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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)

#121

Post by 8note »

xvector wrote: post #94
sriram_malhar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My approach to death is this: I am an insignificant drop, and will eventually merge into an ocean of molecules, to be rearranged into other drops. In that sense, there is nothing to fear, nothing to solve. If the manner in which one is dying is painful, then I should have a means of getting to a quick end.

You won't merge into anything, you will become nothing. No rest, no respite, nothing. Your body might "merge", but that's irrelevant. Your consciousness - who you are - will end, truly, once and for all. You will never again experience hopes, dreams, memories, or love. You won't experience anything at all for the rest of eternity.

You sound a lot more confident than you should be, considering the lack of data.

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

#122

Post by 8note »

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.

Still sounds like death to me.

The computer could be a near copy, but the actual me dies

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

#123

Post by 8note »

xvector wrote: post #112
jcfields wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Death is the only working solution we've got.

Once you've solved the other problems, you can work on death

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

#124

Post by 8note »

xvector wrote: post #98
ljm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death isn't a problem to solve...it's just the end of what we know and the start of everything we don't. I don't know what comes after death but I'm not scared of it.

Alternatively, and more likely, (given our current understanding of the universe), it is the end of everything and the start of nothing.

Given our current understanding of the universe, you are already immortal since there continues to be minute probability that you didn't die, and events can be entangled to that.

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

#125

Post by whytaka »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #109
whytaka wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Linus even have children? I don’t know cause I never cared what he did in that area of his life. It has never affected me certainly. I am certainly in awe of his accomplishments with Linux/git though.

Don’t know. But I think that misses the point.

I get it. He might not prize his accomplishments with software as much as he does having raised his hypothetical children. I doubt it though. Most individuals raise children and there aren't millions around the world singing praises about how one particular individual raised their children.

Single-handedly writing software that touches nearly every human being around the world - only few have done that.

This reminds me of that Bill Burr skit where he talks about mothers convincing themselves that theirs is the "most difficult job in the world".

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

#126

Post by 8note »

xvector wrote: post #96
joelbluminator wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When we are looking at deaths on the cosmic timescales you're implying, we can return to that point. For now, our lifespans are pathetically short. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Pathetically short to me just sounds like you've done a bad job prioritizing.

If you get another 100 years, and you spend it at the 9-5, you're still going to find your life pathetically short.

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

#127

Post by inglor_cz »

8note wrote: post #116
mLuby wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tech that gives you immortality probably gives you the ability to tune your genes and their expression too. We are, in fact, slightly closer to the latter than the former. Things like CRISPR, though yet fairly crude, are in practical use.

And humans haven't been subject to natural selection for ages. Pretty much the entire civilization is a cushion between you and forces of nature. Even mastering fire and learning to shoot an arrow from a bow were major developments away from natural selection.

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

#128

Post by gameman144 »

soheil wrote: post #85

It's dangerous to see acceptance of death as a kind of virtue, I see many comments here showing that sentiment. 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, $3.2b in 2021 down from $3.5b in 2020 [0]. I think it's precisely this line of thinking that explains the lack of funding and the extremely slow progress in this field. See…

> Seeing death in a neutral light is wrong, seeing it as a virtue is absolutely sadistic.

I don't know many people that think death itself is virtuous, but I think seeing sacrifice (even of life) for something good can be extremely virtuous.

I would, however, disagree with the view that seeing death in a neutral light is wrong. I very much enjoy life and I'm looking forward to a long time living it, but I think it's totally fine that I'll die one day. Granted I'm not looking forward to it, but I don't think it's a bad thing that it'll happen.

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

#129

Post by fennecfoxy »

acje wrote: post #113
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.

If humans could live to 200, imagine the wealth and power the top leaders, political or corporate, could accumulate. Now pray it never happens?

Meths

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

#130

Post by oleander73 »

xvector wrote: post #89
Barrin92 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

death is more complex than just being inescapable. Death is also a change agent that wipes the slate clean and makes place for the new. It's how all organic life adopts collectively. The first thing that's going to be immortal when death isn't inescapable is Kim Jong Un. No thanks, if you want to see a world without death read Altered Carbon

Stuff like that is really easy to say until you are actually on your deathbed.

I have incurable cancer and let me tell you, talking about curing death is laughably absurd at this point. We don't even have good pain killers.
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