5 ms·

"Who promised you tomorrow?" - St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death

by user3939382 4y ago

Aeolun 4y ago
In some ways, the 10000+ previous days of my life are a fairly reasonable promise of tomorrow.
- tspike 4y ago
  Gambler'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 ago
    In 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 ago
      The 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 ago
  They say past performance does not guarantee future results…
  - darkarmani 4y ago
    No guarantee but it is a good predictor on a long timeframe.
    - hackernewds 4y ago
      a 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 ago
Being born is a death sentence.
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  Some would say it’s incredibly cruel to bring new life into existence for that very reason.
  - gerdesj 4y ago
    Yet those same people (whomever they are) continue to perpetuate their own "cruel" existence.
    - brookst 4y ago
      The living can consent
    - bialpio 4y ago
      You 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 ago
      The 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 ago
        Fun 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 ago
People 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.

"Who promised you tomorrow?" - St. Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death

Aeolun 4y ago

In some ways, the 10000+ previous days of my life are a fairly reasonable promise of tomorrow.

tspike 4y ago
Gambler'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 ago
  In 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 ago
    The 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 ago
They say past performance does not guarantee future results…
- darkarmani 4y ago
  No guarantee but it is a good predictor on a long timeframe.
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    a 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 ago

Being born is a death sentence.

BizarreByte 4y ago
Some would say it’s incredibly cruel to bring new life into existence for that very reason.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  Yet those same people (whomever they are) continue to perpetuate their own "cruel" existence.
  - brookst 4y ago
    The living can consent
  - bialpio 4y ago
    You 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Fun 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 ago

People 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.