Death

[El_Machinae]

Oh. Well... no then I guess.

Hmmmn, if you can't even be bothered to convince yourself that we should be saving lives, you're probably not qualified to explain when you think people 'should' die. In your implicit opinion, 'now is as good as a time as any other'. So, your statements about functional immortality are going to be .... boring? ... to me.

Additionally, to answer a question upthread, I guess 'we' don't already do that.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I meant "we" as a society/societies. I'm not sure what you want me to do personally. I don't work as an EMT or in medical research or anything. I never said anything about being able to, or wanting to, pick specific times when people should die. But I don't think people living forever would be a good thing. A bit of death is healthy, nay necessary, for the larger human organism. This wasn't intended to be exciting, so criticism of it being boring seems to be rather tangential to me.

 

[Synobun]

I presume El Mac means voting with your dollar, e.g. donating to telomere research, stem cell research, clean food initiatives, clean energy, etc. You don't function as a superhero and you're not actively saving anyone, but each dollar theoretically brings about a possible future with far better outcomes for the average individual.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I presume El Mac means voting with your dollar, e.g. donating to telomere research, stem cell research, clean food initiatives, clean energy, etc. You don't function as a superhero and you're not actively saving anyone, but each dollar theoretically brings about a possible future with far better outcomes for the average individual.

Well okay, some of that would be good, but as I've already said that i don't think immortality would be a good thing you can hopefully see why telomere research would not be high on my list of priorities.

 

[El_Machinae]

I presume El Mac means voting with your dollar, e.g. donating to telomere research, stem cell research, clean food initiatives, clean energy, etc. You don't function as a superhero and you're not actively saving anyone, but each dollar theoretically brings about a possible future with far better outcomes for the average individual.

Malaria is killing people. It's easypeasy to donate a portion of your income to bednets. Or vaccines. Or cancer research. Or whatever type of death you think there should be less of.

I don't see the reason to debate the time of my death with someone unless there is at least some type of preventable death (in others) that they are proactive about

 

[innonimatu]

biological immortality is different from our common idea of immortality. also, with that specific type of jellyfish (I've read about it) you kind of enter a new philosophical dilemma.

Indeed. If you were biologically immortal, but at the cost of suffering from amnesia, would you be immortal? What we are and wish to preserve (or sometimes not!) is how we are at a specific moment, the present usually.What is the difference between an hypothetical human immortal who has lost his memories and a human clone?
And along this line of thought, what about changing environment? Usually people wishing for immortality want to capture and keep a good moment of their lives. But everything around changes...

 

[abradley]

On the other hand, if you ask a 75 year old if they're willing to spend $100,000 extending their life by 6 months, or if they would rather leave $100,000 more in their will, you'll get a different answer

Considering that I am days shy of 83, I'll tell you honestly I'd leave the $100,000 in my will, ain't interested in stretching it out.

No, ain't living in pain ... but my body's losing it's vitality.

As for what's coming next, to quote my Grandmother 'You made your bed, now sleep in it!'

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Malaria is killing people. It's easypeasy to donate a portion of your income to bednets. Or vaccines. Or cancer research. Or whatever type of death you think there should be less of.

I don't see the reason to debate the time of my death with someone unless there is at least some type of preventable death (in others) that they are proactive about

Aren't you essentially saying that people need to share your views on death before you're willing to debate them about death? Seems a bit pointless...

 

[Narz]

Indeed. If you were biologically immortal, but at the cost of suffering from amnesia, would you be immortal?

Yeah cuz I could still write notes to myself like that Momento guy and it beats being dead.

What we are and wish to preserve (or sometimes not!) is how we are at a specific moment, the present usually.What is the difference between an hypothetical human immortal who has lost his memories and a human clone?

Well a clone would be some other dude (and the real Narz would be dead) whereas the amnesia guy would just be a handicapped me.

And along this line of thought, what about changing environment? Usually people wishing for immortality want to capture and keep a good moment of their lives. But everything around changes...

Change is life, I don't want to stay alive because I want to stay in this moment, I'm hoping the future brings more happiness for me. Even if it sucks it would have to suck pretty badly before I'd consider death a better alternative.

Makes me wonder how the suicide rates would change if immortality became an option. I'd imagine they actually wouldn't change much. So many people do it because they feel "My life is over" but if you could live to 1,000 in perfect health then you'd have so many more chances (as opposed to right now where you physically peak at 25 or so, mentally at 40-45 and then it's all downhill especially if you took **** care of yourself).

As for what's coming next, to quote my Grandmother 'You made your bed, now sleep in it!'

I don't get her meaning.

 

[abradley]

abradely: As for what's coming next, to quote my Grandmother 'You made your bed, now sleep in it!'

{Snip}


I don't get her meaning.

I've always been catholic, always knew God's rules for us ... but in my younger days I seldom followed his rules and now have a lot to answer for, hope and pray the Lord is forgiving.

 

[Narz]

Ah I see, well he is forgiving, right?

 

[El_Machinae]

Ah I see, well he is forgiving, right?

There's not very much evidence that He is

 

[Narz]

There's not very much evidence that He is

I mean theres not much evidence of he in general but I'm playing along

 

[Manfred Belheim]

There's even less evidence that He's forgiving.

 

[El_Machinae]

I mean theres not much evidence of he in general but I'm playing along

Well, simple math says that there's more evidence of His existence than there is of evidence that He's forgiving.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Yeah cuz I could still write notes to myself like that Momento guy and it beats being dead.

I think his point was that the guy writing notes to his future self is not necessarily you, because you are the sum of all your experiences, and if they're gone, there might be still a person, but it would be hard to argue that it is the exact same person as before. it's essentially a different person in the same body, because everything that shaped that person is gone. the same goes for extreme cases of alzheimers, or indeed death itself.

now I wouldn't necessarily say that what makes or breaks a being, or a person, is merely his memories and past experiences, but it certainly is the driving factor behind shaping your personality and identity.

It's like wondering what happens when you throw a candy wrapper on the ground. "Nothing happens unless somebody picks it up" makes sense, and requires 0 infrastructure to be in place other than human civilization - which we'll all agree exists. However, "At night flying squirrels pick up all garbage off the ground and recycle it" would require infrastructure in place - you would need a way for the squirrels to scan the whole planet for candy wrappers on the ground, it would require large team of squirrels in place to pick up the wrappers and deliver them to where they can be recycled. Quite frankly, it sounds ridiculous. If it were true, surely somebody would have discovered this secret organization of squirrel cleaners or seen some hints of their actions. But there's been nothing. So "nothing happens" is probably what's actually happening..

I don't think this analogy holds. Try telling anyone in the 19th century that in the future we can split submicroscopic particles to create huge waves of energy with the potential of leveling whole cities and poisoning landmasses for decades. we're talking about completely different levels here. subatomic processes are constantly happening and theoretically observable, the same goes for phenomena of consciousness. but we never do actually see them, empirically, with our eyes, we can only see them via any amount of lenses (like microscopes, or indeed science itself).

I think very few actual theologicians would argue that what happens after death to the soul is in any way a physical process.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Immortality for the individual will be death for humanity.

I approve of this and I approve of your new avatar

Not really. I mean, find a way that you can help prevent deaths, and proactively do so. Then there will be fewer preventable deaths. The worry about 'functional immortality' can wait.

while I do think what you do is very noble and commendable, it would never be the right track for me.

ultimately I care much more about improving the living condition for people already alive, which are way too many, and way too poor, but even more importantly I think it is our duty to at least preserve this planet for subsequent generations and all other forms of life, much, much more than it is to save lives. a life gone is a tragedy, but another 10 years of greenhous gases will mean billions of people will never be born.

as horrible as that realization is, there will at some time come a point when we are either fighting over rapidly diminishing ressources, or we will have entered some kind of post scarcity scenario. the more people there are, the quicker we accelerate towards the first outcome. from a purely egoistic, ecological and economical point of view, completely neglecting individual fates, everyone else benefits when someone dies. that's simply the point we've reached.

 

[El_Machinae]

I whole-heartedly endorse the idea that people work on creating a more sustainable future. As you say, a crashed ecology will create more suffering than is needed. I feel no need to maximize the number of future humans: I'd prefer sustainable happiness over numbers any day. Creating a sustainable future means that people won't be dying from some poverty-related cause, hopefully.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I whole-heartedly endorse the idea that people work on creating a more sustainable future. As you say, a crashed ecology will create more suffering than is needed. I feel no need to maximize the number of future humans: I'd prefer sustainable happiness over numbers any day. Creating a sustainable future means that people won't be dying from some poverty-related cause, hopefully.

In that case we were in agreement all along

 

[El_Machinae]

There are enough inter-connecting parts and enough spinning plates. There's no way to save lives into an unsustainable future without having all types of "404 errors" in your head. If we're improving living conditions, I think it goes hand-in-hand with living lives that are both easier and necessary to save.

Heroic measures to save someone are just mentally easier if you think they have a long and happy life ahead of them