User:JWSchmidt/Blog/1 March 2008

View from the real world I've been on wikibreak and feeling cut-off from Wikiversity. I'll miss not being able to have any more chats with Mike Irwin. I sometimes wondered if he would sometimes do what I sometimes do....argue a position just to explore a topic.....and show up the next time ready to adopt the other side of the argument...just to continue the exploration. I generally do not like to fret over the details of Foundation policies and personalities, but somehow discussions with Mike made such topics interesting and meaningful for me. Even more fun was exploring matters such as how to survive in an environment such as the Lunar surface.....are the atomic constituents of life available? He had vast pools of experience and lore that I could explore at a gentle pace...now I regret my assumption that we would have years to continue those explorations. Regrets? The last time we "spoke" I was pushing the idea that maybe space is better suited for artificial life than for biological organisms. I got the feeling that Mike did not like to think along those lines, but maybe we are forced to do so by the weaknesses and limitations of our bodies. In the end, our bodies fail us. Maybe the dream of migrating to the stars is our best motivation to take control of our biological natures or even move beyond them....can we ever learn how to instantiate human-like minds in new substrates that will make them more enduring? I am old...increasingly I am defined by the minds that have been lost to me. It is a great sadness. --JWSchmidt 00:31, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

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 * Tributes for Mirwin