4 ms·

I've never understood people who believe this, but am happy to let them die if they wish.

by rdl 11y ago

sangnoir 11y ago
> I've never understood people who believe this You can think of your death as a hard-and-fast deadline to achieve all your dreams - this is pretty motivating for some people. Steve jobs had this to say in a 2005 commencement speech[1]: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important". Other people's death's can be a gift as well: tyrants don't get to rule forever, and out-dated ideas die with their generations. Immortality would be a good thing in a "Culture"-like society: i.e. if we manage to solve all the other human problems (like greed and poverty) first 1. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > You can think of your death as a hard-and-fast deadline to achieve all your dreams For it to be useful as a hard-and-fast deadline, you have to know in advance exactly when it will come. Otherwise, its just knowledge that there will be a deadline at some point in the future, which is very different than a hard-and-fast deadline.
  - photonic30 11y ago
    Furthermore, it is an impending erasure of your self. The way people talk about this "deadline", you'd think it's some sort of forced retirement after which you must be satisfied with the life career you've already had.
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    > For it to be useful as a hard-and-fast deadline I think everyone has a rough idea on their personal upper limit of their productive time (for me it's 70). There is no lower limit, just like a project with a deadline might be cancelled at anytime. I do not think baseline homo sapiens have the hardware required to cope with immortality or extended lives (all those memories, lack of the human condition). How bad is time compression experienced at age 7000? A week is a long time to a child, I bet the decades will just fly by. I can imagine the ennui. We would have to evolve into something beyond human to cope with this. It's not going to be in my lifetime, so excuse me for being comfortable with my mortality.
- pliny 11y ago
  What an insanely bad deal: I pay my life, and I get a thing which somewhat increases the quality of my life, contingent on me having ambitions that are big enough to require a death-sized motivational tool. Why would you ever choose "dying" over "not dying"? If you live to be a million years old you have a million years to achieve all your dreams, albeit you don't have as much motivation to achieve them in the first 80 years of your life. If you only live 80 years, then you have a lot of motivation to achieve all your dreams in that timespan but (a) your ambitions might not be achievable in 80 years (b) whatever satisfaction you get from achieving your dreams runs out once you die anyway and worst of all (c) you lose 999920 years of life. It stands to reason that whoever chooses "die at 80" over "die at 1e6" or even "never die" just doesn't value living very much.
  - matt_wulfeck 11y ago
    What makes you think you'll accomplish more in 800 years than in 80? Furthermore why do you assume what you accomplish during that time is of any real benefit to society?
    - photonic30 11y ago
      Why must somebody be of benefit to society to deserve to live? Of what use are collected accomplishments if you cannot be conscious to enjoy them?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - pliny 11y ago
      I didn't say either of those things, but I also don't see why they're relevant. I don't have to earn my first 80 years of life with any "accomplishments that are of any real benefit to society" so I don't see why I would have to earn 800 or 8000 or 8 million years, either.
  - username223 11y ago
    > Why would you ever choose "dying" over "not dying"? First, visit a nursing home. How much is "not dying" worth? Then, visit an elementary school. Given the earth's finite carrying capacity, do you want to have a world with no children?

I've never understood people who believe this, but am happy to let them die if they wish.

by rdl 11y ago

I've never understood people who believe this, but am happy to let them die if they wish.

> I've never understood people who believe this You can think of your death as a hard-and-fast deadline to achieve all your dreams - this is pretty motivating for some people. Steve jobs had this to say in a 2005 commencement speech[1]: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important". Other people's death's can be a gift as well: tyrants don't get to rule forever, and out-dated ideas die with their generations. Immortality would be a good thing in a "Culture"-like society: i.e. if we manage to solve all the other human problems (like greed and poverty) first 1. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

dragonwriter 11y ago
> You can think of your death as a hard-and-fast deadline to achieve all your dreams For it to be useful as a hard-and-fast deadline, you have to know in advance exactly when it will come. Otherwise, its just knowledge that there will be a deadline at some point in the future, which is very different than a hard-and-fast deadline.
- photonic30 11y ago
  Furthermore, it is an impending erasure of your self. The way people talk about this "deadline", you'd think it's some sort of forced retirement after which you must be satisfied with the life career you've already had.
- sangnoir 11y ago
  > For it to be useful as a hard-and-fast deadline I think everyone has a rough idea on their personal upper limit of their productive time (for me it's 70). There is no lower limit, just like a project with a deadline might be cancelled at anytime. I do not think baseline homo sapiens have the hardware required to cope with immortality or extended lives (all those memories, lack of the human condition). How bad is time compression experienced at age 7000? A week is a long time to a child, I bet the decades will just fly by. I can imagine the ennui. We would have to evolve into something beyond human to cope with this. It's not going to be in my lifetime, so excuse me for being comfortable with my mortality.
pliny 11y ago
What an insanely bad deal: I pay my life, and I get a thing which somewhat increases the quality of my life, contingent on me having ambitions that are big enough to require a death-sized motivational tool. Why would you ever choose "dying" over "not dying"? If you live to be a million years old you have a million years to achieve all your dreams, albeit you don't have as much motivation to achieve them in the first 80 years of your life. If you only live 80 years, then you have a lot of motivation to achieve all your dreams in that timespan but (a) your ambitions might not be achievable in 80 years (b) whatever satisfaction you get from achieving your dreams runs out once you die anyway and worst of all (c) you lose 999920 years of life. It stands to reason that whoever chooses "die at 80" over "die at 1e6" or even "never die" just doesn't value living very much.
- matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  What makes you think you'll accomplish more in 800 years than in 80? Furthermore why do you assume what you accomplish during that time is of any real benefit to society?
  - photonic30 11y ago
    Why must somebody be of benefit to society to deserve to live? Of what use are collected accomplishments if you cannot be conscious to enjoy them?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - pliny 11y ago
    I didn't say either of those things, but I also don't see why they're relevant. I don't have to earn my first 80 years of life with any "accomplishments that are of any real benefit to society" so I don't see why I would have to earn 800 or 8000 or 8 million years, either.
- username223 11y ago
  > Why would you ever choose "dying" over "not dying"? First, visit a nursing home. How much is "not dying" worth? Then, visit an elementary school. Given the earth's finite carrying capacity, do you want to have a world with no children?