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We Need to Die

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Re: We Need to Die

#11

Post by Waterluvian »

There have been many, many stories over the millenia that try to empart the wisdom that mortality is necessary. Some present it as being a gift.

I don't think any one source made it click for me, but I think some combination of watching The Good Place, Sandman, and a lot of Black Mirror got me really stretching my imagination of what it would feel like to be truly immortal. I had a moment that felt like my horizons had been expanded very slightly when I felt this severe dread for maybe half a second. A feeling of being inescapably trapped.

There's also this PC game called The Coin Game that's just a solo-dev making lots of arcade games. They exist on an island where you have a home and some hobbies and a few arcades and I think even a mall. But the entire island is devoid of humanity. There's just a bunch of robots. I don't know if the game has a backstory, but the one my brain filled in is that this is a sort of playground for you to live in forever... and it's got a San Junipero feel, but far more bleak. Gave me the chills. I'm happy to be mortal.

Re: We Need to Die

#13

Post by Legend2440 »

>You can see this in retirement, actually. There's real data showing mortality spikes in the years after people stop working. The structure of striving, even when it felt like a burden, was providing something that leisure alone can't replace. People who stop pursuing things often just... decline.

Or maybe people stop working because their health was declining?

Re: We Need to Die

#14

Post by tmsbrg »

Not the argument I expected. I'm also against people living forever, but more because it's a way for society to go forward and get rid of old ways of thinking. There's a saying that science advances one death at a time. And can you imagine a world where current leaders are still in power 1000 years later? Or where the leaders of 1000 years ago were still in charge? Whenever I hear people talk about living forever I think of how it'd be something tech billionaires and autocrats would use to oppress us forever. No thanks.

Re: We Need to Die

#15

Post by photonic34 »

Two major counterpoints, the second borrowed from de Grey.

1. I am young enough that a sense of mortality is not a true motivation to start things now. While I know about my mortality, I do not, in the visceral sense, believe it. My motivation to start things now instead of later is to experience the rewards sooner, not a foreboding panic of losing finite time. I suspect this is true for at least very many people.

2. The argument doesn’t survive a simple inversion test. Let’s concede every single disadvantage immortality might bring— lack of motivation, innovation, housing. Suppose we already live in that world. Would a reasonable solution be to introduce a massive, rolling holocaust (i.e. introduce into this world the concept of death)?

Re: We Need to Die

#17

Post by tmsbrg »

bee_rider wrote: post #8

Bah, nah, I’ll take immortality thanks. I want to see where it all goes. I do think there’s a risk of societal stagnation if we all stick around forever. But, maybe we can make a deal—if we all end up immortal, we can make a threshold, maybe even as young as 80 or something, and have people retire and stop voting at that point. Let society stay vivacious, sure. Give us an end point for our toils, definitely, and a de…

As I said in another comment, I'm against immortality because old people need to make way for new generations. But this comment is cute. I like the idea that we'd be there and we're able to see how people are doing, but we're not influencing the world anymore. Though I could also imagine at some point it could become depressing in bad times when there's nothing you can do, or boring after tens of thousands of years of repetition. I can also imagine some bad spirits trying to break out and influence worldly affairs.

Re: We Need to Die

#19

Post by IAmBroom »

Legend2440 wrote: post #13

>You can see this in retirement, actually. There's real data showing mortality spikes in the years after people stop working. The structure of striving, even when it felt like a burden, was providing something that leisure alone can't replace. People who stop pursuing things often just... decline. Or maybe people stop working because their health was declining?

The counterpoint is in all the people who pursue daily goals intensely, at high ages. POTUSes and SCOTUSes, by example, tend to outlive most USians, and tend to stay active with projects or jobs long beyond normal retirement.
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