8 ms·
I cannot wait until we beat death as a species - or rather, die on our own terms rather than on nature’s.
by xvector 7y ago
I cannot wait until we beat death as a species - or rather, die on our own terms rather than on nature’s.
- Nextgrid 7y agoIt's sad that we as a species waste our time & resources on bullshit such as wars, parasitic businesses like advertising, etc instead of focusing on solving the most important problem that affects us all across all races, religions and cultures: death.
- paganel 7y agoNot all of us view death as the worst thing that has affected this species, not sure why we should all “fight” against this. Afaik there’s no way for this planet to hold and accordingly feed hundreds of billions of people (us, our kids, our-grand-grand-grand.....-kids, none of us dying), so what will happen in case we were given the “eternal life” curse is that we will stop having kids. I for myself would always choose the world belonging to kids/younger people instead of older people.
- fastily 7y agoNot on this planet no, but the universe is a huge place. Space is the obvious next frontier.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoI agree. Far more destruction happens in life, in our callousness with each other. The way we tear down each other's minds, piss in each other's homes. Death is as natural as birth. But sadism, addiction, domination, waste... those are not natural. They are a force from another place, one many religions have a name for. This does seem to be the point many religions try to make. That there are things in this world worse than death, worse than suffering. There are things which strip you of your nature, and many of them may even feel pleasant, tempting, satisfying as they wrap their hands around you.
- mikelyons 7y agoSadism, addiction, domination, waste, these are all completely natural. Nothing that's unnatural exists. All existence is natural. What would make you believe otherwise? Just the fact that they don't align with your particular survival agenda?
- kilroy_jones 7y agoWe have a long ways to go before we could adequately cope with immortality. As is, I could see us misusing and abusing it to a rather extreme level.
- ericd 7y agoUnless we can somehow reintroduce neural plasticity, conquering death will probably be a very very bad thing for the species. I'm not sure it's a good thing even if we do find a way to reintroduce it. Constantly getting new generations to replace old ones is how we adapt to changes as a species, and how we evolve in our thinking, in addition to physically.
- vagab0nd 7y agoThat's a very bad way of justifying killing 150k people every single day. But anyway here's a good response to your concern: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20094281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20094281
- banads 7y agoPhrasing it as "killing" automatically disqualifies your argument as illogical The comment you linked also makes many flawed assumptions. For example: infinite population growth is always good. That idea is literally cancer and deeply ignorant of ecological homeostasis
- ska 7y ago> I cannot wait until... This is probably correct.
- aibara 7y agoI often see this sentiment here. And part of me, of course, agrees. Of course, it would also mean the total upheaval of human society. Not just in terms of our environment and physical space, but all of our customs and culture. What's the point of any rite of passage if the group you enter is ever-expanding, never diminishing? How would we even look back at what we've done, our own past, and have it matter if our future is essentially infinite? Death provides us with a context to make our lives meaningful. I cannot for the life of me even begin to imagine the sort of society that would emerge if humans didn't die.
- melling 7y agoSometime in the next 500 years we’ll figure out how to extend life to be at least a couple hundred years. Then we’ll look back and wonder how people managed such short lives. The universe is a pretty big place. We’re going to need long lives if we expect to go anywhere.
- hsitz 7y agoNeeding to live longer is not the main problem. I'm not sure it's even a problem at all. Whatever our expected life span is, we will adapt and think of it as "too short". The main problem is to figure out how to die (1) with dignity and (2) without physical pain. I say "physical" pain because I don't see any way we can learn to die without some level of mental agony, even if of the bittersweet kind; it's always hard to say goodbye. We're born; we live; we die. Just like every other living organism.
- AgentME 7y agoThis line of thinking seems to also argue against trying to cure any diseases. What's the point of curing a disease that makes someone's life span shorter if all life spans are too short anyway?
- hsitz 7y agoI'm not sure. Having been born, it's natural for us to want to live longer. That's the impetus for all this. Okay fine. But if you to try to objectively answer a more abstract question, "Is it better for humans to live to 150 years of age rather than 75 years of age?", I don't think there is objectively a right answer. It's not very different from the question of whether having more people living on earth is a better or worse thing. Is having 5 billion people living on earth better than having 1 billion? Or 100 million? Or 1 million? Or 50,000? Why? You might end up making an argument that "more progress is possible" if we have more people, or if people can live longer lives. But the idea of "progress" for the sake of "progress" is not necessarily one that enhances the human lives being lived. There is a current strain of thought that the pinnacle of happy lives for humans was during the hunter-gatherer stage tens of thousands of years ago, and that the switch to agriculturally based societies did not enhance human lives, although once it happened it was not possible to reverse the change. For one example of this, refer to Noah Harari's first book, _Sapiens_, an excerpt here: https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/ https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/ Something very similar may have happened with the industrial revolution, and be happening now with, e.g., the digital revolution. IN the realm of medicine/health there are many areas of "progress" that have the potential to make our lives worse. E.g., cloning. On another note, there is little doubt in my mind that merely inventing new ways to prolong human lives is by no means necessarily a good thing. You can see that in current medical world, where many people are kept alive in an undignified state and with extremely low quality of life, while at the same time voluntary euthanasia is illegal. At the very least, more careful thought should be put into what impact major "progress" is likely to have on human life. Unfortunately, in our world things are driven by corporations, profit, and a mostly unquestioned assumption that "progress is good". As it is, technological progress continues at a pace we can't really grasp, and we're left to try to make sense of it after the technology is here. Not a good scenario, it's like unleashing the genie in the bottle, opening pandora's box.
- tsss 7y agoThat would be literally my worst nightmare.
- xvector 7y agoStrange. Executed properly, it would be heaven for me. Executed improperly, I’d find it better than what we call “life” today.
- jdkee 7y agoSteve Jobs would like to have a word with you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA
- hsitz 7y ago". . . die on our own terms rather than on nature’s." Have you fleshed out what that might possibly mean, or how that could ever happen? Unless our body/mind is "naturally" declining (i.e., because of nature), there would seem to be no reason for a well-functioning person to choose to die. Nature is always going to dictate the most important terms.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago> "...there would seem to be no reason for a well-functioning person to choose to die..." -Plain old ennui. Don't underestimate this. -Depression from alienation because society and culture has evolved over centuries beyond their capacity to accept change or has evolved to a point that society no longer accepts them. -Grief at the death of loved ones, either accidentally or through their own choice to check out. -Grief at the estrangement of loved ones as their personality and beliefs change over time. -Loss of one's accumulated wealth and privilege, whether by accident, incompetence, or malice of others I'm sure that many more are possible.
- hsitz 7y agoPrecisely why I included the adjective, "well-functioning". . . . I would add that basically everything you list is why there exists in human cultures a general disapproval of suicide, because people may feel bad in the situations you list, but suicide is not a good answer; in most cases the person's feelings will change and they will be glad they chose not to kill themselves. Deciding to die for reasons like those listed is not generally considered "dying with dignity"; it's a tragic case of people becoming overwhelmed by feeling to their own detriment.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoTrue but the point is that immortality doesn't automatically include "well-functioning" as part of the deal. Life goes on even if one isn't subject to aging.
- 7y ago
- mensetmanusman 7y agoEntropy laughs
- red75prime 7y agoBut it does so in a closed system, so we can't hear it.
- sesuximo 7y agodoes accepting it count as beating it
- MereInterest 7y agoI think that you have an internal voice in your head, some way of interpreting the world. I think there are thoughts that you have had that have never occurred to anyone else. I think that your thoughts enrich those around you. Accepting death is accepting that those unique thoughts will disappear, and that the universe will be lesser for it. Accepting death means looking at each person, intellect blazing like stars, all the clusters and constellations and galaxies of humanity, and accepting that each point of light will sputter, shrivel, and extinguish. Beating death means that these unique views will not be lost, will not be extinguished. Beating death means that there will be the time to talk to each other, to get to know every person one at a time, and to become the greater for it. It may be tomorrow, it may be in ten thousand years, but I'd like to get to know you, too.
- smabie 7y agoBut we can’t live past the heat death of the universe, so does it really mattter? Nothing lasts forever and just increasing the time doesn’t change anything. Moreover, if people never died of old age, they would die of something else. The last study I read about this put the average lifespan of humans without death from natural causes to about 4000 years.
- banads 7y ago>I think there are thoughts that you have had that have never occurred to anyone else. Unless you created your own language that you think in this is most certainly not the case
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoYes, a permanent overclass of wealthy, inter-connected, powerful elderly people, locked into the cultural norms and mōrēs of their youth, ruling over newer generations for all eternity. The ultimate gerontocracy. How delightful. /s
- AgentME 7y agoIf we had that setup and faced those problems, would starting a mass holocaust that will kill everyone who ever has or will exist (inventing death) really be the best solution? I feel like human ingenuity could probably find a better solution than that.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoWe are talking about a far future of people whose sense of self-preservation is so strong that they are willing to place their continued existence, presumably at their current level of comfort and power, ahead of every single other concern in the universe. (Anyone else who did not already checked out "on their own terms" as xxvector says.) I'm not persuaded that they will be inclined to make any significant sacrifices for the good for the rest of humanity or for future generations. [EDIT] I knew I was reminded of something from SF. Quoting from the Wikipedia article for Pierson's Puppeteers from Niven's writings: > "In Ringworld, Nessus, a Puppeteer, explains how his race's cowardice is partly a result of a science experiment (the details of which are not given) that proves the Puppeteers have nothing equivalent to an immortal soul, and therefore death is, for their species, eternal oblivion. As a result, the Puppeteer race is fanatically devoted to its own safety...."
- bagacrap 7y agoIn GP's dystopia, the peasants cannot afford immortality.
- ilammy 7y agoNow that reminds me of Kuttner's Fury. Though his 'immortal' elites were simply having 200+ years lifespans, but for peasants that felt as good as actually being immortal.
- downerending 7y agoI cannot imagine anything more horrifying than (my own) immortality, in this life or beyond. Death is the only form of lasting peace that we can realistically hope for.