11 ms·

Everyone talks about extending life and eventually becoming immortal, yet no one asks what happens when we are immortal. What happens when one accumulates centu

by mavdi 9y ago

Everyone talks about extending life and eventually becoming immortal, yet no one asks what happens when we are immortal. What happens when one accumulates centuries of data and witnesses numerous traumatising events? I mean I'm 34 and I get ever more paranoid, suspicious and corrupt as I age. I can't image what 3400 years would do to my head.

gallerdude 9y ago
I'd rather solve immortality first, and figure out how to deal with it second.
- goatlover 9y ago
  Immortality is impossible. You'll die of something else if it isn't old age. Even your copies will die, and the means for making them will be destroyed at some point or succumb to entropy.
  - aleeds 9y ago
    I think he meant "Why don't we solve dying of old age first". I think that is pretty obvious from context.
  - red75prime 9y ago
    Entropy is non-decreasing in closed systems. Also you can make a habit of not keeping all of your copies in one solar system.
    - pmoriarty 9y ago
      Would you really think of all of these "copies" as yourself?
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    Right. Immortality is impossible without indestructibility. The mean time from birth to a fatal accident is probably around 200 years. But indestructibility is worse than mortality - imagine yourself stuck forever in a situation you can't get out of, like being accidentally buried inside a slab of concrete. What a boring life that would be!
    - mavdi 9y ago
      Christ you just described the nightmare scenario I've been having since hearing the possibility of the universe being infinite, which would mean a consciousness exactly like mine is stuck under a pile of stone somewhere.
pottersbasilisk 9y ago
Maybe we would do something like regenerate from doctor who. Almost like a partial reset or wipe of ourselves ?
RichardHeart 9y ago
Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress Fairness Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out or resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant) Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.) Stop having kids Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136) Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age) Bad for individual You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related) You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?) You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.) Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.) More people make more progress faster. I'm glad my parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without me in it. Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc, still alive and productive would be nice. Many literally asking for others to die out of their fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer sucks, we'll know 100 years from now, and decide then. First 220 year old in 2136 unless you know how to make one faster than 1 year per year? And that's if you added 120 years to a 100 year old person starting TODAY. Man up, save your family, save yourself. P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horribles comes true, even earlier.
- goatlover 9y ago
  You'll likely die of cancer, Alzheimer's or heart disease before 600 anyway.
  - jnicholasp 9y ago
    Because a state of medical science which has solved aging will certainly not have solved cancer, Alzheimers, or heart disease.
    - goatlover 9y ago
a_imho 9y ago
I mean I'm 34 and I get ever more paranoid, suspicious and corrupt as I age Maybe that is because of the time pressure? I guess we will be doing the same just on a different scale, e.g. most of us will be chasing money, power and status
BatFastard 9y ago
> persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance Which aspect do you feel is manifesting? What the years (59) have taught me is other people very RARELY care enough about anyone else to persecute them. My desire for physical things has lessened significantly, since unless you have an extreme amount of money, more things just complicate life more. As for self importance, I want to contribute to making life better for mankind, but I don't think a lot of being recognized for it. Suspicious is just being wise as long as it doesn't rule your life. Corruption is a choice you make in order to have more physical things or feel more important. I feel every year makes me wiser and increases my desire to help mankind. Maybe we need to have a test at 100 years, and cull the self important, corrupt individuals. I personally would love 3400 years! All the things I could learn, all that I could contribute. Edit: I MIGHT even learn spelling and grammer!
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  "What the years (59) have taught me is other people very RARELY care enough about anyone else to persecute them." The Holocaust. Pogroms. Pol Pot. China's Cultural Revolution. Wars without number (often for racial or ethnic reasons). Genocides. The Inquisition. Witch-hunts. Lynchings. Jim Crow laws. Slavery. McCarthyism. Homophobia. Hate crime. Anti-immigrant xenophobic policies. The racist War on Drugs. The list goes on and on. I see persecution everywhere, and many, many people all too eager to take part.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    What you cite is not the persecution of an individual, but persecution of class'es of people. I totally agree that exists, and with nationalism growing, becomes a greater risk in the world. I was talking individual persecution.
    - fao_ 9y ago
      Almost all individual persecution is manifestation of persecution of groups.
drvdevd 9y ago
Also, what about your perception of time? Would it pass the same as it does now? Compress or expand? I think mortality is fundamentally wired into the thought processes of earth bound organisms. Part of that is how one perceives even smaller units of time like a minute, second, hour..
pmoriarty 9y ago
I dread that in all likelihood, due to their money, power, and determination, it is kleptocrats, sociopaths, and fanatics that may get access to this or other advanced technology first, and come to dominate either the "left-behind", primitive humans, and/or whatever form of existence they transcend to.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  True but then again we are all most certainly descendants of rapists and murderers. Point being, life apparently doesn't care much about situational and human derived ethics. And that's what got us here. So what gets us there may not be according to values of our culture and time.
sapphireblue 9y ago
>Everyone talks about extending life and eventually becoming immortal, yet no one asks what happens when we are immortal. I see the opposite picture when these discussions pop up: everybody tries to find a downside in increased lifespan, be it personal or social. It looks like a pretty obvious defense of status-quo to me. What is really-really sad and what really bothers me is that this attitude is so prevalent in the modern West, when the West is the only society on planet Earth that has knowledge and resources to make some version of life extension happen. Other parts of the world are de-facto firmly in the survival mode.
- Ericson2314 9y ago
  The societal problems this would exacerbate are already very hard to fix. It's not that the status quo is good, but immortality is solving a non-problem that may make the real problems intractable.
- tim333 9y ago
  I think a lot of it is rationalization. People figure they are going to die and so the brain comes up with reasons to rationalize why it should be so - extended life must suck and so on. I find it a little sad too but I think attitudes will change if it becomes real.
saulrh 9y ago
There're likely to be some structural issues with human neurology - things like Alzheimers, but software-level bit rot or overfitting instead of physical failure - that will need to be addressed as part of immortality science. For example, we'll likely need to tweak our brains' hard-coded exploration/exploitation tuning so people don't end up stagnating or ossifying and not being able to appreciate the future. Trauma is somewhat related here; suicide, and the mental health issues that lead to it, is just as valid immortality-research topics as cancer and general senescence. Summary: "Immortality" isn't just anti-aging. Mental health and intellectual extensibility are just as important to immortality as oncology.
- exergy 9y ago
  But...why? What possible good could come out of immortality? Why do we never stop to ask "why" anymore? The trite "Just because we can..." thing is irritating but true. My utopian vision doesn't involve millenia-old people everywhere. It involves a smaller world population that succeeds in leaving ever smaller footprints on the planet and living in harmony with other creatures.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jakeogh 9y ago
    If brain function does not degrade it's obvious that more experience to draw upon means better decisions. Hence voting age etc. Maybe others assume those decisions will be net detrimental to others but I don't. Who is anyone else to decide who survives anyway?
    - vt100 9y ago
      When your brain starts to slow down from too much malware, maybe can backup the data, and re-install the OS.
mc32 9y ago
Agree completely. Renewal has been central to the development of the world. So unless people are able to reset their mindsets at intervals, all we'll get is curmudgeonly old people set in their ways --few sons or daughters questioning the status quo and overthrowing their mothers' and fathers' thinking. Renewal would be more or less dead.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  I think that curmudgeonly mindset sets in due to your physical deterioration and hormonal changes. You'd be grumpy too simply getting up out of a chair causes you pain. If life extension reverses / resets aging at the cellular level and you have the endocrine system of a 20 year old , it is likely that one could retain a youthful mindset. I think people overestimate the significance of experience and underestimate how your body's chemicals regulate your mood.
logical42 9y ago
One of the big problems is that death happens to a wealth redistributing event. Imagine being a billionaire who can live forever, collecting rent indefinitely..
- vt100 9y ago
  Yeah, and a tenant who can live forever, paying rent indefinitely.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lucaspiller 9y ago
The book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom explores some of the issues that could occur if we achieve immortality. People regularly perform backups of their mind. In the case of death or injury or illness, a new body is grown and their backup is restored into a new body. It also presents interesting solutions to currency/wealth and what happens when life gets boring when you can live forever.
- terminado 9y ago
  People regularly perform backups of their mind. In the case of death or injury or illness, a new body is grown and their backup is restored into a new body. ... and their backup is restored into a new body. Well, yeah, of course you'd want that. Because it's just SO reassuring to know that even if you die, an identical twin can pick up where you left off. What a relief, to know that something that looks like you, can keep listening to your favorite bands, wearing your clothes, eating the same favorite foods, and having the same opinions about the world after you die. Me? If I had a brain back-up, and they could grow a copy of my body in a vat... Why, I'd just run around fighting lions with my bare hands, and wrestling hungry sharks in the ocean. Who cares if I get completely eaten and digested? The new copy can pick up where I left off, and just beat up whichever animal ate me!
  - goatlover 9y ago
    I don't care about my duplicate. I only care about whether my current consciousness continues. I don't think so highly of myself that there needs to be duplicates running around. Maybe Elon Musk or Ray Kurzweil feel differently.
    - tim333 9y ago
      Still if you get knocked unconscious or even sleep who's to say if that's the current consciousness or a new copy. One of Kurzweil's projects is he wants to resurrect his dad because he misses him. Making copies kind of makes more sense if they interact with others rather than a brain in a vat type scenario.
  - 9y ago
lgas 9y ago
I think of it more as having increased control over when you die, not being prevented from dying.
ca98am79 9y ago
Also, and I know this may sound crazy, but what if we are already immortal? If consciousness doesn't come from the brain, or if other theories like quantum immortality are real, then this could be the case.

by mavdi 9y ago

gallerdude 9y ago

I'd rather solve immortality first, and figure out how to deal with it second.

goatlover 9y ago
Immortality is impossible. You'll die of something else if it isn't old age. Even your copies will die, and the means for making them will be destroyed at some point or succumb to entropy.
- aleeds 9y ago
  I think he meant "Why don't we solve dying of old age first". I think that is pretty obvious from context.
- red75prime 9y ago
  Entropy is non-decreasing in closed systems. Also you can make a habit of not keeping all of your copies in one solar system.
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    Would you really think of all of these "copies" as yourself?
- Koshkin 9y ago
  Right. Immortality is impossible without indestructibility. The mean time from birth to a fatal accident is probably around 200 years. But indestructibility is worse than mortality - imagine yourself stuck forever in a situation you can't get out of, like being accidentally buried inside a slab of concrete. What a boring life that would be!
  - mavdi 9y ago
    Christ you just described the nightmare scenario I've been having since hearing the possibility of the universe being infinite, which would mean a consciousness exactly like mine is stuck under a pile of stone somewhere.

pottersbasilisk 9y ago

Maybe we would do something like regenerate from doctor who. Almost like a partial reset or wipe of ourselves ?

RichardHeart 9y ago

Summary of pro death arguments re: longevity progress Fairness Only rich people will get it. (no tech has ever done this.) Better to give money to the poor than science. (family,city,state,nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.) Bad for society Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.) Run out or resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistant) Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.) Stop having kids Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136) Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age) Bad for individual You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related) You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?) You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.) Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.) More people make more progress faster. I'm glad my parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without me in it. Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc, still alive and productive would be nice. Many literally asking for others to die out of their fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer sucks, we'll know 100 years from now, and decide then. First 220 year old in 2136 unless you know how to make one faster than 1 year per year? And that's if you added 120 years to a 100 year old person starting TODAY. Man up, save your family, save yourself. P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horribles comes true, even earlier.

goatlover 9y ago
You'll likely die of cancer, Alzheimer's or heart disease before 600 anyway.
- jnicholasp 9y ago
  Because a state of medical science which has solved aging will certainly not have solved cancer, Alzheimers, or heart disease.
  - goatlover 9y ago

a_imho 9y ago

I mean I'm 34 and I get ever more paranoid, suspicious and corrupt as I age Maybe that is because of the time pressure? I guess we will be doing the same just on a different scale, e.g. most of us will be chasing money, power and status

BatFastard 9y ago

> persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance Which aspect do you feel is manifesting? What the years (59) have taught me is other people very RARELY care enough about anyone else to persecute them. My desire for physical things has lessened significantly, since unless you have an extreme amount of money, more things just complicate life more. As for self importance, I want to contribute to making life better for mankind, but I don't think a lot of being recognized for it. Suspicious is just being wise as long as it doesn't rule your life. Corruption is a choice you make in order to have more physical things or feel more important. I feel every year makes me wiser and increases my desire to help mankind. Maybe we need to have a test at 100 years, and cull the self important, corrupt individuals. I personally would love 3400 years! All the things I could learn, all that I could contribute. Edit: I MIGHT even learn spelling and grammer!

pmoriarty 9y ago
"What the years (59) have taught me is other people very RARELY care enough about anyone else to persecute them." The Holocaust. Pogroms. Pol Pot. China's Cultural Revolution. Wars without number (often for racial or ethnic reasons). Genocides. The Inquisition. Witch-hunts. Lynchings. Jim Crow laws. Slavery. McCarthyism. Homophobia. Hate crime. Anti-immigrant xenophobic policies. The racist War on Drugs. The list goes on and on. I see persecution everywhere, and many, many people all too eager to take part.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  What you cite is not the persecution of an individual, but persecution of class'es of people. I totally agree that exists, and with nationalism growing, becomes a greater risk in the world. I was talking individual persecution.
  - fao_ 9y ago
    Almost all individual persecution is manifestation of persecution of groups.

drvdevd 9y ago

Also, what about your perception of time? Would it pass the same as it does now? Compress or expand? I think mortality is fundamentally wired into the thought processes of earth bound organisms. Part of that is how one perceives even smaller units of time like a minute, second, hour..

pmoriarty 9y ago

I dread that in all likelihood, due to their money, power, and determination, it is kleptocrats, sociopaths, and fanatics that may get access to this or other advanced technology first, and come to dominate either the "left-behind", primitive humans, and/or whatever form of existence they transcend to.

mythrwy 9y ago
True but then again we are all most certainly descendants of rapists and murderers. Point being, life apparently doesn't care much about situational and human derived ethics. And that's what got us here. So what gets us there may not be according to values of our culture and time.

sapphireblue 9y ago

>Everyone talks about extending life and eventually becoming immortal, yet no one asks what happens when we are immortal. I see the opposite picture when these discussions pop up: everybody tries to find a downside in increased lifespan, be it personal or social. It looks like a pretty obvious defense of status-quo to me. What is really-really sad and what really bothers me is that this attitude is so prevalent in the modern West, when the West is the only society on planet Earth that has knowledge and resources to make some version of life extension happen. Other parts of the world are de-facto firmly in the survival mode.

Ericson2314 9y ago
The societal problems this would exacerbate are already very hard to fix. It's not that the status quo is good, but immortality is solving a non-problem that may make the real problems intractable.
tim333 9y ago
I think a lot of it is rationalization. People figure they are going to die and so the brain comes up with reasons to rationalize why it should be so - extended life must suck and so on. I find it a little sad too but I think attitudes will change if it becomes real.

saulrh 9y ago

There're likely to be some structural issues with human neurology - things like Alzheimers, but software-level bit rot or overfitting instead of physical failure - that will need to be addressed as part of immortality science. For example, we'll likely need to tweak our brains' hard-coded exploration/exploitation tuning so people don't end up stagnating or ossifying and not being able to appreciate the future. Trauma is somewhat related here; suicide, and the mental health issues that lead to it, is just as valid immortality-research topics as cancer and general senescence. Summary: "Immortality" isn't just anti-aging. Mental health and intellectual extensibility are just as important to immortality as oncology.

exergy 9y ago
But...why? What possible good could come out of immortality? Why do we never stop to ask "why" anymore? The trite "Just because we can..." thing is irritating but true. My utopian vision doesn't involve millenia-old people everywhere. It involves a smaller world population that succeeds in leaving ever smaller footprints on the planet and living in harmony with other creatures.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jakeogh 9y ago
  If brain function does not degrade it's obvious that more experience to draw upon means better decisions. Hence voting age etc. Maybe others assume those decisions will be net detrimental to others but I don't. Who is anyone else to decide who survives anyway?
  - vt100 9y ago
    When your brain starts to slow down from too much malware, maybe can backup the data, and re-install the OS.

mc32 9y ago

Agree completely. Renewal has been central to the development of the world. So unless people are able to reset their mindsets at intervals, all we'll get is curmudgeonly old people set in their ways --few sons or daughters questioning the status quo and overthrowing their mothers' and fathers' thinking. Renewal would be more or less dead.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
I think that curmudgeonly mindset sets in due to your physical deterioration and hormonal changes. You'd be grumpy too simply getting up out of a chair causes you pain. If life extension reverses / resets aging at the cellular level and you have the endocrine system of a 20 year old , it is likely that one could retain a youthful mindset. I think people overestimate the significance of experience and underestimate how your body's chemicals regulate your mood.

logical42 9y ago

One of the big problems is that death happens to a wealth redistributing event. Imagine being a billionaire who can live forever, collecting rent indefinitely..

vt100 9y ago
Yeah, and a tenant who can live forever, paying rent indefinitely.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lucaspiller 9y ago

The book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom explores some of the issues that could occur if we achieve immortality. People regularly perform backups of their mind. In the case of death or injury or illness, a new body is grown and their backup is restored into a new body. It also presents interesting solutions to currency/wealth and what happens when life gets boring when you can live forever.

terminado 9y ago
People regularly perform backups of their mind. In the case of death or injury or illness, a new body is grown and their backup is restored into a new body. ... and their backup is restored into a new body. Well, yeah, of course you'd want that. Because it's just SO reassuring to know that even if you die, an identical twin can pick up where you left off. What a relief, to know that something that looks like you, can keep listening to your favorite bands, wearing your clothes, eating the same favorite foods, and having the same opinions about the world after you die. Me? If I had a brain back-up, and they could grow a copy of my body in a vat... Why, I'd just run around fighting lions with my bare hands, and wrestling hungry sharks in the ocean. Who cares if I get completely eaten and digested? The new copy can pick up where I left off, and just beat up whichever animal ate me!
- goatlover 9y ago
  I don't care about my duplicate. I only care about whether my current consciousness continues. I don't think so highly of myself that there needs to be duplicates running around. Maybe Elon Musk or Ray Kurzweil feel differently.
  - tim333 9y ago
    Still if you get knocked unconscious or even sleep who's to say if that's the current consciousness or a new copy. One of Kurzweil's projects is he wants to resurrect his dad because he misses him. Making copies kind of makes more sense if they interact with others rather than a brain in a vat type scenario.
- 9y ago

lgas 9y ago

I think of it more as having increased control over when you die, not being prevented from dying.

ca98am79 9y ago

Also, and I know this may sound crazy, but what if we are already immortal? If consciousness doesn't come from the brain, or if other theories like quantum immortality are real, then this could be the case.