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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)

#111

Post by xvector »

mehwoot wrote: post #110
xvector wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. These are problems to solve independently of death. Shitty governments and politics do not justify death. These problems absolutely aren't in the problem space of life extension to solve. 2. It is arguable that life and freedom are meaningless if we are doomed to lose everything we ever have and are in the end, after such a short amount of time. 3. "Enjoying life for the ephemeral experience it is" is something we…

"Enjoying life for the ephemeral experience it is" is something we do out of hard necessity. But we don't do it. We sit here worrying about dying and trying to ensure we will live forever instead of enjoying the time we do have alive. Read experiences of people who suddenly find out they are going to die relatively soon- the richness of their life takes on a whole new dimension. These are problems to solve independen…

> And why do you have 100% faith they will be solved? Is that how the world generally tends to work? Or will things just get worse and people will blame it on the government instead of the thing that changed and allowed things to be bad?

This doesn't change the fact that using death to solve inequality is like using a nuclear bomb to heat your dinner. We ought to find a better solution and solve it independently.

I do not understand your pessimism. Historically speaking, humanity tends to solve the problems it encounters. A look over the past few centuries alone reveals this. We'll solve this problem too.

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

#112

Post by xvector »

jcfields wrote: post #27
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/

"And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away."

This sounds like a desperate attempt to cope with death. We can find better ways to encourage change than literally dying.

If people lived indefinitely but society was a bit stagnant, and you pressed a button to kill 100M random people a year to "encourage change", you'd be regarded as insane, and rightfully so.

Death is not the solution to our problems, just like throwing your computer in the trash isn't a solution to a crashing program.

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

#113

Post by acje »

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.

If humans could live to 200, imagine the wealth and power the top leaders, political or corporate, could accumulate.

Now pray it never happens?

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

#114

Post by mehwoot »

xvector wrote: post #111
mehwoot wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Enjoying life for the ephemeral experience it is" is something we do out of hard necessity. But we don't do it. We sit here worrying about dying and trying to ensure we will live forever instead of enjoying the time we do have alive. Read experiences of people who suddenly find out they are going to die relatively soon- the richness of their life takes on a whole new dimension. These are problems to solve independen…

> And why do you have 100% faith they will be solved? Is that how the world generally tends to work? Or will things just get worse and people will blame it on the government instead of the thing that changed and allowed things to be bad? This doesn't change the fact that using death to solve inequality is like using a nuclear bomb to heat your dinner. We ought to find a better solution and solve it independently. I d…

This doesn't change the fact that using death to solve inequality

I'm not saying it will solve inequality, I'm saying it is preventing it from being far, far, far worse than it already is. Do you feel like we're solving the inequalities we currently have enough to unleash something that will make things one hundred times worse? Knowing that once it is unleashed it will be almost impossible to reverse?

is like using a nuclear bomb to heat your dinner.

You're proposing that we remove the nuclear bomb that has been heating the food we've been eating for the last 1 billion years and assuming we'll just figure out something else.

I do not understand your pessimism. Historically speaking, humanity tends to solve the problems it encounters

I guess my pessimism stems from a different perspective of what it means to "solve our problems". I look around the world as it is today and I don't feel like we genuinely have solved any of the problems at the core of human existence.

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

#115

Post by 8note »

xvector wrote: post #100
mehwoot wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither viewpoint is wrong, or bad Actually I think trying to eliminate death (at least if we're talking about letting people live >1000 years or choose when they die) is extremely bad and will have awful, awful consequences. You think inequality is bad now? Can you imagine what it will be like when people can amass power and fortunes for thousands of years? How progressive do you think our views on race and sex woul…

1. These are problems to solve independently of death. Shitty governments and politics do not justify death. These problems absolutely aren't in the problem space of life extension to solve. 2. It is arguable that life and freedom are meaningless if we are doomed to lose everything we ever have and are in the end, after such a short amount of time. 3. "Enjoying life for the ephemeral experience it is" is something we…

I don't think 2 is right. Only property becomes meaningless, since it's the only thing you're losing. Life and freedom only become more meaningful with time constraints, since you don't have time to do anything and everything.

As a matter of focus, we should solve those other problems first, especially since increasing life expectancy is already having bad effects, both in wealth and power concentration. Eg. Boomers not retiring, and not dying, so gen x and millenials have bad careers and nowhere to live

For another rephrasing, if I had the option to go back in time, and prolong the life of all the slave owners and the people they enslaved, I wouldn't subject the poor people to 1000 years of torture.

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

#116

Post by 8note »

mLuby wrote: post #63
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…

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

On the other hand, natural selection runs on death and reproduction.

Humanity's genetics will naturally deteriorate without death.

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

#117

Post by 8note »

xvector wrote: post #78
joelbluminator wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is the same thing as immortality. If you only die on your own terms, and never want to die, you are immortal. Sure, a hundred million years looks big from where we are now, but it's pathetically short if you've already lived for 50 million years

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

#118

Post by 8note »

gonehome wrote: post #64
glitchc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you really want to see everyone you care about burn up in a supernova?

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

#119

Post by lycopodiopsida »

dash2 wrote: post #75
soheil wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And he will be alive for 100% of his life - until he is not.

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

#120

Post by 8note »

mLuby wrote: post #72
glitchc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you're not living all the way till dark energy rips your atoms apart, what's the point?

Seriously though, what is the point? You're gonna have the same fomo with death in the future as you do now.

We've already found out how to reactivate those growth and healing mechanisms. Have children, then grand children, then great grandchildren, etc. Each generation gets its own activation

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