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‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

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Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#21

Post by phoe-krk »

melling wrote: post #9

“30 years ago I would have died of cancer; now I will die with cancer, but not of cancer.” And 30-100 years from now, the same cancer will be cured. It’s simply a matter of the human race deciding when to cure cancers.

In this context, your "simply" is probably the greatest understatement I've read on HN in 2023 so far. There's nothing simple about coordinating people like this, starting from facilitating communication across individual people to bootstrap the process and ending at grabbing enough attention of people on top to gain the necessary world-scale attention towards the problem.

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#22

Post by Scarblac »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #18
walterbell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short (25m) wordless art film, https://nbhap.com/sounds/the-national-mike-mills-i-am-easy-t... > We are born, we live and then we all die. And in-between a lot of spectacular things can happen. Or maybe not. Sounds harsh when you put it like this, right? But there’s an undeniable and for many people uncomfortable truth in this and I Am Easy To Find is a film that transports that feeling pretty well.

“There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.”[1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/62360-sourcery

You can tell by that quote that it's an early book in the series. The later books would not say that of anybody.

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#23

Post by belter »

Buttons840 wrote: post #20
brianjking wrote: post #2

This article seems like something I should read, but I'm not sure if I want to. As someone with parents and inlaws who are in their early to mid 70s and quite worried about losing them, I'm not sure if I'm ready to read this. Does anyone have any tips on how to deal with the pre-loss anxiety?

I was raised in a religion and I'm considering returning to it. It gave me peace, and although I know I may be deluding myself, I like the effects. I think I can hold both views in myself, this religion serves me, but it may be wrong and I understand it doesn't serve everyone and it's okay if others choose other religions or no religion. I will also be much more hesitant to give money to my religion. So far it has he…

I see the number of priests abusing children, and take that as an example that, neither religion made them a better person, neither they seem afraid of the after life they preach about...

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#24

Post by meghan_rain »

phoe-krk wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #9

“30 years ago I would have died of cancer; now I will die with cancer, but not of cancer.” And 30-100 years from now, the same cancer will be cured. It’s simply a matter of the human race deciding when to cure cancers.

In this context, your "simply" is probably the greatest understatement I've read on HN in 2023 so far. There's nothing simple about coordinating people like this, starting from facilitating communication across individual people to bootstrap the process and ending at grabbing enough attention of people on top to gain the necessary world-scale attention towards the problem.

hahah it's the infamous HN Dropbox comment but on steroids

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#26

Post by fwip »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #19
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.”[1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/62360-sourcery

From Darwin's perspective, though, that's basically the exact opposite of "sad."

Nope.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9606284-a-man-s-friendships...

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#27

Post by irrational »

> am 73 years old and I’ve had a difficult life, but a long and good one.

I just got back from visiting my grandmother who is a few weeks away from turning 100. She still lives alone, cooks her own food, walks without assistance, has a tremendous memory and still has the mental acuity of any intelligent healthy young person. Her son, my father is 75 and is a physician and still works 60 hour weeks (which he considers to be retirement hours). I started laughing when I read the doctor considering 73 to be a long life. That age feels like barely out of middle age to me.

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#28

Post by bagacrap »

irrational wrote: post #27

> am 73 years old and I’ve had a difficult life, but a long and good one. I just got back from visiting my grandmother who is a few weeks away from turning 100. She still lives alone, cooks her own food, walks without assistance, has a tremendous memory and still has the mental acuity of any intelligent healthy young person. Her son, my father is 75 and is a physician and still works 60 hour weeks (which he considers…

Welp, my dad had an unexpected and fatal heart attack at 58. I would count myself lucky to live to 73.

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#29

Post by renewiltord »

irrational wrote: post #27

> am 73 years old and I’ve had a difficult life, but a long and good one. I just got back from visiting my grandmother who is a few weeks away from turning 100. She still lives alone, cooks her own food, walks without assistance, has a tremendous memory and still has the mental acuity of any intelligent healthy young person. Her son, my father is 75 and is a physician and still works 60 hour weeks (which he considers…

Dude, we know. Everything has a long tail. If everyone in the tail for everything came and posted about stuff we'd be sitting here primarily reading comments that go:

- $500k? I make $5 million and that doesn't even seem enough

- 2 children? I have 5 children and that barely feels like a family

- 3 vim plugins? I have 1E80 and even that is barely enough to write Hello World in Java

Re: ‘Preparing to die has a lot to do with having had a good life’

#30

Post by melling »

phoe-krk wrote: post #21
melling wrote: post #9

“30 years ago I would have died of cancer; now I will die with cancer, but not of cancer.” And 30-100 years from now, the same cancer will be cured. It’s simply a matter of the human race deciding when to cure cancers.

In this context, your "simply" is probably the greatest understatement I've read on HN in 2023 so far. There's nothing simple about coordinating people like this, starting from facilitating communication across individual people to bootstrap the process and ending at grabbing enough attention of people on top to gain the necessary world-scale attention towards the problem.

“It’s simply a matter of the human race deciding…”

You misread what I said. I never said it was a simple problem, I said it was simply a matter of deciding to solve the problem.

The Apollo program, for comparison, took 400,000 people a decade to get to the moon, and 2.5% of GDP.

https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program

If we agree the problem will be solved, then it’s just a matter of deciding to do it sooner than much later.

And along the way, fewer people die. So, if we try to do it in 10 years, but it takes 20, we still win.

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