I'm sorry.  I'm not going to indulge this anymore.  If you don't understand the difference between naysaying an amusement park and naysaying interstellar travel, well... I just don't know what to say about that.  Furthermore, I've spent a lot of time on this website trying to explain the evolution of human nature and how Game Theory is an accurate predictor of our instincts.  If you don't understand it, that's cool, but don't just brush me off when I say that Group Selection is bullshit.  Have you read The Selfish Gene?  If you have not, please do yourself a favor and leave this conversation until you are better equipped to deal with it.  When you're finished with that, I highly recommend The Origins of Virtue and NonZero.  All three are very good explanations of exactly what drives individuals, groups, and nations to do things of great selfishness and altruism.

Basically, it's like this, Vastet.  Everything is selfish.  Everything in life.  Altruism is selfish.  This is because of the benefits of nonzero sum systems.  There are limits to it, though, and deep space travel in any of the forms presented so far pass the mathematical limits of reciprocal altruism.  I'm not just guessing any of this.  It's fact.

As for the rest of your post, I accept that you don't like my contentions, but I see nothing except naked denials.  That being the case, I don't suppose there's anything else to talk about.

I would actually dispute this.

Consider how huge an advantage that touch, taste and eyesight in particular are to any complex organism, regardless of it's environment (given any environment that is actually habitable, anyway). Advantageous traits are always selected; just because it's on another planet doesn't mean that natural selection isn't taking place.

No, you don't.  Did you ignore all that stuff I wrote about how it wouldn't be the same person?  Furthermore, leaving all of humanity forever doesn't fit into the Game Theory model.  Furthermore, the point I was making was not that it's possible to download memories but that it would turn into another person.  It's that even taking it to the farthest most incomprehensible extreme, it's STILL not downloading a person onto a hard drive.  A person is completely and irrevocably tied to this one body at this one time.  There is no separating them.   This is because we are not computers.  We are fully and completely integrated biological machines.  Anything except a machine built and conditioned exactly like me will not be me.

Jake help us if we figure out how to live any longer or reproduce any better.  How much more dominant do you think humans can get, out of curiosity?  We're about to overrun the whole planet.  We've driven more species extinct than any other terrestrial event.  (The meteor did a bit more damage... that's why I say terrestrial event.)

Right.  But, before that happens, we're going to become noncorporeal beings floating through quantum space, exerting our will through the manifestation of fluctuations in superstrings.  All of this will happen through technology that is postulated to maybe one day exist, since we know that there certainly is a theory about superstrings, and damnit, we've read Stephen Hawking, and that show with Mitchiu Kaku is so damn entertaining on Sunday nights.

Kevin, converting biology to digital information is nonsense.  I'm not going to say it's completely impossible because you'll invoke the whole "you don't know what we're going to invent" argument.  Nevermind that I could very well invoke the "We don't know that we won't discover god next year" argument, too, and by the same logic, you'd need to start getting really excited about learning all about god.

The point is, the human mind does not operate anything like a computer, except by way of analogy.  Yes, you can program a computer to use logic, and you can train a mind to use logic, but that's about it.  I'm beginning to agree with deludedgod that using the computer as an analog for the brain is always a bad idea.  People read way too much into it.

Kevin, please don't mistake game theory for marketing theory, ok?  PacMan was one of the most popular games ever, but not because it employs game theory.  There is no correlation that I'm aware of between a video game's success and the degree to which it mirrors the functional workings of natural selection.

Ok, Kevin.  You're right.  It sounds wonderful.  I'm sure it's going to be a beautiful world.  Technology will save us all, and won't that be grand.  I'm sorry to have disturbed you.

Hamby, realistically, are you the same person you were 10 years ago? 20? Human beings don't existin static states, biological or not. The fact that I wouldn't be exactly the same person when translated into a different physical being is largely irrelevant; I wasn't going to stay the same person in my biological body anyway.

We're the kings of the Earth (well, aside from perhaps the bugs), no doubt about that. So, now we look at who te kings are / will be within our own system. Those who live longest and reproduce best, of course. And here is where taking advantage of such technologies will prove profitable to inclined individuals.

This is a strawman, Hamby. I didn't say we'd be converting biological information to digital information. I said we would create a digital persona for ourselves, much like people are doing right now in MMORPGs - but the process will simply become more elaborate over time, and people will demand that developers add more and more persistence to their environments.

I'll also note that this demand is quite obvious to anyone who studies the field, in the form of the number of Bots that players illegally use right now to pump-up their character while they're away from their screen. This is not far-flung technology that I'm speculating about (as I would be with nano-robotics or much more elaborate cybernetics) - this is current-day, just a few small tweaks away from reality technology. People are playing MMORPGs right now (obviously) and making a living off of developing, running and participating in them.

None of this involves mapping someone's DNA or scanning their brain at all. If I might expand more:

Imagine a game, like an MMORPG, that allowed you to program your personal opinions, dissertations, quotes, etc into your online avatar, sort-of like a You-i-pedia. As you play the game, the program 'learns' (presuming using a stat-based point allocation system) what your general behavior patterns are like, and when you're not directly in control of your character, your character plays itself based on what it's 'learned' (I know this isn't the same thing as actual, biological 'learning' - though it's a relatively close analogy of it).

That is, essentially, it. Very simple, very realistic, IMHO.

I'm not.

The gaming industry as a whole does employ Game Theory, and MMORPGs do as well to some extent Iwould argue (See: 'Class Envy', Flavor of the Month', etc).

I did not say 'technology will save us all'. I argued that it would preserve us.

You might go back and read where I admitted that, yes, in such a world where my proposed virtual environment existed, our physical bodies would come and go even as our personas persisted.

My favorite:

How Hamby is happy to use science when it comes to ridiculing others and painting pessimistic portraits over everything, but when science suggests we might be able to improve our future, he looks the other way and pouts about how 'irrational' theoretical physicists and planetary scientists are.

You're missing the point.  I'm not saying this philosophically.  I'm saying it mechanically.  Furthermore, there's a huge difference between a continuous awareness of existence through which to filter the change and what you're talking about.  Please at least acknowledge the fact that you understand what I'm about to say:

The human mind is completely intertwined with the exact DNA of the person interacting with the exact physical body having experienced the exact same life.  If any one of those three is not exactly the same, we're not talking about waking up and having slightly fuzzy memories, or preferring chocolate more than you used to.  The brain is trillions of neurons functioning through constantly changing pathways, all of which are dependent on the exact instructions provided by 25,000 genes, each of which is potentially capable of producing tens of thousands of alternate spellings, producing tens of thousands of wildly different results.  A difference of one ten thousandth of one percent in ANY of the above factors could conceivably produce someone so drastically different from the original that it would be unrecognizable...

IF, by some amazing miracle of science, there is a technology invented which could instantaneously capture and convert trillions and trillions of bits of data from a human body into data that could then be instantaneously put back into a body that had been built to EXACT genetic specifications on a bloody spaceship in the middle of nowhere.

Sounds like a fun game.  Hardly seems relevant.

Sounds like it would be great for sociology.  Can't see how this relates to space travel if you're not converting people from biological units to digital information and back again.

And, like I said, I'm sorry to have disturbed you.  Your faith in science is commendable.  I'm sure you're right.

Really, Thom? And what would this be, then?

Stephen Hawking would be a professor of theoretical physics, Mitchiu Kaku would be a planetary scientist.

I believe Hamby's point is that just because something is speculated doesn't mean that it can be a reality simply because it 'fits' within a model of reality.

The part you didn't quote kind of helps to make that point.

That's not possible.  It's not possible even though it has something to do with the work of Stephen Hawking or that Mitchiu Kaku show.

I, at least, didn't read it like that.  This is getting exhausting though.  I hate to say it, but does it really matter in the end if any of us is right or wrong about manned interstellar travel?  We can at least agree that in the event that it is possible, it's a very long way off?  I mean, I'm only witholding belief that it is possible because I'm not convinced that it actually is possible.  That, and that what arguments there are to convince me dwell deep within the realms of speculation.  I don't think that's irrational of me.

I should hope.  I don't think the future is bleak at all.

There's nothing to say, because there is no difference. Both ideas were or are irrational, both ideas were or will be acted upon. In order to prove me wrong, you will have to prove that a trip CANNOT be profitable, and that the human race is inherrantly rational. I wish you the best of luck.

I'm not saying that you are absolutely wrong here, just partially wrong. You make the assumption that all humans need rational reasons or profitable reasons to do something(flying in the face of history), which erodes the basis of your argument into oblivion.

Prove then, that a selfish reason cannot lead to a trip through the stars.

I think we share this weakness. 

You really need to do better than that. At this point I'm just going to ignore your further posts in this topic as sad and useless attempts to degrade this conversation further.

Which proves that you have missed the point. You are no more the same person mechanically that you were ten years ago than you are the same person in any other aspect.

So I am clear, I am not suggesting that we will find and make a civilization with "little green men" such as Star Trek and Star Wars and Babylon 5 and numerous other sci-fi programs and tales suppose. These concepts are all far above and beyond the simple concept of travel to another star, around which may be a planet which has some form of life upon it. Which NOONE in this topic or the history of humanity has presented any evidence to suggest or prove that it is impossible and will not and can not happen.

I believe this is the only time I have said this to you and I hope this is the only time I say this to you but: That is absurd.

Our immediate consideration should be precisely what might occur in single nucleotide substitutions in nucleic acid sequences. Since you say “can” I will grant you the ideal scenario where this mutation is non-silent. There are two primary sequence types where this might have a major effect

1.      Exons

2.      Regulatory sequences that flank the gene (usually upstream of the TATA box) but bound within the insulator elements that prevent cross-talk between eukaryotic transcription promoters and general transcription factors

In some cases, single nucleotide substitutions can have tremendous effects (but not in the manner you describe). The most clear example I can think of is ADARS in the Adenine to inosine substation effect in gated ion channels during neurogenesis in embryonic development. The effect was first noticed in mice. The substitution is a normal part of embryonic development. If blocked, the mouse dies. The inosine is part of the protein “leash” that admits the passage of ions through the membrane. Without it, electrical signals don’t conduct properly .

This is a very dramatic effect of a nucleotide substation in a protein. For a regulatory element, assuming the substitution occurs in the regulatory protein-binding region of the sequence, in principle a change could alter the K_b (which I will explain shortly) which will directly affect the “tightness” of regulation, which in turn directly affects the ability of a gene control system to respond to signals which increase or decrease the concentration of a regulatory protein.

Gene regulatory proteins bind to regulatory sequences to block or enhance transcription. The tightness of binding dictates the “tightness” of regulation. For tighter binding, changes in concentration of GRP are more likely to have a greater effect. For a population of DNA sequences and binding proteins, the K_b is therefore the equivalent of a binding equilibrium constant. Consider the binding reaction:

P+S=>PS complex

K_b=[PS]/[P][S]

There is a direct relationship between the binding equilibria and free energy. If there is a larger excess of complexes in equilibrium, then the binding is stronger. The stronger the binding, the greater the free energy change:

Then: ∆G=∆G^Θ-RT(pK_b)

Bearing in mind this understanding, it is hard to see how a single nucleotide could have much of effect on K_b. It would have little effect on the number of bonds being formed between the GRP and the DNA. The most important changes occur when regulatory sequences (or, alternatively, the regulatory protein domain responsible for contacting the helix) is duplicated by homologous duplication. This would double the number of contacts between the regulatory element and the GRP, and hence square the association constant.

Insofar as something like personality is no doubt influenced heavily by both the experience and environment of the subject, and a vast conglomerate of genes, especially gene regulatory proteins (which make up a significant portion of the genome), it is hard to argue how a single nucleotide substitution could have a remotely significant effect. Such an alteration in a single exon could in principle alter a single amino acid, which could affect such things as ion channel permeability or DNA-protein contacts (if the exon codes for a segment of a GRP). If it was a transmembrane protein it might alter the contacts it could make with other docking proteins which could in principle affect intracellular vesicular traffic or cell-signalling (as cell signaling depends entirely on relay chains that transduce juxtacrine, endocrine and synaptic signals from the outside). If it was a pumping protein it might affect the ability of the binding domains to hold the transport contents.. But all of these things are fundamental adjustments to physiology and are unlikely to be responsible for personality switches. You’d be hard-pressed to argue that base substitutions can drastically alter personality.  

I chose that word very carefully, as I only intended to convey the possibility, not the certainty, or even the preponderance, of this outcome.

What I was specifically referring to was the gene for BDNF on chromosome 11.  The 192nd letter in 75% of humans is G, and the rest have A.  The two different versions lead to the production of valine and methionine, respectively.  This leads to three kinds of people:  val/vals, val/meths, and meth/meths.  In personality tests, meth/meths are noticeably less neurotic than val/meths, who are noticeably less neurotic than val/vals.  Specifically, val/vals were the most depressed, self-conscious, anxious, and vulnerable, which amounts to four of the six facets of the psychological definition of neuroticism.

Srijan, S., Nesse, R.M., Stoltenberg, S.F., Li, S., et al., A BDNF coding variant is associated with the NEO personality inventory domain neuroticism, a risk factor for depression.  Neuropsychopharmacology, August 2002.

If this finding has been refuted, I'll certainly stop using it, or if I stated it improperly, I'd love to know how to word it properly to reflect the accurate effect of this substitution.

Do you have a link? I can't find it. I could certainly believe that BDNF (which is a trophic factor, with a familial relationship with the famous NGF) could have a major effect on disposition to depression or neurosis. (that may where the confusion arose. I tend to think of depression and neurosis as disorders, not aspects of personality.) It is primarily responsible for rate of neural growth in the areas of the brain asssociated with higher thought (cortex and forebrain), and it is certainly true that depression and neurosis are both correlated with that. (Depression is correlated by low rate of growth, neurosis, the other way around).

 Words can be difficult for me, as I found this, from other wise, easy to understand Carl Sagan .... was it just his time ???

http://www.hillmans.soupbo.com/bu/sagan1.html

Sagan on, BIOLOGY AND HISTORY:

      "Biology is much more like language and history than it is like physics and chemistry. ...Now you might say that where the subject is simple, as in physics, we can figure out the underlying laws and apply them everywhere in the Universe; but where the subject is difficult, as in language, history, and biology, governing laws of Nature may well exist, but our intelligence may be too feeble to recognize their presence - especially if what is being studied is complex and chaotic, exquisitely
sensitive to remote and inaccessible initial conditions. And so we invent formulations about "contingent reality" to disguise our ignorance. There may well be some truth to this point of view, but it is nothing like the whole truth, because history and biology remember in a way that physics does not. Humans share a culture, recall and act on what they've been taught. Life reproduced the adaptations of previous generations, and retains functioning DNA sequences that reach billions of years back into the past. We understand enough about biology and history to recognize a powerful stochastic component, the accidents preserved by high-fidelity reproduction."
          -"Life is Just a Three-Letter Word," Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, p. 92.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define+Stochastic&btnG=Search