7 ms·

How many of you expect to die?

49 points by huherto 18y ago

garethnelsonuk 18y ago
If I read the literal question here (ignoring the article), my response is: "I expect to die at some point, horrible horrible reality - but i'm going to fight against it with all i've got"
olefoo 18y ago
My life plan includes emigrating to the moon at age 80 because I figure the first few generations of settlers are going to have a high attrition rate anyhow and at that age I will be expendable. Also low gravity should be good for joints and heart...
- mixmax 18y ago
  Yes - low gravity and joints definitely sounds like fun. :-)
- eru 18y ago
  Mars waits.
- dlimeb 18y ago
  Speaking of expendability at the end of one's life, I just finished Scalzi's _Old Man's War_. Don't settle somewhere, join the army!
huherto 18y ago
I think is worth reflecting about the last stages of life, and how you would like to live them. For me I would like: 1- A Healthy life. There is plenty you can do, nutrition, exercising, regular check ups, etc. 2 - A productive life. Make sure that every day you produce something of value. 3 - Prepare to die. Understand that is going to happen no matter what. 4 - The present is the best time to enjoy life. You may become a millionaire, but all that money will not buy you more healthy time alive.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  4 - The present is the best time to enjoy life. You may become a millionaire, but all that money will not buy you more healthy time alive. Incorrect. A huge fraction of medical expenses are from the last few months of life. That money will keep you alive. It's probably not worth staying alive at that point, of course. I also think it's a little sad that you're so ambitious, but you've given up on living forever. Accepting even a small chance of not-dying, or of living for 200 years, can radically change some of the calculations you might make.
  - huherto 18y ago
    Interesting, what would those calculations be?
    - byrneseyeview 18y ago
      If you expect to die, things like crossing the street, eating unhealthy food, doing drugs, etc., are just going to affect the timing. But if you think there's a chance you won't die, you can think of these things as slightly killing yourself, instead of changing the date of your death. So it makes you more conservative. But it also makes you more optimistic! Someone who admits to maybe living for a very long time will probably want to invest a lot in having multiple possible careers, not to mention lots of money saved up. This basically amounts to maximizing positive surprises (you can take advantage of more career and investment opportunities) and minimizing negative surprises (losing a job when you have a month's worth of savings is a crisis -- losing your job when you've saved forty years of expenses is a blip).
      - wallflower 18y ago
        In the movie "Big Fish" by Tim Burton, an excellent film about father-son relationships, there is a scene where the son goes to an oracle and learns how he is going to die. After learning how he is going to die, he takes on various death-defying stunts without consequence - for he knew that was not the way he was going to go.
josefresco 18y ago
From looking at those graphs, I'll take Cancer. What did Cobain/Young say? "It's better to burn out than fade away"
- JabavuAdams 18y ago
  Well, I suppose he'll never know. Euthanasia is always an option. Why pessimize prematurely?
- cawel 18y ago
  And thus forsaking (statistically) 10 years of your life? For me it's a non-issue: cancer would be the last option of the three, by far.
dmpayton 18y ago
"I'm going to live forever or die trying."
- j2d2 18y ago
  I plan to live forever without dying. So far, so good!
  - eru 18y ago
    You haven't died before. Just do not start the habit.
- imgabe 18y ago
  "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying"
- lemon 18y ago
  what is this?
vaksel 18y ago
I'm fairly young, so hopefully they'll be solutions by the time I get old. Lets face it, we are in an exponential technological curve, go back 100 years, and probably 90% of stuff in your house didn't even exist back then. Then take into account that people want to live forever. So hopefully in the next 100 years(I'm 20 now, but chances are the current generation will most likely live to be 150), we'll develop something that can either rejuvenate us, or store our memories, or cloning.
- aggieben 18y ago
  Lets face it, we are in an exponential technological curve, go back 100 years, and probably 90% of stuff in your house didn't even exist back then. Actually, I think there are very few things in my house that didn't exist a century ago. There are a few important items, for sure: refrigerator, AC, microwave, computer, cell phone, CD/DVD players and associated media, automobiles. There are probably a few things I'm forgetting, but there is so much more than that in my house that's virtually no different than what was around in 1908: clothing, wood floors, ironing board, closets, stuffed animals, blankets, plates, silverware, drawers, photographs, tables, chairs, beds, doors (my house was built in 1924, so this list could go on and on and on). For that matter, I think the vast majority of things in my house would have been present in similar forms in any number of centuries past. I think the prospects of medical advances that will lengthen lifespans is fascinating, but I also think people tend to lose perspective on how the times really aren't as different as they think they are. We end up thinking we're special because of the times we live in, and it's just not the case (no special criticism of you, of course - just an observation spurred by your remark).
  - vaksel 18y ago
    You forgot the super important invention called doors, roof, and windows. But that's the thing our sciences have taken a huge leap forward in the last 100 years. Another 100 years should bring plenty of new inventions. I mean look 200 years ago, if you got sick they tried to exorcise the sickness away.
  - ashu 18y ago
    The more important point is about advances in genetic engineering. That's been going on for maybe 30-40 years, at best. If the pace picks up a little, what the grandparent says (significantly larger life spans) may well be a reality.
edw519 18y ago
I want to die like my grandfather: in my sleep, not screaming and yelling like everyone else in the car.
- BrandonM 18y ago
  Har har. Old joke.
  - BrandonM 18y ago
    For whoever voted me down: 1. The joke is old and I assumed that most of us have heard it before 2a. What he said really didn't comment on the article 2b. Therefore, I felt the comment didn't add anything 2c. I would, however, automatically expect to see such a comment on Reddit 3. The fact that it's being voted up (5 at this point) disappointed me 4. I voted him down. People always complain when they are voted down without explanation 5. I intended my previous comment to explain why I voted him down That's all. I could make the leap and say that the quality of comments here is going down, but that might be going too far for everyone's tastes.
    - jrockway 18y ago
      I could make the leap and say that the quality of comments here is going down, but that might be going too far for everyone's tastes. So set a good example and don't reply to downmods with 7 reasons why your comment shouldn't have been downmodded. Even good comments get downmodded from time to time; deal with it.
    - webwright 18y ago
      If everyone explained their downvote in comments, how crappy do you think this site would be? Please don't.
      - deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
    - almost 18y ago
ph0rque 18y ago
If SENS is successfull to any degree, it may be possible to live "young" to a very old age.
jsdalton 18y ago
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39236 http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39236 The graphic says it all.
seregine 18y ago
As with any other project, constraints motivate progress. Mortality makes life meaningful.
- huherto 18y ago
  Or as Steve Jobs put it. "Death is life's greatest invention"
  - Herring 18y ago
    That always struck me as BS, like lying to kids about your flavor afterlife. I understand it's nice for coping & all, but none of the people saying it would choose to die if they could live forever.
    - asdflkj 18y ago
      So what? Few heroin addicts would reject a dose of heroin, but that doesn't prevent them from rationally knowing that it's not doing them any good. Arguably, our attitude toward life is like that of an addict. I also think it's BS, FWIW, but not for the reason you mentioned.
    - time_management 18y ago
      That brings up an interesting question: if immortality were possible, would people choose to die, and what would their motivations be? It seems that curiosity about the afterlife would be a primary factor. Then there is the question: would this curiosity mount over time, to the point that everyone succumbed to it? I don't think anyone can answer this question. Peoples' religious views might change over the centuries-- I know mine have, over mere decades-- and it might be that nearly everyone comes to believe in a better life after death at some point, and chooses to die.
      - maneesh 18y ago
        or just get tired as hell of living
sant0sk1 18y ago
There is a way to liver forever, but it cannot be achieved through scientific endeavor.
- huherto 18y ago
  Yes it can. Think of Newton, Galileo, Einstein, etc. ;-)
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
here lies nazgul, the world's oldest man. No one knows how long ago he was born, but some say as far back as the 20th century. He died peacefully in his sleep after a strenuous night, several of his girlfriends reported. :p
time_management 18y ago
I thought this was going to be an article about the singularity. I believe reincarnation is the most likely afterlife, so I'd much rather have a young, quick death than rot away slowly, in order to occupy the smallest proportion of my time with bodily failure. Frailty I can deal with, but dementia sucks. On the other hand, I don't want to die too young, because I haven't lived a complete life yet. I think the reason why cancer gets a bad rap, even though it has the most desirable dropoff curve, is that it can strike anyone at any time, regardless of age and lifestyle. Therefore, it scares the hell out of us, all of us, in a way that heart disease doesn't. (I'm 25.) I expect to live to be about 80, working and exercising the whole way to that point. I think that the lifespan itself won't have increased by much by the time I get there (average will be 85-90) but that late-end quality of life will be a lot better.
- hugh 18y ago
  I'm pleasantly surprised that an army of Singularitarians (is that really a word?) hasn't shown up already to tell us how closed-minded we are for expecting to die.
- jey 18y ago
  "I believe reincarnation is the most likely afterlife" Why?
  - time_management 18y ago
    It makes the most sense intuitively, and it's the only one I've seen evidence (e.g. the work of Ian Stevenson) for.
aggieben 18y ago
I do.
rms 18y ago
It's an existential dilemma I haven't quite solved yet. I don't want to die, but I can't help but feeling that immortality is a trap. What if I'm really a 12th dimensional being and death is the only way to exit this false reality? It would be terrible to spend an eternity trapped in a lesser universe. Though with infinite time and infinite wisdom maybe we can bust our way out.
- ks 18y ago
  I doubt anyone would live for an eternity. Even if we had the techology to live for a million years, everyone would have some sort of accident before then. Perhaps you will die in a super nova accident, while visiting another galaxy in 10.000 years?
  - SteveC 18y ago
    I recall a study where they said nobody would live beyond a certain age due to the probability of accidents occuring (the age was something like 200-300 years old).
  - ingenium 18y ago
    Well, you could in theory live forever if you transitioned your consciousness into a computer. It will soon be possible to simulate a human brain in a computer (see the Blue Brain project http://bluebrain.epfl.ch http://bluebrain.epfl.ch). Philosophical issues aside, you can effectively live forever this way as long as human civilization is able to continue getting resources and energy to power the computers.
eyudkowsky 18y ago
If you feel like not dying, I would suggest signing up for cryonics with Alcor or another reputable provider. Otherwise, frankly, quit whining. It's not like there are no alternatives to death.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
TweedHeads 18y ago
This is the only poll with 100% positives and 100% accuracy
- inklesspen 18y ago
  Really? I don't expect to die.
ajkirwin 18y ago
Frankly, I am quite happy to die. To know that, all my achievements and all my failures, eventually, will cease to matter. To know that I too will give way to the next generation and that, hopefully, they can make up for my follies and mistakes, because we are none of us perfect. And I hope that, as things progress and I get older and progressively more sick, that should I tire of my body, I can choose to leave life at a time and place of my choosing. Of course, with the way things are going, I'll be in my 50s and the only way to do it will be to run my wheelchair off a cliff. (I couldn't end this on a non-cynical note, it just wouldn't be me!)
lst 18y ago
Taboo!!
helveticaman 18y ago
Hackers never die...they're just slowly overwritten.

49 points by huherto 18y ago

If I read the literal question here (ignoring the article), my response is: "I expect to die at some point, horrible horrible reality - but i'm going to fight against it with all i've got"

olefoo 18y ago

My life plan includes emigrating to the moon at age 80 because I figure the first few generations of settlers are going to have a high attrition rate anyhow and at that age I will be expendable. Also low gravity should be good for joints and heart...

mixmax 18y ago
Yes - low gravity and joints definitely sounds like fun. :-)
eru 18y ago
Mars waits.
dlimeb 18y ago
Speaking of expendability at the end of one's life, I just finished Scalzi's _Old Man's War_. Don't settle somewhere, join the army!

huherto 18y ago

I think is worth reflecting about the last stages of life, and how you would like to live them. For me I would like: 1- A Healthy life. There is plenty you can do, nutrition, exercising, regular check ups, etc. 2 - A productive life. Make sure that every day you produce something of value. 3 - Prepare to die. Understand that is going to happen no matter what. 4 - The present is the best time to enjoy life. You may become a millionaire, but all that money will not buy you more healthy time alive.

byrneseyeview 18y ago
4 - The present is the best time to enjoy life. You may become a millionaire, but all that money will not buy you more healthy time alive. Incorrect. A huge fraction of medical expenses are from the last few months of life. That money will keep you alive. It's probably not worth staying alive at that point, of course. I also think it's a little sad that you're so ambitious, but you've given up on living forever. Accepting even a small chance of not-dying, or of living for 200 years, can radically change some of the calculations you might make.
- huherto 18y ago
  Interesting, what would those calculations be?
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    If you expect to die, things like crossing the street, eating unhealthy food, doing drugs, etc., are just going to affect the timing. But if you think there's a chance you won't die, you can think of these things as slightly killing yourself, instead of changing the date of your death. So it makes you more conservative. But it also makes you more optimistic! Someone who admits to maybe living for a very long time will probably want to invest a lot in having multiple possible careers, not to mention lots of money saved up. This basically amounts to maximizing positive surprises (you can take advantage of more career and investment opportunities) and minimizing negative surprises (losing a job when you have a month's worth of savings is a crisis -- losing your job when you've saved forty years of expenses is a blip).
    - wallflower 18y ago
      In the movie "Big Fish" by Tim Burton, an excellent film about father-son relationships, there is a scene where the son goes to an oracle and learns how he is going to die. After learning how he is going to die, he takes on various death-defying stunts without consequence - for he knew that was not the way he was going to go.

josefresco 18y ago

From looking at those graphs, I'll take Cancer. What did Cobain/Young say? "It's better to burn out than fade away"

JabavuAdams 18y ago
Well, I suppose he'll never know. Euthanasia is always an option. Why pessimize prematurely?
cawel 18y ago
And thus forsaking (statistically) 10 years of your life? For me it's a non-issue: cancer would be the last option of the three, by far.

dmpayton 18y ago

"I'm going to live forever or die trying."

j2d2 18y ago
I plan to live forever without dying. So far, so good!
- eru 18y ago
  You haven't died before. Just do not start the habit.
imgabe 18y ago
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying"
lemon 18y ago
what is this?

vaksel 18y ago

I'm fairly young, so hopefully they'll be solutions by the time I get old. Lets face it, we are in an exponential technological curve, go back 100 years, and probably 90% of stuff in your house didn't even exist back then. Then take into account that people want to live forever. So hopefully in the next 100 years(I'm 20 now, but chances are the current generation will most likely live to be 150), we'll develop something that can either rejuvenate us, or store our memories, or cloning.

aggieben 18y ago
Lets face it, we are in an exponential technological curve, go back 100 years, and probably 90% of stuff in your house didn't even exist back then. Actually, I think there are very few things in my house that didn't exist a century ago. There are a few important items, for sure: refrigerator, AC, microwave, computer, cell phone, CD/DVD players and associated media, automobiles. There are probably a few things I'm forgetting, but there is so much more than that in my house that's virtually no different than what was around in 1908: clothing, wood floors, ironing board, closets, stuffed animals, blankets, plates, silverware, drawers, photographs, tables, chairs, beds, doors (my house was built in 1924, so this list could go on and on and on). For that matter, I think the vast majority of things in my house would have been present in similar forms in any number of centuries past. I think the prospects of medical advances that will lengthen lifespans is fascinating, but I also think people tend to lose perspective on how the times really aren't as different as they think they are. We end up thinking we're special because of the times we live in, and it's just not the case (no special criticism of you, of course - just an observation spurred by your remark).
- vaksel 18y ago
  You forgot the super important invention called doors, roof, and windows. But that's the thing our sciences have taken a huge leap forward in the last 100 years. Another 100 years should bring plenty of new inventions. I mean look 200 years ago, if you got sick they tried to exorcise the sickness away.
- ashu 18y ago
  The more important point is about advances in genetic engineering. That's been going on for maybe 30-40 years, at best. If the pace picks up a little, what the grandparent says (significantly larger life spans) may well be a reality.

edw519 18y ago

I want to die like my grandfather: in my sleep, not screaming and yelling like everyone else in the car.

BrandonM 18y ago
Har har. Old joke.
- BrandonM 18y ago
  For whoever voted me down: 1. The joke is old and I assumed that most of us have heard it before 2a. What he said really didn't comment on the article 2b. Therefore, I felt the comment didn't add anything 2c. I would, however, automatically expect to see such a comment on Reddit 3. The fact that it's being voted up (5 at this point) disappointed me 4. I voted him down. People always complain when they are voted down without explanation 5. I intended my previous comment to explain why I voted him down That's all. I could make the leap and say that the quality of comments here is going down, but that might be going too far for everyone's tastes.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    I could make the leap and say that the quality of comments here is going down, but that might be going too far for everyone's tastes. So set a good example and don't reply to downmods with 7 reasons why your comment shouldn't have been downmodded. Even good comments get downmodded from time to time; deal with it.
  - webwright 18y ago
    If everyone explained their downvote in comments, how crappy do you think this site would be? Please don't.
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
  - almost 18y ago

ph0rque 18y ago

If SENS is successfull to any degree, it may be possible to live "young" to a very old age.

jsdalton 18y ago

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39236 http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39236 The graphic says it all.

seregine 18y ago

As with any other project, constraints motivate progress. Mortality makes life meaningful.

huherto 18y ago
Or as Steve Jobs put it. "Death is life's greatest invention"
- Herring 18y ago
  That always struck me as BS, like lying to kids about your flavor afterlife. I understand it's nice for coping & all, but none of the people saying it would choose to die if they could live forever.
  - asdflkj 18y ago
    So what? Few heroin addicts would reject a dose of heroin, but that doesn't prevent them from rationally knowing that it's not doing them any good. Arguably, our attitude toward life is like that of an addict. I also think it's BS, FWIW, but not for the reason you mentioned.
  - time_management 18y ago
    That brings up an interesting question: if immortality were possible, would people choose to die, and what would their motivations be? It seems that curiosity about the afterlife would be a primary factor. Then there is the question: would this curiosity mount over time, to the point that everyone succumbed to it? I don't think anyone can answer this question. Peoples' religious views might change over the centuries-- I know mine have, over mere decades-- and it might be that nearly everyone comes to believe in a better life after death at some point, and chooses to die.
    - maneesh 18y ago
      or just get tired as hell of living

sant0sk1 18y ago

There is a way to liver forever, but it cannot be achieved through scientific endeavor.

huherto 18y ago
Yes it can. Think of Newton, Galileo, Einstein, etc. ;-)

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

here lies nazgul, the world's oldest man. No one knows how long ago he was born, but some say as far back as the 20th century. He died peacefully in his sleep after a strenuous night, several of his girlfriends reported. :p

time_management 18y ago

I thought this was going to be an article about the singularity. I believe reincarnation is the most likely afterlife, so I'd much rather have a young, quick death than rot away slowly, in order to occupy the smallest proportion of my time with bodily failure. Frailty I can deal with, but dementia sucks. On the other hand, I don't want to die too young, because I haven't lived a complete life yet. I think the reason why cancer gets a bad rap, even though it has the most desirable dropoff curve, is that it can strike anyone at any time, regardless of age and lifestyle. Therefore, it scares the hell out of us, all of us, in a way that heart disease doesn't. (I'm 25.) I expect to live to be about 80, working and exercising the whole way to that point. I think that the lifespan itself won't have increased by much by the time I get there (average will be 85-90) but that late-end quality of life will be a lot better.

hugh 18y ago
I'm pleasantly surprised that an army of Singularitarians (is that really a word?) hasn't shown up already to tell us how closed-minded we are for expecting to die.
jey 18y ago
"I believe reincarnation is the most likely afterlife" Why?
- time_management 18y ago
  It makes the most sense intuitively, and it's the only one I've seen evidence (e.g. the work of Ian Stevenson) for.

aggieben 18y ago

I do.

rms 18y ago

It's an existential dilemma I haven't quite solved yet. I don't want to die, but I can't help but feeling that immortality is a trap. What if I'm really a 12th dimensional being and death is the only way to exit this false reality? It would be terrible to spend an eternity trapped in a lesser universe. Though with infinite time and infinite wisdom maybe we can bust our way out.

ks 18y ago
I doubt anyone would live for an eternity. Even if we had the techology to live for a million years, everyone would have some sort of accident before then. Perhaps you will die in a super nova accident, while visiting another galaxy in 10.000 years?
- SteveC 18y ago
  I recall a study where they said nobody would live beyond a certain age due to the probability of accidents occuring (the age was something like 200-300 years old).
- ingenium 18y ago
  Well, you could in theory live forever if you transitioned your consciousness into a computer. It will soon be possible to simulate a human brain in a computer (see the Blue Brain project http://bluebrain.epfl.ch http://bluebrain.epfl.ch). Philosophical issues aside, you can effectively live forever this way as long as human civilization is able to continue getting resources and energy to power the computers.

eyudkowsky 18y ago

If you feel like not dying, I would suggest signing up for cryonics with Alcor or another reputable provider. Otherwise, frankly, quit whining. It's not like there are no alternatives to death.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

TweedHeads 18y ago

This is the only poll with 100% positives and 100% accuracy

inklesspen 18y ago
Really? I don't expect to die.

ajkirwin 18y ago

Frankly, I am quite happy to die. To know that, all my achievements and all my failures, eventually, will cease to matter. To know that I too will give way to the next generation and that, hopefully, they can make up for my follies and mistakes, because we are none of us perfect. And I hope that, as things progress and I get older and progressively more sick, that should I tire of my body, I can choose to leave life at a time and place of my choosing. Of course, with the way things are going, I'll be in my 50s and the only way to do it will be to run my wheelchair off a cliff. (I couldn't end this on a non-cynical note, it just wouldn't be me!)

lst 18y ago

Taboo!!

helveticaman 18y ago

Hackers never die...they're just slowly overwritten.