261–270 of 287 posts
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We're constantly digging up old and dead things because we care.
But they stay dead and we can study them at our leisure. If it was people who started walking around again doing stuff, we'd have a different opinion.
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I’d also invite you to contemplate the reverse: a last goodbye talk on his death bed. I find contemplating the absence of others to be much more powerful than my own return back to the void.
I think that's a great point and I'm absolutely not going to do that - I can't bring myself to imagine my children will die before me.
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The ‘hacker’ ethos commonly involves sacrifice. In a zero sum life, striving to change the world, or achieve financial independence, or to learn new skills and abilities often means deferring relationships and emotions in favor of ‘work’, in the broadest definition of that word. I think a lot of people here have an anxiety about the regrets they may have if their life were to suddenly become very finite. The article…
Thank you. I have another question - why have I been downvoted and flagged? Is it so unacceptable to ask questions in this community that your comments will be reported?
The guidelines explicitly say "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate" (the recommended action is to flag it or email the moderators), and it's the convention on HN to flag comments/posts that break the guidelines.
It's also unwelcome on HN for there to be "that person" who sullies a discussion involving personal reflections about life and death and other profound human contemplations, with a curmudgeonly comment complaining that it doesn't belong here. To be fair, someone always ends up being "that person" on every such thread, but it gets repetitive and predictable, which is why people are quick to downvote and flag.
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But they stay dead and we can study them at our leisure. If it was people who started walking around again doing stuff, we'd have a different opinion.
You really think if we could reanimate some ancient person, we wouldn't? Imagine what we could learn from important people in those times.
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I don't know about other atheists, but I get some comfort knowing that the universe will continue to exist long after I die. I don't believe that there is a god but that doesn't rule out the possibility of some kind of afterlife or reincarnation or alternative form of consciousness. There are still a lot of possibilities on the table and these possibilities are a source of hope. When you think that your consciousness…
> based on empirical evidence Small nit but my so far amateur understanding of philosophy of mind indicates to me that there isn't empirical evidence connecting Mind to neurochemistry so clearly. Neither, of course, is there any evidence of the reverse, that a non physical Mind can magically influence the physical world through the brain interface. As an atheist, delving into the materialism vs dualism philosophical…
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It's not the idea itself which seems to me absurd, it's the process - let's take something from abstract mathematical field and apply it on a vaguely "topologically" similar subjective experience and think that "it's proven by math".
Topological similarities can be meaningful. Shape and structure are like form and function.
However, it's just an inspiration and it must be proven in its newly applied field - proof in context of category theory is not valid in the context of inter-personal relations.
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I have not seen a reason to think cryonics will work at all. Even if we actually do find a way to restore frozen near-death people to life, you'd better write a heck of a pitch as to why future humans should spend resources on reviving and healing you. Never mind all the resources being spent on keeping you properly frozen all that time. That's all assuming the company running your freezer doesn't just go belly-up af…
They should revive you because you paid for it.
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You are generalizing the argument giving conditions where life is worth it or not. That's not the point. And stop downvoting.
There is a trade off: * You can invest X money for a Y% chance that you will be revived in the future. * You can invest X money for a Z% chance that your children will survive in %W case of a problem. Like a better surgeon in a heart operation or cancer treatment, or more food stored before a famine, or a home that is not in a floodable area, or more education to get an points to get a visa to another country, some s…
I mean if we're talking about saving the life of people who are not yourself. But that would be a huge change in topic.
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One would hope that the rule of law and private contracts still exists in 50-300 years.
There's an expression called ruling from the grave to reflect the difficulty of enforcing a contract after you are dead. The same principle applies as those frozen people are dead in every legal sense and practical sense and likely any biological sense.