6 ms·

Based on my discussions over the years, a majority of people want to be dead - just not right now. Or rather, to be more precise, they either hold or find it co

Based on my discussions over the years, a majority of people want to be dead - just not right now. Or rather, to be more precise, they either hold or find it convenient to pretend to hold the belief that they want to be dead at some point in the future that roughly corresponds with other people's similarly declared desire to be dead at some point in the future. It's pretty easy to turn up this complex of beliefs and signaling and ideas: just talk to people about greatly extending the healthy human life span. Your average fellow will disavow such an idea, even if it comes with good health all the way. Oh no, they will say, why would anyone want to live for such a time. I'll be glad to go. So, in general, people want to be dead. Just not right now this minute. As to this: some days I talk about it, some days I throw up my hands, and some days I wonder whether or not it is the most insane thing in the mad world. Possibly, possibly not. From a utilitarian perspective, sure, yes, as a widespread belief it has effects going forward (in this age of biotechnology in which we might largely remove involuntary death if we actually cared enough to do that, but the signs so far are that not so many people do) that are worse than war, worse than poverty, worse than all the disasters of a century rolled into one. From the perspective of a metric of craziness of what is believed or adhered to, possibly not as bad as religions, either civic or devotional.

vividmind 14y ago
> Based on my discussions over the years, a majority of people want to be dead - just not right now. WOW! This really struck me now... Imagine how your behaviour would change if you didn't have this expectation!
- barrkel 14y ago
  Probably for the negative, given the human propensity for procrastination.
kiba 14y ago
Come with me! Let the deathists buries their dead.
graeme 14y ago
You sound very confident that immortality would be a good thing. Maybe. We've never experienced it, so how can you be sure? To be clear, I THINK my own immortality would be nice, but I can't even be sure about that. Immortality for EVERYONE would fundamentally change our societies. Every human institution is affected by death. Removing it would change everything, unpredictably. If you can find an English version (or read Spanish), the Immortal by Borges is a good partial exploration of this theme, for an individual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_(short_story) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_(short_story)
- Wingman4l7 14y ago
  A good examination of radical life extension and its repercussions on society, life, and memory is examined in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.
  - zacharycohn 14y ago
    Also, Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love."
- reasonattlm 14y ago
  What is the cost of 100,000 lives lost every day? [1] If you have objections to agelessness through medicine, and many do, then it is probably a good idea to first consider the question above, and then consider your objection in the same terms. [1] http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outrage-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra...
  - graeme 14y ago
    I didn't say death is without cost. I said, eliminating death has bigger implications than we can imagine. It's certainly conceivable that the net effect would be negative. The original post was phrased to the effect that anyone who thinks death has a purpose is a priori not just wrong, but very, very wrong.
- guylhem 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
brianchu 14y ago
All else being equal, immortality could very well be a bad thing - overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, massive unemployment, etc. But the problem is that in the real world immortality obviously will not be achieved alone. If society makes the technological leap towards immortality, almost certainly society will have undergone other technological transformations. By the time we achieve immortality, maybe computer-brain interfaces would allow us to live in a virtual reality, maybe capitalism will be dead and automation will be complete, maybe we will have colonized other planets, the list goes on. These changes may obviate the negative effects of immortality on society. The fact remains that technological progress is inexorable and inescapable. Contrast this against people's attitudes towards changing trends in technology, and people are remarkably stubborn. That people today by and large want to eventually die does not mean that people living in a future society where immortality is taken for granted will also wish to die eventually. Just compare attitudes towards social networking between people who are in their teens, and people who are in their 60s.
- Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
  'overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, massive unemployment, etc.' We are going to have to face these things with or without immortality, likely this century.
JoshTriplett 14y ago
What people profess and what people believe can differ wildly. Right now, most people don't see any obvious route towards living forever, and haven't even given that idea much thought; furthermore, most people likely don't see any benefit to their personally professing a belief otherwise, and professing such a belief goes contrary to social norms. On the other hand, many people gain (perceived or actual) social benefits from professing various religious, quasi-religious/spiritual, or otherwise socially acceptable beliefs regarding death. Combine that with the usual fear of any change to the status quo, and you end up with a society of people that by and large professes a desire to be dead at some distant point in the future. On the other hand, if you had a practical implementation of immortality, today, with no major drawbacks, what subset of the population would actually refuse? I suspect far fewer people would profess a desire to die at that point.
pebb 14y ago
I also noticed that most people actually want to be dead. It really surprised me... But then, most people live crap lives.
- Riesling 14y ago
  > But then, most people live crap lives. And this is the really sad part. If one does not believe in another life or an afterlife, life itself might be the most precious thing there ever was. Just think about the astounding circumstances that have brought your or my specific mind into existence. Given the uniqueness of every mind on this planet we all should feel honored to be alive with them at the same time. But what do we do? We make people lives miserable. We waste lives in wars. We let children starve before they even have to chance to use this ordinary gift. I think future generations will judge us for this. Edit: Phrasing
gwern 14y ago
I am reminded of http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/27/would-you-like-another-plate-of-this/ http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/27/would-you-like-a... or http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on_the_unpopularity_of_cryonics_life_sucks_but_at/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on_the_unpopularity_of_cryonics_...
meric 14y ago
Perhaps some people imagine, if they didn't die, they'd grow old; If imagine someone imagining being old and stuck with maximum walking speed of 2km/h seeing and hearing ability continuing to deteriorate. It's not hard to imagine they won't want to live forever in that state; There's a difference between being young forever and living forever. Also if you were indeed young forever but everyone else wasn't, it's also not hard to imagine your life would be carefully scrutinised by everyone else for research; which not everyone might like.
- icebraining 14y ago
  The section of Gulliver's Travels on the Struldbrugs has permanently changed my view of immortality: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jswift/bl-jswift-gull-3-10.htm http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jswift/bl-jswi...
nnq 14y ago
People like FINITE things, "BOUND" things and things that seem UNDERSTANDABLE and that have a PURPOSE that doesn't lie in the thing itself and most people HATE open ended things (I know, for future oriented technologists like us it's hard to understand this, but ask you... mom). The "fear of immortality" (even if it's more professed than truly believed actually) is FEAR OF INFINITY and fear of being part of something whose purpose is itself. An infinite life would be: 1. infinite (obviously) 2. not "understandable" - your mind will evolve infinitely and your future personality/self might end up so different of you present self that you might disagree even on the most basic questions of morality and what's "good" and "bad" (you have to accept that you're actually different persons and the same thing will apply if you "cloned" your mind now and the two minds will meet each other in 1000 years time), and your present self can't even imagine what the future self might become, the actual "self" becomes "not understandable" potentially 3. open ended 4. there's no "final", imaginable "purpose" - because you're future life is beyond the edges of you present imagination, you can't imagine a purpose for life itself (like "be good and go to heaven")), so the purpose of life has to be life itself ...and most people (I call them "un-open minds", to not be superior or mean and to state that I think they have the potential to be "opened") are AFRAID of (1) to (4)... it's against the way they've been brought up and it takes away their "shield" for other fears... imagine convincing a frightened little girl to so skydiving or maybe closer to getting her join the army and become a paratrooper.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html #passive-aggressive
  - nnq 14y ago
    ...sorry, didn't knew this style was considered rude around here, just used it instead of the bold/strong style that's available on stackoverflow and most other discussion boards
lmm 14y ago
I don't allow myself to want that which is impossible. Doing so would only frustrate me. You have a plan for extending human life by ten years? Sure, that seems awesome; if the details are good enough I'd be willing to donate to fund that. You have a plan for extending human life indefinitely? That's so implausible I'm not going to even look at what it is. Chasing that dream looks a lot like gambling away your savings - worse, your lifetime - chasing after that one big win that's never going to come.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Who said anything about a plan? It's just an hypothetical question.
- rpm4321 14y ago
  "You have a plan for human flight? That's so implausible I'm not going to even look at what it is. Chasing that dream looks a lot like gambling away your savings - worse, your lifetime - chasing after that one big win that's never going to come." - lmm's great-grandfather, 1902.
  - lmm 14y ago
    I'd hardly've said that that 100+ years after the Montgolfiers had already done it. The physics of flight had been understood since Newton; powered flight (which I suspect is what you're getting at, though again that had been done in 1901) was just a matter of making a light enough engine to combine with existing flying technology. There were a long series of incremental steps along the way, e.g. a powered but tethered aeroplane had been flown in something like 1850. A better analogy for saying you can solve all human ageing would be saying you had a way to cure all diseases before the germ theory had been invented, or claiming you knew how to make a child inherit the best traits of both parents before Mendelev. I don't think preventing ageing will always be impossible. But it's a pointlessly distant goal to have at the moment.
Nursie 14y ago
I never want to be dead. Ever. I know that at some time I have to die. Perhaps it's easier for some people to fool themselves that they accept death because they know it's inevitable. I find it hard to imagine that if actually given the choice all that many people would choose to have a limited lifespan. I'm not saying that they wouldn't, I'm saying I find it hard to believe or understand. To me death is the greatest injustice of existence.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  >I never want to be dead. Ever. Sure, everybody says that at some point. But when you're too old, sick and aching, and with your friends/family gone, do you really believe you'll think exactly the same?
  - Nursie 14y ago
    Firstly, in the hypothetical situation I'd like to see, who ages? But even without that - HELL YES.
    - pretoriusB 14y ago
      OK, check back in 50 years.
      - Nursie 14y ago
        I think it's charming that you think old people want to die, it must comfort you to imagine that by that age you'll welcome death like an old friend.
- frenchman_in_ny 14y ago
  I think of death almost as a requirement to give meaning to our lives -- an element of temporality that defines what you've done, and what to be proud of (or not). See [1] for a philosophical discussion on the topic. [1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending...
yason 14y ago
They're right. Inside of themselves they realize, consciously or subconsciously, that death is the great motivator. Death is, if anything, what forces people to break out of living other peoples' lives and start living their own. Even death can not do it for all people but without death and the sense of our mortality during our limited days alive hardly more than a few people would face things in their lives and go forward. Theoretically, a majority would probably just opt for postponing things "till tomorrow" for hundreds of years.
pretoriusB 14y ago
>It's pretty easy to turn up this complex of beliefs and signaling and ideas: just talk to people about greatly extending the healthy human life span. Your average fellow will disavow such an idea, even if it comes with good health all the way. Oh no, they will say, why would anyone want to live for such a time. I'll be glad to go. I don't think this is so. People cling to life to extreme measures. What they don't like is the actual process of aging, losing relatives and friends, their health, and so on. That affects what they respond to even if you ask them about "extending the healthy human life span" even if it comes with good health all the way, because the pain of aging is real, whereas the "good health all the way" thing they know to be a pipe-dream. If you could demonstrably show them the "extension + good health all the way" they would JUMP at it. Especially if it could include their loved ones too (people don't merely want to live, like some primitive organism, they want to live with a certain quality and in certain company).

vividmind 14y ago

> Based on my discussions over the years, a majority of people want to be dead - just not right now. WOW! This really struck me now... Imagine how your behaviour would change if you didn't have this expectation!

barrkel 14y ago
Probably for the negative, given the human propensity for procrastination.

kiba 14y ago

Come with me! Let the deathists buries their dead.

graeme 14y ago

You sound very confident that immortality would be a good thing. Maybe. We've never experienced it, so how can you be sure? To be clear, I THINK my own immortality would be nice, but I can't even be sure about that. Immortality for EVERYONE would fundamentally change our societies. Every human institution is affected by death. Removing it would change everything, unpredictably. If you can find an English version (or read Spanish), the Immortal by Borges is a good partial exploration of this theme, for an individual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_(short_story) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_(short_story)

Wingman4l7 14y ago
A good examination of radical life extension and its repercussions on society, life, and memory is examined in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.
- zacharycohn 14y ago
  Also, Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love."
reasonattlm 14y ago
What is the cost of 100,000 lives lost every day? [1] If you have objections to agelessness through medicine, and many do, then it is probably a good idea to first consider the question above, and then consider your objection in the same terms. [1] http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outrage-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra...
- graeme 14y ago
  I didn't say death is without cost. I said, eliminating death has bigger implications than we can imagine. It's certainly conceivable that the net effect would be negative. The original post was phrased to the effect that anyone who thinks death has a purpose is a priori not just wrong, but very, very wrong.
guylhem 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

brianchu 14y ago

All else being equal, immortality could very well be a bad thing - overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, massive unemployment, etc. But the problem is that in the real world immortality obviously will not be achieved alone. If society makes the technological leap towards immortality, almost certainly society will have undergone other technological transformations. By the time we achieve immortality, maybe computer-brain interfaces would allow us to live in a virtual reality, maybe capitalism will be dead and automation will be complete, maybe we will have colonized other planets, the list goes on. These changes may obviate the negative effects of immortality on society. The fact remains that technological progress is inexorable and inescapable. Contrast this against people's attitudes towards changing trends in technology, and people are remarkably stubborn. That people today by and large want to eventually die does not mean that people living in a future society where immortality is taken for granted will also wish to die eventually. Just compare attitudes towards social networking between people who are in their teens, and people who are in their 60s.

Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
'overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, massive unemployment, etc.' We are going to have to face these things with or without immortality, likely this century.

JoshTriplett 14y ago

What people profess and what people believe can differ wildly. Right now, most people don't see any obvious route towards living forever, and haven't even given that idea much thought; furthermore, most people likely don't see any benefit to their personally professing a belief otherwise, and professing such a belief goes contrary to social norms. On the other hand, many people gain (perceived or actual) social benefits from professing various religious, quasi-religious/spiritual, or otherwise socially acceptable beliefs regarding death. Combine that with the usual fear of any change to the status quo, and you end up with a society of people that by and large professes a desire to be dead at some distant point in the future. On the other hand, if you had a practical implementation of immortality, today, with no major drawbacks, what subset of the population would actually refuse? I suspect far fewer people would profess a desire to die at that point.

pebb 14y ago

I also noticed that most people actually want to be dead. It really surprised me... But then, most people live crap lives.

Riesling 14y ago
> But then, most people live crap lives. And this is the really sad part. If one does not believe in another life or an afterlife, life itself might be the most precious thing there ever was. Just think about the astounding circumstances that have brought your or my specific mind into existence. Given the uniqueness of every mind on this planet we all should feel honored to be alive with them at the same time. But what do we do? We make people lives miserable. We waste lives in wars. We let children starve before they even have to chance to use this ordinary gift. I think future generations will judge us for this. Edit: Phrasing

gwern 14y ago

I am reminded of http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/27/would-you-like-another-plate-of-this/ http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/27/would-you-like-a... or http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on_the_unpopularity_of_cryonics_life_sucks_but_at/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on_the_unpopularity_of_cryonics_...

meric 14y ago

Perhaps some people imagine, if they didn't die, they'd grow old; If imagine someone imagining being old and stuck with maximum walking speed of 2km/h seeing and hearing ability continuing to deteriorate. It's not hard to imagine they won't want to live forever in that state; There's a difference between being young forever and living forever. Also if you were indeed young forever but everyone else wasn't, it's also not hard to imagine your life would be carefully scrutinised by everyone else for research; which not everyone might like.

icebraining 14y ago
The section of Gulliver's Travels on the Struldbrugs has permanently changed my view of immortality: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jswift/bl-jswift-gull-3-10.htm http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jswift/bl-jswi...

nnq 14y ago

People like FINITE things, "BOUND" things and things that seem UNDERSTANDABLE and that have a PURPOSE that doesn't lie in the thing itself and most people HATE open ended things (I know, for future oriented technologists like us it's hard to understand this, but ask you... mom). The "fear of immortality" (even if it's more professed than truly believed actually) is FEAR OF INFINITY and fear of being part of something whose purpose is itself. An infinite life would be: 1. infinite (obviously) 2. not "understandable" - your mind will evolve infinitely and your future personality/self might end up so different of you present self that you might disagree even on the most basic questions of morality and what's "good" and "bad" (you have to accept that you're actually different persons and the same thing will apply if you "cloned" your mind now and the two minds will meet each other in 1000 years time), and your present self can't even imagine what the future self might become, the actual "self" becomes "not understandable" potentially 3. open ended 4. there's no "final", imaginable "purpose" - because you're future life is beyond the edges of you present imagination, you can't imagine a purpose for life itself (like "be good and go to heaven")), so the purpose of life has to be life itself ...and most people (I call them "un-open minds", to not be superior or mean and to state that I think they have the potential to be "opened") are AFRAID of (1) to (4)... it's against the way they've been brought up and it takes away their "shield" for other fears... imagine convincing a frightened little girl to so skydiving or maybe closer to getting her join the army and become a paratrooper.

icebraining 14y ago
Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html #passive-aggressive
- nnq 14y ago
  ...sorry, didn't knew this style was considered rude around here, just used it instead of the bold/strong style that's available on stackoverflow and most other discussion boards

lmm 14y ago

I don't allow myself to want that which is impossible. Doing so would only frustrate me. You have a plan for extending human life by ten years? Sure, that seems awesome; if the details are good enough I'd be willing to donate to fund that. You have a plan for extending human life indefinitely? That's so implausible I'm not going to even look at what it is. Chasing that dream looks a lot like gambling away your savings - worse, your lifetime - chasing after that one big win that's never going to come.

icebraining 14y ago
Who said anything about a plan? It's just an hypothetical question.
rpm4321 14y ago
"You have a plan for human flight? That's so implausible I'm not going to even look at what it is. Chasing that dream looks a lot like gambling away your savings - worse, your lifetime - chasing after that one big win that's never going to come." - lmm's great-grandfather, 1902.
- lmm 14y ago
  I'd hardly've said that that 100+ years after the Montgolfiers had already done it. The physics of flight had been understood since Newton; powered flight (which I suspect is what you're getting at, though again that had been done in 1901) was just a matter of making a light enough engine to combine with existing flying technology. There were a long series of incremental steps along the way, e.g. a powered but tethered aeroplane had been flown in something like 1850. A better analogy for saying you can solve all human ageing would be saying you had a way to cure all diseases before the germ theory had been invented, or claiming you knew how to make a child inherit the best traits of both parents before Mendelev. I don't think preventing ageing will always be impossible. But it's a pointlessly distant goal to have at the moment.

Nursie 14y ago

I never want to be dead. Ever. I know that at some time I have to die. Perhaps it's easier for some people to fool themselves that they accept death because they know it's inevitable. I find it hard to imagine that if actually given the choice all that many people would choose to have a limited lifespan. I'm not saying that they wouldn't, I'm saying I find it hard to believe or understand. To me death is the greatest injustice of existence.

pretoriusB 14y ago
>I never want to be dead. Ever. Sure, everybody says that at some point. But when you're too old, sick and aching, and with your friends/family gone, do you really believe you'll think exactly the same?
- Nursie 14y ago
  Firstly, in the hypothetical situation I'd like to see, who ages? But even without that - HELL YES.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    OK, check back in 50 years.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      I think it's charming that you think old people want to die, it must comfort you to imagine that by that age you'll welcome death like an old friend.
frenchman_in_ny 14y ago
I think of death almost as a requirement to give meaning to our lives -- an element of temporality that defines what you've done, and what to be proud of (or not). See [1] for a philosophical discussion on the topic. [1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending...

yason 14y ago

They're right. Inside of themselves they realize, consciously or subconsciously, that death is the great motivator. Death is, if anything, what forces people to break out of living other peoples' lives and start living their own. Even death can not do it for all people but without death and the sense of our mortality during our limited days alive hardly more than a few people would face things in their lives and go forward. Theoretically, a majority would probably just opt for postponing things "till tomorrow" for hundreds of years.

pretoriusB 14y ago

>It's pretty easy to turn up this complex of beliefs and signaling and ideas: just talk to people about greatly extending the healthy human life span. Your average fellow will disavow such an idea, even if it comes with good health all the way. Oh no, they will say, why would anyone want to live for such a time. I'll be glad to go. I don't think this is so. People cling to life to extreme measures. What they don't like is the actual process of aging, losing relatives and friends, their health, and so on. That affects what they respond to even if you ask them about "extending the healthy human life span" even if it comes with good health all the way, because the pain of aging is real, whereas the "good health all the way" thing they know to be a pipe-dream. If you could demonstrably show them the "extension + good health all the way" they would JUMP at it. Especially if it could include their loved ones too (people don't merely want to live, like some primitive organism, they want to live with a certain quality and in certain company).