I assume you are reading this because you have infinite time

My friend gave me another book to read. You know, the friend who lent me Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future. Well I think I'm starting to notice a pattern here. This friend is only giving me books to read that require me to assume 20 different things before breakfast before their arguements make sense. In much the same way I hate being in a room with more than three people I can't stand arguements that require more than three assumptions. Actually make that two assumptions and they have to be clearly aknowleged as assumptions for the purpose of speculation. My friend is doing this to try to get me to assume things! Well I don't assume, thank you very much! Wait a minute! Now I'm assuming that my friend is trying to get me to assume things! My head hurts.

Anyway, I get to the top of page two in this new book and it says that death gives time meaning. That, "Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it." Gee, what an assumption. Did he even think of asking some immortals if time meant anything to them? What? There are no convenient immortals around to ask? So this author is making an assumption that can in no way be checked? What cheek! Well I guess we'll just have to do a thought experiment then. If you found out today that you were immortal and someone tried to shoot you through the head a few times to prove it, would your time suddenly become meaningless? Or would you enter party mode, secure in the knowledge that no matter what risks you took you'd never screw up enough to die? It must be nice to know that whatever your mistakes you have forever to make them up.

Indeed, many humans seem incapable of realizing the fact that they are likely to live for eighty or more years, let alone eternity. Just think of how many teenagers have lost perfectly good teeth showing off or in a stupid fight or both? Even if we all became immortal tomorrow I doubt many people would appreciate it on more than an intellectual level, even if they managed to get hit by a bus every second week. Humans just aren't made to lose appreciation of time, even if they did get an infinite amount of it dumped in their laps. I even have trouble convincing myself that too much caffeine today will make it hard for me to sleep tonight.

And what is the name of the book? I'm not telling you that! What if the author gets mad at me for mocking his assumptions? He might come around and knock my teeth out with a baseball bat and I'm planning on using these pearly whites until I'm at least eighty.