3 ms·

I've lived a modern day life of comfort, opportunities and experiences unimaginable compared to even my grandparents (all deceased now). I've been to places and

I've lived a modern day life of comfort, opportunities and experiences unimaginable compared to even my grandparents (all deceased now). I've been to places and had opportunities to try things which they never did. Compared to my grandma who cooked during food rationing and had to save sugar rations to make a cake, who lived a frugal life of 'make do and mend', I have the spare money and first world surroundings to indulge any ordinary luxury[1] on a whim - meal at a restaurant, new clothes, ticket to a show, buy a household goods item or entertaining gadget, holiday abroad in a hotel on a couple of day's notice, all no problem. I've travelled more than she ever did, owned more things than she ever did, experienced many kinds of novelty and variety that she never did. Is that enough? Can I go now? Isn't that enough? I still have possibly 3-4 decades of life left to average life expectancy, and for what - to grind through more experiences? Even though I've already had vastly more than most humans who ever lived? I have no great purpose to achieve, there's nothing I can do which millions of others can't do. The main reason to go on living is because dying would hurt others unnecessarily. Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. > "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." It seems common that people who become rich enough to do anything end up depressed doing nothing. Taking the forcing function out seems to make people miserable rather than happy. Even people who said beforehand that they had lots they'd like to do often seem to lose motivation to actually do any of it. [1] there's a phrase.

endtime 4y ago
> Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. Speak for yourself, but please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective. (I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to.)
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  > "Speak for yourself" Whom do you think I am speaking for? > "please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective." "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of by gaining things and realising that drowning in endless things isn't happiness, it's a hoarding disorder. People with a PetaByte storage array of media aren't the happiest film watchers on the planet, people with a garage full of Lamborghinis aren't the best drivers or the happiest people, Billionaires aren't satisfied with 'enough' money. Indeed, the opposite as one anecdote in this thread commented - a child with nothing who gets an orange is happy; a child with 9 consoles who gets a 10th console and wants an 11th, isn't happy. Saying "I want 1000000 consoles" seems more cringeworthy than convincing. "I want a career" "I want ten careers!" "I want a pony" "I want a hundred lifetimes of pony ownership!". "I want to master an instrument" "I want to master infinity instruments!". Ok mr oneupper. But it makes no difference whether "you" lived all those lives you can't remember, or someone else did. No difference at all. In fact, you may as well assume that other people are you, and their lives are ones you lived and can no longer remember. Everything becomes much simpler and it makes just as much sense. > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to." I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early? I also suspect one of the reasons our societies are against suicide is because workers can't be allowed an easy escape from their suffering. The kind of people who are in favour of working infinity lifetimes of careers are probably in the upper/white collar classes if they see that as a good thing; to a huge amount of the world, retirement is the carrot dangled ahead of them and dozens of lifetimes of work would be a pretty bad thing.
  - endtime 4y ago
    > Whom do you think I am speaking for? I think you're speaking for "adults", given your next sentence. > "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of... Also: > > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to." > I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early? I was ambiguous, sorry. I know for a fact that a great many of longevity advocates advocate legalized suicide. My "I think" was hedging against the fact that I haven't done a survey and don't have hard data. But I think you - understandably, given this is what you're doing - took it as idle, uninformed speculation. My advice would be actually to read serious arguments in favor of longevity before forming opinions on them. Maybe start here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/cryonics https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/cryonics
chucksmash 4y ago
I agree that the idea of crisscrossing the world to take every possible scenic selfie seems empty. For some people, it won't though. There's also so much more available to us than just this sort of consumption. Personally, I've always had the itch to recreate as much of the computing stack I rely on as possible. I love the idea of running my own text editor in my own shell, written in my own programming language, compiled with my own compiler, running on my own operating system. Not because I think I would be pushing the state of the art forward or that it would be commercially viable, but just for kicks. The joy of truly understanding. I think this is not a completely uncommon feeling, which is why a lot of programmers could look at Terry Davis and say "okay, aside from the obvious mental illness, the racism and the antisemitism, there is something there." He spent years building something with little value to anybody beyond himself. Zach and Tarn Adams spending twenty years on Dwarf Fortress also comes to mind, to the extent they are doing it for themselves. These projects require huge sacrifices on the part of their creators. The opportunity costs incurred shape their lives (e.g. the Dwarf Fortress decisions currently being made based on health insurance coverage). I can't imagine inflicting the programmer monk lifestyle that would come along with such long term non-commercial work on my young kids when the end state is just "Yeah, it's useless but I got a kick out of doing it." Being honest, it's also hard to imagine that once my kids move out and I can pick a more austere lifestyle just for myself, I'll look at the remaining ~20 years of my life and say, "I think I will devote the rest of my life to this one single 'that would be kinda neat' drive." If I had, say, 100, 200, 500 more good years where I could just subsist and pursue passion projects? I'd love to spend 10-20 years going down the "recreate all your software from scratch" rabbit hole. --- A thought on the "society needs death" idea: if my continued existence pursuing obscure hobbies without economic value is a drain on society, maybe the fix isn't that I must die at some arbitrary age fixed by evolution, maybe the fix is just a better way to account for the costs and benefits of our actions. Don't say nobody can spend 10,000 years jetsetting from tourist spot to tourist spot, just require them to offset it through their other actions so that on balance they've made a positive contribution.
throwuwu 4y ago
Yes, materialism is an empty pursuit.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  That's not an interesting comment. What isn't an empty pursuit?
  - throwuwu 4y ago
    Charity, love, contemplation of beauty, building friendships, raising children, many more. These are not empty in many ways, they provide long lasting satisfaction, they help others, they give you a feeling of peace, they can be shared freely, they provide meaning and make the world a better place for yourself and others.

endtime 4y ago

> Brute forcing through everything-there-is-to-experience is not an enticing vision for the future at all, it's a grind. Speak for yourself, but please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective. (I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to.)

jodrellblank 4y ago
> "Speak for yourself" Whom do you think I am speaking for? > "please don't confuse that for a good argument for the death of others with a different perspective." "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of by gaining things and realising that drowning in endless things isn't happiness, it's a hoarding disorder. People with a PetaByte storage array of media aren't the happiest film watchers on the planet, people with a garage full of Lamborghinis aren't the best drivers or the happiest people, Billionaires aren't satisfied with 'enough' money. Indeed, the opposite as one anecdote in this thread commented - a child with nothing who gets an orange is happy; a child with 9 consoles who gets a 10th console and wants an 11th, isn't happy. Saying "I want 1000000 consoles" seems more cringeworthy than convincing. "I want a career" "I want ten careers!" "I want a pony" "I want a hundred lifetimes of pony ownership!". "I want to master an instrument" "I want to master infinity instruments!". Ok mr oneupper. But it makes no difference whether "you" lived all those lives you can't remember, or someone else did. No difference at all. In fact, you may as well assume that other people are you, and their lives are ones you lived and can no longer remember. Everything becomes much simpler and it makes just as much sense. > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to." I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early? I also suspect one of the reasons our societies are against suicide is because workers can't be allowed an easy escape from their suffering. The kind of people who are in favour of working infinity lifetimes of careers are probably in the upper/white collar classes if they see that as a good thing; to a huge amount of the world, retirement is the carrot dangled ahead of them and dozens of lifetimes of work would be a pretty bad thing.
- endtime 4y ago
  > Whom do you think I am speaking for? I think you're speaking for "adults", given your next sentence. > "I want everything" is a youthful perspective that adults grow out of... Also: > > "I don't think longevity advocates generally want to prevent suicide or force people to live forever if they don't want to." > I suspect they are against suicide; why would someone who promotes longevity so much also be pro-dying-early? I was ambiguous, sorry. I know for a fact that a great many of longevity advocates advocate legalized suicide. My "I think" was hedging against the fact that I haven't done a survey and don't have hard data. But I think you - understandably, given this is what you're doing - took it as idle, uninformed speculation. My advice would be actually to read serious arguments in favor of longevity before forming opinions on them. Maybe start here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/cryonics https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/cryonics

chucksmash 4y ago

I agree that the idea of crisscrossing the world to take every possible scenic selfie seems empty. For some people, it won't though. There's also so much more available to us than just this sort of consumption. Personally, I've always had the itch to recreate as much of the computing stack I rely on as possible. I love the idea of running my own text editor in my own shell, written in my own programming language, compiled with my own compiler, running on my own operating system. Not because I think I would be pushing the state of the art forward or that it would be commercially viable, but just for kicks. The joy of truly understanding. I think this is not a completely uncommon feeling, which is why a lot of programmers could look at Terry Davis and say "okay, aside from the obvious mental illness, the racism and the antisemitism, there is something there." He spent years building something with little value to anybody beyond himself. Zach and Tarn Adams spending twenty years on Dwarf Fortress also comes to mind, to the extent they are doing it for themselves. These projects require huge sacrifices on the part of their creators. The opportunity costs incurred shape their lives (e.g. the Dwarf Fortress decisions currently being made based on health insurance coverage). I can't imagine inflicting the programmer monk lifestyle that would come along with such long term non-commercial work on my young kids when the end state is just "Yeah, it's useless but I got a kick out of doing it." Being honest, it's also hard to imagine that once my kids move out and I can pick a more austere lifestyle just for myself, I'll look at the remaining ~20 years of my life and say, "I think I will devote the rest of my life to this one single 'that would be kinda neat' drive." If I had, say, 100, 200, 500 more good years where I could just subsist and pursue passion projects? I'd love to spend 10-20 years going down the "recreate all your software from scratch" rabbit hole. --- A thought on the "society needs death" idea: if my continued existence pursuing obscure hobbies without economic value is a drain on society, maybe the fix isn't that I must die at some arbitrary age fixed by evolution, maybe the fix is just a better way to account for the costs and benefits of our actions. Don't say nobody can spend 10,000 years jetsetting from tourist spot to tourist spot, just require them to offset it through their other actions so that on balance they've made a positive contribution.

throwuwu 4y ago

Yes, materialism is an empty pursuit.

jodrellblank 4y ago
That's not an interesting comment. What isn't an empty pursuit?
- throwuwu 4y ago
  Charity, love, contemplation of beauty, building friendships, raising children, many more. These are not empty in many ways, they provide long lasting satisfaction, they help others, they give you a feeling of peace, they can be shared freely, they provide meaning and make the world a better place for yourself and others.