking out the garbage, philia. In other words, I'm going to really love taking out the garbage, when it is way more than orgasmic! Brent Allsop