11 ms·

Immortality vs. Society (2016)

30 points by notpushkin 6y ago

5nlight 6y ago
"a modern human because he can adapt to anything himself, and do so a billion times faster and more efficiently. People are going to the space because they’ve invented rockets and space suits" so, is this what you believe here on HN? genuinely curious.
- ben_w 6y ago
  We are diverse. Myself? This blog entry reads kinda like the Wiccan self-help books I was into in a big way as a teenager and no longer care for. I hope to live long enough to benefit from SENS. I’m planning as if I don’t, because I have no control over which reality I will face and doing what I’m doing has the best expected utility given that uncertainty. Then there’s the limits of any plausible form of immortality: While the idea of being part of a starlifting project to extend the lifespan of Sol by a factor of a thousand (and of being able to enjoy the benefits of that project ten trillion years from now) appeals greatly, curing ageing and all disease — leaving only injuries both accidental and malicious as causes of death — still leaves humans with a half-life of something like 800 to 1200 years. Give us mind-backups (which also appeal to me, but less so when I consider the likelihood of misuse) and you still have to consider the radical change in what it means to be over such timescales. I don’t know what the future will bring, and I will plan for all too short a season, even though I will embrace life extension and do what I can to stay around for as long as I can.
maria_weber23 6y ago
Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't even know where to start. > If I’m going to cease to exist, it doesn’t matter what would be in a world without me. Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else? > children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because. Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper bots". I am assuming he is a he, because a women would never say these things... I don't know in what world you live in to think of children this way. Have you ever played with a child or seen it grow up? This is atrocious. Seriously man, get help or something, this almost borders on psychopath level of apathy. > (Children, again) It’s like a new branch in a version control system, if you know what I mean. Okay I am out. You really should get help. Definitely. > So no, children are not our immortality. They are the best way to kill time (and eventually yourself). Yep... Totally get it. Obviously children are not our immortality. Are they the best way to kill time? I mean if you are a robot, that's probably true. > We’ve already superseded the evolution, so we don’t actually need it any more. We are far away from that. Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection. And yet, we still can't live forever and we can't fix the common cold. Good luck to our species. > The nature isn’t our friend. It’s our enemy. Okay :D. Just dig yourself a concrete hole and live in there from bottles of Soylent and see what happens. There are tons of studies who show you how important a connection to nature is for the human body and mind, but well... > The meaning of life is to keep on living. Yeah, that's maybe the only thing I can agree with in this "text" or whatever it is. But it definitely doesn't follow from the brainfarts that came before. I am now actually pitying the coworkers of this person and actually anybody he interacts with, if any. Look, there is only one thing that differentiates humans from robots. It is that humans are nothing like you want to make them in your article. If humans were like you, I would wish this race would get replaced by actual robots asap, because at least then, there is an excuse for behaving the way you do.
- airocker 6y ago
  Haha, same thought. I agree with the evolution bit though. But if all humans decide to not have children, machines are not smart enough to keep evolving themselves yet or in the near future.
  - amarant 6y ago
    There was an ai at Google that designed ai for specific purposes better than the human engineers. Doesn't seem that far off to me! https://futurism.com/google-artificial-intelligence-built-ai https://futurism.com/google-artificial-intelligence-built-ai
- ben_w 6y ago
  Broadly agree except > Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection Is it? I’ve not heard any serious claim of deterioration before.
- Retric 6y ago
  > because we managed to eliminate natural selection. Evolution is alive and well. Drunk driving for example kills young people. Disease similarly kills plenty of people to kick evolution into action. Suicide is tragic enough people don’t think of it as evolutionary pressure, but dead is dead. Etc. Etc. It’s not as obvious as dealing with actual lions, but the developed world is well below the replacement rate. That’s some serious evolutionary pressure.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    The largest group of drunk driving deaths is 25-35 so already I'm not sure how much of an affect that is.
    - Retric 6y ago
      First what matters is the sum of all deaths by a specific age not deaths at a specific age. Anyway, the average age of fathers in the US is 31. Men over the age of 40 make up 9% of all fathers. So, dying at 30 or even 40 is directly meaningful from an evolutionary standpoint. Further, losing parents is a significant issue.
XiJInPaddington 6y ago
I would give so much to live in a society where people like Aubrey de Gray are heroes like Elon Musk is in ours. The fact that people die does not have to be immutable fate. We look back at people seeking the fountain of youth or the philosophers stone with sneering contempt but at least they had the right goal. Our acquiescence of death is the greatest tragedy ever and collectively we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
- kiba 6y ago
  Sneering contempt because it's currently impossible, and we built up all sort of cultural artifacts to dissuade people from doing or coping mechanism with the fact that immortality isn't possible. The Epic of Gilgamesh(you should listen to it once) is one of our first written story which basically state this opinion about immortality.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Immortality would be spitting in the face of humanity. A race of immortals has no need) or very little need) for children. Such a society would be joyless and without vitality, without the “firsts” that happen only once in a lifetime no matter how long you live. People imagine that life extension would mean that people would have time to see the world, to read every book, etc. But that’s not what makes most people happy. Most people won’t read Shakespeare no matter how long they live. Immortality would condemn your average person to a pretty awful existence.
  - kiba 6y ago
    Excuse me? Lot of people enjoyed life without having children.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      It’s not about individuals having children, but a society that collectively has few to no children. 9 out of 10 people age 45+, if they had to do it all again, would have had children: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp.... Only 1 in 10 wouldn’t have had kids if they had to do it over. Immortality would universalize the experience of the 10% to the other 90% of the population.
malthejorgensen 6y ago
The first part rings dangerously close to solipsism in my ears, and once you’re there nothing much matters. Just trash the planet, use people and move on. Cause once you’re dead it doesn’t matter? I might be wrong but you can’t build a civilization in that way. Second thing is that immortality creates conservatism. Old age does too, but it seems to me immortality over-indexes self-preservation over progress of civilization, where the former is just slightly less of a concern for the individual when lifetimes are as short as they are now.
- k__ 6y ago
  No, because if you want to live forever, you can't trash the planet. You got to keep nature in check as long as possible.
- majewsky 6y ago
  > immortality creates conservatism I want to refute this, but I have to back up a bit first. The late Frank Schirrmacher (a German journalist and essayist who died in 2014) argued that German politics is getting more conservative over time because of demographics. Large-scale reforms or revolutions typically cause less prosperity in the short term (as societal institutions get rebuilt and investments in future institutions are required) and higher prosperity in the long term. That's a bargain that works well for young people: They get to reap the benefits for a long time and thus can tolerate austerity in the short term, but from the POV of an old person (e.g. age 60+), they get all the troubles and none of the benefits. Hence an older society is a more conservative society. In other words, a significant part of conservatism [1] is caused by people knowing that they will die soonish (say, within the next 10-20 years) and therefore deciding that the best way to ensure prosperity within these remaining years is to defend the status quo as fiercely as possible. Immortality would fix this behavior, bringing personal incentives more in line with the incentives of society as a whole. [1] The other part of conservatism can be attributed to people genuinely being unable to imagine a better society than the one they live in or genuinely not believing a better society to be attainable (whether justified or not). As far as I can see, that part of conservatism would be largely unaffected by the availability of immortality.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
This is very very stupid. I mean it: stupid. The act of planning is not about the future, it’s about the present. I haven’t experienced the future yet, so it has no value to me. But a chained sequence of events that have a certain likelihood of occurring does have value to me now in the form of the expectation (which I experience today) of the outcome. The author also presumes no one can value states of the world except insofar as they are directly, materially experiencing that state of the world, but this is wrong. For example, I’ve never visited Australia, but I would value a state of the world where Australian cryptography laws and email surveillance laws are reformed. I get value just from the concept of that state of the world. I suppose it’s similar to getting value from consuming a fictional work of art - I experience the concept of it, but it doesn’t materially exist in my presence. I don’t benefit from it (say, like an Australian citizen would), but I benefit from the concept of it and associated probabilities of the world changing to a certain state. So if I am on my death bed with a special button laid out in front of me, which if pressed will automatically cause all Australian politicians’ pants to fall down until they vote to reform cryptography laws, and I believe there’s high probability the button would work and the embarrassment would work, then my impending death should not make me indifferent to pressing the button. With those precious few moments of life, I am experiencing something materially of value (a chained sequence of cause & effect with high probability to lead to a state of the world I value). The world I am in contains aspects of value I can experience that are functions of sequences of events leading to worlds I am not in. There’s nothing irrational, non-utilitarian or inconsistent about this.
darkerside 6y ago
Is there nothing worth dying for?
- Tenoke 6y ago
  Maybe there is but I doubt you'd call the reasons why the majority of people die as something that's 'worth it'.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Just trying to logically demonstrate the problem with solipsism
thret 6y ago
I do agree with this thesis in the sense that leaving an inheritance has no benefit to you. I've tried to explain to people that life insurance is a waste of money for this very reason but it is hard to put into words. I think they are undervaluing procreation though. You should do it because it makes you happy - I have never met a parent who regretted having children.
- amarant 6y ago
  I've never met a parent tho didn't regret having children! I've also never met I've who would admit to regretting it openly. Now ask them if they would recommend it for you, and they'll spill the beans for you...
  - pixl97 6y ago
    I'll have to say your experience is an anecdote and not data. I've met parents that were regretful of having children, but I have meet people who's only regret is they did not have more children than they did. You may live in an environment where you have a limited set differing world experiences, keep that in mind when making any important decisions.
    - gwn7 6y ago
      > your experience is an anecdote Yes, all personal experiences are anecdotes. That's by definition. > your experience is an anecdote and not data As if there is something wrong with sharing anecdotes in a forum like this. This is not a scientific journal. > I've met parents that were regretful of having children, but I have meet people who's only regret is they did not have more children than they did. "Your experience is an anecdote, and you shouldn't share anecdotes here, but here's an anecdote from me to counter your anecdote" > You may live in an environment where you have a limited set differing world experiences, All they did was to acknowledge the existence of a fact they experienced personally. They don't have to see the whole world to do that. This sounds patronising. Maybe it's you who live in an environment where you have a limited set of differing world experiences? Have you never met anybody who regretted having children? How can you even believe that everyone who had children are happy with that decision, and have no regrets? I won't start with my own anecdotes, but there are many.
majkinetor 6y ago
> For what? For nothing, just because. Don’t seek a rational explanation, you won’t find it. It doesn’t exist. Having a child is type of experience and commitment that has no parallel in any domain of life. It shapes you in certain ways if you are devoted to it. I want to be that type of person because I recognize some qualities that I admire (like being way less self-centric). My body is designed so that it can do this. Hence, not having children is against the design. Its like using oven as newspaper holder - nothing wrong with that, but using oven by design is something else which you can't really describe to non-oven people who never tasted cooked dishes. However, it takes time and there are number of responsibilities involved and there are huge number of people who think its just waste of time when they can simply go burger king or avoid eating at all until they must. That is not nothing. Yes, it can go bad, like anything else in life. You can die in fire using oven too. I think this is rational explanation. So called "Socratic procreation" (in short, where your procreate via recognized work/ideas instead of sexual act) on the other hand, is IMO meaningless (and maybe even compensation) for the very reasons mentioned in the blog post. That said, I do want to have a health span (not life span) as long as possible and that has nothing to do with all of this. I can freeze my head in a jar but that doesn't really count as health (while it could be counted as life).
- kiba 6y ago
  Your body isn't designed to do anything. We are like viruses in the sense of whatever works, works. While folks who don't reproduce are summarily eliminated from the gene pool. Not because they don't have value, but because they don't 'work'. The fact that you find having children fulfilling is about you, not about anybody else.
  - runsWphotons 6y ago
    Viruses are designed to infect, multiply and spread. Also humans are not viruses. I know that isn't what you meant since you specified "in the sense that...". But this kind of analogy seems to me to lead to bad thinking.
    - kiba 6y ago
spicyramen 6y ago
Hard to follow for me and depressing at the same time
deleted 6y ago
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syrrim 6y ago
People treat happiness as a good unto itself. Why? "People like being happy"? That's circular. "There's no other point to life"? So? Desire for immortality reads as a cope. You have picked a goal in life that is truly pointless. You recognize that. You therefore want to compensate by trying to get as much of it as you can. Unfortunately, you can't compensate for pointlessness with volume. (Just as you can't compensate for losing money on each sale with volume). If you pursue something worthwhile, then you need precisely however much time it takes to do that thing, then you're done. You won't reach the end and still feel anguish at having no time left. I see pursuit of immortality as deeply immoral. There are other human beings waiting to be born into the world. We have limited space and resources, capable of supporting a certain maximum number of people at a time. You want to take as much of that time and space for yourself, even at the cost of preventing others from being born. This frequently coming from supposed altruists. Cryonics is similarly deplorable. You, like everyone who came before you, are going to die. But right before you die, you are going to have your body frozen in time, at the moment before your death. Then you are going to demand that the people of the future, who themselves face the inevitability of death, unfreeze you and extend your life, rather than bringing their own children into the world. Of course, if we look at it from the other perspective, immortality is not only currently achievable but trivial. And, furthermore, it costs your ancestors nothing. The trick is to perceive the universe as being made up of little cells of spacetime. You're goal is to put something into one of those cells. Once you've done so, it will stay there for the rest of all eternity. In fact, you do this every day (every instant), so there is no trouble in putting things in these spacetime cells. Rather, the trouble is deciding what to put in them. Naturally, if they are going to last for the rest of all eternity, you ought to pick something pretty special to go in them. https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf (section 10) "In complexity theory, the difference between space and time manifests itself in the straightforward fact that you can reuse the same memory cells over and over, but you can’t reuse the same moments of time." (so make the most of them) http://thecodelesscode.com/case/234 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/234 "TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE/The code beside persisting to the last—/as permanent as aught upon this sphere—"
- pixl97 6y ago
  With this said, the world is very small, but space is very large. Immorality would make the exploration of space and extra solar planets a workable idea.
jamesjyu 6y ago
Shelly Kagan wrote a great introduction to the philosophy of death [1]. It directly addresses many of the OP's arguments, and, it persuaded me that it's not a black and white issue (ie. immortality = ultimate good) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Death-Open-Courses-Shelly-Kagan/dp/0300180845 https://www.amazon.com/Death-Open-Courses-Shelly-Kagan/dp/03...
null_deref 6y ago
I'm happy that I'm going to die eventually, I think death provides great opportunity for new morals and ideas to take place. I'm very happy to live in country where slavery doesn't exist and women have rights, I wouldn't want to live with the people that supported the opposite of those things. For example, what would've happen if the Nazis won, and Hitler would still be alive? I also recognize my descendants will look at my decision to eat natural meat (that wasn't grown in a lab) with contempt. I just want to live my hundred years happily, and then make a room for better ideas and morals (I know I won't feel this way near the end of my life, but this is the right way).
ailac 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory
mcguire 6y ago
As for me, I'm not so in love with myself or the world that the idea of immortality sounds even moderately appealing. Spending eternity in the company of immortal people? Bleah.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Immortality in any practical sense of the word does not mean eternal life. Even if we have fountain-of-youth-type medicine, people are still going to get run over by buses.
  - c22 6y ago
    Honestly the bus problem sounds easier to solve than the fountain of youth thing.
POiNTx 6y ago
Not following all arguments of the author, but do agree with the main theme. I'd rather live than not live. On the same topic, this is a great read: https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
- xtracto 6y ago
  I have ruminated about the same topic as the author on immortality, society and children. My take is that as a society we may at some point establish a system where people can decide between a) Living forever and b) Have children. In Biology there is this principle that all living organisms push to remain either by longevity or reproduction. We humans have gotten very good at longevity and if you think about it as a society we are focusing on that path. Now with the COVID19 event, I have thought that, if the same serious focused research effort, time and money was put by humanity on aging/degeneration/death related issues, we could have amazing progress in very little time. But for some reason showing relevant ads and paying faster is more important. Unfortunately we are focusing on "living faster" instead of "living more".
Foxmilk 6y ago
Without trying to imply any criticism of the life extension movement, when I read about arguments in support of technological immortality, they usually rest of the notion that death is a bad thing. Which seems intuitive. But I frequently wonder to myself: why is life preferable to death? Obviously we're all been programmed through evolution to fear and avoid death, since if we didn't we wouldn't be here reading this thread. Our entire society, all human society, revolves around avoiding death in nearly all circumstances. And with the invention of religion even death isn't really 'death.' But the preference of being alive over being dead still seems arbitrary to me. In the same way it seems odd to believe that water is preferable to ice. People may argue that giving the people the choice of immortality lessens the suffering associated with dying. But what about the suffering associated with living? To be alive is to suffer, you can't suffer if you're dead. Perhaps if we really want to reduce suffering human extinction is our best bet. I also feel like when most people imagine technological immortality they imagine it is 'them' that remains alive for hundreds of years, which involves a continuous static self that I'm skeptical of. I already change so much from year to year, it's hard to imagine that this body in a decade will be 'me'. And a hundred years? Maybe that future person would have some of my memories, but they'd be so different that I might as well be dead anyway. What if tomorrow somebody offered you a lifetime supply of one of two pills. One pill will prevent you from aging, you will be functionally immortal until you are killed by some other circumstance (like murder or an accident). The other pill will completely remove your fear of death, or the death of your loved ones. You won't become suicidal or take irrational risks, you'll just be as zen as this guy: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c_self-immolation.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Th%C3%AD... Which pill would reduce suffering more in your life?
- knodi123 6y ago
  From a certain point of view, we're all biological machines designed to spread life, and the reason we want to be alive is because the creatures who didn't, didn't fight hard enough to get here today. So from that point of view, sure - choosing to be alive for as long as possible is about as meaningful as trying to get the highest score on an arcade game. So sure, a person ought to be free to step off of the biological treadmill and come up with their own goal and purpose. But what alternate purpose do you propose? I've come up with quite a few that appeal to me, and for all of the ones I like, living longer is still beneficial.
deleted 6y ago
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grishka 6y ago
Didn't expect to see this here. Anyway, if anyone has any questions... Also I gotta find a better CMS for that blog. And ditch Disqus because it was bought by an ad company.
1penny42cents 6y ago
This argument is only valid from an egocentric perspective. It's like saying when you close your eyes, the world ceases to exist because you can't see it. I want my loved ones to be happy when my eyes are closed, as much as I want them to be alive and well when I die. There is something left behind.
- thefounder 6y ago
  >> I want my loved ones to be happy when my eyes are closed Well, they will die too so they won't do any better..or even worse they will die before you.
  - 1penny42cents 6y ago
    A song isn't worthless because it ends. The value of a life is more than its end result.
    - thefounder 6y ago
      Well if the song dies/it's lost it's pretty much worthless.
      - 1penny42cents 6y ago
        I don't think anyone really evaluates a song on whether they think it'll survive the lifespan of the universe. It's a very narrow definition of value.
        thefounder 6y ago
        There would be no song to evaluate once it dies/is forgotten. Of course it could have some value for the people that heard it but that values goes to zero once they die as well.

30 points by notpushkin 6y ago

"a modern human because he can adapt to anything himself, and do so a billion times faster and more efficiently. People are going to the space because they’ve invented rockets and space suits" so, is this what you believe here on HN? genuinely curious.

ben_w 6y ago
We are diverse. Myself? This blog entry reads kinda like the Wiccan self-help books I was into in a big way as a teenager and no longer care for. I hope to live long enough to benefit from SENS. I’m planning as if I don’t, because I have no control over which reality I will face and doing what I’m doing has the best expected utility given that uncertainty. Then there’s the limits of any plausible form of immortality: While the idea of being part of a starlifting project to extend the lifespan of Sol by a factor of a thousand (and of being able to enjoy the benefits of that project ten trillion years from now) appeals greatly, curing ageing and all disease — leaving only injuries both accidental and malicious as causes of death — still leaves humans with a half-life of something like 800 to 1200 years. Give us mind-backups (which also appeal to me, but less so when I consider the likelihood of misuse) and you still have to consider the radical change in what it means to be over such timescales. I don’t know what the future will bring, and I will plan for all too short a season, even though I will embrace life extension and do what I can to stay around for as long as I can.

maria_weber23 6y ago

Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't even know where to start. > If I’m going to cease to exist, it doesn’t matter what would be in a world without me. Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone else? > children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15 years. For what? For nothing, just because. Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper bots". I am assuming he is a he, because a women would never say these things... I don't know in what world you live in to think of children this way. Have you ever played with a child or seen it grow up? This is atrocious. Seriously man, get help or something, this almost borders on psychopath level of apathy. > (Children, again) It’s like a new branch in a version control system, if you know what I mean. Okay I am out. You really should get help. Definitely. > So no, children are not our immortality. They are the best way to kill time (and eventually yourself). Yep... Totally get it. Obviously children are not our immortality. Are they the best way to kill time? I mean if you are a robot, that's probably true. > We’ve already superseded the evolution, so we don’t actually need it any more. We are far away from that. Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection. And yet, we still can't live forever and we can't fix the common cold. Good luck to our species. > The nature isn’t our friend. It’s our enemy. Okay :D. Just dig yourself a concrete hole and live in there from bottles of Soylent and see what happens. There are tons of studies who show you how important a connection to nature is for the human body and mind, but well... > The meaning of life is to keep on living. Yeah, that's maybe the only thing I can agree with in this "text" or whatever it is. But it definitely doesn't follow from the brainfarts that came before. I am now actually pitying the coworkers of this person and actually anybody he interacts with, if any. Look, there is only one thing that differentiates humans from robots. It is that humans are nothing like you want to make them in your article. If humans were like you, I would wish this race would get replaced by actual robots asap, because at least then, there is an excuse for behaving the way you do.

airocker 6y ago
Haha, same thought. I agree with the evolution bit though. But if all humans decide to not have children, machines are not smart enough to keep evolving themselves yet or in the near future.
- amarant 6y ago
  There was an ai at Google that designed ai for specific purposes better than the human engineers. Doesn't seem that far off to me! https://futurism.com/google-artificial-intelligence-built-ai https://futurism.com/google-artificial-intelligence-built-ai
ben_w 6y ago
Broadly agree except > Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection Is it? I’ve not heard any serious claim of deterioration before.
Retric 6y ago
> because we managed to eliminate natural selection. Evolution is alive and well. Drunk driving for example kills young people. Disease similarly kills plenty of people to kick evolution into action. Suicide is tragic enough people don’t think of it as evolutionary pressure, but dead is dead. Etc. Etc. It’s not as obvious as dealing with actual lions, but the developed world is well below the replacement rate. That’s some serious evolutionary pressure.
- pixl97 6y ago
  The largest group of drunk driving deaths is 25-35 so already I'm not sure how much of an affect that is.
  - Retric 6y ago
    First what matters is the sum of all deaths by a specific age not deaths at a specific age. Anyway, the average age of fathers in the US is 31. Men over the age of 40 make up 9% of all fathers. So, dying at 30 or even 40 is directly meaningful from an evolutionary standpoint. Further, losing parents is a significant issue.

XiJInPaddington 6y ago

I would give so much to live in a society where people like Aubrey de Gray are heroes like Elon Musk is in ours. The fact that people die does not have to be immutable fate. We look back at people seeking the fountain of youth or the philosophers stone with sneering contempt but at least they had the right goal. Our acquiescence of death is the greatest tragedy ever and collectively we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

kiba 6y ago
Sneering contempt because it's currently impossible, and we built up all sort of cultural artifacts to dissuade people from doing or coping mechanism with the fact that immortality isn't possible. The Epic of Gilgamesh(you should listen to it once) is one of our first written story which basically state this opinion about immortality.
rayiner 6y ago
Immortality would be spitting in the face of humanity. A race of immortals has no need) or very little need) for children. Such a society would be joyless and without vitality, without the “firsts” that happen only once in a lifetime no matter how long you live. People imagine that life extension would mean that people would have time to see the world, to read every book, etc. But that’s not what makes most people happy. Most people won’t read Shakespeare no matter how long they live. Immortality would condemn your average person to a pretty awful existence.
- kiba 6y ago
  Excuse me? Lot of people enjoyed life without having children.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    It’s not about individuals having children, but a society that collectively has few to no children. 9 out of 10 people age 45+, if they had to do it all again, would have had children: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp.... Only 1 in 10 wouldn’t have had kids if they had to do it over. Immortality would universalize the experience of the 10% to the other 90% of the population.

malthejorgensen 6y ago

The first part rings dangerously close to solipsism in my ears, and once you’re there nothing much matters. Just trash the planet, use people and move on. Cause once you’re dead it doesn’t matter? I might be wrong but you can’t build a civilization in that way. Second thing is that immortality creates conservatism. Old age does too, but it seems to me immortality over-indexes self-preservation over progress of civilization, where the former is just slightly less of a concern for the individual when lifetimes are as short as they are now.

k__ 6y ago
No, because if you want to live forever, you can't trash the planet. You got to keep nature in check as long as possible.
majewsky 6y ago
> immortality creates conservatism I want to refute this, but I have to back up a bit first. The late Frank Schirrmacher (a German journalist and essayist who died in 2014) argued that German politics is getting more conservative over time because of demographics. Large-scale reforms or revolutions typically cause less prosperity in the short term (as societal institutions get rebuilt and investments in future institutions are required) and higher prosperity in the long term. That's a bargain that works well for young people: They get to reap the benefits for a long time and thus can tolerate austerity in the short term, but from the POV of an old person (e.g. age 60+), they get all the troubles and none of the benefits. Hence an older society is a more conservative society. In other words, a significant part of conservatism [1] is caused by people knowing that they will die soonish (say, within the next 10-20 years) and therefore deciding that the best way to ensure prosperity within these remaining years is to defend the status quo as fiercely as possible. Immortality would fix this behavior, bringing personal incentives more in line with the incentives of society as a whole. [1] The other part of conservatism can be attributed to people genuinely being unable to imagine a better society than the one they live in or genuinely not believing a better society to be attainable (whether justified or not). As far as I can see, that part of conservatism would be largely unaffected by the availability of immortality.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

This is very very stupid. I mean it: stupid. The act of planning is not about the future, it’s about the present. I haven’t experienced the future yet, so it has no value to me. But a chained sequence of events that have a certain likelihood of occurring does have value to me now in the form of the expectation (which I experience today) of the outcome. The author also presumes no one can value states of the world except insofar as they are directly, materially experiencing that state of the world, but this is wrong. For example, I’ve never visited Australia, but I would value a state of the world where Australian cryptography laws and email surveillance laws are reformed. I get value just from the concept of that state of the world. I suppose it’s similar to getting value from consuming a fictional work of art - I experience the concept of it, but it doesn’t materially exist in my presence. I don’t benefit from it (say, like an Australian citizen would), but I benefit from the concept of it and associated probabilities of the world changing to a certain state. So if I am on my death bed with a special button laid out in front of me, which if pressed will automatically cause all Australian politicians’ pants to fall down until they vote to reform cryptography laws, and I believe there’s high probability the button would work and the embarrassment would work, then my impending death should not make me indifferent to pressing the button. With those precious few moments of life, I am experiencing something materially of value (a chained sequence of cause & effect with high probability to lead to a state of the world I value). The world I am in contains aspects of value I can experience that are functions of sequences of events leading to worlds I am not in. There’s nothing irrational, non-utilitarian or inconsistent about this.

darkerside 6y ago

Is there nothing worth dying for?

Tenoke 6y ago
Maybe there is but I doubt you'd call the reasons why the majority of people die as something that's 'worth it'.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Just trying to logically demonstrate the problem with solipsism

thret 6y ago

I do agree with this thesis in the sense that leaving an inheritance has no benefit to you. I've tried to explain to people that life insurance is a waste of money for this very reason but it is hard to put into words. I think they are undervaluing procreation though. You should do it because it makes you happy - I have never met a parent who regretted having children.

amarant 6y ago
I've never met a parent tho didn't regret having children! I've also never met I've who would admit to regretting it openly. Now ask them if they would recommend it for you, and they'll spill the beans for you...
- pixl97 6y ago
  I'll have to say your experience is an anecdote and not data. I've met parents that were regretful of having children, but I have meet people who's only regret is they did not have more children than they did. You may live in an environment where you have a limited set differing world experiences, keep that in mind when making any important decisions.
  - gwn7 6y ago
    > your experience is an anecdote Yes, all personal experiences are anecdotes. That's by definition. > your experience is an anecdote and not data As if there is something wrong with sharing anecdotes in a forum like this. This is not a scientific journal. > I've met parents that were regretful of having children, but I have meet people who's only regret is they did not have more children than they did. "Your experience is an anecdote, and you shouldn't share anecdotes here, but here's an anecdote from me to counter your anecdote" > You may live in an environment where you have a limited set differing world experiences, All they did was to acknowledge the existence of a fact they experienced personally. They don't have to see the whole world to do that. This sounds patronising. Maybe it's you who live in an environment where you have a limited set of differing world experiences? Have you never met anybody who regretted having children? How can you even believe that everyone who had children are happy with that decision, and have no regrets? I won't start with my own anecdotes, but there are many.

majkinetor 6y ago

> For what? For nothing, just because. Don’t seek a rational explanation, you won’t find it. It doesn’t exist. Having a child is type of experience and commitment that has no parallel in any domain of life. It shapes you in certain ways if you are devoted to it. I want to be that type of person because I recognize some qualities that I admire (like being way less self-centric). My body is designed so that it can do this. Hence, not having children is against the design. Its like using oven as newspaper holder - nothing wrong with that, but using oven by design is something else which you can't really describe to non-oven people who never tasted cooked dishes. However, it takes time and there are number of responsibilities involved and there are huge number of people who think its just waste of time when they can simply go burger king or avoid eating at all until they must. That is not nothing. Yes, it can go bad, like anything else in life. You can die in fire using oven too. I think this is rational explanation. So called "Socratic procreation" (in short, where your procreate via recognized work/ideas instead of sexual act) on the other hand, is IMO meaningless (and maybe even compensation) for the very reasons mentioned in the blog post. That said, I do want to have a health span (not life span) as long as possible and that has nothing to do with all of this. I can freeze my head in a jar but that doesn't really count as health (while it could be counted as life).

kiba 6y ago
Your body isn't designed to do anything. We are like viruses in the sense of whatever works, works. While folks who don't reproduce are summarily eliminated from the gene pool. Not because they don't have value, but because they don't 'work'. The fact that you find having children fulfilling is about you, not about anybody else.
- runsWphotons 6y ago
  Viruses are designed to infect, multiply and spread. Also humans are not viruses. I know that isn't what you meant since you specified "in the sense that...". But this kind of analogy seems to me to lead to bad thinking.
  - kiba 6y ago

spicyramen 6y ago

Hard to follow for me and depressing at the same time

deleted 6y ago

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syrrim 6y ago

People treat happiness as a good unto itself. Why? "People like being happy"? That's circular. "There's no other point to life"? So? Desire for immortality reads as a cope. You have picked a goal in life that is truly pointless. You recognize that. You therefore want to compensate by trying to get as much of it as you can. Unfortunately, you can't compensate for pointlessness with volume. (Just as you can't compensate for losing money on each sale with volume). If you pursue something worthwhile, then you need precisely however much time it takes to do that thing, then you're done. You won't reach the end and still feel anguish at having no time left. I see pursuit of immortality as deeply immoral. There are other human beings waiting to be born into the world. We have limited space and resources, capable of supporting a certain maximum number of people at a time. You want to take as much of that time and space for yourself, even at the cost of preventing others from being born. This frequently coming from supposed altruists. Cryonics is similarly deplorable. You, like everyone who came before you, are going to die. But right before you die, you are going to have your body frozen in time, at the moment before your death. Then you are going to demand that the people of the future, who themselves face the inevitability of death, unfreeze you and extend your life, rather than bringing their own children into the world. Of course, if we look at it from the other perspective, immortality is not only currently achievable but trivial. And, furthermore, it costs your ancestors nothing. The trick is to perceive the universe as being made up of little cells of spacetime. You're goal is to put something into one of those cells. Once you've done so, it will stay there for the rest of all eternity. In fact, you do this every day (every instant), so there is no trouble in putting things in these spacetime cells. Rather, the trouble is deciding what to put in them. Naturally, if they are going to last for the rest of all eternity, you ought to pick something pretty special to go in them. https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf (section 10) "In complexity theory, the difference between space and time manifests itself in the straightforward fact that you can reuse the same memory cells over and over, but you can’t reuse the same moments of time." (so make the most of them) http://thecodelesscode.com/case/234 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/234 "TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE/The code beside persisting to the last—/as permanent as aught upon this sphere—"

pixl97 6y ago
With this said, the world is very small, but space is very large. Immorality would make the exploration of space and extra solar planets a workable idea.

jamesjyu 6y ago

Shelly Kagan wrote a great introduction to the philosophy of death [1]. It directly addresses many of the OP's arguments, and, it persuaded me that it's not a black and white issue (ie. immortality = ultimate good) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Death-Open-Courses-Shelly-Kagan/dp/0300180845 https://www.amazon.com/Death-Open-Courses-Shelly-Kagan/dp/03...

null_deref 6y ago

I'm happy that I'm going to die eventually, I think death provides great opportunity for new morals and ideas to take place. I'm very happy to live in country where slavery doesn't exist and women have rights, I wouldn't want to live with the people that supported the opposite of those things. For example, what would've happen if the Nazis won, and Hitler would still be alive? I also recognize my descendants will look at my decision to eat natural meat (that wasn't grown in a lab) with contempt. I just want to live my hundred years happily, and then make a room for better ideas and morals (I know I won't feel this way near the end of my life, but this is the right way).

ailac 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

mcguire 6y ago

As for me, I'm not so in love with myself or the world that the idea of immortality sounds even moderately appealing. Spending eternity in the company of immortal people? Bleah.

majewsky 6y ago
Immortality in any practical sense of the word does not mean eternal life. Even if we have fountain-of-youth-type medicine, people are still going to get run over by buses.
- c22 6y ago
  Honestly the bus problem sounds easier to solve than the fountain of youth thing.

POiNTx 6y ago

Not following all arguments of the author, but do agree with the main theme. I'd rather live than not live. On the same topic, this is a great read: https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

xtracto 6y ago
I have ruminated about the same topic as the author on immortality, society and children. My take is that as a society we may at some point establish a system where people can decide between a) Living forever and b) Have children. In Biology there is this principle that all living organisms push to remain either by longevity or reproduction. We humans have gotten very good at longevity and if you think about it as a society we are focusing on that path. Now with the COVID19 event, I have thought that, if the same serious focused research effort, time and money was put by humanity on aging/degeneration/death related issues, we could have amazing progress in very little time. But for some reason showing relevant ads and paying faster is more important. Unfortunately we are focusing on "living faster" instead of "living more".

Foxmilk 6y ago

Without trying to imply any criticism of the life extension movement, when I read about arguments in support of technological immortality, they usually rest of the notion that death is a bad thing. Which seems intuitive. But I frequently wonder to myself: why is life preferable to death? Obviously we're all been programmed through evolution to fear and avoid death, since if we didn't we wouldn't be here reading this thread. Our entire society, all human society, revolves around avoiding death in nearly all circumstances. And with the invention of religion even death isn't really 'death.' But the preference of being alive over being dead still seems arbitrary to me. In the same way it seems odd to believe that water is preferable to ice. People may argue that giving the people the choice of immortality lessens the suffering associated with dying. But what about the suffering associated with living? To be alive is to suffer, you can't suffer if you're dead. Perhaps if we really want to reduce suffering human extinction is our best bet. I also feel like when most people imagine technological immortality they imagine it is 'them' that remains alive for hundreds of years, which involves a continuous static self that I'm skeptical of. I already change so much from year to year, it's hard to imagine that this body in a decade will be 'me'. And a hundred years? Maybe that future person would have some of my memories, but they'd be so different that I might as well be dead anyway. What if tomorrow somebody offered you a lifetime supply of one of two pills. One pill will prevent you from aging, you will be functionally immortal until you are killed by some other circumstance (like murder or an accident). The other pill will completely remove your fear of death, or the death of your loved ones. You won't become suicidal or take irrational risks, you'll just be as zen as this guy: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c_self-immolation.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Th%C3%AD... Which pill would reduce suffering more in your life?

knodi123 6y ago
From a certain point of view, we're all biological machines designed to spread life, and the reason we want to be alive is because the creatures who didn't, didn't fight hard enough to get here today. So from that point of view, sure - choosing to be alive for as long as possible is about as meaningful as trying to get the highest score on an arcade game. So sure, a person ought to be free to step off of the biological treadmill and come up with their own goal and purpose. But what alternate purpose do you propose? I've come up with quite a few that appeal to me, and for all of the ones I like, living longer is still beneficial.

deleted 6y ago

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grishka 6y ago

Didn't expect to see this here. Anyway, if anyone has any questions... Also I gotta find a better CMS for that blog. And ditch Disqus because it was bought by an ad company.

1penny42cents 6y ago

This argument is only valid from an egocentric perspective. It's like saying when you close your eyes, the world ceases to exist because you can't see it. I want my loved ones to be happy when my eyes are closed, as much as I want them to be alive and well when I die. There is something left behind.

thefounder 6y ago
>> I want my loved ones to be happy when my eyes are closed Well, they will die too so they won't do any better..or even worse they will die before you.
- 1penny42cents 6y ago
  A song isn't worthless because it ends. The value of a life is more than its end result.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    Well if the song dies/it's lost it's pretty much worthless.
    - 1penny42cents 6y ago
      I don't think anyone really evaluates a song on whether they think it'll survive the lifespan of the universe. It's a very narrow definition of value.
      - thefounder 6y ago
        There would be no song to evaluate once it dies/is forgotten. Of course it could have some value for the people that heard it but that values goes to zero once they die as well.