Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#61

Post by gonehome » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #47

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather we change our view on death. Death has always been a constant since life became a thing. Even the mightiest stars in the skies are destined to die one day. After you die, your consciousness fades, and so do all your desires and regrets. To me, death is the ultimate respite.

That's fair; you are of course welcome to your own views on life and death. But I don't think there's a "we", here. Some people are accepting of death, and aren't interested in the idea of immortality, or even a significant amount of life extension. Others... are. Neither viewpoint is wrong, or bad. I don't think I'd want to live forever, but I think the time we get is far too short. I want to see an end to scarcity…

I think a lot about Alcor too - I think it's probably worth doing. Hopefully you can get someone you care about to do it too.

In the unlikely event it does work, there'd at least be a handful of people - it'd be pretty unlikely to be the only success story I think. Downside risk seems small?

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#62

Post by gonehome » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

xvector wrote: post #39

the__alchemist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on your core point, but in a way, it's orthogonal: Death will continue to be an inevitability, and can arrive at any time - even after we solve senescence. (Accidents, murder etc)

The endgame (a few hundred years from now) would be virtualizing consciousnesses and distributing them across space so only a cosmic disaster could end a being.

Basically Permutation City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#63

Post by mLuby » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #47

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather we change our view on death. Death has always been a constant since life became a thing. Even the mightiest stars in the skies are destined to die one day. After you die, your consciousness fades, and so do all your desires and regrets. To me, death is the ultimate respite.

That's fair; you are of course welcome to your own views on life and death. But I don't think there's a "we", here. Some people are accepting of death, and aren't interested in the idea of immortality, or even a significant amount of life extension. Others... are. Neither viewpoint is wrong, or bad. I don't think I'd want to live forever, but I think the time we get is far too short. I want to see an end to scarcity…

Humans are generally adaptable and resilient. Permadeath means you don't get to try adapting to that future.

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#64

Post by gonehome » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #58

gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At another point in the discussion, a man spoke of some benefit X of death, I don't recall exactly what. And I said: "You know, given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing. But if you took someone who wasn't being hit on the head with a baseball bat, and you asked them if they wa…

Actually there is a physics based reason. It’s entropy. Entropy can only increase over time in an isolated system. The human body is a complex multicellular organism largely isolated from the environment and largely in homeostasis once fully grown. Increasing entropy over time is inevitable. It would require increasingly larger amounts of energy to counteract its effects on our body, which over time would become impo…

When the human lifespan is on the order of a star's - I'll be a lot happier.

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#65

Post by sooheon » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #60

gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At another point in the discussion, a man spoke of some benefit X of death, I don't recall exactly what. And I said: "You know, given human nature, if people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing. But if you took someone who wasn't being hit on the head with a baseball bat, and you asked them if they wa…

"science advances one funeral at a time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle Most likely outcome of immortality as humans currently are would be stagnation and power being concentrated in a few hands

Literally the end of evolution.

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#66

Post by joelbluminator » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:07 AM UTC

xvector wrote: post #10

dvt wrote: post #7

I personally like posts like this; a sobering reminder of our own mortality: memento mori . It hopefully motivates us to thrive, flourish, and cherish what really matters -- friendship, kindness, humility, love -- and to leave the world a little better than we found it. And if you're curious, the Aaaron Winborn Award is still going strong[1]! [1] https://www.drupal.org/community/cwg/aaron-winborn-award

Hopefully it also starts us on a path of treating death as a problem to solve, so we can die on our own terms instead of being forced to do so by a cruel reality. https://www.sens.org/ https://www.lifespan.io/ https://www.buckinstitute.org/

Its not really a problem to solve. Its a pretty much guaranteed end we can only delay by so much.

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#67

Post by saulpw » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #28

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather we change our view on death. Death has always been a constant since life became a thing. Even the mightiest stars in the skies are destined to die one day. After you die, your consciousness fades, and so do all your desires and regrets. To me, death is the ultimate respite.

To me, death is the ultimate respite. To me, this makes a virtue of necessity. We have deep philosophies around death only because it's inescapable. But if we could change that, then we could also change those philosophies.

Everything passes. This is not something that can be conquered; it is an inevitable part of the fabric of existence. Maybe it will one day be possible for people to live indefinitely. Maybe egomaniacs would live for thousands of years if they could. But it is not possible to live forever; the universe itself won't last (at least, in form hospitable to life) forever. And so the cessation of our consciousness is inevitable. We can't change this any more than we can change the value of pi.

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#68

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #65

ren_engineer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"science advances one funeral at a time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle Most likely outcome of immortality as humans currently are would be stagnation and power being concentrated in a few hands

Literally the end of evolution.

s/evolution/engineering and life goes on

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#69

Post by Zenst » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #56

The strange irony to me of this post is that anyone who is older than about 80 could write about how this is likely their last birthday. Death comes for everyone eventually. I think to myself sometimes, "How long till I'm 80?" From that point on it's just waiting to die. What am I going to do and accomplish in the time between now and then?

Age and health are funny things, sometimes it slowly creeps along, other times it jumps. At 20 my perspective of old age was different from when I was 30,40,50...

One concern as I get older is the whole aspect that you can reach a point of so much pain and limitations that life becomes a living torture, and with that - my appreciation of the need for legal euthanasia is something that my support grows with age.

After all, it's not worth worrying about death and I don't. What worries me is how I die. Dignity goes a long way and I sure don't want to husk out for days on end in so much pain and medication to combat the pain that I'm dribbling wreck unable to function. That's not my idea of life and I'd like to have that choice and whilst living wills have some carry, the limitations due to dated laws regarding euthanasia and ending ones life early are in need of revision.

Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)

#70

Post by joelbluminator » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #47

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather we change our view on death. Death has always been a constant since life became a thing. Even the mightiest stars in the skies are destined to die one day. After you die, your consciousness fades, and so do all your desires and regrets. To me, death is the ultimate respite.

That's fair; you are of course welcome to your own views on life and death. But I don't think there's a "we", here. Some people are accepting of death, and aren't interested in the idea of immortality, or even a significant amount of life extension. Others... are. Neither viewpoint is wrong, or bad. I don't think I'd want to live forever, but I think the time we get is far too short. I want to see an end to scarcity…

You can be interested in immortality all you want but you will still die eventually. Even Jeff Bezos will die, I just don't see science solving this soon, or maybe ever. In fact in the long term the whole universe dies afaik.