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>At the core, every sentient being loves being alive, and every mind wishes to be immortal, and not be lonely. This is a strong universal claim about a fact, a

by zaat 7y ago

>At the core, every sentient being loves being alive, and every mind wishes to be immortal, and not be lonely. This is a strong universal claim about a fact, and I'm pretty sure that it is not true. While probably generally true for young people, research on older people suggest that not everyone wishes to be immortal and some are actually in peace with the approaching end of their life. Just one result from a quick search: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0150686 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=info:doi/10.137...

afshin 7y ago
I agree with you. The only universal thing that could be said of any conscious entity is that it is capable of experience. No other aspect of consciousness (e.g. fear of ceasing to exist) could be claimed to be a universal.
Razengan 7y ago
> * While probably generally true for young people, research on older people suggests that not everyone wishes to be immortal* Exactly, by very definition of getting "older", they already know it's damn well not going to happen. They feel their frailty and corporeal limitations, and have lost other people to mortality, so they learn to cope with it, via the very topic of this post: Terror management or whatever you want to call it. I said at the core, because the purpose of any mind is to, well, mind. If a mind wishes to cease to exist, it's because it's unable to attain its desires and knows it will never have enough time (for some, to even find a desire in the first place.) I've always been fairly morbid myself. If given a choice, I'd choose to be immortal or never have come into existence at all, rather than this temporal teaser. Like the comment below by rinchik [0], our global culture encourages every mind to .. succumb. We're discouraged from feeling, from the core essence of sentient existence. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298809

by zaat 7y ago

afshin 7y ago

I agree with you. The only universal thing that could be said of any conscious entity is that it is capable of experience. No other aspect of consciousness (e.g. fear of ceasing to exist) could be claimed to be a universal.

Razengan 7y ago

> * While probably generally true for young people, research on older people suggests that not everyone wishes to be immortal* Exactly, by very definition of getting "older", they already know it's damn well not going to happen. They feel their frailty and corporeal limitations, and have lost other people to mortality, so they learn to cope with it, via the very topic of this post: Terror management or whatever you want to call it. I said at the core, because the purpose of any mind is to, well, mind. If a mind wishes to cease to exist, it's because it's unable to attain its desires and knows it will never have enough time (for some, to even find a desire in the first place.) I've always been fairly morbid myself. If given a choice, I'd choose to be immortal or never have come into existence at all, rather than this temporal teaser. Like the comment below by rinchik [0], our global culture encourages every mind to .. succumb. We're discouraged from feeling, from the core essence of sentient existence. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298809