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A world without death is a world where flowers never change into fruit, a world where fruit never change into a new plant. Remember there's a theory of the univ
by meric 11y ago
A world without death is a world where flowers never change into fruit, a world where fruit never change into a new plant. Remember there's a theory of the universe ending in heat death, where entropy is maximum, where there is no more change possible. To prevent death is to prevent change, and you bring about a world, in the long term, becomes changeless, like a giant museum, flowers and fruit and plants stay in the same state and never age, caterpillars never turn into butterflies, where squid never mate and reproduce, everyone immersed in their VR, day after day, for eternity. Philosophically, what difference is that to the heat death of the universe then?
The experience after death is exactly the same as the experience before birth. Was it a vile, atrocious thing you weren't born until you were? Death is about returning to that state. The disintegration of your mind is the mirror image of the creation of it. A world where you have left without right, top without bottom, beginning without end is like the universe before the big bang, or the universe after the heat death, where we, you, me, and everything else, is returned to being one.
Lengthening life span? That's a different matter. But I can tell you, you will never stop death from happening. It's perfectly acceptable to accept death will happen, and more isn't always better. ;)
- MichaelGG 11y agoSorry if it wasn't clear I was referring to death of intelligent life. Heat death of the universe is definitely a problem but for a later time. I think having lifespans on the terms of millions of years or longer is qualitatively different than what we have now. I don't find the before-birth argument very compelling. I just don't see how it's relevant.
- meric 11y agoYou want society to view death as being wicked rather than acceptable. Since death is inevitable (either on millions of years or a decades scale), and it isn't that horrible of a state to return to anyway, viewing death as a kind of wickedness is like telling a Christian to accept he is going to hell, and make life miserable. I think it's important for people to be allowed to accept the inevitable, to accept they will return to a state that isn't that vile or wicked.
- chucksmash 11y agoI just shake my head at: > Since death is inevitable (either on millions of years or a decades scale) Think of the difference even a single order of magnitude would make. The Founding Fathers would still be here to settle the arguments about what exactly they meant in this or that amendment when the Supreme Court argues guns or personhood, for instance. They fact that you completely disregard the difference between decades and millions of years because if someone is eventually going to die anyways, it's all the same....just wow.
- scintill76 11y ago> The Founding Fathers would still be here to settle the arguments about what exactly they meant in this or that amendment when the Supreme Court argues guns or personhood, for instance. Would we really want that? They would be elevated to an even greater stature than they are now when they're dead, greater than what they probably wanted individual men to be in the government they devised[0]. They could become corrupted, or change their minds, so that "what the Founding Fathers wanted" becomes an actual moving target, rather than just something that can appear to change by us debating it. What's the point of writing a law if you plan to indefinitely query the writer on what they "really meant"? Why have a representative government at all, if the Founding Fathers are so great that they did everything perfectly and they are still around to run it for us? Maybe it's better that people die, and all we're left with is our memories of them, or written statements of their ideas or accounts of their deeds. We pick up what we find useful from them, and have the freedom to discard what isn't. Every political movement has a built-in time limit based on the deaths of its most powerful leaders. Greater diversity in people and thoughts grows, because we don't have the luxury of keeping them the same forever. Many mistakes will die with their creator, and everyone else can move on. Longer lives would amplify the negative effects of human frailties, just as you hope it would amplify the positive effects of smart and noble people. It's possible the Founding Fathers' ideas were only good for 50-100 years around their lives, and that as rigid adults they would be unable to formulate better versions for the changing world.[1] The world would be a vastly different place without death, or with much longer lives. I think it's naive to simply assume it would be better. I've explained some reasons it could be worse, but I'm open to more detailed analysis of why it would be better (for humanity collectively, not just the recipients of longer lives.) [0] Though to be fair, maybe they would have thought differently if they planned to live hundreds, thousands of years. [1] Assuming immortal or very long-lived people become "set in their ways" as we do now. How much of this is internally self-generated, based on watching our "biological clock" tick away? To be fair, maybe we would behave differently in this respect if we had more time. Or, maybe we would just reach peak open-mindedness (or whatever the metric) at 300 years instead of 30.
- teraflop 11y agoIf death is so noble and necessary, why should anyone have a problem with murder? Why should we bother trying to cure diseases? Do you think the world was twice as dynamic and full of vitality 100 years ago, when the global average life expectancy was half what it is today? I don't think making people immortal would "prevent change" because there are plenty of kinds of change that don't involve ending a person's life without their consent. Is that not obvious?
- meric 11y agoDeath happens, if not now then when entropy is at maximum, and birth happens too. Murder happens, and people angry at murders also happen. Diseases happen, and cures for diseases happen also. People go to work late happens, people go to work on time happens too. People fall in love and is rejected happens, and people fall in love and is reciprocated happens also. If you were to tell me what life is, that's life. That's vitality. You can have both left and right, good and bad, or nothing. There is duality, and then there is oneness, and you can't have one without the other. Life is duality, non-life is oneness. Maximum oneness is maximum entropy.
- kbenson 11y ago> If you were to tell me what life is, that's life. That boils down to "life is stuff happening", which is true, useless, and does nothing to answer the question posed. It is trivially obvious that it's impossible to stop all death, or even all human death, so I think it's also obvious that what's being talked about is not the elimination of death, but the elimination of the current main cause of death, which is aging.
- meric 11y agoI was replying to MichaelGG's statement: Just because it seems inevitable, we should not make it socially acceptable to give up and view death as anything but the wickedness it is. As I said before, Lengthening life span? That's a different matter. EDIT: Reply to below, that's a good explanation, thanks. I don't think I could come up with it so clear and succinct, if I could I would have!
- dzhiurgis 11y agoI think you are overestimating the importance of biological nature of live and underestimating the nature of intelligence.
- hokkos 11y agoThis article talk about brain simulation, so bodily death is implied, so bodily-able people could still communicate with their bodily-dead friends.