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The day we escape death will begin the descent into the longest dark age humanity will ever experience. Death is necessary to allow new ideas and change to be

by eezurr 5y ago

The day we escape death will begin the descent into the longest dark age humanity will ever experience. Death is necessary to allow new ideas and change to be brought into the world. Death is necessary to prevent wealth and power accumulating into fewer hands. Death is necessary for others to enjoy the right to bear and raise children. EDIT: 2 minutes go by and this comment has already been downvoted 3+ times. At least respond before you downvote.

pas 5y ago
Wtf is this deathcult bullshit. Maybe in 2A Jesusland death is the only option, but in other parts of the world there are taxes and proportional representation and euthanasia. Yes, there are problems, but saying that death (and more specifically aging with all of its shitty slow painful consequences) is great (okay, you said necessary), because it somehow "solves" other problems is a logical fallacy. Plus, "actually" aging is one of the things that causes inequality, because wealthy people live longer thanks to having access to better healthcare, food, lifestyle, etc.
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  I think parent comment is going along the lines "Altered Carbon" tv series ( and novels ) thread. For instance, if eternal life could be bought, the first one to buy it could be the richest man in the world. Parent is not happy with the idea of an inmortal ruler. In the mean time, I would like to stay younger for longer. And older people are still afraid of death, even if they are not healthy.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    More like, if eternal life can be bought, the first one to sell it would be the richest man in the world.
  - pas 5y ago
    > immortal ruler term limits. what I'm trying to say (besides that the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy is aweeeesome!) is that these problems are already here, and are already solvable. regular dictators consolidate their power in a 5-10 years. corporations/memes/ideologies/religions are already immortal. and so on, and so on. aging and death is basically a disease of the poor. the solution is not more aging/death, but less poverty.
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  Death is here for a good reason. There's the general fear of death that drives a significant portion of human morality. If we can't die, we don't fear risking doing things that would result in our own deaths, or the deaths of others. Suddenly we can inflict a lot more harm and give a lot less of a shit what people think, because what are they gonna do, put me in jail for 1,000 years? I'm just going to live for infinity after that... Aging is a significant source of perspective. As people age, the way they think about their lives change, the way they approach risk changes. Those changes in both thought process and lifestyle are probably one of the biggest contributors to how human societies work. We have probably never had a human society without aging people, so we don't know what a society without their influence would look like. If people continue to be born, we would eventually run out of space. At that point you reach a new form of political crisis: do you kill people to make space? Do you shuffle them off the planet in rudimentary space stations? Do wars over resource contention increase? Certainly different "seniority" would lead to new social classes. Death is a necessary part of evolution. If we eliminate death, we have to alter living people's genomes to respond to biological threats, mix up the gene pool, adapt to new problems and somehow try to predict unexpected ones. All of that is currently science fiction; we have no idea if we would get it right, and could end up basically destroying the species from hubris and ignorance. Nature has a pretty good handle on it. Cultures should change over time, and people need to change with those cultural changes, but it's basically impossible for individual humans to completely change their entire cultural makeup. Can you imagine if people today lived alongside people from 3,000 years ago? We would end up separated not just by nations, but by epochs. It would just further segregate people and cause tension. The world would be so much more complicated than it is today. Death is part of a process of cultural natural selection. It creates and changes and influences more than it destroys. Entire peoples are wiped out and new ones emerge, languages die and are born, knowledge is lost and created, practices are abandoned and instantiated. Shakespeare was dramatically influenced by death; it's a major plot point in basically all of his writings. Imagine if death simply didn't exist in his world.
jhatemyjob 5y ago
Death is still gonna happen, people will just kill each other
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  You know, Francisco Franco, the spanish dictator, died of old age. ( He suffered an infection and died ) He was smart and powerful enough to live a long life.
namrog84 5y ago
Society won't stay the same if we don't die from age induced problems. Lots of rules and laws will have to change. To say death is only option undercuts the potential for humans to change and become better. Throughout history there have been plenty of people in power and rule to see the errors of their ways and induce lasting real positive change. Sure there will be growing and transition pains but I for one welcome the impacts that human longevity will bring longer term.
speedcoder 5y ago
Hmm. Do you mean to imply an external Dorian Gray effect may happen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray? Wonder if there would be any other biological intra-cellular or inter-cellular Dorian Gray effects that may happen? Or, if this may really be a new free lunch.

by eezurr 5y ago

pas 5y ago

Wtf is this deathcult bullshit. Maybe in 2A Jesusland death is the only option, but in other parts of the world there are taxes and proportional representation and euthanasia. Yes, there are problems, but saying that death (and more specifically aging with all of its shitty slow painful consequences) is great (okay, you said necessary), because it somehow "solves" other problems is a logical fallacy. Plus, "actually" aging is one of the things that causes inequality, because wealthy people live longer thanks to having access to better healthcare, food, lifestyle, etc.

catlikesshrimp 5y ago
I think parent comment is going along the lines "Altered Carbon" tv series ( and novels ) thread. For instance, if eternal life could be bought, the first one to buy it could be the richest man in the world. Parent is not happy with the idea of an inmortal ruler. In the mean time, I would like to stay younger for longer. And older people are still afraid of death, even if they are not healthy.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  More like, if eternal life can be bought, the first one to sell it would be the richest man in the world.
- pas 5y ago
  > immortal ruler term limits. what I'm trying to say (besides that the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy is aweeeesome!) is that these problems are already here, and are already solvable. regular dictators consolidate their power in a 5-10 years. corporations/memes/ideologies/religions are already immortal. and so on, and so on. aging and death is basically a disease of the poor. the solution is not more aging/death, but less poverty.
throwaway984393 5y ago
Death is here for a good reason. There's the general fear of death that drives a significant portion of human morality. If we can't die, we don't fear risking doing things that would result in our own deaths, or the deaths of others. Suddenly we can inflict a lot more harm and give a lot less of a shit what people think, because what are they gonna do, put me in jail for 1,000 years? I'm just going to live for infinity after that... Aging is a significant source of perspective. As people age, the way they think about their lives change, the way they approach risk changes. Those changes in both thought process and lifestyle are probably one of the biggest contributors to how human societies work. We have probably never had a human society without aging people, so we don't know what a society without their influence would look like. If people continue to be born, we would eventually run out of space. At that point you reach a new form of political crisis: do you kill people to make space? Do you shuffle them off the planet in rudimentary space stations? Do wars over resource contention increase? Certainly different "seniority" would lead to new social classes. Death is a necessary part of evolution. If we eliminate death, we have to alter living people's genomes to respond to biological threats, mix up the gene pool, adapt to new problems and somehow try to predict unexpected ones. All of that is currently science fiction; we have no idea if we would get it right, and could end up basically destroying the species from hubris and ignorance. Nature has a pretty good handle on it. Cultures should change over time, and people need to change with those cultural changes, but it's basically impossible for individual humans to completely change their entire cultural makeup. Can you imagine if people today lived alongside people from 3,000 years ago? We would end up separated not just by nations, but by epochs. It would just further segregate people and cause tension. The world would be so much more complicated than it is today. Death is part of a process of cultural natural selection. It creates and changes and influences more than it destroys. Entire peoples are wiped out and new ones emerge, languages die and are born, knowledge is lost and created, practices are abandoned and instantiated. Shakespeare was dramatically influenced by death; it's a major plot point in basically all of his writings. Imagine if death simply didn't exist in his world.

jhatemyjob 5y ago

Death is still gonna happen, people will just kill each other

catlikesshrimp 5y ago
You know, Francisco Franco, the spanish dictator, died of old age. ( He suffered an infection and died ) He was smart and powerful enough to live a long life.

namrog84 5y ago

Society won't stay the same if we don't die from age induced problems. Lots of rules and laws will have to change. To say death is only option undercuts the potential for humans to change and become better. Throughout history there have been plenty of people in power and rule to see the errors of their ways and induce lasting real positive change. Sure there will be growing and transition pains but I for one welcome the impacts that human longevity will bring longer term.

speedcoder 5y ago

Hmm. Do you mean to imply an external Dorian Gray effect may happen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray? Wonder if there would be any other biological intra-cellular or inter-cellular Dorian Gray effects that may happen? Or, if this may really be a new free lunch.