Immortality vs. Society (2016)
grishka.me
Immortality vs. Society (2016)
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Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#2"a modern human because he can adapt to anything himself, and do so a billion times faster and more efficiently. People are going to the space because they’ve invented rockets and space suits"
so, is this what you believe here on HN? genuinely curious.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#3Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't even know where to start.
> If I’m going to cease to exist, it doesn’t matter what would be in a world without me.
Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else?
> children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because.
Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper bots". I am assuming he is a he, because a women would never say these things... I don't know in what world you live in to think of children this way. Have you ever played with a child or seen it grow up? This is atrocious. Seriously man, get help or something, this almost borders on psychopath level of apathy.
> (Children, again) It’s like a new branch in a version control system, if you know what I mean.
Okay I am out. You really should get help. Definitely.
> So no, children are not our immortality. They are the best way to kill time (and eventually yourself).
Yep... Totally get it. Obviously children are not our immortality. Are they the best way to kill time? I mean if you are a robot, that's probably true.
> We’ve already superseded the evolution, so we don’t actually need it any more.
We are far away from that. Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection. And yet, we still can't live forever and we can't fix the common cold. Good luck to our species.
> The nature isn’t our friend. It’s our enemy.
Okay :D. Just dig yourself a concrete hole and live in there from bottles of Soylent and see what happens. There are tons of studies who show you how important a connection to nature is for the human body and mind, but well...
> The meaning of life is to keep on living.
Yeah, that's maybe the only thing I can agree with in this "text" or whatever it is. But it definitely doesn't follow from the brainfarts that came before.
I am now actually pitying the coworkers of this person and actually anybody he interacts with, if any.
Look, there is only one thing that differentiates humans from robots. It is that humans are nothing like you want to make them in your article. If humans were like you, I would wish this race would get replaced by actual robots asap, because at least then, there is an excuse for behaving the way you do.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#4I would give so much to live in a society where people like Aubrey de Gray are heroes like Elon Musk is in ours. The fact that people die does not have to be immutable fate. We look back at people seeking the fountain of youth or the philosophers stone with sneering contempt but at least they had the right goal. Our acquiescence of death is the greatest tragedy ever and collectively we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#5The first part rings dangerously close to solipsism in my ears, and once you’re there nothing much matters.
Just trash the planet, use people and move on. Cause once you’re dead it doesn’t matter? I might be wrong but you can’t build a civilization in that way.
Second thing is that immortality creates conservatism. Old age does too, but it seems to me immortality over-indexes self-preservation over progress of civilization, where the former is just slightly less of a concern for the individual when lifetimes are as short as they are now.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#6"a modern human because he can adapt to anything himself, and do so a billion times faster and more efficiently. People are going to the space because they’ve invented rockets and space suits" so, is this what you believe here on HN? genuinely curious.
We are diverse.
Myself? This blog entry reads kinda like the Wiccan self-help books I was into in a big way as a teenager and no longer care for.
I hope to live long enough to benefit from SENS. I’m planning as if I don’t, because I have no control over which reality I will face and doing what I’m doing has the best expected utility given that uncertainty.
Then there’s the limits of any plausible form of immortality: While the idea of being part of a starlifting project to extend the lifespan of Sol by a factor of a thousand (and of being able to enjoy the benefits of that project ten trillion years from now) appeals greatly, curing ageing and all disease — leaving only injuries both accidental and malicious as causes of death — still leaves humans with a half-life of something like 800 to 1200 years. Give us mind-backups (which also appeal to me, but less so when I consider the likelihood of misuse) and you still have to consider the radical change in what it means to be over such timescales.
I don’t know what the future will bring, and I will plan for all too short a season, even though I will embrace life extension and do what I can to stay around for as long as I can.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#7This is very very stupid. I mean it: stupid.
The act of planning is not about the future, it’s about the present. I haven’t experienced the future yet, so it has no value to me. But a chained sequence of events that have a certain likelihood of occurring does have value to me now in the form of the expectation (which I experience today) of the outcome.
The author also presumes no one can value states of the world except insofar as they are directly, materially experiencing that state of the world, but this is wrong.
For example, I’ve never visited Australia, but I would value a state of the world where Australian cryptography laws and email surveillance laws are reformed. I get value just from the concept of that state of the world. I suppose it’s similar to getting value from consuming a fictional work of art - I experience the concept of it, but it doesn’t materially exist in my presence. I don’t benefit from it (say, like an Australian citizen would), but I benefit from the concept of it and associated probabilities of the world changing to a certain state.
So if I am on my death bed with a special button laid out in front of me, which if pressed will automatically cause all Australian politicians’ pants to fall down until they vote to reform cryptography laws, and I believe there’s high probability the button would work and the embarrassment would work, then my impending death should not make me indifferent to pressing the button. With those precious few moments of life, I am experiencing something materially of value (a chained sequence of cause & effect with high probability to lead to a state of the world I value). The world I am in contains aspects of value I can experience that are functions of sequences of events leading to worlds I am not in. There’s nothing irrational, non-utilitarian or inconsistent about this.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#8Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't even know where to start. > If I’m going to cease to exist, it doesn’t matter what would be in a world without me. Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else? > children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because. Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper…
Haha, same thought. I agree with the evolution bit though. But if all humans decide to not have children, machines are not smart enough to keep evolving themselves yet or in the near future.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#9Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't even know where to start. > If I’m going to cease to exist, it doesn’t matter what would be in a world without me. Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else? > children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because. Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper…
Broadly agree except
> Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection
Is it? I’ve not heard any serious claim of deterioration before.
Re: Immortality vs. Society (2016)
#10Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't even know where to start. > If I’m going to cease to exist, it doesn’t matter what would be in a world without me. Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else? > children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because. Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper…
> because we managed to eliminate natural selection.
Evolution is alive and well. Drunk driving for example kills young people. Disease similarly kills plenty of people to kick evolution into action. Suicide is tragic enough people don’t think of it as evolutionary pressure, but dead is dead.
Etc. Etc. It’s not as obvious as dealing with actual lions, but the developed world is well below the replacement rate. That’s some serious evolutionary pressure.