4 ms·

The fact that I'm going to die. It's really annoying. Also, ageing effects on the body, like brain plasticity reduction and various other bits that really suck

by terryf 9y ago

The fact that I'm going to die. It's really annoying. Also, ageing effects on the body, like brain plasticity reduction and various other bits that really suck when you get up in the morning and remember how easy it was 20 years ago. Life is so totally freaking awesome, I want more of it.

milquetoastaf 9y ago
>Life is so totally freaking awesome, I want more of it. Life is amazing because it's finite. The sense of urgency, the foreknowledge of limited time, trying to get the most out of each moment but at the same time striving to enjoy the simple things, these are all incredible motivators. Take away death and what do you get?
- ajuc 9y ago
  > Life is amazing because it's finite. How do you know that? Some pretty miserable people had finite lives too. > Take away death and what do you get? I don't think they'll forbid people to die. It will simply become optional. As for more practical objections to your opinion - when you're young you live like you're going to live forever. I don't think kids and young people live less happily than old people.
  - milquetoastaf 9y ago
    >I don't think they'll forbid people to die. It will simply become optional. You can't even euthanize yourself in most states. If you want to die, people consider you 'insane' and you get locked up at the govt's (and your) expense. Life extension / artificial age reduction will purely be a benefit for the rich - the poor will just get injections so they live longer and work harder for their ageless overlords. It's not gonna be good.
    - hfsktr 9y ago
      You sort of described the plot of the movie In Time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/ Just because you can't age doesn't mean you can't die. I think if people started living forever there would be a lot of rebellion from the people who are not given that access. Assuming at that point they can't just use brute force to protect themselves from the masses.
- lodi 9y ago
  Even if you want to keep it finite, it would still be better to have the body of a twenty-five year old for ~sixty years and then die.
  - milquetoastaf 9y ago
    If you want to be incredibly vain, sure. I think we'll see a huge backlash to artificial age reduction / life extension, much in the same way that plastic surgery / cosmetic enhancement is viewed as an indulgent activity.
    - trey-jones 9y ago
      No, nobody is going to object to feeling like a 25-year-old for their entire life. It's not about vanity. I would be totally fine with appearing to age, if I could run and jump, and recover the same at 70 as I did at 25. Is there any more universal dream than eternal youth, or even youth for a lifetime?
      - milquetoastaf 9y ago
        Ironically, the whole point of the 'fountain of eternal youth' stories is that people wasted their entire lives looking for it rather than enjoying life / what they were given. Age extension technology is going to be the doom of humanity as we know it. Death right now is the only equalizer we have to our own destructive and damaging tendencies to the planet and ourselves at large. Living longer just means more waste, more war, more inequality, all the behest of the richest who get access to life extension technologies first. Don't kid yourself.
        randallsquared 9y ago
        > Ironically, the whole point of the 'fountain of eternal youth' stories is that people wasted their entire lives looking for it rather than enjoying life / what they were given. On a meta level, perhaps those stories are an example of 'sour grapes'? :)
        9y ago
- mikeash 9y ago
  "Take away death and what do you get?" Nobody has any idea, because it's never been done. There's no support for your claims that life's amazing-ness comes from impending death. Meanwhile there's a lot of support for the claim that death causes a lot of suffering. In any case, an actually infinite life is not possible as far as anyone knows. You'll eventually die when the universe undergoes heat death or the Big Crunch. Is living a mere ~10^34 years sufficient to remove the enjoyment of life?
- dionidium 9y ago
  One way to clarify your thoughts on this is to imagine that the opposite were true -- that is, that we already lived for thousands of years -- and then ask yourself how you'd feel about artificially limiting that to ~70 years.
- abruzzi 9y ago
  > Take away death and what do you get? Overpopulation?
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    That is probably the best argument against it, but I still think it is a weak argument. Countries with populations that live longer tend to have fewer children and care for them better. Look at Europe and even he United States, the average amount of children per pair of parents is 1.5 to 2.5 depending on where you look. If you pick poorer places that have way more kids. I think its clear the mechanism at work here is wealth and not age directly. Richer countries make richer people and richer people live longer. Then something happens and they have fewer kids. For many social and health issues it seems possible to go the either way. Some place increase wealth to get health, others increase health and get wealth. If someone poor today could be made to live until they chose to die, would the knowledge they accumulate in their unnaturally long life lead to increased wealth in their community? I think it would and I think it would lead to the same long term reduction having too many kids.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      Or you could summarize it as: wealth and health are bidirectionally causal. In any given situation, one of them will be the limiting factor to increases in both.
  - Symmetry 9y ago
    If we can control our population growth that isn't inevitable. If we can't we'll get that with or without aging.
- alejohausner 9y ago
  > Take away death and what do you get? You get lack of genetic diversity, which leads to death. If a species became immortal, it would have to stop reproducing, to prevent overpopulation. Without sex, the gene pool stops changing. Along comes some new infectious organism, and there are no individuals that can resist it. The species goes extinct. Sex and death are both necessary.
  - crowbahr 9y ago
    Because there's no option other than just stopping and dying to super bugs? Biological immortality would have us push for the stars so much faster...
  - swamp40 9y ago
    Tell that to the dandelions.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    You really think a civilization advanced enough to cure aging can't stop a pathogen? Evolution sure isn't going to save us. Evolution happens on a timescale of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. The plague will come and go long before evolution can do anything interesting.
  - hx87 9y ago
    > lack of genetic diversity > gene pool stops changing The above two are incompatible. How can a gene pool decrease in genetic diversity if it never changes?
  - dvtv75 9y ago
    The probability of an accident (car accident, firearms accident, choking, tripping while carrying a knife, drowning, and so on) resulting in death would tend toward one, given a long enough life, so humans would still need to reproduce, we would just need to keep the rate quite low.

by terryf 9y ago

milquetoastaf 9y ago

>Life is so totally freaking awesome, I want more of it. Life is amazing because it's finite. The sense of urgency, the foreknowledge of limited time, trying to get the most out of each moment but at the same time striving to enjoy the simple things, these are all incredible motivators. Take away death and what do you get?

ajuc 9y ago
> Life is amazing because it's finite. How do you know that? Some pretty miserable people had finite lives too. > Take away death and what do you get? I don't think they'll forbid people to die. It will simply become optional. As for more practical objections to your opinion - when you're young you live like you're going to live forever. I don't think kids and young people live less happily than old people.
- milquetoastaf 9y ago
  >I don't think they'll forbid people to die. It will simply become optional. You can't even euthanize yourself in most states. If you want to die, people consider you 'insane' and you get locked up at the govt's (and your) expense. Life extension / artificial age reduction will purely be a benefit for the rich - the poor will just get injections so they live longer and work harder for their ageless overlords. It's not gonna be good.
  - hfsktr 9y ago
    You sort of described the plot of the movie In Time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/ Just because you can't age doesn't mean you can't die. I think if people started living forever there would be a lot of rebellion from the people who are not given that access. Assuming at that point they can't just use brute force to protect themselves from the masses.
lodi 9y ago
Even if you want to keep it finite, it would still be better to have the body of a twenty-five year old for ~sixty years and then die.
- milquetoastaf 9y ago
  If you want to be incredibly vain, sure. I think we'll see a huge backlash to artificial age reduction / life extension, much in the same way that plastic surgery / cosmetic enhancement is viewed as an indulgent activity.
  - trey-jones 9y ago
    No, nobody is going to object to feeling like a 25-year-old for their entire life. It's not about vanity. I would be totally fine with appearing to age, if I could run and jump, and recover the same at 70 as I did at 25. Is there any more universal dream than eternal youth, or even youth for a lifetime?
    - milquetoastaf 9y ago
      Ironically, the whole point of the 'fountain of eternal youth' stories is that people wasted their entire lives looking for it rather than enjoying life / what they were given. Age extension technology is going to be the doom of humanity as we know it. Death right now is the only equalizer we have to our own destructive and damaging tendencies to the planet and ourselves at large. Living longer just means more waste, more war, more inequality, all the behest of the richest who get access to life extension technologies first. Don't kid yourself.
      - randallsquared 9y ago
        > Ironically, the whole point of the 'fountain of eternal youth' stories is that people wasted their entire lives looking for it rather than enjoying life / what they were given. On a meta level, perhaps those stories are an example of 'sour grapes'? :)
      - 9y ago
mikeash 9y ago
"Take away death and what do you get?" Nobody has any idea, because it's never been done. There's no support for your claims that life's amazing-ness comes from impending death. Meanwhile there's a lot of support for the claim that death causes a lot of suffering. In any case, an actually infinite life is not possible as far as anyone knows. You'll eventually die when the universe undergoes heat death or the Big Crunch. Is living a mere ~10^34 years sufficient to remove the enjoyment of life?
dionidium 9y ago
One way to clarify your thoughts on this is to imagine that the opposite were true -- that is, that we already lived for thousands of years -- and then ask yourself how you'd feel about artificially limiting that to ~70 years.
abruzzi 9y ago
> Take away death and what do you get? Overpopulation?
- sqeaky 9y ago
  That is probably the best argument against it, but I still think it is a weak argument. Countries with populations that live longer tend to have fewer children and care for them better. Look at Europe and even he United States, the average amount of children per pair of parents is 1.5 to 2.5 depending on where you look. If you pick poorer places that have way more kids. I think its clear the mechanism at work here is wealth and not age directly. Richer countries make richer people and richer people live longer. Then something happens and they have fewer kids. For many social and health issues it seems possible to go the either way. Some place increase wealth to get health, others increase health and get wealth. If someone poor today could be made to live until they chose to die, would the knowledge they accumulate in their unnaturally long life lead to increased wealth in their community? I think it would and I think it would lead to the same long term reduction having too many kids.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Or you could summarize it as: wealth and health are bidirectionally causal. In any given situation, one of them will be the limiting factor to increases in both.
- Symmetry 9y ago
  If we can control our population growth that isn't inevitable. If we can't we'll get that with or without aging.
alejohausner 9y ago
> Take away death and what do you get? You get lack of genetic diversity, which leads to death. If a species became immortal, it would have to stop reproducing, to prevent overpopulation. Without sex, the gene pool stops changing. Along comes some new infectious organism, and there are no individuals that can resist it. The species goes extinct. Sex and death are both necessary.
- crowbahr 9y ago
  Because there's no option other than just stopping and dying to super bugs? Biological immortality would have us push for the stars so much faster...
- swamp40 9y ago
  Tell that to the dandelions.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  You really think a civilization advanced enough to cure aging can't stop a pathogen? Evolution sure isn't going to save us. Evolution happens on a timescale of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. The plague will come and go long before evolution can do anything interesting.
- hx87 9y ago
  > lack of genetic diversity > gene pool stops changing The above two are incompatible. How can a gene pool decrease in genetic diversity if it never changes?
- dvtv75 9y ago
  The probability of an accident (car accident, firearms accident, choking, tripping while carrying a knife, drowning, and so on) resulting in death would tend toward one, given a long enough life, so humans would still need to reproduce, we would just need to keep the rate quite low.