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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

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.
- neuralRiot 2y ago
  > There's way more to see and do than any one current lifespan. Perhaps this a personal view but I had conversations with elder people and most will tell you the same, a very long life (even a healthy one) is quite boring and depressing, you start to see the same patterns again and again, everything and everyone you loved dissappear and the essence of humanity doesn’t change. Same play, different actors and costumes.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    I'm sure some people feel that way, but I also know not everyone does. I have to wonder how much of that is a consequence of aging. Anyway, life extension can be a choice, once it's available.
  - Viliam1234 2y ago
    Different people are different. For some people everything is so boooooooring already at high school. For other people, it's "vita brevis, ars longa". > everything and everyone you loved disappear Perhaps with immortality, there would be less of this? Maybe I am just too young to understand the wisdom of the old people. I am almost 50, so in the optimistic case I might get the same amount of time again. That is definitely not enough to see all the things I want to see, try all the things I want to try, learn all the things I want to learn. I imagine that when your health becomes shit, life sucks and you get tired of it. Good immortality should come with perfect (or at least average, from out current perspective) health. That includes mental health. But if someone believes that he already understands everything and it's all just the same patterns over and over again... dude, where are all your Nobel prices? Maybe your life is boring because you don't try new things.
    - neuralRiot 2y ago
      I’m in you age bracket and I wouldn’t say I find life “boring”, I find it recurrent, to me being able to communicate instantly from one end of the world to the other but being unable to understand our neighbor who thinks differently and losing the sense of “community” to become just individuals living closely in isolation to be able to travel in minutes what used to take months but at the expense of destroying our own environment and poisoning the future of our own descendants is no evolution. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “There’s more to life than increasing its speed”
snickerbockers 2y ago
You seem to be under the impression that this is some sort of Faustian pact that prevents you from ever changing your mind at any point in the future.

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.
neuralRiot 2y ago
> There's way more to see and do than any one current lifespan. Perhaps this a personal view but I had conversations with elder people and most will tell you the same, a very long life (even a healthy one) is quite boring and depressing, you start to see the same patterns again and again, everything and everyone you loved dissappear and the essence of humanity doesn’t change. Same play, different actors and costumes.
- goatlover 2y ago
  I'm sure some people feel that way, but I also know not everyone does. I have to wonder how much of that is a consequence of aging. Anyway, life extension can be a choice, once it's available.
- Viliam1234 2y ago
  Different people are different. For some people everything is so boooooooring already at high school. For other people, it's "vita brevis, ars longa". > everything and everyone you loved disappear Perhaps with immortality, there would be less of this? Maybe I am just too young to understand the wisdom of the old people. I am almost 50, so in the optimistic case I might get the same amount of time again. That is definitely not enough to see all the things I want to see, try all the things I want to try, learn all the things I want to learn. I imagine that when your health becomes shit, life sucks and you get tired of it. Good immortality should come with perfect (or at least average, from out current perspective) health. That includes mental health. But if someone believes that he already understands everything and it's all just the same patterns over and over again... dude, where are all your Nobel prices? Maybe your life is boring because you don't try new things.
  - neuralRiot 2y ago
    I’m in you age bracket and I wouldn’t say I find life “boring”, I find it recurrent, to me being able to communicate instantly from one end of the world to the other but being unable to understand our neighbor who thinks differently and losing the sense of “community” to become just individuals living closely in isolation to be able to travel in minutes what used to take months but at the expense of destroying our own environment and poisoning the future of our own descendants is no evolution. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “There’s more to life than increasing its speed”

snickerbockers 2y ago

You seem to be under the impression that this is some sort of Faustian pact that prevents you from ever changing your mind at any point in the future.