The best protocol is to just ignore it. Animals do it, so why shouldn't we?
This approach is also fully compatible with the idea that life itself is a "terminal disease".
A Protocol for Dying
141–150 of 347 posts
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Accuracy will get you an endless cycle of "but why dad?" So keep answering until you can't, and then say "I don't know". Curiosity is something to be fostered, not shutdown with lies.
Have you had an inconsolable five year old who lost a close relative or even pet? I prefer to use analogies and explanations they can understand and accept to help them understand the reality. It's not the same as presuming they have no concept of death. That's a very long way from shutting them down with lies, avoiding the topic, or "protecting" them from it. It's trying to be age-appropriate. I make no claims to be…
Obviously you try to explain, but what was objected to above is making excuses for death. Death sucks, and trying to pretend there's some good to balance that out is a lie.
That said, I'm not a parent, and I realise it's easier to be idealistic in theory.
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#143> Imagine you have a box of Lego, and you build a house, and you keep it. And you keep making new houses, and never breaking the old ones. What happens? "The box gets empty, Daddy." Good, yes. And can you make new houses then? "No, not really." So we're like a Lego houses, and when we die our pieces get broken up and put back in the box. We die, and new babies can be born. It is the wheel of life. I am stealing this.
It might be consoling to some, but it is hardly accurate.
There would be over a hundred billion people today if nobody ever died, and that's only counting the humans. The practical reality of the world since the dawn of life has been that if you want to shake up the genetic Lego box and create new creatures, the old creatures have to die. Eventually.
The analogy is not perfect. To create new Lego creations you have to destroy the old ones first. But analogies are never perfect. They're just a starting point to get a rough understanding.
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is, it doesn't have to be accurate. It just have to make sense to a child.
To put it bluntly, I can think of a number of other cases where (1) people say things to children because it is more pleasant or convenient, not because it is true, and (2) these misleading statements have negative effects later. In this case, it seems potentially worthwhile to keep in view that death is actually not a good thing, and that it would better if there weren't death, and that we want to keep an eye out fo…
Death is just another part of life. It's going to get you eventually.
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
The inaccuracy is that in reality, the box of Legos is huge and nowhere near running out of bricks. If suddenly all humans on Earth stopped dying, the carbon cycle wouldn't even notice it for centuries or more (the things we'd be doing to control overpopulation are another topic though).
Why are you assuming the analogy is to physical resources instead of "population slots," for lack of a better term? The old have to die for the young to move forward, which is one thing that gives me pause about immortality research.
"The old have to die for the young to move forward" - This seems like a baseless assumption. If immortality research succeeds, surely we can also fix the problem of older people being stubborn.
A lot of the stubborness comes from facing death. When you think in terms of forever, it helps you to think a lot bigger than petty personal politics.
Or, at least, it should.
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you had an inconsolable five year old who lost a close relative or even pet? I prefer to use analogies and explanations they can understand and accept to help them understand the reality. It's not the same as presuming they have no concept of death. That's a very long way from shutting them down with lies, avoiding the topic, or "protecting" them from it. It's trying to be age-appropriate. I make no claims to be…
I lost a brother who has two girls. They were very young when it happened. It was a sudden death. Gone in less than a day. You never get an answer to the why. The Lego analogy works because it tells the child that life ends. It doesn't explain why. Just the fact. And that's ok. Why did my brother die? Everyday I ask myself that very same question and have yet come to an answer. His daughters have asked me why too. I…
>It doesn't explain why.
The aspect of it that people are objecting to is that it does try to explain why. It says "Your father needs to go back in the box so we can make other people", which simply isn't true.
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
To put it bluntly, I can think of a number of other cases where (1) people say things to children because it is more pleasant or convenient, not because it is true, and (2) these misleading statements have negative effects later. In this case, it seems potentially worthwhile to keep in view that death is actually not a good thing, and that it would better if there weren't death, and that we want to keep an eye out fo…
Death is just another part of life. It's going to get you eventually. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
Personally, I really like living, mainly because there's a lot of awesome stuff to do and see and build, stories to tell, people to be with, etc. The logical next step is that I don't want to die, at least any time soon or involuntarily. Avoiding death may be difficult, but it seems rather sad to just give up; and anyway, say what you will about humans, but we are pretty goddamn clever occasionally.
So it seems quite worth it to fight death. I don't know if avoiding involuntary death should seem so implausible---humans are machines that can be fixed when they start breaking; that's how ordinary medicine works! I think it would actually be surprising if we could extend lifespans from 30 years all the way up to 100+ years, but couldn't possibly go much further, even given massive future advances in our understanding of biology, neurology, and technology.
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like if every person who has ever lived were still alive today we'd had some issues.
Do you mean because of limited resources like food and space? Sure, but (1) these look like difficult but quite solvable problems (we are engineers, after all) and (2) the alternative is having every person who has ever lived also be dead, which sounds bad to me. There might be more clever options, like cryopreserve everyone who dies; this does not consume many resources (the only recurring cost is liquid nitrogen, w…
Well, yes. According to a quick search something like 108 billion people have ever lived (compared to 7 billion who walk the Earth today). That seems like a population that would be pretty hard to keep going without having a few extra Earths.
Besides that, it is immaterial. We are all going to die someday and there is nothing we can do about it. The people seeing cryogenics are largely snake-oil salesmen. I don't believe anybody will ever find immortality (at least not in this life).
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be consoling to some, but it is hardly accurate.
There would be over a hundred billion people today if nobody ever died, and that's only counting the humans. The practical reality of the world since the dawn of life has been that if you want to shake up the genetic Lego box and create new creatures, the old creatures have to die. Eventually. The analogy is not perfect. To create new Lego creations you have to destroy the old ones first. But analogies are never perf…
Does this seem like a desirable state of affairs? I think I'd rather not have anyone die involuntarily. If we put our minds to it, I bet we could figure out how to not have anyone die who didn't want to. There's no physical law that says you can't have billions or trillions of humans live awesome lives for a very long time (though maybe not literally forever).
Re: A Protocol for Dying
#150These words hit close to home. My dad just passed away from cancer/diabetes in Florida and had to endure the "barbaric torture of decay and failure". Basically 4 months suffering in bed until he eventually denied eating anything and his liver failed. I asked the nurses repeatedly if there was anything to help him go or pass and there was nothing. Something's got to change in the US, we treat animals better than human…
> Something's got to change in the US
Oregon was the first place in the world to legalize euthanasia.
I'm very sorry for your loss.