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We Need to Die

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Re: We Need to Die

#171

Post by npodbielski »

spongebobism wrote: post #152
npodbielski wrote: post #104

> they'd evolve so completely that you'd become a different person anyway. How is that a bad thing? Are you the same person you were when you were 15? Of course not. Is it the case for when you were 20 or 30? No. The whole point of living is to learn, gather new experiences and grow. Would you stop doing that because you are immortal? No. I think author is caught too much in his work whatever it is. Me, personnally w…

> > they'd evolve so completely that you'd become a different person anyway. > How is that a bad thing? The point isn't that it's bad, but that it's equivalent to dying and then someone else taking your place. So if it's OK for your character to change fundametally over the span of your life, then it must also be OK for you to die at some point and yield the stage to the next generation.

This is like arguing that you die in your sleep and in the morning you are another person.

Re: We Need to Die

#172

Post by nradov »

skissane wrote: post #168
nradov wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What trends are those? So far there has been zero progress on increasing maximum human lifespan.

We know other species have different maximum lifespans-some shorter, some longer. Obviously this is determined by genetics-as our knowledge of that subject continues to improve, why wouldn’t we eventually work out how to alter it? We can already change the maximum lifespan of some other species. Why shouldn’t we expect to gradually be able to do it for more species? And then what makes humans special that we couldn’t…

You're making a huge leap there based on zero scientific evidence. No one has ever demonstrated maximum lifespan extension for mammals living in the wild. Experiments have been limited to animals living in nice safe, sterile cages. There's no free lunch in genetics and modifications that increase maximum lifespan are likely to result in other undesirable changes. Like suppression of immune response can be helpful but that comes with a huge obvious downside if you're ever exposed to random pathogens. Outside of some very limited genetic defects it's usually impossible to alter a single trait in isolation.

Re: We Need to Die

#173

Post by skissane »

nradov wrote: post #172
skissane wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know other species have different maximum lifespans-some shorter, some longer. Obviously this is determined by genetics-as our knowledge of that subject continues to improve, why wouldn’t we eventually work out how to alter it? We can already change the maximum lifespan of some other species. Why shouldn’t we expect to gradually be able to do it for more species? And then what makes humans special that we couldn’t…

You're making a huge leap there based on zero scientific evidence. No one has ever demonstrated maximum lifespan extension for mammals living in the wild. Experiments have been limited to animals living in nice safe, sterile cages. There's no free lunch in genetics and modifications that increase maximum lifespan are likely to result in other undesirable changes. Like suppression of immune response can be helpful but…

No one has ever done it is not in itself evidence it can’t be done, only that it is hard.

And my point was-no matter how hard human life extension is, mind uploading is many orders of magnitude harder. The first, it seems likely in principle that we could achieve it if only we knew the right genetic changes to make-now, you may be right that in a thousand years we still won’t work out in practice exactly what they are-but human life extension has a certain kind of theoretical in principle feasibility which could well coexist with practical infeasibility; mind uploading lacks even that level of theoretical in principle feasibility.

Re: We Need to Die

#174

Post by roenxi »

sungho_ wrote: post #167
roenxi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To even consider "immortal" as possible suggests someone hasn't had a lot of formal math training. Infinity is rather large. In an infinite amount of time, any possible conjunction of circumstances that could cause an immortality system to fail will happen. Talking in thousands, millions or even billions of years doesn't even need to be rounded to be basically zero when compared to eternity. Death is a certainty. No…

You are confusing ‘thinking it is possible’ with 'being certain of it.'

I don't think I am. What would the path be to thinking it is possible? In the best case scenario where everything we know about physics turns out to be wrong and the universe miraculously allows complex eternal patterns to form it'd still eventually end up as some entity that thought a completely different way, had a completely different form, and has a very limited understanding of the concept of "what I am" because it'd have to keep changing parts of itself due to unexpected circumstances. It'd be a ship of Thesius to the point where there wasn't even a memory of what a ship was any more. A severe Alzheimers patient would be the same person they always have been compared to what an eternity of change would bring.

If that is immortality then we may as well call it a tautology and say we're already immortal. None of the things that make people who they are need to be preserved to achieve it so we're realistically already there.

Living an absurdly long time I can get behind. Billions of years, trillions of years, unimaginable numbers of years, sure. That could happen. But immortality isn't an option, everything eventually dies off unless we play semantic games where there aren't any properties of the thing that need to be preserved. And maybe even reality has an expiration date for all we know, which would render the whole project moot.

Re: We Need to Die

#175

Post by kbelder »

Antibabelic wrote: post #122
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…

> Put us in computers I feel like this is a modern version of believing in souls. You are matter, not data. If you find a way to simulate yourself on a computer, this will not prevent you from experiencing death. And if that's the case, what's the point? Stroking your ego with the knowledge that a simulation of you will stick around for some time after you give up the ghost?

I think it's the opposite. Believing that something special exists in brains that can't in be replicated in a (sufficiently complex) computer is spirituality, a belief in the supernatural.

Re: We Need to Die

#176

Post by decafninja »

I’m Christian, and believe in the afterlife. Supposedly heaven will be incomprehensible awesome.

However I feel nonetheless there is so much awesomeness to experience here on this earthly realm too, and too little time even in a perfectly “good” life to take it all in. Even if someone’s life starting from birth to death at a ripe old age happens to fall perfectly min-maxed in place served with a silver spoon.

Re: We Need to Die

#177

Post by skissane »

roenxi wrote: post #174
sungho_ wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing ‘thinking it is possible’ with 'being certain of it.'

I don't think I am. What would the path be to thinking it is possible? In the best case scenario where everything we know about physics turns out to be wrong and the universe miraculously allows complex eternal patterns to form it'd still eventually end up as some entity that thought a completely different way, had a completely different form, and has a very limited understanding of the concept of "what I am" because…

If we look at afterlife beliefs-and their secular substitutes such as life extension, cryonics, mind uploading, simulationism, quantum immortality-I don’t think they all have the same motivation-two people may adopt the same belief with different psychological motivations.

For some people, the idea that their present conscious moment might eventually be left permanently without any future extension is terrifying-but provided that doesn’t happen, they might be neutral (or even positive) about the prospect of the contents of that consciousness eventually becoming so radically transformed that it becomes a completely different person, or even something which transcends human notions of personhood, albeit ultimately still continuous with the person they are now. For other people, that prospect is terrifying. It really depends on what one is most attached to - the mere continuation of one’s own consciousness, or its distinctive contents that makes you you.

Re: We Need to Die

#178

Post by Antibabelic »

kbelder wrote: post #175
Antibabelic wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put us in computers I feel like this is a modern version of believing in souls. You are matter, not data. If you find a way to simulate yourself on a computer, this will not prevent you from experiencing death. And if that's the case, what's the point? Stroking your ego with the knowledge that a simulation of you will stick around for some time after you give up the ghost?

I think it's the opposite. Believing that something special exists in brains that can't in be replicated in a (sufficiently complex) computer is spirituality, a belief in the supernatural.

Rather, confusing models (including computational ones) for the things they model is the very definition of magical thinking. Matter matters. There is nothing specific about "brains" that prevents them from "existing" digitally. The fact is that nothing material can "exist" in a computational substrate. A computer can only simulate: replicate the structure of material things in a useful to us manner using symbols.

Re: We Need to Die

#179

Post by Paratoner »

npodbielski wrote: post #170
Paratoner wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for dozens of years Yeah, that's not eternity. And if you read the article at all you'd know the argument is not against life extension, it's about having constraints, horizons, and deadlines to give meaning and urgency to things.

I read it. And this argument is plain silly. Does a kid feels urgency of immediate death? Did you when you were sixteen? Like the only thing keeping people all around the world going would be though that they are going to die and they need to do as much as they can before that. This is just radicoulous. If people would be immortal they would just lie down and die because there is no point in leaving! People die on th…

Good reductio, and good showcase of how little you know of your true nature. This is just a disagreement on the fundamental nature and needs of a human being. If you think an eternity would go great for you, more power to you. We'll see when/if that happens who's right, and who's delusional. Its pointless to make my case to transhumanist techbros on this website.

Re: We Need to Die

#180

Post by Borrible »

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Susan Ertz. Anger in the Sky. Hodder & Stoughton. 1943

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