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

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

#71

Post by nradov »

codetrotter wrote: post #32
xvector wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

> so we can die on our own terms instead of being forced to do so by a cruel reality Step one would be to allow euthanasia. Until we allow that, we cannot pretend that anyone is ever going to be allowed to die on their own terms.

Even when euthanasia is legal it's generally only an option for people of sound mind. Once you have dementia that option is closed off.

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

#72

Post by mLuby »

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…

Entropy may win in the very end, but that's after trillions of years (unless we're in a Big Crunch or Big Rip universe), and asserts that no intelligence will ever find a way to circumvent it (see Clarke's First Law).

On a more relatable scale, humans do grow in complexity, order, and capability in their early years, until eventually decay turns the tide toward the end of our natural lifespans. It would be rather odd if it's physically impossible to re-activate those growth and healing mechanisms—much more likely that we just haven't figured out how yet.

[Edit: I'm amazed at the posts saying it's not worth trying to live longer because you'll never outlast A STAR. It's not a competition people!]

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

#73

Post by thelittleone »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #18
xvector wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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.

I agree with you. In a way, death can be viewed a kind of birth. In some cultures a well-liked persons passing is comparatively celebrated.

The grim black traditions of my culture are almost self centered by comparison.

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

#74

Post by dash2 »

morpheos137 wrote: post #51
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.

Death is neither good nor bad, nor permanent, in my opinion. Given eternity arbitrary close combinations of matter in space and time that composes you will arise again and again. My opinion is that when we die we pretty much begin a life extremely similar to the life we just lived except maybe some infintesimal thing is different. Thus if you want a better life then start creating it because you have been living vari…

But presumably you've also then been living very different variations of the same script, since there have been infinite combinations of matter that were close enough to give rise to you, but different enough to have very different outcomes.

Also, doesn't physics and the Big Bang rule out this eternal recurrence idea? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA

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

#75

Post by dash2 »

soheil wrote: post #49
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.

Let me remind you that you had been dead for 13.7 billion years before being alive for only 1/1,000,000,000 of that time and you call death a break?

But he's been alive for 100% of his life, which is all that he had to experience.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by soheil »

gonehome wrote: post #42
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.

"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…

It's dangerous to see acceptance of death as a kind of virtue. The amount of funding dedicated to anti-aging research is very small, it's a tiny subset of funding for Alzheimer's disease by the NIH. I think it's precisely this line of thinking that explains the lack of funding and the extremely slow progress in this field [0].

[0] https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/budget/fiscal-year-2021-budget

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

#78

Post by xvector »

joelbluminator wrote: post #70
kelnos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please re-read his comment, or even this whole thread.

The person you replied to specifically said that they don't care for immortality. People are simply advocating for death on their own terms, instead of the pathetically short lives we have today.

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

#79

Post by jsolson »

SquibblesRedux wrote: post #15

Given what I would consider the eternal preciousness of a human, and the fleeting insignificance of computer software, I found it strange he opened with "I am a developer for Drupal." For example, why did he place that before his being a father? I think people too often miss the significance of their own existence, independent of their relatively brief tasks and accomplishments. I certainly do not mean to belittle or…

Well, if it helps, fixating on this choice allowed me to collapse your entire thread without reading most of your comment with zero guilt :)

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

#80

Post by kiba »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #18
xvector wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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.

Sounds like a rationalization. There is no permanent solution to the problem of preventing death, so people try to make it a good thing.

This is especially true when you looked at some of our oldest myth such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

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