4 ms·

What do you mean?

orangecat 15y ago
Death is not good; it is very bad. If given the opportunity to live "forever" (and not age), you'd take it. In a world without death, nobody would think introducing it was a good idea. But because we currently can't do anything about it, we try to tell ourselves it's a good thing.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Yeah, but without death the whole world would be filled to the brim with protobacteria, and none of us complex life forms would ever have had room to exist.
  - danssig 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure he's talking about death of people. I'm sure he gets the same satisfied smile smashing a mosquito that the rest of us do.
- wtallis 15y ago
  That's only cognitive dissonance if you're hopelessly egocentric. Death is obviously bad for you as an individual, but is crucial to the long-term survival on a species. Without death, you can't have evolution or adaptability. The only thing wrong here are the people responding with the fallacy of composition.
  - orangecat 15y ago
    Death is obviously bad for you as an individual, but is crucial to the long-term survival on a species. Without death, you can't have evolution or adaptability. Once a species has the intelligence and technology to eliminate death, they'll be able to evolve and adapt themselves far more effectively than evolution via natural selection.
  - icandoitbetter 15y ago
    I cannot even begin to conceive the kind of confusion that has legitimized the "species over the individual" narrative. Just because something is natural doesn't mean that it's good. If you consider it "hopelessly egocentric" to think of death as a bad, bad thing since it's necessary for natural selection, do you also consider it ethically acceptable to kill an individual once he has stopped procreating, since he's no longer relevant to the evolutionary game?
    - elemenohpee 15y ago
      The species over the individual "narrative" exists because it is a fact of evolution. Life is a pattern of self-replication, and it is at the level of the gene that natural selection works to make this pattern more robust. The whole concept of having an individual "over" a species is so quaintly human. The universe, and the physical processes within it that are life, have no concern for such silly concepts. To put so much stock into the individual (and such people are always really talking about themselves), is completely egocentric. We tell ourselves stories about how important and special we are to validate our own existences, and that's fine, it makes some of us feel better. But we ignore the macro-processes that even allowed our existences at our own peril. Guess what, with no species, there are no individuals to glorify. >do you also consider it ethically acceptable to kill an individual once he has stopped procreating, since he's no longer relevant to the evolutionary game? The evolutionary game is much more complicated than you imagine it to be. Humans have evolved to be social animals. Someone who is too old to procreate can still watch after young, pass knowledge on to them, etc., which increases their fitness. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding, you have no reason to be so confident in such matters.
      - Udo 15y ago
        Evolution is a vehicle for genes, bodies are just incidental to this process. We are, however, more than bodies that breed genes. We are persons, we have minds. We have developed into something that goes beyond the substrate from which we came and we owe it to ourselves to some day outgrow the need for that substrate completely. Imagine what our minds could do if they had centuries to develop. Imagine what our culture could be like if we didn't have to start from scratch every 70 years. Imagine a society without loss and scarcity. I know it's not an idea that appeals to a lot of people, but it does appeal to me. And I do believe it's an inevitable next step. In the end, it doesn't matter what most people think of this idea. It's not a development that the majority of humanity has to sign off on - we'll just move along without you, no harm done.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    I don't care about some dreamy ideal of evolution or adaptability so much that I would choose to die for it. [Edit for more substance: you imply evolution is driving humanity towards some 'good' destination, such that more evolution is better. This isn't how evolution works.]
    - wtallis 15y ago
      "you imply evolution is driving humanity towards some 'good' destination" No. All I'm implying is that humanity, in its current form, cannot survive all possible natural threats to its existence. We're still competing with other species, and we're still vulnerable to things like the effects of climate change, so if we completely stop evolving, it's likely that in only a few thousand years, we'll be completely dependent on our technology for survival.
      - Jach 15y ago
        I'm trying to understand what your view of evolution is if you think we're going to be significantly different in a few thousand years given we stopped all technological process today and let "nature take its course", or if you think we can survive things like climate change without using our intelligence and technology (perhaps it will even be necessary to augment both). Evolution is slow, evolution is dumb, evolution isn't going to magically make us more likely to survive threats to our existence. You would rather subject yourself to such a blind, dumb, uncaring process, than a future product, perhaps itself intelligent, of our own intelligence that outclasses a natural evolutionary process in every way? Do you think evolution is going to magically get our species off this planet should an asteroid wander this way, or in the future when the Sun dies? Our long-term survival is completely dependent on our technology already. I would be very surprised and disappointed if our technological processes in a mere hundred years are not more robust and better than evolutionary equivalents--indeed we can already do many things evolution could never do itself, the last big step is doing that more on the micro scale. Work on that has already begun, it's pretty exciting to look at it. E. glowli is just the very beginning.
      - jodrellblank 15y ago
        You're still doing it. When you say "We're still competing with other species, and we're still vulnerable to things like the effects of climate change, so if we completely stop evolving", what you imply is that if we keep evolving, we will improve until we can survive climate change and outcompete other species. Again, that's not how it works - dinosaurs didn't evolve to be meteor resistant, and carrying on evolving could as well lead to our extinction as to our saving, or indeed to our losing intelligence and becoming a niche species again. And that's aside from the fact that even with technological immortality, we'd still have people dieing and being created, and evolution will still be happening - it can't not-happen.
  - sdrinf 15y ago
    This madness has to stop.
  - zasz 15y ago
    Uh...if every member of a species happened to be immortal, that species would be the most successful species ever. Natural selection is all about getting rid of individuals who can't hack it. An individual who can't die is clearly one that can hack it, and is perfectly adapted to all situations.
  - mannicken 15y ago
    Obviously. From what I know, ego is created by memories from a subjective experience. Death is nothing but destruction of memories. Some of the memories and experiences are selected and stored in global consciousness (like art/writing/design/etc). Same thing as death would probably happen if all your memory were to suddenly become unavailable within a context of staying awake as a physical body. We're all in linked system (your memories come from others, your ego is build from global consciousness + the context of your physical body) so "death" as in the end of phenomen of consciousness is possible but hardly achievable. Even if we kill every living being on earth, who's to say consciousness won't recreate again or it hasn't already. I'll come back to this at the end. What's funny is memories are also re-created and retouched when we recall them. The whole thing is very complex and when people say they 'know for sure' something about life/death it irritates the hell out of me. Individual death isn't bad or good. Death just is. It's more fluid and complex than bad or good. Not to mention "dead/alive" itself are fluid concepts. People choose to interpret death as good or bad because people are idiots. If death was ultimately bad people wouldn't commit suicide all the time. If death was ultimately good people wouldn't apply so much effort to keep alive. People choose to think suicidals are by definition mentally ill also because people are idiots. If you're in a burning building, you most likely will jump out of the building committing suicide because the alternative (being burned alive) is much worse. Similar thing with a lot of suicides. My point is: people are naive idiots and we still have no idea what exactly happens after death, and what exactly is 'after' or before. The idiocy of people when it comes to the subject of death figuratively speaking makes me want to kill myself. The comforting thing is, within a context of individual consciousness you're pretty much fucking immortal. Whatever happens outside of the context of functioning consciousness should really be none of your concern. It is impossible to "feel dead". "When I'm alive death isn't here, when I'm dead I won't be there to witness it".
- paganel 15y ago
  > Death is not good; it is very bad. If given the opportunity to live "forever" (and not age), you'd take it. In a world without death, nobody would think introducing it was a good idea. But because we currently can't do anything about it, we try to tell ourselves it's a good thing. That doesn't explain self-sacrifice. And, honestly, I wouldn't want to live an "eternal" life when everybody I love and know around me would be dead at some point or another. Maybe this is also why I've come to see Christianity's "promise" of eternal life as ridiculous and almost scary at times. As Seneca used to say, it doesn't matter how long you live, it's what you do with your life that matters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_%28Seneca%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_%28Seneca%29) """ The philosopher brings up many Stoic principles on the nature of time, namely that men waste much of it in meaningless pursuits. According to the essay, nature gives man enough time to do what is really important and the individual must allot it properly. """ And to finish in an even more pathetic tone, I don't think we should strive for living an eternal life, but rather do what Julius Caesar did when he realized that Alexander had already conquered the world by 30: weep, and then try to conquer the world by ourselves.
- equalarrow 15y ago
  Exactly. Longevity and maintenance are the key. The reason to want to live longer? One word: space. Living hundreds of years in good health will allow us all to become a space faring race. It will allow us to take the long view on interstellar travel, our species and relationships. I'm hoping to see that day and having Steve leave so early only solidifies the importance of longevity in my mind. Intelligence is not meant to die, it's meant to live. We accept death only because we have to and have been powerless to stop it. Technology is starting to change all that.

What do you mean?

Death is not good; it is very bad. If given the opportunity to live "forever" (and not age), you'd take it. In a world without death, nobody would think introducing it was a good idea. But because we currently can't do anything about it, we try to tell ourselves it's a good thing.

hugh3 15y ago
Yeah, but without death the whole world would be filled to the brim with protobacteria, and none of us complex life forms would ever have had room to exist.
- danssig 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure he's talking about death of people. I'm sure he gets the same satisfied smile smashing a mosquito that the rest of us do.
wtallis 15y ago
That's only cognitive dissonance if you're hopelessly egocentric. Death is obviously bad for you as an individual, but is crucial to the long-term survival on a species. Without death, you can't have evolution or adaptability. The only thing wrong here are the people responding with the fallacy of composition.
- orangecat 15y ago
  Death is obviously bad for you as an individual, but is crucial to the long-term survival on a species. Without death, you can't have evolution or adaptability. Once a species has the intelligence and technology to eliminate death, they'll be able to evolve and adapt themselves far more effectively than evolution via natural selection.
- icandoitbetter 15y ago
  I cannot even begin to conceive the kind of confusion that has legitimized the "species over the individual" narrative. Just because something is natural doesn't mean that it's good. If you consider it "hopelessly egocentric" to think of death as a bad, bad thing since it's necessary for natural selection, do you also consider it ethically acceptable to kill an individual once he has stopped procreating, since he's no longer relevant to the evolutionary game?
  - elemenohpee 15y ago
    The species over the individual "narrative" exists because it is a fact of evolution. Life is a pattern of self-replication, and it is at the level of the gene that natural selection works to make this pattern more robust. The whole concept of having an individual "over" a species is so quaintly human. The universe, and the physical processes within it that are life, have no concern for such silly concepts. To put so much stock into the individual (and such people are always really talking about themselves), is completely egocentric. We tell ourselves stories about how important and special we are to validate our own existences, and that's fine, it makes some of us feel better. But we ignore the macro-processes that even allowed our existences at our own peril. Guess what, with no species, there are no individuals to glorify. >do you also consider it ethically acceptable to kill an individual once he has stopped procreating, since he's no longer relevant to the evolutionary game? The evolutionary game is much more complicated than you imagine it to be. Humans have evolved to be social animals. Someone who is too old to procreate can still watch after young, pass knowledge on to them, etc., which increases their fitness. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding, you have no reason to be so confident in such matters.
    - Udo 15y ago
      Evolution is a vehicle for genes, bodies are just incidental to this process. We are, however, more than bodies that breed genes. We are persons, we have minds. We have developed into something that goes beyond the substrate from which we came and we owe it to ourselves to some day outgrow the need for that substrate completely. Imagine what our minds could do if they had centuries to develop. Imagine what our culture could be like if we didn't have to start from scratch every 70 years. Imagine a society without loss and scarcity. I know it's not an idea that appeals to a lot of people, but it does appeal to me. And I do believe it's an inevitable next step. In the end, it doesn't matter what most people think of this idea. It's not a development that the majority of humanity has to sign off on - we'll just move along without you, no harm done.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  I don't care about some dreamy ideal of evolution or adaptability so much that I would choose to die for it. [Edit for more substance: you imply evolution is driving humanity towards some 'good' destination, such that more evolution is better. This isn't how evolution works.]
  - wtallis 15y ago
    "you imply evolution is driving humanity towards some 'good' destination" No. All I'm implying is that humanity, in its current form, cannot survive all possible natural threats to its existence. We're still competing with other species, and we're still vulnerable to things like the effects of climate change, so if we completely stop evolving, it's likely that in only a few thousand years, we'll be completely dependent on our technology for survival.
    - Jach 15y ago
      I'm trying to understand what your view of evolution is if you think we're going to be significantly different in a few thousand years given we stopped all technological process today and let "nature take its course", or if you think we can survive things like climate change without using our intelligence and technology (perhaps it will even be necessary to augment both). Evolution is slow, evolution is dumb, evolution isn't going to magically make us more likely to survive threats to our existence. You would rather subject yourself to such a blind, dumb, uncaring process, than a future product, perhaps itself intelligent, of our own intelligence that outclasses a natural evolutionary process in every way? Do you think evolution is going to magically get our species off this planet should an asteroid wander this way, or in the future when the Sun dies? Our long-term survival is completely dependent on our technology already. I would be very surprised and disappointed if our technological processes in a mere hundred years are not more robust and better than evolutionary equivalents--indeed we can already do many things evolution could never do itself, the last big step is doing that more on the micro scale. Work on that has already begun, it's pretty exciting to look at it. E. glowli is just the very beginning.
    - jodrellblank 15y ago
      You're still doing it. When you say "We're still competing with other species, and we're still vulnerable to things like the effects of climate change, so if we completely stop evolving", what you imply is that if we keep evolving, we will improve until we can survive climate change and outcompete other species. Again, that's not how it works - dinosaurs didn't evolve to be meteor resistant, and carrying on evolving could as well lead to our extinction as to our saving, or indeed to our losing intelligence and becoming a niche species again. And that's aside from the fact that even with technological immortality, we'd still have people dieing and being created, and evolution will still be happening - it can't not-happen.
- sdrinf 15y ago
  This madness has to stop.
- zasz 15y ago
  Uh...if every member of a species happened to be immortal, that species would be the most successful species ever. Natural selection is all about getting rid of individuals who can't hack it. An individual who can't die is clearly one that can hack it, and is perfectly adapted to all situations.
- mannicken 15y ago
  Obviously. From what I know, ego is created by memories from a subjective experience. Death is nothing but destruction of memories. Some of the memories and experiences are selected and stored in global consciousness (like art/writing/design/etc). Same thing as death would probably happen if all your memory were to suddenly become unavailable within a context of staying awake as a physical body. We're all in linked system (your memories come from others, your ego is build from global consciousness + the context of your physical body) so "death" as in the end of phenomen of consciousness is possible but hardly achievable. Even if we kill every living being on earth, who's to say consciousness won't recreate again or it hasn't already. I'll come back to this at the end. What's funny is memories are also re-created and retouched when we recall them. The whole thing is very complex and when people say they 'know for sure' something about life/death it irritates the hell out of me. Individual death isn't bad or good. Death just is. It's more fluid and complex than bad or good. Not to mention "dead/alive" itself are fluid concepts. People choose to interpret death as good or bad because people are idiots. If death was ultimately bad people wouldn't commit suicide all the time. If death was ultimately good people wouldn't apply so much effort to keep alive. People choose to think suicidals are by definition mentally ill also because people are idiots. If you're in a burning building, you most likely will jump out of the building committing suicide because the alternative (being burned alive) is much worse. Similar thing with a lot of suicides. My point is: people are naive idiots and we still have no idea what exactly happens after death, and what exactly is 'after' or before. The idiocy of people when it comes to the subject of death figuratively speaking makes me want to kill myself. The comforting thing is, within a context of individual consciousness you're pretty much fucking immortal. Whatever happens outside of the context of functioning consciousness should really be none of your concern. It is impossible to "feel dead". "When I'm alive death isn't here, when I'm dead I won't be there to witness it".
paganel 15y ago
> Death is not good; it is very bad. If given the opportunity to live "forever" (and not age), you'd take it. In a world without death, nobody would think introducing it was a good idea. But because we currently can't do anything about it, we try to tell ourselves it's a good thing. That doesn't explain self-sacrifice. And, honestly, I wouldn't want to live an "eternal" life when everybody I love and know around me would be dead at some point or another. Maybe this is also why I've come to see Christianity's "promise" of eternal life as ridiculous and almost scary at times. As Seneca used to say, it doesn't matter how long you live, it's what you do with your life that matters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_%28Seneca%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_%28Seneca%29) """ The philosopher brings up many Stoic principles on the nature of time, namely that men waste much of it in meaningless pursuits. According to the essay, nature gives man enough time to do what is really important and the individual must allot it properly. """ And to finish in an even more pathetic tone, I don't think we should strive for living an eternal life, but rather do what Julius Caesar did when he realized that Alexander had already conquered the world by 30: weep, and then try to conquer the world by ourselves.
equalarrow 15y ago
Exactly. Longevity and maintenance are the key. The reason to want to live longer? One word: space. Living hundreds of years in good health will allow us all to become a space faring race. It will allow us to take the long view on interstellar travel, our species and relationships. I'm hoping to see that day and having Steve leave so early only solidifies the importance of longevity in my mind. Intelligence is not meant to die, it's meant to live. We accept death only because we have to and have been powerless to stop it. Technology is starting to change all that.