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Thanks. Sorry, realizing I avoid clicking into these most times, so just finally did now and saw nothing but boosting (and I unfairly generalized). If i unders

by patcon 7y ago

Thanks. Sorry, realizing I avoid clicking into these most times, so just finally did now and saw nothing but boosting (and I unfairly generalized). If i understand, you feel that death is a curable condition, and not an evolved adaptation of a population within living networks? I guess i just find it difficult to conclude that death, an evolved trait for 99.999% of lifeforms, esp ones like us (with its uncountable trillions of iterations of validation) is something we should allow our members to cavalierly just brush aside. My "survival of species" lens says we should just "cap" lifespan -- so that no set of individuals can bend the structure of biology and society to create such an existential asymmetry in the our shared systems. But that has obvious clashes with the belief systems we've established. There's a rad allegory in city planning. A student wants to remove a fence across a narrow laneway. She says to her wise mentor "hey this fence is here and it's not doing anything. can i remove it and improve the flow". The mentor replies, "sure, but before you remove the fence, you should first uncover why it was there." I feel like our wise mentor is the process of evolution. She's been around the block. She wasn't born yesterday. I truly don't feel we're wise on this topic. And conveniently, there are essentially no death-defeating maverick species to teach us their learned wisdom. It feels like hubris to presume that we know better than this mentor...

at_a_remove 7y ago
If you have a way to brush aside death, do share with us. So far as I can tell, nothing about the attempts have been cavalier. Fortunes have been squandered, tears wept over the fresh graves of the beloved, lives were focused in an all-consuming passion, and so forth. The subject has already been rendered not cavalier by the agonies of our past. We haven't a "skip death" button to press. Chesterson's fence, which you referenced, is only applicable to the conscious acts of thinking beings. Evolution is not wise, evolution is not careful, evolution did not plan or reason for that fence. Evolution also gave us susceptibility to diseases, revolting parasites, defects of birth, and an often tragic fragility. Shall we preserve those as well? After all, they must be there for a reason. Under that aegis, nothing which applies to death does not equally and as thoroughly apply to quite literally every other medical intervention humanity has invented starting with the humble bandage. Evolution gave us allergies which cause people to asphixiate and clotting disorders which have children bleeding out from a casual scrape. Blindness, gangrene, arthritis: this is the wisdom of evolution.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  > Evolution gave us allergies which cause people to asphixiate and clotting disorders which have children bleeding out from a casual scrape. Blindness, gangrene, arthritis: this is the wisdom of evolution. It is indeed a wisdom, albeit a primitive one which simply works good enough long term - survival of the fittest, best adapted, strongest, with better immunity etc. Collateral damage for the unfortunate is not important when we talk about billions of organisms over countless generations, and survival of the species as a whole. We also evolved over weaker species, because we were better and luckier. And we will evolve more either naturally or by our hands, if we keep on surviving.
- titzer 7y ago
  > Evolution is not wise, evolution is not careful, evolution did not plan or reason for that fence. Evolution also gave us susceptibility to diseases, revolting parasites, defects of birth, and an often tragic fragility. Shall we preserve those as well? After all, they must be there for a reason. Copy. Mutate. Select. Simple algorithm, remarkable results. Incredibly robust to failure. I think you do yourself a disservice thinking this way about the process that gave rise to you. Edit: and I didn't even read your whole comment. > Evolution gave us allergies which cause people to asphixiate and clotting disorders which have children bleeding out from a casual scrape. Blindness, gangrene, arthritis: this is the wisdom of evolution. It also, apparently, gave us breathtaking ignorance. No wait, that was human society.
  - at_a_remove 7y ago
    This process that gave rise to me also gave me a painful, lifetime disability ... in its wisdom.
    - patcon 7y ago
      fwiw I find myself very torn to be rationalizing death when my mom just went into paliative care last week. I'm literally typing this as I should be walking out the door to the hospital. I suppose I'd like to push the button that let me mom live 200 years, but i also fear for that button ever existing. I don't think I could NOT push it. I promise I'm not callous. I'm maybe suspicious of the west's cult of the individual. I feel like sometimes we as individuals can't have what we want for ourselves, if we want the bigger ongoing project to succeed. Things are already so complicated, not least due to accumulation of generational wealth and inaction of the older generation. I worry the "curing" death will doom us all, and collapse this whole beautiful mess in on itself :/ Curing death sounds great when young startup folks are pushing it, but we all age out, we all get stuck inside the minds that grew up in old worlds. anyhow, much love to you and yours. truly
melling 7y ago
More of my 3 year old post: “Finally, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that death is going to be an easy disease to cure. Maybe we’ll get a few breakthroughs over the next couple of decades and we’ll figure out how to add a few extra healthy years to the average person. We definitely need to move beyond long term studies and peer deeper into our bodies. By the way, the latest study says we need to take 15,000 steps a day to live a longer life.”

by patcon 7y ago

at_a_remove 7y ago

If you have a way to brush aside death, do share with us. So far as I can tell, nothing about the attempts have been cavalier. Fortunes have been squandered, tears wept over the fresh graves of the beloved, lives were focused in an all-consuming passion, and so forth. The subject has already been rendered not cavalier by the agonies of our past. We haven't a "skip death" button to press. Chesterson's fence, which you referenced, is only applicable to the conscious acts of thinking beings. Evolution is not wise, evolution is not careful, evolution did not plan or reason for that fence. Evolution also gave us susceptibility to diseases, revolting parasites, defects of birth, and an often tragic fragility. Shall we preserve those as well? After all, they must be there for a reason. Under that aegis, nothing which applies to death does not equally and as thoroughly apply to quite literally every other medical intervention humanity has invented starting with the humble bandage. Evolution gave us allergies which cause people to asphixiate and clotting disorders which have children bleeding out from a casual scrape. Blindness, gangrene, arthritis: this is the wisdom of evolution.

saiya-jin 7y ago
> Evolution gave us allergies which cause people to asphixiate and clotting disorders which have children bleeding out from a casual scrape. Blindness, gangrene, arthritis: this is the wisdom of evolution. It is indeed a wisdom, albeit a primitive one which simply works good enough long term - survival of the fittest, best adapted, strongest, with better immunity etc. Collateral damage for the unfortunate is not important when we talk about billions of organisms over countless generations, and survival of the species as a whole. We also evolved over weaker species, because we were better and luckier. And we will evolve more either naturally or by our hands, if we keep on surviving.
titzer 7y ago
> Evolution is not wise, evolution is not careful, evolution did not plan or reason for that fence. Evolution also gave us susceptibility to diseases, revolting parasites, defects of birth, and an often tragic fragility. Shall we preserve those as well? After all, they must be there for a reason. Copy. Mutate. Select. Simple algorithm, remarkable results. Incredibly robust to failure. I think you do yourself a disservice thinking this way about the process that gave rise to you. Edit: and I didn't even read your whole comment. > Evolution gave us allergies which cause people to asphixiate and clotting disorders which have children bleeding out from a casual scrape. Blindness, gangrene, arthritis: this is the wisdom of evolution. It also, apparently, gave us breathtaking ignorance. No wait, that was human society.
- at_a_remove 7y ago
  This process that gave rise to me also gave me a painful, lifetime disability ... in its wisdom.
  - patcon 7y ago
    fwiw I find myself very torn to be rationalizing death when my mom just went into paliative care last week. I'm literally typing this as I should be walking out the door to the hospital. I suppose I'd like to push the button that let me mom live 200 years, but i also fear for that button ever existing. I don't think I could NOT push it. I promise I'm not callous. I'm maybe suspicious of the west's cult of the individual. I feel like sometimes we as individuals can't have what we want for ourselves, if we want the bigger ongoing project to succeed. Things are already so complicated, not least due to accumulation of generational wealth and inaction of the older generation. I worry the "curing" death will doom us all, and collapse this whole beautiful mess in on itself :/ Curing death sounds great when young startup folks are pushing it, but we all age out, we all get stuck inside the minds that grew up in old worlds. anyhow, much love to you and yours. truly

melling 7y ago

More of my 3 year old post: “Finally, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that death is going to be an easy disease to cure. Maybe we’ll get a few breakthroughs over the next couple of decades and we’ll figure out how to add a few extra healthy years to the average person. We definitely need to move beyond long term studies and peer deeper into our bodies. By the way, the latest study says we need to take 15,000 steps a day to live a longer life.”