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When you're healthy, living forever sounds great. When you've experienced a few minor illnesses and a bit of short-lived pain, such as a broken limb or two, li
by beloch 15y ago
When you're healthy, living forever sounds great.
When you've experienced a few minor illnesses and a bit of short-lived pain, such as a broken limb or two, living forever still sounds great.
I had a (thankfully temporary) condition that resulted in chronic pain for about a year. It wasn't terrible pain, but pain that never goes away wears you down in a way that horrible, but short-lived, pain simply doesn't. After a while you just want it to stop. Before this period in my life I was of the opinion that immortality was worth almost anything. Now I believe that quality of life is just as important, if not more so. I would not want to live forever if it involved even a small amount of chronic pain. I used to think a little pain would be a small price to pay. That was ignorance.
Jobs and Ritchie both died from diseases that probably gave them a good deal of chronic pain over the last years of their lives. I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them.
- true_religion 15y ago> I can completely understand why extending their lives was not desirable to them. I think its presumed that life extension would also come with improved health. What kills you is decline due to chronic conditions. Target that and stop the declined and you gain both long-life, and healthy life.
- beloch 15y agoThere are a lot of things that can cause chronic pain without threatening your life. We would have to learn how fix all of these non-life-threatening things in addition to what causes death, or everlasting life will lead to everlasting pain with absolute certainty.
- lsparrish 15y agoYou seem to be omitting reversible cryopreservation from the scenario. All you would need to do is freeze yourself until a cure is found for whatever is causing you pain. But this seems like a non-likely thought experiment scenario anyway -- I can't imagine being able to regenerate body parts and prevent aging from being lethal, yet being unable to comprehensively prevent pain.
- ks 15y agoI think this can be broken down into two problems. 1. Preventing / curing all causes of pain. 2. Changing how the body responds to pain. I think problem number 2 is easier to solve. The human body is a biological machine and I hink we will find better ways of handling pain than today. An example could be an implant in the brain that simply blocks the impulses.
- lsparrish 15y agoI do agree that quality of life is just as important if not more so. And yet I think I would put up with a lot of suffering for a fairly long time in exchange for a shot at being healthy for a much longer time later on. I'm not sure where those balance out. For a thousand years of youth? I'd definitely put up with the pain of dying of cancer for that (or so I say now). But that's just a thought experiment. No cryonicist expects to be revived in anything less than fully regenerated (or uploaded) condition. Reanimating into a painful and incurable half-life is unlikely, as you probably could not revive someone to begin with if you didn't have the ability to prevent that.