To the Editors…

To the Editors,

EXTROPY is very promising - lots of potential. There is a bit of understandable overambitiousness in your first issue - for example, what can you say about aesthetics (p.13) in a brief compass? (I devoted an entire book, ‘Understanding the Arts,’ to the subject, and THAT barely scratched the surface. The ‘what is beauty’ type question is not easily discussed and certainly not easily disposed of.)

But my main suggestion is that you are really too optimistic about the future. I remember when I was in college, all diseases would be cured or curable within 25 years, and there would be no more wars. (That was two years before World War 2 broke out.) Some of my optimist fellow students were killed in that war. Briefly, a few points:-

1. In the optimistic future scenario, the possibility of war is rather discounted. I hope you’re right, but wouldn’t bet on it. When ideologies find no other way to promulgate their views, they do it by force, and I see no reason why they won’t continue to. At the moment the Middle West (Iran, Israel etc.) is a big trouble spot; it can’t keep forever on the tightrope as it is doing now. The situation of Israel in spite of its military power is very insecure, surrounded by enemies who only need to win once; if fundamentalist Islam continues to grow, Israel’s goose is cooked anyway. But they have said that if they are surrounded they will use nuclear bombs to obliterate first Moslem capitals, then Moscow, then Washington. I see no reason to think that might not happen.

2. Nuclear wars will be seen to be self-destructive (though a mad dictator like Hitler wouldn’t care). But chemical weapons such as nerve gas are more than 2,000 times cheaper to produce, and could kill a city in a short time, without nuclear fallout. Russia and a few others are making it like mad. What makes you think that they won’t use it when they have it?

3. I don’t see a very good future for the environment. Even if the amount of garbage and pollutants were to remain stable starting tomorrow, the oceans might be doomed, as well as lakes and wetlands. And then there’s the ozone hole, the greenhouse effect, and a few such delicacies to worry about. We have soiled our own nest so badly that there will surely be SOME horrendous consequences.

4. Growing old, life extension, is a mixed bag. Growing old for what? To be the same at 120 as most people now are at 90? To sustain life as people in nursing homes how experience it? Horrible! If people could continue at 30 till they die, fine, but I don’t see anyone saying that. Surely it’s the quality and not the quantity of life that counts. To have people preserved in old age centers for decades is not a very alluring prospect.

Moreover, as medical science extends life, the expense of it becomes astronomical. Many people could live to 89 instead of 88, at the cost of half a million dollars. Is it worth it? As medicare spreads, they will have to put some limitation on it (to avoid bankruptcy) as England does, e.g. no expensive treatment for people over 70, even though their taxes have paid for the care.

EXTROPY

#2 - Winter Issue, 1989

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