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It's clear from many of these discussions that there is an unbridgeable discursive gap between the "why on earth would you ever want to die" and the "life would

It's clear from many of these discussions that there is an unbridgeable discursive gap between the "why on earth would you ever want to die" and the "life would become an intolerable nightmare" groups. Realistically if we do find ways to extend life then people will take advantage of them and all kinds of weird consequences will follow, and the two groups will argue about just how long life should be while trying not to die. Cosmically speaking all that will happen is that human development will slow down: after all if it requires a generation of human scientists to die so that new ideas can be accepted then [1]... My personal preference is pro-death. I enjoy life but it's important to my enjoyment that there is a terminus. The fact that it's not under my control also makes me feel calmer - it's out of my hands. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

litenboll 2y ago
What if reluctance to accept new ideas later in life stems from mortality in the first place?
- ted_bunny 2y ago
  Enough people deny their mortality that I doubt this is the case.
  - Filligree 2y ago
    People can deny their mortality all they like; they’re still mortal, and things like lower learning rates are likely to be genetic.
- scandox 2y ago
  Well who knows. My bet is on the very long-lived being fairly risk averse. And new ideas are risky.
  - waterhouse 2y ago
    If you're going to retire in N years, then that gives you an upper limit to how much you can benefit from learning (or even experimenting with) a new and potentially better approach, versus sticking with what currently works for you. As N gets smaller, the cost-benefit analysis increasingly favors the latter.
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  I like the concept that because we decline in liquid IQ as we age, so our static skill growth is always counterbalanced by our intellectual decline, we have never even seen a human being in the fullness of its power.
- kiba 2y ago
  That is silly. Some people are more adaptable than other and are able to change their mind through time.
  - litenboll 2y ago
    What is silly? Your statement can be true at the same time... And just to be clear, I did not mean that it's the sole reason that people refute new ideas, I was just opening up the possibility that without mortality we might still have progress without relying on generation shifts.
- throw9474 2y ago
  What if every time you accept new ideas, your old self dies a little bit? Our five year old self is already dead.
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  I think neuroplasticity is well known to have a physical basis. We can probably extend the neuroplasticity of young adult and early middle age into longer and longer timespans, but all you have to do is watch a teenager or young adult for a few days to see that the extreme neuroplasticity of very young people definitely comes with some drawbacks. I don't think I would want a future immortal billionaire with access to accumulated generations of power to enter a new adolescence with the brain reset that comes along with it. We need young people to be stupid and brash and occasionally fearless and brilliant and unburdened by the lessons (or scars) of the past to keep society moving forward but those can't be the same people in charge of the world. There are roles for both.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  In the US at least, young people are a lot more risk averse than previous generations.
Nursie 2y ago
If flexibility and plasticity of thinking are age-related, couldn't prevention of ageing maintain that? I think it's inevitable that such a change would cause big social upheavals. I find it highly ironic that those people who call this out as a negative often also call out how people living longer are change averse. > I enjoy life but it's important to my enjoyment that there is a terminus. Can I ask why, genuinely? The fact that I will likely die sometime in the next 50 years doesn't make the evening out I have planned any better or worse. The band I'm going to see are getting older, but I'm going to see them because they're coming to my town and it'll be enjoyable. My eventual death has no bearing on it at all as far as I can tell.
- voiceblue 2y ago
  On the one hand, we enjoy real flowering plants more than fake ones, and delight in anticipating their blossoming, though it is the fake plants that are ever blooming and ever lasting. On the other hand, the only moment in which you have direct control and could actually affect is the current one. When Pinocchio made his wish, was “agency” all he wanted, or was there something more?
  - Nursie 2y ago
    > though it is the fake plants that are ever blooming and ever lasting. I have recently been envious of a neighbours bushes - they flowered uninterrupted for many months, all spring, summer and autumn. Fantastic sprays of cream and crimson blooms. Both beautiful and long-lasting, I would love to plant those over more temporally limited ones that only flower for a few days per year. It is not the permanence that is unappealing about fake blooms, nor the brevity that makes flowers beautiful. To me anyway. Silk wallpaper with floral prints that has survived for hundreds of years in old British castles and country homes is no less beautiful for its age. I’m not sure I see the relevance of your other points. I guess we see things very differently.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 2y ago
dmm 2y ago
> human development will slow down: after all if it requires a generation of human scientists to die so that new ideas can be accepted then A worse problem is that whatever generation is in control when immortality is achieved will rule the world forever. Falling fertility makes this even more likely.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  > Falling fertility makes this even more likely. Falling fertility makes us extinct very soon. The idea that the youngest generation, raised by many generations to be dismissive or even outright hostile to fertility will, by some miracle, be the ones who say "no, I will have 2.1 children" is silly. And because it's falling fertility and not just "stable but below replacement fertility", demographic collapse comes quickly. and extinction within 200 years. If you're worried about immortality, then the good news is we don't even have enough time to figure it out.
  - hooverd 2y ago
    You can blame older generations for sucking up all the housing and holding on until they die.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      I could blame them, but about 3 months ago I saw a headline here on Hacker News telling us that the government of Canada plans on having a population of 100 million within the next few decades (currently at 30ish million). The 70 million difference isn't old people. Quite clearly, looks like government policy.
      - itishappy 2y ago
        The Century Initiative is not government policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative
    - jimbokun 2y ago
arisAlexis 2y ago
But you can always end it so why not give option? Options make for greatest value
neuralRiot 2y ago
I think that what most pro-immortality people forget is that forever is not just a very long time, our finite thinking does not allow us to understand something that never start or never ends and that death is life just as light is darkness and heat is cold one cannot exist without the other.
- goatlover 2y ago
  Immortality isn't a thing, the heat death of the universe virtually guarantees that. But nobody seriously thinks they're going to live a Googleplex of years. They just don't want to be limited to a max 110 year lifespan, where there's a good chance you spend the last few years wasting away in some nursing home. Why not live a few centuries or even millenia until something inevitably kills you? There's way more to see and do than any one current lifespan.
  - strogonoff 2y ago
    Effective immortality is very much a thing for everyone at present. Given immortality means living forever, if you cannot access experience before your life, and you cannot access experience after your life, then for all purposes your life is forever as far as your experience goes, and your experience is all there is for you.
    - goatlover 2y ago
      Semantics doesn't change the equation. I'd rather live a few centuries than tell myself that.
      - strogonoff 2y ago
        > Semantics doesn't change the equation. “Semantics” is simply “meaning”. If something has a different meaning, the equation no longer solves the same way. If you feel defensive and want ways to put someone down, you can replace “semantics” with “sophism” or something like that. > I'd rather live a few centuries than tell myself that. But you can’t, can you? So might as well look into what life, death, and immortality might really be, beyond the naive and wrong intuitions we have picked up from fiction books about vampires. Unless you believe in life after death (which I would not blame you for as many do, among scientists included), there is no span of time available to you in which you are not alive.
andsoitis 2y ago
> all that will happen is that human development will slow down: after all if it requires a generation of human scientists to die so that new ideas can be accepted then It isn’t obvious to me that that is given. An alternative would be that the breadth of parallel ideas would expand, more competition. There could then also be more depth because individuals behind groundbreaking ideas can build on their cognitive foundations for longer. One major change, which it thibk would be a positive is that we will be directed to thibk more long term. With extreme life extension, the cosmos also becomes smaller because we could travel and explore space and time more extensively.
DontchaKnowit 2y ago
Just my 2 cents - "why on earth would you ever want to die" Because its the end of any worry, doubt, suffering, fear, uncertainty. Because its over. And youll be dead, so you wont be able to feel what youre missing out on. The finality of death is a beautiful and comforting eventuality in my opinion.
- Auracle 2y ago
  I know a lot of people share similar sentiments but I doubt many feel that way when they’re on their deathbed. Personally, I don’t want to die. There’s so much to do, see, and experience. One lifetime isn’t even close to enough, and that only got worse since I had children.

litenboll 2y ago

What if reluctance to accept new ideas later in life stems from mortality in the first place?

ted_bunny 2y ago
Enough people deny their mortality that I doubt this is the case.
- Filligree 2y ago
  People can deny their mortality all they like; they’re still mortal, and things like lower learning rates are likely to be genetic.
scandox 2y ago
Well who knows. My bet is on the very long-lived being fairly risk averse. And new ideas are risky.
- waterhouse 2y ago
  If you're going to retire in N years, then that gives you an upper limit to how much you can benefit from learning (or even experimenting with) a new and potentially better approach, versus sticking with what currently works for you. As N gets smaller, the cost-benefit analysis increasingly favors the latter.
FeepingCreature 2y ago
I like the concept that because we decline in liquid IQ as we age, so our static skill growth is always counterbalanced by our intellectual decline, we have never even seen a human being in the fullness of its power.
kiba 2y ago
That is silly. Some people are more adaptable than other and are able to change their mind through time.
- litenboll 2y ago
  What is silly? Your statement can be true at the same time... And just to be clear, I did not mean that it's the sole reason that people refute new ideas, I was just opening up the possibility that without mortality we might still have progress without relying on generation shifts.
throw9474 2y ago
What if every time you accept new ideas, your old self dies a little bit? Our five year old self is already dead.
idiotsecant 2y ago
I think neuroplasticity is well known to have a physical basis. We can probably extend the neuroplasticity of young adult and early middle age into longer and longer timespans, but all you have to do is watch a teenager or young adult for a few days to see that the extreme neuroplasticity of very young people definitely comes with some drawbacks. I don't think I would want a future immortal billionaire with access to accumulated generations of power to enter a new adolescence with the brain reset that comes along with it. We need young people to be stupid and brash and occasionally fearless and brilliant and unburdened by the lessons (or scars) of the past to keep society moving forward but those can't be the same people in charge of the world. There are roles for both.
jimbokun 2y ago
In the US at least, young people are a lot more risk averse than previous generations.

Nursie 2y ago

If flexibility and plasticity of thinking are age-related, couldn't prevention of ageing maintain that? I think it's inevitable that such a change would cause big social upheavals. I find it highly ironic that those people who call this out as a negative often also call out how people living longer are change averse. > I enjoy life but it's important to my enjoyment that there is a terminus. Can I ask why, genuinely? The fact that I will likely die sometime in the next 50 years doesn't make the evening out I have planned any better or worse. The band I'm going to see are getting older, but I'm going to see them because they're coming to my town and it'll be enjoyable. My eventual death has no bearing on it at all as far as I can tell.

voiceblue 2y ago
On the one hand, we enjoy real flowering plants more than fake ones, and delight in anticipating their blossoming, though it is the fake plants that are ever blooming and ever lasting. On the other hand, the only moment in which you have direct control and could actually affect is the current one. When Pinocchio made his wish, was “agency” all he wanted, or was there something more?
- Nursie 2y ago
  > though it is the fake plants that are ever blooming and ever lasting. I have recently been envious of a neighbours bushes - they flowered uninterrupted for many months, all spring, summer and autumn. Fantastic sprays of cream and crimson blooms. Both beautiful and long-lasting, I would love to plant those over more temporally limited ones that only flower for a few days per year. It is not the permanence that is unappealing about fake blooms, nor the brevity that makes flowers beautiful. To me anyway. Silk wallpaper with floral prints that has survived for hundreds of years in old British castles and country homes is no less beautiful for its age. I’m not sure I see the relevance of your other points. I guess we see things very differently.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago

dmm 2y ago

> human development will slow down: after all if it requires a generation of human scientists to die so that new ideas can be accepted then A worse problem is that whatever generation is in control when immortality is achieved will rule the world forever. Falling fertility makes this even more likely.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> Falling fertility makes this even more likely. Falling fertility makes us extinct very soon. The idea that the youngest generation, raised by many generations to be dismissive or even outright hostile to fertility will, by some miracle, be the ones who say "no, I will have 2.1 children" is silly. And because it's falling fertility and not just "stable but below replacement fertility", demographic collapse comes quickly. and extinction within 200 years. If you're worried about immortality, then the good news is we don't even have enough time to figure it out.
- hooverd 2y ago
  You can blame older generations for sucking up all the housing and holding on until they die.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    I could blame them, but about 3 months ago I saw a headline here on Hacker News telling us that the government of Canada plans on having a population of 100 million within the next few decades (currently at 30ish million). The 70 million difference isn't old people. Quite clearly, looks like government policy.
    - itishappy 2y ago
      The Century Initiative is not government policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative
  - jimbokun 2y ago

arisAlexis 2y ago

But you can always end it so why not give option? Options make for greatest value

neuralRiot 2y ago

I think that what most pro-immortality people forget is that forever is not just a very long time, our finite thinking does not allow us to understand something that never start or never ends and that death is life just as light is darkness and heat is cold one cannot exist without the other.

goatlover 2y ago
Immortality isn't a thing, the heat death of the universe virtually guarantees that. But nobody seriously thinks they're going to live a Googleplex of years. They just don't want to be limited to a max 110 year lifespan, where there's a good chance you spend the last few years wasting away in some nursing home. Why not live a few centuries or even millenia until something inevitably kills you? There's way more to see and do than any one current lifespan.
- strogonoff 2y ago
  Effective immortality is very much a thing for everyone at present. Given immortality means living forever, if you cannot access experience before your life, and you cannot access experience after your life, then for all purposes your life is forever as far as your experience goes, and your experience is all there is for you.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    Semantics doesn't change the equation. I'd rather live a few centuries than tell myself that.
    - strogonoff 2y ago
      > Semantics doesn't change the equation. “Semantics” is simply “meaning”. If something has a different meaning, the equation no longer solves the same way. If you feel defensive and want ways to put someone down, you can replace “semantics” with “sophism” or something like that. > I'd rather live a few centuries than tell myself that. But you can’t, can you? So might as well look into what life, death, and immortality might really be, beyond the naive and wrong intuitions we have picked up from fiction books about vampires. Unless you believe in life after death (which I would not blame you for as many do, among scientists included), there is no span of time available to you in which you are not alive.

andsoitis 2y ago

> all that will happen is that human development will slow down: after all if it requires a generation of human scientists to die so that new ideas can be accepted then It isn’t obvious to me that that is given. An alternative would be that the breadth of parallel ideas would expand, more competition. There could then also be more depth because individuals behind groundbreaking ideas can build on their cognitive foundations for longer. One major change, which it thibk would be a positive is that we will be directed to thibk more long term. With extreme life extension, the cosmos also becomes smaller because we could travel and explore space and time more extensively.

DontchaKnowit 2y ago

Just my 2 cents - "why on earth would you ever want to die" Because its the end of any worry, doubt, suffering, fear, uncertainty. Because its over. And youll be dead, so you wont be able to feel what youre missing out on. The finality of death is a beautiful and comforting eventuality in my opinion.

Auracle 2y ago
I know a lot of people share similar sentiments but I doubt many feel that way when they’re on their deathbed. Personally, I don’t want to die. There’s so much to do, see, and experience. One lifetime isn’t even close to enough, and that only got worse since I had children.