Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Need to Die

willllliam.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 190 posts

Re: We Need to Die

#41

Post by kulahan »

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…

Being stuck in a computer might not be so bad. "Wake up" once a year decade for a few hours, see what happened, go back to "sleep". Immortality on call.

Re: We Need to Die

#42

Post by sph »

weinzierl wrote: post #25
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…

Me too, definitely. Should I get bored I could always go about and insult every being that ever lived and will live in the entire universe - in alphabetical order.

I feel that those that would choose immortality are so self-important that they would not get any wiser from their additional time on earth.

Re: We Need to Die

#43

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

"I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice."

Re: We Need to Die

#44

Post by munificent »

Derren Brown's book "Happy: Why More or Less Everything Is Fine" (which is much better than the title might lead you to believe) does a very good job exploring the philosophy behind this.

The choices we make have meaningful and value in large part because we sacrifice a fraction of our finite time and attention in order to do them. But once you have infinite time, then the value of everything you do becomes zero.

Re: We Need to Die

#45

Post by tern »

For me, the biggest tell was how frequently older people report feeling completely at peace and ready to die.

As my own life progressed, the feeling of novelty became harder to find, and then less important. Grief became easier, death became lighter.

As I deepened my investigation into the nature of my own experience, I started to realize that "I" do not exist in the way that I originally assumed, and I started to wonder what we're even talking about when we talk about death. Who or what is dying?

The self, time, and consciousness are not well-understood in philosophy, science, or the experience of most people, and as such, most conversations about immortality are really about something else.

Re: We Need to Die

#46

Post by moralestapia »

>There's this genuine repulsion I feel when people talk about a future where death by old age is no longer a thing.

Tell me you're from the US without telling you're from the US. They're always keen to police over other people's lives, it's so noticeable when you're not from that culture.

As with almost every other "controversial" topic, the answer to this one is: let people who want to die, die, and let people who want to live, live.

Re: We Need to Die

#47

Post by wseqyrku »

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.

Unfortunately, that's only available for premium max customers. Also you should know, plus is now standard.

Re: We Need to Die

#48

Post by jacksontheel »

munificent wrote: post #30
Waterluvian wrote: post #11

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…

> 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. Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" explores this feeling.

Guillermo del Toro's "Pinnochio" actually impressed the dread feeling much more, personally. It's interesting how similar these two movies are, considering the target audience is quite different.

Re: We Need to Die

#49

Post by drhagen »

A funny thing I realized: immortality is incompatible with spending a nonzero fraction of my life with children.

I treasure the time I spend with my kids. I can see that this season will be over soon. This won't be my whole life, but it will be a significant fraction of my life. If I were immortal, this would be a tiny blip in the inconceivably far past for 100% of my life.

You may think I could start again every 100 or 1000 or million years, but if a nonzero fraction of people did that, that would be exponential growth. Even ignoring resource constraints, you cannot sustain exponential growth of any kind in a 3D universe.

A universe with kids necessitates a universe with death.

Post reply on HN