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I think the way you are thinking of death is sadly too common, but also profoundly materialistic and selfish. Science doesn't really tell us what happens to yo

I think the way you are thinking of death is sadly too common, but also profoundly materialistic and selfish. Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. It doesn't say much of anything about your consciousness at all - in fact, it is still largely mystified as to why you aren't just a flesh robot following straightforward evolutionary imperatives with maybe a little quantum randomness thrown in. What you think about your conscious mind largely comes down to belief, and it looks like you believe that there is nothing more than the flesh robot, which I guess has some emergent properties that result in a conscious mind. If there really is nothing to it but what we have observed, then that's true, but there are a lot of things in the universe that we haven't observed, and this may be one of them. For all we know, any one of the religions could be right about life after death or the existence of some sort of "soul," including yours, which denies the existence of one. As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Why is life about what will "do me much good"? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? There has always been a slice of the elite that thinks they can cheat death by doing this, and usually it doesn't go well. Usually, they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. Is this time different because instead of drinking lead or drying your body, you've chosen to freeze it instead? Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. I think it's a lot better to embrace the fact that you get about 100 years on this rock to advance the state of the world as much as you can before passing the job of being its steward onto the next generation.

southernplaces7 3y ago
>As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? If anything is selfish, it's making all sorts of unfounded assumptions about why people choose to try extending their lifespan and then moralizing based on those assumptions. People may have all kinds of reasons for wanting to try this, and they need not be materialistic or accumulation-based at all. Ultimately, it's their personal choice, with their money, and even if they spend $100,000 on paying for it, or more, it doesn't mean they didn't leave other assets or things for their descendants. By making a moral claim for why YOU decide that spending that money isn't justified, you're going down one very arrogant and ultimately silly road of making the same claim to so many other things people spend money and effort they've worked hard for on specific personal preferences, be they material or otherwise. Maybe you buying a $700,000 house vs. a $600,000 house is just as idiotic then? Do you really need the extra floor space or bathrooms? >There has always been a slice of the elite that thinks they can cheat death by doing this, and usually it doesn't go well. It isn't just a slice of the elite that would love to have extra years of life in the face of a total unknown darkness. It's something that many people would love, and if a few with more resources are willing to pay more (and again, the prices of these services aren't absurdly expensive) to hopefully move forward a technology that gives that to both rich and poor at some point, it's fundamentally a good thing, and certainly not something that should be hammered down because of very shaky and subjective moralizing. Where would you draw a line? Should other once-implausible life enhancement therapies that are now widely used and accepted also be forsaken? How about organ transplants? Gene therapy? highly expensive cancer treatments that all have extended life beyond what was previously "natural" for many people? Often these also start first as speculative ideas, then experiments, then just options for the rich, but later become much more widely available. >they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. Is this time different because instead of drinking lead or drying your body, you've chosen to freeze it instead? Let's separate completely absurd assumptions about people needing cult beliefs to be open minded on weird science from the much more straightforward and reasoned logic of wanting to live a longer life, or experimenting with interesting new technologies. Here you're just smearing for its own sake. Also, cryogenics, for all its still tenuous science, is a far cry from purely mystical beliefs like medieval alchemy. By fixating on how absurd freezing seems to you only because current medicine can't reverse it yet without damage (though nothing material makes the idea impossible), you're scoffing at the idea in the same way as a priest from the 16th century probably would if you explained completely workable modern gene therapies and organ transplants to them.
nulld3v 3y ago
All science currently points to consciousness completely ceasing after death. Death does not strike when it is just. Death comes at random. Who are you to judge when people should die? Is it selfish for someone who dies at 25 years old to participate in this scheme?
KronisLV 3y ago
These discussions can get a bit long, so I'll attempt (and fail) to keep it brief. > Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. Currently it doesn't really tell us that there's a consciousness of any sort afterwards. The concept of an afterlife might as well be a coping mechanism and the burden of proof should lie on those in favor of those claims. Maybe some day we'll have an answer. Until then, it's best to stick to what we know. What we know is that one's physical body shapes their mind or at least its expression a great deal, like the case of Phineas Gage and others. Similarly, even the casual descriptions of going under for surgery convey a sense of "lost time", just nothingness. If I have some sort of a "soul" then it will become more relevant once I'm dead. Until then, it makes sense to look after my body in whatever ways are possible, which includes things like eating well, getting enough sleep, not acting reckless or engaging in risk-taking behavior, limiting intake of harmful substances and so on. It also might include preserving my body around the time of death in case my brain activity can be restored later. > As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? I will have no descendants. This is not a world where I'd want any, or worse yet, pursue parenthood due to selfish motivations or societal pressures. It's challenging to do it right and it is not for everyone. Props to the good parents out there, shame on the bad ones, or those who are not ready or qualified to be parents, yet choose that anyways. > Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Why is life about what will "do me much good"? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? Nothing special at all, just self preservation - I experience life from my own perspective. I would like a continuation of that, within my means. I'm not stealing the last bite of food out of some descendant's mouth, merely using my own capital as I please, after the corresponding taxes have been paid and other investments made, charity donations done and so on. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to do, given how we typically get capital for our contributions to society in one way or another (hopefully that's the case). We don't tell people that they shouldn't buy nice clothes or cars for themselves because their future descendants could use the resources better, even knowing that those clothes will tatter and those cars will turn into heaps of rust. We don't tell people that they shouldn't buy medicine or medical procedures that might improve their health just because of them being a certain age, or more bluntly, we don't tell them that they should die so that the state and their descendants can take whatever inheritance there is. > Usually, they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. I think it probably boils down to simple maths: 0.01% is still better than 0%. Probably depends on how much you want to live. On the flip side, there are also those who say that a lifetime is more than enough and they're happy to have an end to a life well lived. > Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. Unfortunately, infant mortality was also a natural part of life, until we took an effort to improve things. There's no reason why death or even deterioration at a late age couldn't be engineering problems to be solved. A world without Alzheimer's or cancer would be a better world, even if both of those are also natural. Imagine if you could preserve someone terminally ill or someone in need of an unavailable organ donation, until later. > I think it's a lot better to embrace the fact that you get about 100 years on this rock to advance the state of the world as much as you can before passing the job of being its steward onto the next generation. There is no reason why someone couldn't live with this assumption (regardless of whether they choose to have kids or not), while hoping for or investing in healthcare advancements, or even set aside some money for cryonics if they want, instead of buying more real estate or whatever. All in all, I don't expect to change any opinions, because mine is as alien to you as yours is to me. I don't appreciate that some of it reads condescending and so accusatory, though.
Retric 3y ago
Science very clearly says what happens to consciousness after death, people just don’t like what it says. That doesn’t make science wrong any more than it’s wrong when people dislike the the speed of light etc. It might be wrong, but that’s a different question.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Science shows that the brain and the rest of the nervous system stops at death. How that relates to the notion of consciousness is still pretty much unknown, and many neuroscientists will tell you that. We haven't yet found an organ or process in the brain responsible for the conscious mind that we can say stops at death. Our level of understanding of neuroscience basically stops at understanding what regions and receptors in the brain are tickled by what sensations, and we still have very few actual ideas as to things like how your brain computes 2 + 2, let alone how your brain computes things like right and wrong.
  - Retric 3y ago
    First science knows lack of blood flow to the brain results in loss of consciousness and it also knows blood flow stops at death. That’s enough to reach a well supported conclusion. Our level of understanding of neuroscience is irrelevant, but also far more detailed than you just described. The brains chemistry for example is a huge area of study with a lot of useful information. We also know many functional details such as how vision works down to enough detail for people to have come up with new classes of optical illusions. etc etc But again neuroscience is overkill, science made the blood flow consciousness connection hundreds of years ago.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      We are using "consciousness" with two different definitions. There is a definition of "the thing that observes the universe," which you are using, and a definition of "the thing that contains your self," much less scientific, which I am using. The former definition is very clearly understood, but also doesn't really matter in this discussion, since your observations of the world are very clearly known to be moderated through meatspace, but the "consciousness" in the latter sense persists across so-called "losses of consciousness" (when using the former definition). It is very legitimate to say that the latter definition doesn't exist, but that is as much a belief as the idea that it does. I personally don't believe that it exists, but I think it's hubris or folly to say that science shows that it definitely doesn't.
insanitybit 3y ago
> Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. It doesn't say much of anything about your consciousness at all lol what? No. When you die your brain ceases activity. There is no scientific evidence to support that there is some underlying, persisting system that drives consciousness - literally everything points to consciousness being driven by brain activity. When you die you die. That is it. > Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's good or something to accept. Disease is natural, do we just go "well it's part of life!" - no, we cure it. And none of this is unknown, it's the known part (ie: "I will cease") that is horrifying.
- zer8k 3y ago
  > There is no scientific evidence to support that there is some underlying, persisting system that drives consciousness - literally everything points to consciousness being driven by brain activity. Similarly, there's no scientific consensus on what consciousness even is. Neuroscience has some idea (e.g. "its related to brain activity") but that's it. The psychologists, in typical psychological fashion, have even less of an idea. That's not to say the lack of evidence proves that your consciousness ascends to a higher plane after you die. Simply a fact that _consciousness_ is one of the millennium problems of brain science. You cannot tell yourself apart from a well programmed LLM. Does this imply the LLM is conscious? Well according to the Chinese Room Argument the answer is no. In a practical sense, your argument is leading you to that conclusion. In that case, the view is that people are just deterministic meat robots with some randomness component is probably accurate. However, even for stanch atheist the idea that they are nothing more than a deterministic meat computer featuring programmed self-death is understandably disturbing. It's hard to separate the thought of death (and your ideas around it) from your own self-preservation mechanism. The next 100 years of neuroscience will be very interesting.
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    > Similarly, there's no scientific consensus on what consciousness even is. It literally does not matter. We know that it is something that exists within the body, primarily if not exclusively the brain/nervous system. Therefor if the entire body dies you don't need any more information to know that consciousness is gone. It would require additional evidence to the contrary for one to take on the theory that consciousness somehow exists outside of the nervous system. What you're saying just flat out does not matter. What consciousness is does not matter. If you destroy someone's brain you can be assured that consciousness ends.
xereeto 3y ago
Yes, preserving my own life is worth more to me than passing resources to “future generations”. I’m not having kids anyway. Death is a natural part of life, but so was smallpox until it wasn’t. Nature fucking sucks and we should bend it to our will.
fasterik 3y ago
>Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. There are a lot of things science doesn't currently tell us. That doesn't mean every possible alternative is equally reasonable. Either consciousness is physical or non-physical. If it's physical, then everything we know about the brain and the laws of physics suggests that it can't survive the death of the brain. If it's non-physical, then it must still interact with the quantum fields of physics. Otherwise, how would we have any experience of physical reality? The slogan in these situations is "show me the equations". If you're claiming that there is a non-physical substance that interacts with quantum fields, there should be equations governing these interactions. Until these equations have been provided and confirmed to predict the results of experiments, why should we believe in it? >Death is ultimately a natural part of life This is the naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is natural does not automatically make it good. If 100 years on this rock is better than 25, why wouldn't 1000 years be better than 100?
majkinetor 3y ago
Omfg. I am in disbeleif that people like this exist. U really have a problem about my beleifs or how I spend the money I earned myself? You could literary burn yours during your life or death and I wouldnt care at all. You can literary invest in pink elepanths reviving you millenia after your death and I would not lift an eyebrow... Its you who is selfish not the OP. You and your beleifs... you judging others not to be good enough by your metrics. Did you even read yourself before posting? Nothing?

southernplaces7 3y ago

>As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? If anything is selfish, it's making all sorts of unfounded assumptions about why people choose to try extending their lifespan and then moralizing based on those assumptions. People may have all kinds of reasons for wanting to try this, and they need not be materialistic or accumulation-based at all. Ultimately, it's their personal choice, with their money, and even if they spend $100,000 on paying for it, or more, it doesn't mean they didn't leave other assets or things for their descendants. By making a moral claim for why YOU decide that spending that money isn't justified, you're going down one very arrogant and ultimately silly road of making the same claim to so many other things people spend money and effort they've worked hard for on specific personal preferences, be they material or otherwise. Maybe you buying a $700,000 house vs. a $600,000 house is just as idiotic then? Do you really need the extra floor space or bathrooms? >There has always been a slice of the elite that thinks they can cheat death by doing this, and usually it doesn't go well. It isn't just a slice of the elite that would love to have extra years of life in the face of a total unknown darkness. It's something that many people would love, and if a few with more resources are willing to pay more (and again, the prices of these services aren't absurdly expensive) to hopefully move forward a technology that gives that to both rich and poor at some point, it's fundamentally a good thing, and certainly not something that should be hammered down because of very shaky and subjective moralizing. Where would you draw a line? Should other once-implausible life enhancement therapies that are now widely used and accepted also be forsaken? How about organ transplants? Gene therapy? highly expensive cancer treatments that all have extended life beyond what was previously "natural" for many people? Often these also start first as speculative ideas, then experiments, then just options for the rich, but later become much more widely available. >they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. Is this time different because instead of drinking lead or drying your body, you've chosen to freeze it instead? Let's separate completely absurd assumptions about people needing cult beliefs to be open minded on weird science from the much more straightforward and reasoned logic of wanting to live a longer life, or experimenting with interesting new technologies. Here you're just smearing for its own sake. Also, cryogenics, for all its still tenuous science, is a far cry from purely mystical beliefs like medieval alchemy. By fixating on how absurd freezing seems to you only because current medicine can't reverse it yet without damage (though nothing material makes the idea impossible), you're scoffing at the idea in the same way as a priest from the 16th century probably would if you explained completely workable modern gene therapies and organ transplants to them.

nulld3v 3y ago

All science currently points to consciousness completely ceasing after death. Death does not strike when it is just. Death comes at random. Who are you to judge when people should die? Is it selfish for someone who dies at 25 years old to participate in this scheme?

KronisLV 3y ago

These discussions can get a bit long, so I'll attempt (and fail) to keep it brief. > Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. Currently it doesn't really tell us that there's a consciousness of any sort afterwards. The concept of an afterlife might as well be a coping mechanism and the burden of proof should lie on those in favor of those claims. Maybe some day we'll have an answer. Until then, it's best to stick to what we know. What we know is that one's physical body shapes their mind or at least its expression a great deal, like the case of Phineas Gage and others. Similarly, even the casual descriptions of going under for surgery convey a sense of "lost time", just nothingness. If I have some sort of a "soul" then it will become more relevant once I'm dead. Until then, it makes sense to look after my body in whatever ways are possible, which includes things like eating well, getting enough sleep, not acting reckless or engaging in risk-taking behavior, limiting intake of harmful substances and so on. It also might include preserving my body around the time of death in case my brain activity can be restored later. > As to selfishness, why spend the $100k+ on having your body frozen rather than passing that along to your descendants? I will have no descendants. This is not a world where I'd want any, or worse yet, pursue parenthood due to selfish motivations or societal pressures. It's challenging to do it right and it is not for everyone. Props to the good parents out there, shame on the bad ones, or those who are not ready or qualified to be parents, yet choose that anyways. > Do you believe that there's something special about you and/or inadequate about other people that makes your greed over a chance at a few more years of life worth the money and time you are taking from them? Why is life about what will "do me much good"? Is that all you think your life is worth? It's just about accruing a bunch of stuff so that you can hopefully spend it on becoming immortal before your clock runs out? Nothing special at all, just self preservation - I experience life from my own perspective. I would like a continuation of that, within my means. I'm not stealing the last bite of food out of some descendant's mouth, merely using my own capital as I please, after the corresponding taxes have been paid and other investments made, charity donations done and so on. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to do, given how we typically get capital for our contributions to society in one way or another (hopefully that's the case). We don't tell people that they shouldn't buy nice clothes or cars for themselves because their future descendants could use the resources better, even knowing that those clothes will tatter and those cars will turn into heaps of rust. We don't tell people that they shouldn't buy medicine or medical procedures that might improve their health just because of them being a certain age, or more bluntly, we don't tell them that they should die so that the state and their descendants can take whatever inheritance there is. > Usually, they are also part of some weird cult, too, that convinces them that they can beat the odds. I think it probably boils down to simple maths: 0.01% is still better than 0%. Probably depends on how much you want to live. On the flip side, there are also those who say that a lifetime is more than enough and they're happy to have an end to a life well lived. > Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. Unfortunately, infant mortality was also a natural part of life, until we took an effort to improve things. There's no reason why death or even deterioration at a late age couldn't be engineering problems to be solved. A world without Alzheimer's or cancer would be a better world, even if both of those are also natural. Imagine if you could preserve someone terminally ill or someone in need of an unavailable organ donation, until later. > I think it's a lot better to embrace the fact that you get about 100 years on this rock to advance the state of the world as much as you can before passing the job of being its steward onto the next generation. There is no reason why someone couldn't live with this assumption (regardless of whether they choose to have kids or not), while hoping for or investing in healthcare advancements, or even set aside some money for cryonics if they want, instead of buying more real estate or whatever. All in all, I don't expect to change any opinions, because mine is as alien to you as yours is to me. I don't appreciate that some of it reads condescending and so accusatory, though.

Retric 3y ago

Science very clearly says what happens to consciousness after death, people just don’t like what it says. That doesn’t make science wrong any more than it’s wrong when people dislike the the speed of light etc. It might be wrong, but that’s a different question.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
Science shows that the brain and the rest of the nervous system stops at death. How that relates to the notion of consciousness is still pretty much unknown, and many neuroscientists will tell you that. We haven't yet found an organ or process in the brain responsible for the conscious mind that we can say stops at death. Our level of understanding of neuroscience basically stops at understanding what regions and receptors in the brain are tickled by what sensations, and we still have very few actual ideas as to things like how your brain computes 2 + 2, let alone how your brain computes things like right and wrong.
- Retric 3y ago
  First science knows lack of blood flow to the brain results in loss of consciousness and it also knows blood flow stops at death. That’s enough to reach a well supported conclusion. Our level of understanding of neuroscience is irrelevant, but also far more detailed than you just described. The brains chemistry for example is a huge area of study with a lot of useful information. We also know many functional details such as how vision works down to enough detail for people to have come up with new classes of optical illusions. etc etc But again neuroscience is overkill, science made the blood flow consciousness connection hundreds of years ago.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    We are using "consciousness" with two different definitions. There is a definition of "the thing that observes the universe," which you are using, and a definition of "the thing that contains your self," much less scientific, which I am using. The former definition is very clearly understood, but also doesn't really matter in this discussion, since your observations of the world are very clearly known to be moderated through meatspace, but the "consciousness" in the latter sense persists across so-called "losses of consciousness" (when using the former definition). It is very legitimate to say that the latter definition doesn't exist, but that is as much a belief as the idea that it does. I personally don't believe that it exists, but I think it's hubris or folly to say that science shows that it definitely doesn't.

insanitybit 3y ago

> Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. It doesn't say much of anything about your consciousness at all lol what? No. When you die your brain ceases activity. There is no scientific evidence to support that there is some underlying, persisting system that drives consciousness - literally everything points to consciousness being driven by brain activity. When you die you die. That is it. > Death is ultimately a natural part of life, and I guess the unknown part of it is so terrifying that we spend so much of life futilely trying to prevent it. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's good or something to accept. Disease is natural, do we just go "well it's part of life!" - no, we cure it. And none of this is unknown, it's the known part (ie: "I will cease") that is horrifying.

zer8k 3y ago
> There is no scientific evidence to support that there is some underlying, persisting system that drives consciousness - literally everything points to consciousness being driven by brain activity. Similarly, there's no scientific consensus on what consciousness even is. Neuroscience has some idea (e.g. "its related to brain activity") but that's it. The psychologists, in typical psychological fashion, have even less of an idea. That's not to say the lack of evidence proves that your consciousness ascends to a higher plane after you die. Simply a fact that _consciousness_ is one of the millennium problems of brain science. You cannot tell yourself apart from a well programmed LLM. Does this imply the LLM is conscious? Well according to the Chinese Room Argument the answer is no. In a practical sense, your argument is leading you to that conclusion. In that case, the view is that people are just deterministic meat robots with some randomness component is probably accurate. However, even for stanch atheist the idea that they are nothing more than a deterministic meat computer featuring programmed self-death is understandably disturbing. It's hard to separate the thought of death (and your ideas around it) from your own self-preservation mechanism. The next 100 years of neuroscience will be very interesting.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  > Similarly, there's no scientific consensus on what consciousness even is. It literally does not matter. We know that it is something that exists within the body, primarily if not exclusively the brain/nervous system. Therefor if the entire body dies you don't need any more information to know that consciousness is gone. It would require additional evidence to the contrary for one to take on the theory that consciousness somehow exists outside of the nervous system. What you're saying just flat out does not matter. What consciousness is does not matter. If you destroy someone's brain you can be assured that consciousness ends.

xereeto 3y ago

Yes, preserving my own life is worth more to me than passing resources to “future generations”. I’m not having kids anyway. Death is a natural part of life, but so was smallpox until it wasn’t. Nature fucking sucks and we should bend it to our will.

fasterik 3y ago

>Science doesn't really tell us what happens to your consciousness after death. There are a lot of things science doesn't currently tell us. That doesn't mean every possible alternative is equally reasonable. Either consciousness is physical or non-physical. If it's physical, then everything we know about the brain and the laws of physics suggests that it can't survive the death of the brain. If it's non-physical, then it must still interact with the quantum fields of physics. Otherwise, how would we have any experience of physical reality? The slogan in these situations is "show me the equations". If you're claiming that there is a non-physical substance that interacts with quantum fields, there should be equations governing these interactions. Until these equations have been provided and confirmed to predict the results of experiments, why should we believe in it? >Death is ultimately a natural part of life This is the naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is natural does not automatically make it good. If 100 years on this rock is better than 25, why wouldn't 1000 years be better than 100?

majkinetor 3y ago

Omfg. I am in disbeleif that people like this exist. U really have a problem about my beleifs or how I spend the money I earned myself? You could literary burn yours during your life or death and I wouldnt care at all. You can literary invest in pink elepanths reviving you millenia after your death and I would not lift an eyebrow... Its you who is selfish not the OP. You and your beleifs... you judging others not to be good enough by your metrics. Did you even read yourself before posting? Nothing?