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Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the

Never understood the quest for immortality. We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Don’t fear the reaper.

ranUltra 4y ago
Four years ago, I moved to a different continent with a totally different culture. After four years, I love living here more than in my home country where I grew up. So your argument isn’t really convincing.
brnt 4y ago
I've lived as a stranger in a strange land and I regret returning 'home', whatever that means. Sounds like cryo is right up my alley! If it only worked...
- b1zguy 4y ago
  Can you please elaborate on why your regret returning home?
  - antonvs 4y ago
    I’m not the person you replied to, but for many of us “home” is not a first world or Western country. The opportunities there are much fewer, quality of life is lower in many tangible ways - do you like having reliable power, internet, mail/shipping, safe roads? Dangerous crime is a much more serious problem, and corruption is rife. Healthcare is subpar if you’re not wealthy. Education is generally poor, which has all sorts of consequences for society as a whole. There’s also the fact that after living elsewhere for many years, the home you go back to is not the same as the home you left.
  - brnt 4y ago
    Moving abroad and making some sort of life for yourself is two things: 1. a review of your preconceptions and a test for your ability to adapt, 2. if you stick it out, you may integrate new ways and viewpoints into who you are and what you think. When you then go back to people who are similar (because that's always going to be the case to some extent, even if locally the community feels and/or thinks itself diverse) you will frequently feel that others have not 'progressed' or are 'stuck' in those culturally determined ways. It's hard to share that growth with people that haven't done the same, which is I think why expats stick together, even when they're back. I moved between Western countries I should perhaps add.
progman32 4y ago
I'm no believer in immortality, but I find your argument unconvincing. People are removed from their childhood home all the time, immersed in a foreign culture. They survive. I'd certainly accept a sudden relocation to an unfamiliar foreign land vs. dying. And I'm certain that a hypothetical resurrected human wouldn't be the only one - what's to say these folks wouldn't form their own pocket of culture?
chrisfosterelli 4y ago
In case it's insightful, I've correspondingly never understood the common contentment with death. The world is an incredible place, and there's so much to experience and do. If I had the time there's hundreds of careers I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery. I think I could live a thousand lives with the people I care about and not be done. I've had to choose one life, and it's a nice one, but if it wasn't for some limit forced upon me, if it was really my choice, then there's a lot more I'd like to do. I suspect in hundreds or thousands of years we'll look back at age-related death culturally the same way we look at infant mortality during the medieval ages: commonly accepted as part of life at the time, but unnecessary and completely solvable in retrospective. I think fear is the wrong word per-say. If it's something I can't change, that's fine. But if there's an avenue to change it, even if unlikely, why not try?
- xlii 4y ago
  For a counter thought: while I absolutely agree with you in terms of richness of life, I don’t think pursuing endless life is a sound idea. As parent poster wrote, we like nostalgia, because we clutch to our experiences. We compare them instead of collecting it. On the other side the more we experience something the more we stall or get bored. Even with other people - with increase of lifespan we also increased number of divorces, lost connections etc. That doesn’t make us happier. One could argue that we, as humans, suffer more today from out deteriorating bodies, than people in medieval time, when it was shorter, and that we suffer more psychologically due to increased influx of information, global conscience and artificial constructs we build every day. Resources would also be an issue, so even if immortality would be obtainable it’d be either reserved for the richest or would divide people with almost impassable line splitting centuries of servitude and centuries of indulgence. So to answer your question - why not? Because it’ll bring suffer to many on many levels except for a blessed few and we should focus first on making life great for everyone present before trying to make it infinitely longer. Joking lightly (as subject is very deep) - it’s somewhat useful skill to know when to get off the stage.
  - Rubinsalamander 4y ago
    It would not only be for the rich. Healthcare cost are incredibly expensive especially later in live so governments have a strong inventive to provide it for everyone. Also people wont have to retire anymore (also great for government) The most expensive part about it would probably be research, but since every person on the planet is a potential user and there a big savings in Healthcare and Pension i don't see costs being a problem. Humans dont progress in terms of biological evolution anymore but instead technologically. The increased lifespan would allow scientist to master multiple fields which would be great for progress.
ramraj07 4y ago
I for one would like a bit more time. 200? Maybe 500? No one likely wants to be immortal but 80 or so seems criminally short for what our abilities are and how long it takes for us to find our calling.
- adastra22 4y ago
  I want to be immortal. If I ever tire of existence and achieve terminal boredom, I'll just use technology to forget (temporarily or permanently) some memories and experience them again anew. I'll see you all at the heat death of the universe.
  - ausbah 4y ago
    semi relevant user name ironically
    - adastra22 4y ago
      Not at all ironic or accidental.
  - terminal_d 4y ago
    If you like that premise, you'd like to read "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright. It's hard scifi.
    - adastra22 4y ago
      Thanks!
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  You may find this organization (working on extending healthy human lifespan) interesting. https://www.levf.org/ https://www.levf.org/ I'm not involved with that organization, but I find their work very interesting. As a backup plan, there's Alcor. https://www.alcor.org/ https://www.alcor.org/
causi 4y ago
If I don't want to die now why should I want to die later?
radu_floricica 4y ago
I've heard this sentiment occasionally and I've actually done some introspection about it. What's the earliest time of human history I'd have to be born in, to feel alien in our times? There's actually a surprising answer to this, and it's not even subjective: there is a lot more difference between my grandparent's house in the countryside 40 years ago and current times, than to pretty much any agricultural period. No running water, outhouse was... out, no TV. And in _their_ childhood it was even more barebones: no electricity, phone or radio, nor cars or trains or asphalt. So... would my grandparents feel alienated now? Hell no! My surviving grandma is complaining about constant pain and ailing vision, not that things are too strange. She needs somebody else to call me or show her pictures I send on whatsapp because she can't physically use a phone anymore, not because she can't adapt to it. There is some truth in what you're saying, but it's due to something we don't like to talk or think about: dementia. Not just Alzheimer, but dozens of ways the aging brain is deteriorating. Fix that, and suddenly you'll find out that old people aren't children anymore, and are perfectly capable of adapting to the new.
kelnos 4y ago
That's just an opinion, formed over centuries of humans trying to make peace with their mortality, because they believed it was inevitable. There's no inherent truth to your words; it's just a philosophy. I'm not really afraid of dying, per se, but as a sci-fi buff, I am deeply sad that there are amazing technological advancements that I will never get to see. Even if the world 300 years from now (assuming humans still exist by then) looks nothing like what any sci-fi author could have envisioned, it still bums me out that I won't get to see what that ends up being like. (And yes, I've considered the possibility that things could be much much worse than now in 300 years, at least for humans.) My only worry about this is that if I were "asleep" for 300 years, that "stranger in a strange land" bit could be very real, and I don't know that humans are well-equipped psychologically to deal with that kind of... dislocation. I'm not religious, and don't believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, or of anything after we die. So if I want to see the future, in any shape or form, life extension is the only way. I doubt medicine will solve aging and mortality in my lifetime, so even a moonshot like cryonics would likely be my only hope -- even such a remote hope -- of seeing the future. Not sure I'd actually go for it, though, but I get the appeal.
- microtonal 4y ago
  I used to have the same curiosity, but now I just want to see our daughter grow up and maybe get grandkids someday. Having a kid really changed my perspective in life.
- Rubinsalamander 4y ago
  Stranger in a strange land also sounds incredibly exciting to me. Funny how a con ist pro argument depending on your view point.
  - trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    You can have this now, no need to wait for death since the plot is mostly about culture, not technology. Seems to me that many die without even having scratched the surface of life. Of course, there is this wish for an afterlife or future re-awakening in many. It's natural to want more.
TylerLives 4y ago
You're right that we're not "built" for immortality, but I see no reason why we couldn't adapt over time. The other issue is that aging is really really bad and reduces quality of life much more than nostalgia.
nigamanth 4y ago
The goal of life isn't to live forever, but to create something that is. I'm not sure why someone would even try and live forever, to fulfill ambitions? Assuming someone is immortal, after 100 years they'd probably get bored of this world.
- kelnos 4y ago
  The goal of life is whatever each individual has decided the goal of life is. You may not get why someone might want to live forever, but that doesn't invalidate that desire; it just makes you unable to see their point of view. That's ok, though! I think 100 years is far too short to experience everything our world has to offer. I get that motivation could be an issue for some, but a motivated individual would certainly appreciate extra time to broaden their experiences!
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miramba 4y ago
Strange, my POV is completely different. Humans can adapt to everything, look at those native tribes in Brazil. I am certain that once humanity fully decrypted its own genes, immortality will arrive with all the implications one can‘t now even imagine. I also believe that this discovery was inevitable, it is literally in our genes and was already waiting to be discovered when the first stone tool has been made . Immortality is the destiny of this species. It will transform everything, altough I’m not sure it would all be good. Unfortunately, chances are that I won‘t live long enough to see, unless cryo. A minimal chance that it would work, but better than no chance at all…and I would die -well rather not die- to see how everything continues. The world now is different than the world when I was born, it‘s constantly changing in small and big ways and I‘d love to see it. One day, the white house will look like the forum romanum.
Archipelagia 4y ago
I'm registered with a cryonics company to be frozen after death on a rare chance that it actually works. My reasoning is that I simply like living. I think that arguments against longevity often sound deep, but if you rephrase them in more straightforward terms, they'll seem completely devoid of substance. For example, what does "we're children of our times mean?" That once world changes too much, death is preferable to adapting? I would absolutely love to see how the world will look in a hundred years, and I sincerely hope it will be strange and unique. Same with "death will simply take us back to where we came from"... I'm sorry, but it doesn't really mean anything. If my loved one dies, that's bad. If my friend gets sick, I hope they recover. Again, I'm sorry but once we strip the poetics, there's really nothing left here.
- Rubinsalamander 4y ago
  I think about it this way, although i dont have the money to sign up yet.(and don't want to do a rate plan while being young). Basically every religion has some hope of afterlife/reincarnation. So for non religious people this also kinda provides this hope. And if it doesnt work out it is just a expensive funeral. If your dead body is burned, frozen or buried doesnt really matter in this case.
  - Archipelagia 4y ago
    If you're in Europe – I'm signed with Tomorrow Biostasis (https://www.tomorrow.bio https://www.tomorrow.bio) and the pricing is not as bad as I expected when I initially started thinking about it.
    - Rubinsalamander 4y ago
      Didnt look too much into it but my gut feeling based on the price says its too cheap to be able to keep the lights on for centuries. I would rather do a one time payment because they sure wont get money from me when i am dead. So a one time payment must basically be big enough to generate enough interest/stock market returns to make it worth their while too keep the lights on forever. I dont see this with a 50€ Subscription. Maybe they would do it like an ETF Investment Account which signs you up for Cyro Preservation after reaching a certain size. The money would have to be withdrawable while being alive though.
pilaf 4y ago
Is there such a thing as nostalgia for the future? Because I'm sure I experience it just as much as for the past, especially with how much the world changes decade to decade in current times, it's just too interesting to watch.
- stanete 4y ago
  I felt this way many times. The desire to see everything that will come, to experience it all. Being nostalgic for the future also implies that we're optimistic about what's to come.
nathias 4y ago
if that was a concern we'd all kill ourselves at 30
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Gordonjcp 4y ago
> drowning in the sea of nostalgia # I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE / YOU OTHA BROTHAS CAN'T DENY... You can't just sit here in the dark listening to classical music, Fry.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon
the_gipsy 4y ago
Classic Terror Management Theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory IMHO this is a generally benefitial viewpoint in life, except when specifically discussing mortality.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Very interesting Wiki article, thank you very much for sharing!
jsemrau 4y ago
Maybe immortality is a requirement for space travel? With the 78 years avg that we currently have we won't get far unless we bend spacetime. If everyone lives forever, time becomes meaningless.
- macrolime 4y ago
  If we could manage to build a spacecraft that could continuously accelerate at 1g. It would, from the perspective of the inhabitants on the ship, be possible to travel to the end of the edge of the visible universe and back in 100 years, even though billions of years would have passed on earth. Relativity is weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_ac...
  - TchoBeer 4y ago
    note that a spacecraft which can continuously accelerate at 1g would require an insane amount of energy. Relativity is indeed weird.
Semaphor 4y ago
> Never understood the quest for immortality. Me neither, it sounds like a punishment. > We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Now here, I disagree. If someone offered me to become displaced in time, being frozen most of the time, but waking up for a few months or a year (assuming I’d not be pennyless on the street) every decade or century, I’d love it until I tire and either retire in the "now" or end my life. I love that my life will eventually end, I hate that I won’t be able to see everything to come.
sts153 4y ago
Simple, but wonderful words.
stanete 4y ago
I guess it has been portrayed the wrong way for a long time. All fringe ideas get thrown in the same basket. Singularity, anti-aging research, wormholes and interstellar travel, etc. But most research today is trying to solve aging, not death. It's trying to maintain people from getting in that state of frailty and maintain youth for as long as possible. I got interested in longevity a decade ago but only came back to the community this year and the field has evolved quite a lot. I started blogging again about it and I addressed this specific topic: https://www.stanete.com/coming-of-age/ https://www.stanete.com/coming-of-age/.
lynx23 4y ago
I never understood that quest either. Is it really so hard to accept that ones existance on earth is finite? Do people really want to stand in the way of the young, forever? I will be happy when I finally can leave this planet.
krisoft 4y ago
> When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. This is not really convincing argument. If and when that happens and I find it so inconvenient that it is not worth continuing I shall end my life on my own terms. > Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Nah. We don’t “go” anywhere after we die. This is simply propaganda invented and formulated to get people over their fear of death. It has zero basis in reality other than the fact that people want it.
mclightning 4y ago
I am 30, and I already feel alien as a millennial. We did not become immortal, but the contents of our lives have already become bigger than what previous generations experienced in their lifetimes. We are already there. We already face this challenge. We will overcome it before immortality. Immortality will be just the next step.
KronisLV 4y ago
> Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. I prefer existing and being conscious to not existing, everything else is just details. The finality of death is perhaps the only thing that human beings should be truly afraid of and treat as an engineering/biology problem to be solved as soon as possible, the other details and impact of this should be addressed later. This complacence with the status quo is harmful in that regard. Even if you don't want immortality, not having the last decades of your life being trapped in a decaying flesh prison while your brain and organs are riddled with various diseases does sound like how things should be. Even if aging cannot be eliminated entirely (for now), its effects definitely should be lessened, so people can live out their lives respectfully and comfortably, what modern medicine is very gradually advancing towards. Cryogenics just acknowledge that focusing on this to the point of beating aging altogether is unlikely and that we're all born in the wrong time and come to the conclusion that maybe 1% chance at survival is better than 0%. Most if not all will sadly not survive.
danwee 4y ago
Maybe not immortality but living longer isn't what it's all about? Before we were dying in our 20s, then in our 30s, then in our 60s, now in our 80s. Perhaps in 200 years we could say we die in our 120s? That would be a good thing (and no, this doesn't mean to live the years between 90 and 120 in the worst conditions possible, barely able to walk, eat, talk...; it means to extend our good years and make the 110-120 just like our current 80-90). I myself am in my 40s but I look younger than many people in their late 20s/early 30s (mainly because I don't smoke, and I don't eat crap. I excerise regularly and sleep a lot). Some celebrities right now in their 50s look younger than many regular people in their 30s. So, I think there is hope for future generations to extend their lives by a lot.
DrBazza 4y ago
> When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. I feel like that now, in my, ahem, later years, and watching the 20-somethings tie themselves in knots over things, that are actually quite trivial. Friends and family are important, social media not so much. I don't really get it. When I was that age, and I was angry, it took a bit of effort. I'd have to cut the letters out of newspapers, glue them to a bit of paper, and post it to people.
scotty79 4y ago
> Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Except it doesn't. Death is the end of everything for you. It's ultimate loss of any game you might have participated in. And there's nothing else. When you die then there's no longer any you. And there will never be you in any shape or form. When you die it's as if your family home burnt to ashes along with your family inside and family business and there not even any cinder left. What was there doesn't exist anymore. Once you actually understand death without the layer of culture that we built to distract ourselves from the reality there's really no wonder why some people would take any chances to avoid it in any way conceivable.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  And not just that - for those still alive the dead person usually causes quite a bit of suffering! Death is really not a good idea for everyone involved.
- comboy 4y ago
  > Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. > Death is the end of everything for you. Both of you these are objective. You can think you are insignificant or you can think that you are part of the big bang which is still happening. It's just narration and if it makes no practical difference (as it would seem in these cases), everybody can choose whatever makes him feel better, there is no need to put down the other narration.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    You can think whatever you want. But in almost all cases you are wrong. And you can only choose what makes you feel better in matters that don't matter. In all others you are almost always better off choosing what is actually correct. You can choose a narrative that pi equals 3 because it makes you feel better but you won't be doing world or yourself any favors if you choose to make real world decisions based on that narrative.
    - comboy 4y ago
d_tr 4y ago
Immortality is a strong word. I am personally in favour of a situation where death would feel more like a choice and not like something which can come at any time or after a (not very) long road of mental and physical decline and loss. The amount of all forms of suffering and sadness this would lift seems hard to describe in a few paragraphs.
neuronic 4y ago
There are definitely reasons to fear the reaper. When we go return to where we came from before our birth it simply means the absence of consciousness. In this universe, you can either be conscious or not. There is something mysterious and magical about this phenomenon that seemingly differentiates our lives from simpler or even single celled organisms which seem more like biological robots. It may very well be that the next time a consciousness manifests and forms a 'you' from 'the place before birth' you may as well be born as a cow, shackled in the darkness among feces. Kept from the warmth of your mother with cold metal spikes attached to her udder, ripping open the young flesh of your nose when you seek its nourishment. How many times did we wake up yet from this 'place before birth'? How likely is it to be born as human among the conscious life forms on Earth? Nevermind being born as healthy human in the developed world in the 21st century. Between the clear dry science and the mysterious wonder of a perception of 'self' and being consciously aware I just feel dizzy about it all.
- kubanczyk 4y ago
  I think you use the word "consciousness" as a thought stopper. A though experiment: Imagine I have no consciousness, but I can run circles around you, outperform you, outpredict you, game you, have a better intuition (gasp), or be more creative (gasp squared). What's left of the magic now?
  - neuronic 4y ago
    Interesting point, this is why I love these discussions so first of all thank you. When we strip away all of these aspects from 'the magic' it gets really interesting to think about what's left. And this is always where it becomes hard to articulate for me. Would you describe yourself as a robot performing a set of finite predetermined tasks? A system merely responding to pattern recognition? Are we just a more complex version of ants following some chemical impulses? I cannot shake the feeling that it's more of a 1+1=3 kind of thing, where the sum is more than the addition of parts. In Complex Systems Theory it would be emergent behavior, I suppose.
    - 4y ago
winReInstall 4y ago
The older i get, the more i get the clining to "immortal" structures, like cathedrals and monuments. They are the only thing constant in the sea of change.
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grishka 4y ago
The problem with death and aging in its current form is that it's non-consensual. Of course there will be people who would like to expire, and of course they will always be able to do so — the same way today someone who was diagnosed with a bacterial infection can refuse to take antibiotics and die exactly like everyone did in the 19th century. It sickens me when people romanticize death. There's nothing romantic about the world being taken away from you at the time when you've understood so much of it and found your place in it — and could have contributed so much more to it, and enjoyed it so much more. It's an artificial limit imposed on us by the nature that needs to be fought with all available resources. It should definitely not be accepted. It's about time humanity stops being humble about this stuff, ffs.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Attitudes are quite inconsistent even then. The same people who romanticize the death of the old will often be appalled by the idea of people being able to choose their own death at any point in their life
  - grishka 4y ago
    Then also, if someone is ill, they will never refuse treatment if one is available — regardless of their views on death. Even if their condition is terminal, they'll do everything in their power to stretch out their remaining time as much as they could before ultimately giving up, for as long as it's physically bearable for them. So one might say that there's a degree of hypocrisy in such views. They romanticize death unless it's their turn.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I understand it, even if I think it is a bit silly and probably evidence of a mental sickness. The survival instinct is an important one for getting life to where it is. Problem I have with immortalists isn't that they have some desire to live forever, it's that they rarely are able to articulate what lives forever. Self is a construct, an narrative abstraction created by our minds that has utility as regards our functioning in the world, but is ultimately not real. I am not the same person I was 5 years ago, nor will the version of me that exists 5 years from now be the same as me. There are probably several people out there who are more like 5-years-ago me than I am currently, but for some reason they aren't considered to be the same person. What is it that makes me me? It can't be memory, because memories are extremely fallible, and often confabulated. If we are our memories then we have forgotten most of who we are and will continue to forget ourselves as time passes. If you erased my memories somehow, you'd still likely consider me the same person anyway, so clearly memories aren't me. Of course, even forgotten experiences leave some kind of mark on our being, but just by existing we leave our mark on the people and world around us but we don't consider those things us, do we? And clearly anyone who imagines a digital-self in their future doesn't consider their physical form to be them either, so what's left? Illusions and abstractions, a heuristic notion of self that has utility but not reality. Sure, go ahead and solve "immortality", I don't have a philosophical objection to the concept. What I have a problem with is the insistence that death is some kind of fundamental evil we must place a high priority on solving. Some would go so far as to preserve their own lives at the cost of many others, so terrified they are of something that has basically already happened to previous versions of themselves. Its perverse.
BrotherBisquick 4y ago
You say that, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I believe that everyone is gripped by panic when they know they're about to die. I don't care how enlightened you are, we all fear death above all else. That, I think, is the root of the desire for immortality. The only really pleasant, anxiety-free way to die is to not see it coming. We should wish for that rather than wish for immortality.
ErikVandeWater 4y ago
That seems like a severe lack of imagination/empathy on your part. Others won't be "drowning in the sea of nostalgia" because they didn't find the past enjoyable.
absolute_unit22 4y ago
If you have some time, this is worth a read: https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon It’s a nice, short metaphorical story for our acceptance of death.
throwuwu 4y ago
5 sentences, 0 semantic value.
GuB-42 4y ago
> Never understood the quest for immortality. Self-preservation, this is hardwired into us. You may rationalize, refer to a higher power, philosophize, etc... to make you accept the inevitable, sometimes successfully, but that's not what your body is telling you.

ranUltra 4y ago

Four years ago, I moved to a different continent with a totally different culture. After four years, I love living here more than in my home country where I grew up. So your argument isn’t really convincing.

brnt 4y ago

I've lived as a stranger in a strange land and I regret returning 'home', whatever that means. Sounds like cryo is right up my alley! If it only worked...

b1zguy 4y ago
Can you please elaborate on why your regret returning home?
- antonvs 4y ago
  I’m not the person you replied to, but for many of us “home” is not a first world or Western country. The opportunities there are much fewer, quality of life is lower in many tangible ways - do you like having reliable power, internet, mail/shipping, safe roads? Dangerous crime is a much more serious problem, and corruption is rife. Healthcare is subpar if you’re not wealthy. Education is generally poor, which has all sorts of consequences for society as a whole. There’s also the fact that after living elsewhere for many years, the home you go back to is not the same as the home you left.
- brnt 4y ago
  Moving abroad and making some sort of life for yourself is two things: 1. a review of your preconceptions and a test for your ability to adapt, 2. if you stick it out, you may integrate new ways and viewpoints into who you are and what you think. When you then go back to people who are similar (because that's always going to be the case to some extent, even if locally the community feels and/or thinks itself diverse) you will frequently feel that others have not 'progressed' or are 'stuck' in those culturally determined ways. It's hard to share that growth with people that haven't done the same, which is I think why expats stick together, even when they're back. I moved between Western countries I should perhaps add.

progman32 4y ago

I'm no believer in immortality, but I find your argument unconvincing. People are removed from their childhood home all the time, immersed in a foreign culture. They survive. I'd certainly accept a sudden relocation to an unfamiliar foreign land vs. dying. And I'm certain that a hypothetical resurrected human wouldn't be the only one - what's to say these folks wouldn't form their own pocket of culture?

chrisfosterelli 4y ago

In case it's insightful, I've correspondingly never understood the common contentment with death. The world is an incredible place, and there's so much to experience and do. If I had the time there's hundreds of careers I could spend a lifetime in each trying to develop mastery. I think I could live a thousand lives with the people I care about and not be done. I've had to choose one life, and it's a nice one, but if it wasn't for some limit forced upon me, if it was really my choice, then there's a lot more I'd like to do. I suspect in hundreds or thousands of years we'll look back at age-related death culturally the same way we look at infant mortality during the medieval ages: commonly accepted as part of life at the time, but unnecessary and completely solvable in retrospective. I think fear is the wrong word per-say. If it's something I can't change, that's fine. But if there's an avenue to change it, even if unlikely, why not try?

xlii 4y ago
For a counter thought: while I absolutely agree with you in terms of richness of life, I don’t think pursuing endless life is a sound idea. As parent poster wrote, we like nostalgia, because we clutch to our experiences. We compare them instead of collecting it. On the other side the more we experience something the more we stall or get bored. Even with other people - with increase of lifespan we also increased number of divorces, lost connections etc. That doesn’t make us happier. One could argue that we, as humans, suffer more today from out deteriorating bodies, than people in medieval time, when it was shorter, and that we suffer more psychologically due to increased influx of information, global conscience and artificial constructs we build every day. Resources would also be an issue, so even if immortality would be obtainable it’d be either reserved for the richest or would divide people with almost impassable line splitting centuries of servitude and centuries of indulgence. So to answer your question - why not? Because it’ll bring suffer to many on many levels except for a blessed few and we should focus first on making life great for everyone present before trying to make it infinitely longer. Joking lightly (as subject is very deep) - it’s somewhat useful skill to know when to get off the stage.
- Rubinsalamander 4y ago
  It would not only be for the rich. Healthcare cost are incredibly expensive especially later in live so governments have a strong inventive to provide it for everyone. Also people wont have to retire anymore (also great for government) The most expensive part about it would probably be research, but since every person on the planet is a potential user and there a big savings in Healthcare and Pension i don't see costs being a problem. Humans dont progress in terms of biological evolution anymore but instead technologically. The increased lifespan would allow scientist to master multiple fields which would be great for progress.

ramraj07 4y ago

I for one would like a bit more time. 200? Maybe 500? No one likely wants to be immortal but 80 or so seems criminally short for what our abilities are and how long it takes for us to find our calling.

adastra22 4y ago
I want to be immortal. If I ever tire of existence and achieve terminal boredom, I'll just use technology to forget (temporarily or permanently) some memories and experience them again anew. I'll see you all at the heat death of the universe.
- ausbah 4y ago
  semi relevant user name ironically
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Not at all ironic or accidental.
- terminal_d 4y ago
  If you like that premise, you'd like to read "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright. It's hard scifi.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Thanks!
epicureanideal 4y ago
You may find this organization (working on extending healthy human lifespan) interesting. https://www.levf.org/ https://www.levf.org/ I'm not involved with that organization, but I find their work very interesting. As a backup plan, there's Alcor. https://www.alcor.org/ https://www.alcor.org/

causi 4y ago

If I don't want to die now why should I want to die later?

radu_floricica 4y ago

I've heard this sentiment occasionally and I've actually done some introspection about it. What's the earliest time of human history I'd have to be born in, to feel alien in our times? There's actually a surprising answer to this, and it's not even subjective: there is a lot more difference between my grandparent's house in the countryside 40 years ago and current times, than to pretty much any agricultural period. No running water, outhouse was... out, no TV. And in _their_ childhood it was even more barebones: no electricity, phone or radio, nor cars or trains or asphalt. So... would my grandparents feel alienated now? Hell no! My surviving grandma is complaining about constant pain and ailing vision, not that things are too strange. She needs somebody else to call me or show her pictures I send on whatsapp because she can't physically use a phone anymore, not because she can't adapt to it. There is some truth in what you're saying, but it's due to something we don't like to talk or think about: dementia. Not just Alzheimer, but dozens of ways the aging brain is deteriorating. Fix that, and suddenly you'll find out that old people aren't children anymore, and are perfectly capable of adapting to the new.

kelnos 4y ago

That's just an opinion, formed over centuries of humans trying to make peace with their mortality, because they believed it was inevitable. There's no inherent truth to your words; it's just a philosophy. I'm not really afraid of dying, per se, but as a sci-fi buff, I am deeply sad that there are amazing technological advancements that I will never get to see. Even if the world 300 years from now (assuming humans still exist by then) looks nothing like what any sci-fi author could have envisioned, it still bums me out that I won't get to see what that ends up being like. (And yes, I've considered the possibility that things could be much much worse than now in 300 years, at least for humans.) My only worry about this is that if I were "asleep" for 300 years, that "stranger in a strange land" bit could be very real, and I don't know that humans are well-equipped psychologically to deal with that kind of... dislocation. I'm not religious, and don't believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, or of anything after we die. So if I want to see the future, in any shape or form, life extension is the only way. I doubt medicine will solve aging and mortality in my lifetime, so even a moonshot like cryonics would likely be my only hope -- even such a remote hope -- of seeing the future. Not sure I'd actually go for it, though, but I get the appeal.

microtonal 4y ago
I used to have the same curiosity, but now I just want to see our daughter grow up and maybe get grandkids someday. Having a kid really changed my perspective in life.
Rubinsalamander 4y ago
Stranger in a strange land also sounds incredibly exciting to me. Funny how a con ist pro argument depending on your view point.
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  You can have this now, no need to wait for death since the plot is mostly about culture, not technology. Seems to me that many die without even having scratched the surface of life. Of course, there is this wish for an afterlife or future re-awakening in many. It's natural to want more.

TylerLives 4y ago

You're right that we're not "built" for immortality, but I see no reason why we couldn't adapt over time. The other issue is that aging is really really bad and reduces quality of life much more than nostalgia.

nigamanth 4y ago

The goal of life isn't to live forever, but to create something that is. I'm not sure why someone would even try and live forever, to fulfill ambitions? Assuming someone is immortal, after 100 years they'd probably get bored of this world.

kelnos 4y ago
The goal of life is whatever each individual has decided the goal of life is. You may not get why someone might want to live forever, but that doesn't invalidate that desire; it just makes you unable to see their point of view. That's ok, though! I think 100 years is far too short to experience everything our world has to offer. I get that motivation could be an issue for some, but a motivated individual would certainly appreciate extra time to broaden their experiences!

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miramba 4y ago

Strange, my POV is completely different. Humans can adapt to everything, look at those native tribes in Brazil. I am certain that once humanity fully decrypted its own genes, immortality will arrive with all the implications one can‘t now even imagine. I also believe that this discovery was inevitable, it is literally in our genes and was already waiting to be discovered when the first stone tool has been made . Immortality is the destiny of this species. It will transform everything, altough I’m not sure it would all be good. Unfortunately, chances are that I won‘t live long enough to see, unless cryo. A minimal chance that it would work, but better than no chance at all…and I would die -well rather not die- to see how everything continues. The world now is different than the world when I was born, it‘s constantly changing in small and big ways and I‘d love to see it. One day, the white house will look like the forum romanum.

Archipelagia 4y ago

I'm registered with a cryonics company to be frozen after death on a rare chance that it actually works. My reasoning is that I simply like living. I think that arguments against longevity often sound deep, but if you rephrase them in more straightforward terms, they'll seem completely devoid of substance. For example, what does "we're children of our times mean?" That once world changes too much, death is preferable to adapting? I would absolutely love to see how the world will look in a hundred years, and I sincerely hope it will be strange and unique. Same with "death will simply take us back to where we came from"... I'm sorry, but it doesn't really mean anything. If my loved one dies, that's bad. If my friend gets sick, I hope they recover. Again, I'm sorry but once we strip the poetics, there's really nothing left here.

Rubinsalamander 4y ago
I think about it this way, although i dont have the money to sign up yet.(and don't want to do a rate plan while being young). Basically every religion has some hope of afterlife/reincarnation. So for non religious people this also kinda provides this hope. And if it doesnt work out it is just a expensive funeral. If your dead body is burned, frozen or buried doesnt really matter in this case.
- Archipelagia 4y ago
  If you're in Europe – I'm signed with Tomorrow Biostasis (https://www.tomorrow.bio https://www.tomorrow.bio) and the pricing is not as bad as I expected when I initially started thinking about it.
  - Rubinsalamander 4y ago
    Didnt look too much into it but my gut feeling based on the price says its too cheap to be able to keep the lights on for centuries. I would rather do a one time payment because they sure wont get money from me when i am dead. So a one time payment must basically be big enough to generate enough interest/stock market returns to make it worth their while too keep the lights on forever. I dont see this with a 50€ Subscription. Maybe they would do it like an ETF Investment Account which signs you up for Cyro Preservation after reaching a certain size. The money would have to be withdrawable while being alive though.

pilaf 4y ago

Is there such a thing as nostalgia for the future? Because I'm sure I experience it just as much as for the past, especially with how much the world changes decade to decade in current times, it's just too interesting to watch.

stanete 4y ago
I felt this way many times. The desire to see everything that will come, to experience it all. Being nostalgic for the future also implies that we're optimistic about what's to come.

nathias 4y ago

if that was a concern we'd all kill ourselves at 30

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Gordonjcp 4y ago

> drowning in the sea of nostalgia # I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE / YOU OTHA BROTHAS CAN'T DENY... You can't just sit here in the dark listening to classical music, Fry.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon

the_gipsy 4y ago

Classic Terror Management Theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory IMHO this is a generally benefitial viewpoint in life, except when specifically discussing mortality.

npteljes 4y ago
Very interesting Wiki article, thank you very much for sharing!

jsemrau 4y ago

Maybe immortality is a requirement for space travel? With the 78 years avg that we currently have we won't get far unless we bend spacetime. If everyone lives forever, time becomes meaningless.

macrolime 4y ago
If we could manage to build a spacecraft that could continuously accelerate at 1g. It would, from the perspective of the inhabitants on the ship, be possible to travel to the end of the edge of the visible universe and back in 100 years, even though billions of years would have passed on earth. Relativity is weird. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_under_constant_ac...
- TchoBeer 4y ago
  note that a spacecraft which can continuously accelerate at 1g would require an insane amount of energy. Relativity is indeed weird.

Semaphor 4y ago

> Never understood the quest for immortality. Me neither, it sounds like a punishment. > We are the children of our time. When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. Now here, I disagree. If someone offered me to become displaced in time, being frozen most of the time, but waking up for a few months or a year (assuming I’d not be pennyless on the street) every decade or century, I’d love it until I tire and either retire in the "now" or end my life. I love that my life will eventually end, I hate that I won’t be able to see everything to come.

sts153 4y ago

Simple, but wonderful words.

stanete 4y ago

I guess it has been portrayed the wrong way for a long time. All fringe ideas get thrown in the same basket. Singularity, anti-aging research, wormholes and interstellar travel, etc. But most research today is trying to solve aging, not death. It's trying to maintain people from getting in that state of frailty and maintain youth for as long as possible. I got interested in longevity a decade ago but only came back to the community this year and the field has evolved quite a lot. I started blogging again about it and I addressed this specific topic: https://www.stanete.com/coming-of-age/ https://www.stanete.com/coming-of-age/.

lynx23 4y ago

I never understood that quest either. Is it really so hard to accept that ones existance on earth is finite? Do people really want to stand in the way of the young, forever? I will be happy when I finally can leave this planet.

krisoft 4y ago

> When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. This is not really convincing argument. If and when that happens and I find it so inconvenient that it is not worth continuing I shall end my life on my own terms. > Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Nah. We don’t “go” anywhere after we die. This is simply propaganda invented and formulated to get people over their fear of death. It has zero basis in reality other than the fact that people want it.

mclightning 4y ago

I am 30, and I already feel alien as a millennial. We did not become immortal, but the contents of our lives have already become bigger than what previous generations experienced in their lifetimes. We are already there. We already face this challenge. We will overcome it before immortality. Immortality will be just the next step.

KronisLV 4y ago

> Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. I prefer existing and being conscious to not existing, everything else is just details. The finality of death is perhaps the only thing that human beings should be truly afraid of and treat as an engineering/biology problem to be solved as soon as possible, the other details and impact of this should be addressed later. This complacence with the status quo is harmful in that regard. Even if you don't want immortality, not having the last decades of your life being trapped in a decaying flesh prison while your brain and organs are riddled with various diseases does sound like how things should be. Even if aging cannot be eliminated entirely (for now), its effects definitely should be lessened, so people can live out their lives respectfully and comfortably, what modern medicine is very gradually advancing towards. Cryogenics just acknowledge that focusing on this to the point of beating aging altogether is unlikely and that we're all born in the wrong time and come to the conclusion that maybe 1% chance at survival is better than 0%. Most if not all will sadly not survive.

danwee 4y ago

Maybe not immortality but living longer isn't what it's all about? Before we were dying in our 20s, then in our 30s, then in our 60s, now in our 80s. Perhaps in 200 years we could say we die in our 120s? That would be a good thing (and no, this doesn't mean to live the years between 90 and 120 in the worst conditions possible, barely able to walk, eat, talk...; it means to extend our good years and make the 110-120 just like our current 80-90). I myself am in my 40s but I look younger than many people in their late 20s/early 30s (mainly because I don't smoke, and I don't eat crap. I excerise regularly and sleep a lot). Some celebrities right now in their 50s look younger than many regular people in their 30s. So, I think there is hope for future generations to extend their lives by a lot.

DrBazza 4y ago

> When our time passes, we will live as strangers in a strange land, drowning in the sea of nostalgia. I feel like that now, in my, ahem, later years, and watching the 20-somethings tie themselves in knots over things, that are actually quite trivial. Friends and family are important, social media not so much. I don't really get it. When I was that age, and I was angry, it took a bit of effort. I'd have to cut the letters out of newspapers, glue them to a bit of paper, and post it to people.

scotty79 4y ago

> Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. Except it doesn't. Death is the end of everything for you. It's ultimate loss of any game you might have participated in. And there's nothing else. When you die then there's no longer any you. And there will never be you in any shape or form. When you die it's as if your family home burnt to ashes along with your family inside and family business and there not even any cinder left. What was there doesn't exist anymore. Once you actually understand death without the layer of culture that we built to distract ourselves from the reality there's really no wonder why some people would take any chances to avoid it in any way conceivable.

m4rtink 4y ago
And not just that - for those still alive the dead person usually causes quite a bit of suffering! Death is really not a good idea for everyone involved.
comboy 4y ago
> Death will simply takes us back to where we came from before our birth. > Death is the end of everything for you. Both of you these are objective. You can think you are insignificant or you can think that you are part of the big bang which is still happening. It's just narration and if it makes no practical difference (as it would seem in these cases), everybody can choose whatever makes him feel better, there is no need to put down the other narration.
- scotty79 4y ago
  You can think whatever you want. But in almost all cases you are wrong. And you can only choose what makes you feel better in matters that don't matter. In all others you are almost always better off choosing what is actually correct. You can choose a narrative that pi equals 3 because it makes you feel better but you won't be doing world or yourself any favors if you choose to make real world decisions based on that narrative.
  - comboy 4y ago

d_tr 4y ago

Immortality is a strong word. I am personally in favour of a situation where death would feel more like a choice and not like something which can come at any time or after a (not very) long road of mental and physical decline and loss. The amount of all forms of suffering and sadness this would lift seems hard to describe in a few paragraphs.

neuronic 4y ago

There are definitely reasons to fear the reaper. When we go return to where we came from before our birth it simply means the absence of consciousness. In this universe, you can either be conscious or not. There is something mysterious and magical about this phenomenon that seemingly differentiates our lives from simpler or even single celled organisms which seem more like biological robots. It may very well be that the next time a consciousness manifests and forms a 'you' from 'the place before birth' you may as well be born as a cow, shackled in the darkness among feces. Kept from the warmth of your mother with cold metal spikes attached to her udder, ripping open the young flesh of your nose when you seek its nourishment. How many times did we wake up yet from this 'place before birth'? How likely is it to be born as human among the conscious life forms on Earth? Nevermind being born as healthy human in the developed world in the 21st century. Between the clear dry science and the mysterious wonder of a perception of 'self' and being consciously aware I just feel dizzy about it all.

kubanczyk 4y ago
I think you use the word "consciousness" as a thought stopper. A though experiment: Imagine I have no consciousness, but I can run circles around you, outperform you, outpredict you, game you, have a better intuition (gasp), or be more creative (gasp squared). What's left of the magic now?
- neuronic 4y ago
  Interesting point, this is why I love these discussions so first of all thank you. When we strip away all of these aspects from 'the magic' it gets really interesting to think about what's left. And this is always where it becomes hard to articulate for me. Would you describe yourself as a robot performing a set of finite predetermined tasks? A system merely responding to pattern recognition? Are we just a more complex version of ants following some chemical impulses? I cannot shake the feeling that it's more of a 1+1=3 kind of thing, where the sum is more than the addition of parts. In Complex Systems Theory it would be emergent behavior, I suppose.
  - 4y ago

winReInstall 4y ago

The older i get, the more i get the clining to "immortal" structures, like cathedrals and monuments. They are the only thing constant in the sea of change.

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grishka 4y ago

The problem with death and aging in its current form is that it's non-consensual. Of course there will be people who would like to expire, and of course they will always be able to do so — the same way today someone who was diagnosed with a bacterial infection can refuse to take antibiotics and die exactly like everyone did in the 19th century. It sickens me when people romanticize death. There's nothing romantic about the world being taken away from you at the time when you've understood so much of it and found your place in it — and could have contributed so much more to it, and enjoyed it so much more. It's an artificial limit imposed on us by the nature that needs to be fought with all available resources. It should definitely not be accepted. It's about time humanity stops being humble about this stuff, ffs.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
Attitudes are quite inconsistent even then. The same people who romanticize the death of the old will often be appalled by the idea of people being able to choose their own death at any point in their life
- grishka 4y ago
  Then also, if someone is ill, they will never refuse treatment if one is available — regardless of their views on death. Even if their condition is terminal, they'll do everything in their power to stretch out their remaining time as much as they could before ultimately giving up, for as long as it's physically bearable for them. So one might say that there's a degree of hypocrisy in such views. They romanticize death unless it's their turn.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

I understand it, even if I think it is a bit silly and probably evidence of a mental sickness. The survival instinct is an important one for getting life to where it is. Problem I have with immortalists isn't that they have some desire to live forever, it's that they rarely are able to articulate what lives forever. Self is a construct, an narrative abstraction created by our minds that has utility as regards our functioning in the world, but is ultimately not real. I am not the same person I was 5 years ago, nor will the version of me that exists 5 years from now be the same as me. There are probably several people out there who are more like 5-years-ago me than I am currently, but for some reason they aren't considered to be the same person. What is it that makes me me? It can't be memory, because memories are extremely fallible, and often confabulated. If we are our memories then we have forgotten most of who we are and will continue to forget ourselves as time passes. If you erased my memories somehow, you'd still likely consider me the same person anyway, so clearly memories aren't me. Of course, even forgotten experiences leave some kind of mark on our being, but just by existing we leave our mark on the people and world around us but we don't consider those things us, do we? And clearly anyone who imagines a digital-self in their future doesn't consider their physical form to be them either, so what's left? Illusions and abstractions, a heuristic notion of self that has utility but not reality. Sure, go ahead and solve "immortality", I don't have a philosophical objection to the concept. What I have a problem with is the insistence that death is some kind of fundamental evil we must place a high priority on solving. Some would go so far as to preserve their own lives at the cost of many others, so terrified they are of something that has basically already happened to previous versions of themselves. Its perverse.

BrotherBisquick 4y ago

You say that, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I believe that everyone is gripped by panic when they know they're about to die. I don't care how enlightened you are, we all fear death above all else. That, I think, is the root of the desire for immortality. The only really pleasant, anxiety-free way to die is to not see it coming. We should wish for that rather than wish for immortality.

ErikVandeWater 4y ago

That seems like a severe lack of imagination/empathy on your part. Others won't be "drowning in the sea of nostalgia" because they didn't find the past enjoyable.

absolute_unit22 4y ago

If you have some time, this is worth a read: https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon It’s a nice, short metaphorical story for our acceptance of death.

throwuwu 4y ago

5 sentences, 0 semantic value.

GuB-42 4y ago

> Never understood the quest for immortality. Self-preservation, this is hardwired into us. You may rationalize, refer to a higher power, philosophize, etc... to make you accept the inevitable, sometimes successfully, but that's not what your body is telling you.