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Is that new? Humans have always planned how they die, and how it will affect those around them. Isn't that the point of a will, for instance?

grishka 6y ago
Idk, I just don't understand the meaning of a life that has an end, and thus "leaving something behind" makes no sense to me. Why leave something behind if the moment a person dies the entire universe ceases to exist for them?
- pizza 6y ago
  There are things worse than dying, similarly, there are things that are better than what can be experienced
- jlokier 6y ago
  It makes sense if you believe other people exist in a meaningful way similar to your own conscious existence. When you die, the universe doesn't cease to exist for them. So you are not leaving things behind for your own benefit. It's for other people. Conversely, if you believe the universe ceases to exist entirely when you die, you believe other people cease to exist too. In this case, perhaps the only consistent way to think of other people is that they are not like you when you are alive either. From a more down to Earth perspective, if I left the planet on a one-way interstellar FTL journey, confident I would never return and that there was no way to communicate with the people I left behind, even though it would be a relief in some ways and I'd stop caring about people left behind, I'd still want to arrange good things for some of them after my departure. Because I'm nice like that.
  - grishka 6y ago
    > From a more down to Earth perspective, if I left the planet on a one-way interstellar FTL journey, confident I would never return and that there was no way to communicate with the people I left behind, even though it would be a relief in some ways and I'd stop caring about people left behind, I'd still want to arrange good things for some of them after my departure. Because I'm nice like that. Well, you can't be so sure you'll never see them again and you'll never be able to communicate with them, because of scientific advances and such. The only truly irreversible thing that could happen to a human being is death itself. Everything else being reversible (or eventually reversible) is the nice part about being alive.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  Well, the universe doesn’t need me to keep on going, and it makes me happy while I’m alive that I can help my fellow humans out. That doesn’t really work out in a logical sense if you assume that people are purely self interested, but they aren’t, their behavior is optimized by evolution and self interest is only one of many complicated feelings that people have. I still share your optimism though that we might cure the diseases of aging, so that people do not suffer from slow decline.

grishka 6y ago

Idk, I just don't understand the meaning of a life that has an end, and thus "leaving something behind" makes no sense to me. Why leave something behind if the moment a person dies the entire universe ceases to exist for them?

pizza 6y ago
There are things worse than dying, similarly, there are things that are better than what can be experienced
jlokier 6y ago
It makes sense if you believe other people exist in a meaningful way similar to your own conscious existence. When you die, the universe doesn't cease to exist for them. So you are not leaving things behind for your own benefit. It's for other people. Conversely, if you believe the universe ceases to exist entirely when you die, you believe other people cease to exist too. In this case, perhaps the only consistent way to think of other people is that they are not like you when you are alive either. From a more down to Earth perspective, if I left the planet on a one-way interstellar FTL journey, confident I would never return and that there was no way to communicate with the people I left behind, even though it would be a relief in some ways and I'd stop caring about people left behind, I'd still want to arrange good things for some of them after my departure. Because I'm nice like that.
- grishka 6y ago
  > From a more down to Earth perspective, if I left the planet on a one-way interstellar FTL journey, confident I would never return and that there was no way to communicate with the people I left behind, even though it would be a relief in some ways and I'd stop caring about people left behind, I'd still want to arrange good things for some of them after my departure. Because I'm nice like that. Well, you can't be so sure you'll never see them again and you'll never be able to communicate with them, because of scientific advances and such. The only truly irreversible thing that could happen to a human being is death itself. Everything else being reversible (or eventually reversible) is the nice part about being alive.
fallingfrog 5y ago
Well, the universe doesn’t need me to keep on going, and it makes me happy while I’m alive that I can help my fellow humans out. That doesn’t really work out in a logical sense if you assume that people are purely self interested, but they aren’t, their behavior is optimized by evolution and self interest is only one of many complicated feelings that people have. I still share your optimism though that we might cure the diseases of aging, so that people do not suffer from slow decline.