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A great many people are incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of death, and installations like this, and similar works of art, are a great antidote. Accepting
by photochemsyn 4y ago
A great many people are incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of death, and installations like this, and similar works of art, are a great antidote. Accepting death as the price of life might be a bit difficult for people raised in a culture that worships perpetual youth and which dreams of immortality, perhaps in the form of a digital silicon upload, but it's really a sign of maturity.
Taking a minute or so out of every day to meditate upon the inevitablity of your own death is good for one's mental health - and can be motivating. If there's something you want to do, do it now - tomorrow is not guaranteed!
- user3939382 4y ago"Who promised you tomorrow?" - St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death
- Aeolun 4y agoIn some ways, the 10000+ previous days of my life are a fairly reasonable promise of tomorrow.
- tspike 4y agoGambler's fallacy
- skeaker 4y ago"Okay, wow. You don't want me to kill you because you have so much to live for? Umm, sunk cost fallacy, heard of it?"
- brookst 4y ago“No, no, I have an MBA, I’d never fall for sunk cost. I’m all in on the ‘I’ll travel the world and do all the crazy fun stuff after I retire’ fallacy.”
- akomtu 4y agoIn a randomly sampled million individuals, what's the probability of any of them surviving another day? The gambler fallacy talks about a gambler who has won and believes that the cause that made him win is long lasting. But a living man is right to believe that he is alive due to forces that have a lot of momentum and won't vanish suddenly. The fallacy would be assuming that the man is exempt from accidents, that are unpredictable.
- hackernewds 4y agoThe fallacy is that assuming someone who has lived longer already has a greater chance of staying alive. which is clearly wrong?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jl6 4y agoThey say past performance does not guarantee future results…
- darkarmani 4y agoNo guarantee but it is a good predictor on a long timeframe.
- hackernewds 4y agoa person with 20,000 previous days would have greater prediction than someone with 10,000 previous days. implies on older person should predict a continuation of life, more than a younger one. incorrect?
- BeFlatXIII 4y agoBeing born is a death sentence.
- BizarreByte 4y agoSome would say it’s incredibly cruel to bring new life into existence for that very reason.
- gerdesj 4y agoYet those same people (whomever they are) continue to perpetuate their own "cruel" existence.
- brookst 4y agoThe living can consent
- bialpio 4y agoYou can try to do the best you can with the hand you got dealt but still wish you weren't at the table.
- BizarreByte 4y agoThe human mind makes it very hard for people to do anything but continue living. It takes an unbelievable amount of effort to overcome the natural safeguards our brain has built in. Someone can hate their life, find it exceptionally cruel, yet find themselves unable to end said life despite not waiting to live it. That aside, you can tolerate or even enjoy life while understanding that for many it's an absolutely awful experience they had no say in partaking in.
- BeFlatXIII 4y agoFun fact: the will to live (or, rather, the will to continue your own existence at all costs) is considered to be one of the five poisons of the mind in the Yoga sutras.
- 4y ago
- echelon 4y agoPeople were never seriously interested in extending their lives. I submit that there's a pretty easy, macabre (to most) way to go about it: Monoclonal antigen-free body farms. Grow human bodies in labs -- farmed donor bodies -- and get good at head transplants. This cures most cancers, most diseases, skipping the complicated molecular biology we've yet to solve for. Literally replace your whole body as it ages. You can renew the thymus (big!), circulatory, pulmonary system, etc. It would have a rejuvenating affect on the brain. You'd probably give humans 150-year lifespans with it. Be able to run marathons in your 70's. We'd suck at head transplants for decades (reducing patient outcomes in the initial period), but over time could probably get quite good at it. Initial patient populations could be recruited from terminal cancer patients, where the cancers have not spread to the blood or brain tissues. Survival rates would be low, and a lifetime of paralysis would likely be the penalty for the first decade or so of patients. But in time, we'd get better. Eventually to the point where it was no longer an emergency procedure, but a preventative maintenance measure. The ancillary tech that would spring up from this would be in the BCI domain and we'd start getting good at modeling brain states. A whole industry of related organismal-level biotech advances would arise, propelling us forward like a new space age (or AI wave, to reference a current trend of advances). There are crazy other things you could do - race and gender changes, better than natural genes and performance (VO2 max etc) enhancements, transgenic stuff, etc. Why limit ourselves to our previous limitations? In 200 years we could conceivably move human thoughts onto silicon and stop dying. Too late for us with present day "life extension" / "health span" prognosis, so nobody is trying. But it's "icky" and you'd get an even worse reaction than artists take to AI art or certain greens take to nuclear. The "people should die" folks raise their pitchforks, as do the incredibly religious. It's a very tough pill to swallow. It angers me, because it's pretty low hanging fruit. You could grow bodies as vegetables without brains. Cut them off in development genetically and surgically. Innervate and artificially grow the bodies in advanced farms that keep their muscles moving, their hormones and limbic systems pumping, etc. If I make a billion dollars I'll put everything into it. I want to live 150 years, and I want everyone else to as well. It's way more important to me than buying stuff or collecting "experiences". As it stands, there's little point to anything we do (despite the fact none of us behave this way). Our experiences and enjoyment are short-lived dopamine hits to decaying neural networks, which on the geologic time scale, are pathetic little flashes that will never be noticed or remembered. When our brain cells bleb and desiccate, they won't remember all the good times we had or money we spent. My perspective is we're all already dead. We may as well be holograms of our machine descendants playing out historical recreations. Anyway, we could solve this if we put ourselves to it. I've yet to meet anyone else that's so gung-ho about it. I just think we're too early. And to this decaying neural network, it's kind of a horror to watch how others deal with the fact.
- mc32 4y agoThere are some cultures that believe the remains of their ancestors are sacred. How would you encourage them to accept your POV?
- NoZebra120vClip 4y agoRoman Catholic culture is one of those by far. What better way to attest to the sacredness of human remains but to incorporate them into the most sacred architecture we have? Human remains of Catholics are buried until their cause for canonization calls for exhumation and examination of the relics. By the time of canonization, division of the relics has begun and they are distributed for veneration to various communities and places. This is how we treat sacred remains: by making them accessible to all the faithful for viewing, veneration, and inspiration. What was your question again?
- mc32 4y agoAnd for those who aren’t Catholic, or any religion or spirituality that doesn’t have this interpretation?
- photochemsyn 4y agoDo you mean, for example: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2018/11/01/respect-for-the-dead-under-islamic-law-considerations-for-humanitarian-forensics/ https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2018/11/01/respect-for... > "Respect for dead bodies manifests itself in diverse ways in different cultures around the world.In Islamic law and Muslim cultures, burying the dead in the ground is the correct way to respect dead bodies. Cremation is prohibited under Islamic law because, unlike in some cultures, it is considered a violation of the dignity of the human body." People from different cultures have to learn to respect one another's traditions if they're to live together in democratic societies, that's certainly true. Some people would instead destroy anything that offends their own particular views, unfortunately.
- akomtu 4y ago
- clhodapp 4y agoPersonally, I find a lot of truth in what you say but I vehemently disagree with the premise that we should accept death as the price of life. Of course, we need to be realistic and acknowledge that everyone living will all almost certainly die one day but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for a future without death. I think that CGP Grey's video, Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, does a wonderful job arguing this viewpoint.
- brookst 4y agoI admire striving to not die. Statistically, I fully expect to die. Never dying would be a fantastic surprise. I think acceptance is a lot healthier and more likely to produce happiness in life than thinking one may be an exception.
- kiba 4y agoWhy not both?
- Mystery-Machine 4y agoThere's a difference between "thinking one may be an exception" and realizing that, no matter how small, there is a chance that one day we'll invent the technology that will make us immortal (to some extent). If we had the same stance for all the other things that never happened before and were considered impossible, we would have never went to space and achieved many other great firsts.
- brookst 4y agoTo the extent that thinking something is possible influences the outcome, sure. For me, at my age, with my expertise, I am aware that there is a tiny possibility I could live forever the same way I am aware I could win the lottery: I accept that neither will happen, but I’ll still buy a lottery ticket every now and then.
- anigbrowl 4y agoAll things have an extent, the urge to forget this is regressive imho.Books/TV shows that never ended seemed highly desirable when I was young, but infinite potential arguably means nothing matters.
- whatshisface 4y agoI don't know about you but seeing a big pile of skeletons in a basement mainly serves to confirm the ideas about death that I already had. It's also kind of misleading because they're not complaining but dying is actually pretty awful unless you're really, really lucky.
- brookst 4y agoWait, is it lucky if you’re aware of your last moments or lucky if you’re not?
- whatshisface 4y agoIt depends on the moments, really.
- warent 4y agoNaturally dying is unpalatable to the individual living brain, evolved for survival and reproduction! Doesn't it seem to be that death and life are mind-made abstractions of an unfathomable process of eternal continuity and change? In our minds it's all very binary because of evolution, and we conflate our evolved perception with true reality. If we peel back those layers then what is remaining?
- whatshisface 4y ago>If we peel back those layers then what is remaining? A really miserable process of being sick.
- warent 4y agoYou can be sick when you're dead?
- von_lohengramm 4y agoIt sounds like you're entirely missing GP's point.
- brookst 4y agoParis Catacombs are also amazing for this. First few skeletons are yikes. Next 50 are unsettling. Next 500 are sobering. Next 5,000 start to be kind of interesting, starting to notice variations in bone and joint shapes. Next 50,000 start to resemble the other people walking with you, just more naked. It’s a good experience.
- eikenberry 4y ago> death as the price of life IMO this is still casting it in an uncomfortable way. IMO it is much healthier to think of death as the reward for life, the final rest from the toils of living. The idea is to put them on equal footing as they are part of the same process and you should look forward to death as much as you look forward to living.
- hackernewds 4y ago> digital silicon upload What is this a reference to?
- kmlx 4y agoghost in the shell?