8 ms·

You Are Going to Die

88 points by scottkduncan 14y ago

hayksaakian 14y ago
And water is wet, and the sky is blue.
ttar 14y ago
Most people act as if they are immortal though.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Is there any other way to stay sane?
  - virtualwhys 14y ago
    heh, heh, is sanity even possible given the circumstances? born to die, blink of an eye, gone, become, everything.
rayiner 14y ago
I think the part about segregating the elderly away so we don't have to confront death is spot-on. Even though I was raised in the U.S., I find the American approach to the elderly a bit bizarre. My family is from Bangladesh. My grandparents moved in with their children when they were too old to take care of themselves. Yet here in the U.S., the popular culture strongly pushes back against multi-generational living. So we end up with a fairly bizarre situation: a country that is in crisis about how to take care of retirees, and also faces the challenge of middle class couples not wanting to have children because of, among other things, the enormous costs of child care. I feel like one problem is a built in solution to the other problem. I'm not trying to criticize anyone's lifestyle choices. But to an extent our lifestyle choices are cultural. See, e.g., the cultural attitudes about young people living with their parents into their 20's in places like Spain versus the U.S. I think one thing the economy and the retirement crisis will force is a changing attitude towards multi-generational living. We're facing a future with fewer workers per retiree. At this instant it's a zero-sum game: we either tax working people more so the elderly can maintain independent lifestyles, or we reduce benefits to older people and force them to depend more on their children. Either way, the efficiencies that are inherent in multi-generational living will be an attractive way to deal with the smaller than expected pie that must be split amongst more people.
- pyre 14y ago
  | also faces the challenge of middle class couples not | wanting to have children because of, among other | things, the enormous costs of child care. I feel | like one problem is a built in solution to the other | problem. This assumes that your parents are willing and capable of childcare. | we either tax working people more so the elderly can maintain | independent lifestyles, or we reduce benefits to older | people and force them to depend more on their children. You're assuming that everyone elderly has children. How do you factor in reducing benefits to someone with no relatives to turn to? [Queue, "they made their bed, now they should lay in it!" responses by extreme libertarians.]
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    Annoying pedantic guy here, I think you meant "cue" instead of queue. Extreme libertarianism isn't about waiting in line. That's extreme socialism, Soviet-style.
    - pyre 14y ago
      Right you are, but I was picturing them queueing up to post an angry reply, so that's probably where the brain fart came from. :P
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Childless adults save a lot of expenses, that money should be invested in golden-years care, not squandered on fancy vacations followed by a demand for an extra share of handout.
    - pyre 14y ago
      You're assuming that everyone is making boat-loads of money. You're also assuming that people without enough money have 'squandered' it on 'fancy vacations.'
  - rayiner 14y ago
    I'm talking about broad demographic trends. The cohort of women who were near the end of their reproductive years in 1992 are the ones who are just starting to retire now. Among that demographic, about 85% had kids at some point: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/06/25/childlessness-up-among-all-women-down-among-women-with-advanced-degrees http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/06/25/childlessness-up-a.... Obviously relying on kids isn't an option for everyone, but I think it's a mutually beneficial option for a larger group of people than seriously consider it.
barry-cotter 14y ago
Not if Aubrey de Grey, Eliezer Yudkowsky or a number of other people succeed. Donate. Death is not the end of everything but it will be the end of you.
- wissler 14y ago
  Too much government interference right now for that kind of thing to bear fruit. We need radical research not the slow meandering kind that the FDA allows us.
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    Government is way too incompetent to prevent technical progress. The real enemy of technical progress is natural complexity of things.
    - wissler 14y ago
      You don't need to be competent to destroy. As they say, it's far easier to destroy than it is to create. Government destroys incentive by threats, laws, regulations, direct appropriation, usurping the educational system, etc. etc. etc. You far underestimate the problem. We are now living in a virtual dark ages compared to what is possible under a proper system of government.
      - dennisgorelik 14y ago
        There are 100+ governments on Earth. Why wouldn't you pick a proper one?
        wissler 14y ago
        Why do you suppose that there's a proper one? You clearly need to read more history.
Evbn 14y ago
This conversation is not good for mental health.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  One may argue that the denialist approach to mortality is even worse for mental health.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    It is too late for us, but spare your friends and especially your children. We who search for all the answers suffer when find the unanswerable ones. The minds who are lucky don't encounter the darkest questions of life, and we should let them be happy, and help protect their innocence.
    - MartinCron 14y ago
      Children can, in child-appropriate ways, understand that death is a part of life. Just today, my five year old daughter pointed out a dead fish floating in a tank at my local fish store. It was neither traumatic nor funny, it just was.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Death isn't an unanswerable question. It is, in a world with finite resources, a necessary inevitability. The only question is whether that death comes in orderly cycles, or catastrophically. Not everyone wants to live forever. My grandparents lived to their 80's. My father, who is a bit over 60, considers that to be a very reasonable number, and I feel the same way. I don't want to still be here in 60+ years straining the resources of my daughter's generation.
      - capisce 14y ago
        Let me know the day you feel you've had your fill and you're ok with pulling the plug, if not due to your body ceasing to function properly.
Evbn 14y ago
This conversation is not good for mental health.
diziet 14y ago
Strangely enough, the observed / estimated mortality rate is around 93% -- the seven billion living people haven't yet died. On another somber note, even if we could transcribe our consciousness to machines, achieve singularity, etc -- all we do is delay it by another number. The sun is going to burn out, explode an expand, and eventually stars in general will run out of fuel. Is only hope is to change your conscious understanding of life and existence to accept non existence?
- rpm4321 14y ago
  "all we do is delay it by another number" 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 > 80
  - delinquentme 14y ago
    Thank you. I'm glad someone pointed this out.
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    There are way too many zeroes in that number.
    - petercooper 14y ago
      For anyone interested in the various guesses at what the number could actually be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe... That said, it does seem even if we gain a mind-boggling level of energy manipulation, 10^20..10^40 years is a rough expectation for regular matter, as we know it, to continue to exist.
    - erre 14y ago
      True, but I think it illustrates his point further: given enough zeroes, it's close enough to infinity that it doesn't matter :)
- 14y ago
fusiongyro 14y ago
Americans are afraid to die, sure, but there's something we're much more afraid of which explains all of this so much better. We're afraid of old people fucking. We're afraid to know our parents had sex. We're afraid for our kids to know we have sex. We're afraid of what happens when we get old and wrinkly. We're afraid that when we're old and wrinkly, nobody taut and sexy will want to have sex with us. We're secretly afraid when we're old and wrinkly we won't be able to get it up. And, of course, we're terrified that our widowed grandparents might be having sex with other widowed grandparents. I think the whole youth and beauty thing falls out of this.
- delinquentme 14y ago
  coping mechanism to accept death.
- marquis 14y ago
  >I think the whole youth and beauty thing falls out of this. Yes, you're right but that is more of a side-effect of why we value youth and beauty: our primary drive for sex is to reproduce, and there is a nice bell-curve on the age of a person as to when that is optimal, made clearly obvious by their outward appearance of youth and beauty. Plenty of older people have sex, and I've heard anecdotally that retirement homes are a good place for finding a partner.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    > our primary drive for sex is to reproduce Clearly you and I are not watching the same pornography. > Plenty of older people have sex Sure. I'm just positing that the retirement home phenomenon is exacerbated by our cultural fear of finding out about this.
virtualwhys 14y ago
What luck, there is no you.
benched 14y ago
"the well are without mercy" This line jumped out at me, as if taken from my own thoughts of the day. I have found, anytime that I am functioning at anything less than 100%, that almost every other human becomes like a jackal. Nonchalantly, politely divesting me of whatever scraps are left of my spirit, dignity or bank account, with a smile. The same goes for people who are thought to be helpers, like doctors, nurses, counselors, social workers and the like. Human instincts to prey on the weaker seem to trump professional narratives in many cases. I see this in the way doctors treat my grandfather. I see it in the way well-off members of the family treat poorer. Life is brutal, and as ever, it's we who make it so.
- Evbn 14y ago
  You need to find better friends. There is a class of people who pour love and care out of themselves. Most of them aren't startup millionaires, though. (Some are.)
- delinquentme 14y ago
  By * all * measurable aspects we're living in the most peaceful time known in all recorded history. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen... You should make a conscious effort to see this. Otherwise you're going to begin to believe the amygdala-driven "what is the world coming to" type statements.
Evbn 14y ago
This article is an obnoxious meander. It is an "anxiety" blog for heavens sake, not very productive. Getting care for the elderly is nice. Modern medicine is a mixed blessing, where we live long enough to get old with alzheimers and cancer. Make the most of the years you get, the last one will be bad no matter what you do, unless you die of a heart attack during sex. And set up your grandparents with Skype or FaceTime or Hangouts, the joy it brings them is beyond measure. Nothing is better for the cost of a device and Internet connectivity.
carleverett 14y ago
I'd like to point out first that this author has an awful attitude, and I'd also like to point out that his opinion about the "flattened bell curve" of life is factually incorrect. Most studies show a linear improvement in happiness during the twilight years of life - http://www.economist.com/node/17722567 http://www.economist.com/node/17722567 - it is in face a U-shape, the opposite of a bell curve. Don't let depressed assholes like Tim Kreider affect your outlook on life. You'll note that he, at age 45, is right next to the statistically lowest point of self-reported well-being. One day he, like his Mother, will learn to enjoy the good things in life and not look so morbidly at his pending doom.
- helmut_hed 14y ago
  It may be an awful attitude, but it coincides remarkably well with mine. And he's not an asshole - just a bit morbid, perhaps. I think we spend a lot of time and mental energy suppressing the fact of our own eventual decline and death, leading to stress and cognitive dissonance. It's nice to occasionally face the facts directly.
Eliezer 14y ago
The world doesn't have to be like this. Not anymore. It's too late for my little brother - but Kim Suozzi made it, and it's not too late for you, or any of your loved ones who are still alive. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics
- rpm4321 14y ago
  Hey Eliezer, what do you think it would take to bring the price point of cryonics down to a level where it could become commonplace? Right now, the primary barriers to its widespread addoption are still probably incredulity and religious objections, but I think those would quickly fall by the wayside if it didn't cost as much as a house. Perhaps an X-Prize style competition to develop more cost-effective technologies and techniques?
  - nazgulnarsil 14y ago
    Much of the cost is due to regulatory burdens rather than technical.
  - AngryParsley 14y ago
    The cost is low enough today that it could be much more common. Even the most expensive set-up (Alcor whole-body, whole life insurance) is about $130/month for a healthy person in their mid 20's. With term life and neuro (head-only), you could cut that in half. Still, only a couple thousand people are signed up. Alcor has published a cost break-down http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonicsTables.txt http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonicsTables.txt and explained it at http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonics.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonics.html A big chunk of cash is spent keeping a team on-site while waiting for the person to die. Assisted suicide for the terminally ill would help reduce costs significantly.
    - nodata 14y ago
      > for a healthy person in their mid 20's Oh come on, quoting the cheapest price isn't fair or realistic. How about showing us something more representative, or at least quoting the most expensive rate as well?
meric 14y ago
Death may be inevitable, but there is life to live yet.
hashbrown7 14y ago
We certainly start to come to grips with our own mortality as we age. At 28, I'm having thoughts and concerns about illnesses I never thought I would, even though I'm certainly more aware of what I put into my body than I was just years ago. I remember a conversation with my mom a few years back, where she started with something like "If I had died a few years ago." That was unfathomable to me because the thought of losing my parents is something I've always wrestled with and my mom is still very much youthful and carefree despite her advancing age. Its a great piece that highlights the fact that at sometime we can and do come to terms with the fact that we won't be here forever. It's a sobering thought, but one that gives us perspective on life about the things that matter. In addition, realizing that we are mortal makes us want to leave behind a legacy, whether its a family, a product, or a book, we all want to be remembered for something. I think we all come to this realization at different points in our lives.
delinquentme 14y ago
Life-extension as the pursuit of the every-man: " The mortality rate is holding at a scandalous 100 percent. " What are YOU doing?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
anonymouz 14y ago
"Hacker News"
dade_ 14y ago
The article states that films rarely have infirm or elderly characters, though a great film that does is "Away from her". It isn't the easiest to watch, but it is sobering. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Similarly, I just saw the trailer for "the Quartet" with Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, and John Cleese and it looks remarkable.

88 points by scottkduncan 14y ago

hayksaakian 14y ago

And water is wet, and the sky is blue.

ttar 14y ago

Most people act as if they are immortal though.

Evbn 14y ago
Is there any other way to stay sane?
- virtualwhys 14y ago
  heh, heh, is sanity even possible given the circumstances? born to die, blink of an eye, gone, become, everything.

rayiner 14y ago

I think the part about segregating the elderly away so we don't have to confront death is spot-on. Even though I was raised in the U.S., I find the American approach to the elderly a bit bizarre. My family is from Bangladesh. My grandparents moved in with their children when they were too old to take care of themselves. Yet here in the U.S., the popular culture strongly pushes back against multi-generational living. So we end up with a fairly bizarre situation: a country that is in crisis about how to take care of retirees, and also faces the challenge of middle class couples not wanting to have children because of, among other things, the enormous costs of child care. I feel like one problem is a built in solution to the other problem. I'm not trying to criticize anyone's lifestyle choices. But to an extent our lifestyle choices are cultural. See, e.g., the cultural attitudes about young people living with their parents into their 20's in places like Spain versus the U.S. I think one thing the economy and the retirement crisis will force is a changing attitude towards multi-generational living. We're facing a future with fewer workers per retiree. At this instant it's a zero-sum game: we either tax working people more so the elderly can maintain independent lifestyles, or we reduce benefits to older people and force them to depend more on their children. Either way, the efficiencies that are inherent in multi-generational living will be an attractive way to deal with the smaller than expected pie that must be split amongst more people.

pyre 14y ago
| also faces the challenge of middle class couples not | wanting to have children because of, among other | things, the enormous costs of child care. I feel | like one problem is a built in solution to the other | problem. This assumes that your parents are willing and capable of childcare. | we either tax working people more so the elderly can maintain | independent lifestyles, or we reduce benefits to older | people and force them to depend more on their children. You're assuming that everyone elderly has children. How do you factor in reducing benefits to someone with no relatives to turn to? [Queue, "they made their bed, now they should lay in it!" responses by extreme libertarians.]
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Annoying pedantic guy here, I think you meant "cue" instead of queue. Extreme libertarianism isn't about waiting in line. That's extreme socialism, Soviet-style.
  - pyre 14y ago
    Right you are, but I was picturing them queueing up to post an angry reply, so that's probably where the brain fart came from. :P
- Evbn 14y ago
  Childless adults save a lot of expenses, that money should be invested in golden-years care, not squandered on fancy vacations followed by a demand for an extra share of handout.
  - pyre 14y ago
    You're assuming that everyone is making boat-loads of money. You're also assuming that people without enough money have 'squandered' it on 'fancy vacations.'
- rayiner 14y ago
  I'm talking about broad demographic trends. The cohort of women who were near the end of their reproductive years in 1992 are the ones who are just starting to retire now. Among that demographic, about 85% had kids at some point: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/06/25/childlessness-up-among-all-women-down-among-women-with-advanced-degrees http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/06/25/childlessness-up-a.... Obviously relying on kids isn't an option for everyone, but I think it's a mutually beneficial option for a larger group of people than seriously consider it.

barry-cotter 14y ago

Not if Aubrey de Grey, Eliezer Yudkowsky or a number of other people succeed. Donate. Death is not the end of everything but it will be the end of you.

wissler 14y ago
Too much government interference right now for that kind of thing to bear fruit. We need radical research not the slow meandering kind that the FDA allows us.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Government is way too incompetent to prevent technical progress. The real enemy of technical progress is natural complexity of things.
  - wissler 14y ago
    You don't need to be competent to destroy. As they say, it's far easier to destroy than it is to create. Government destroys incentive by threats, laws, regulations, direct appropriation, usurping the educational system, etc. etc. etc. You far underestimate the problem. We are now living in a virtual dark ages compared to what is possible under a proper system of government.
    - dennisgorelik 14y ago
      There are 100+ governments on Earth. Why wouldn't you pick a proper one?
      - wissler 14y ago
        Why do you suppose that there's a proper one? You clearly need to read more history.

Evbn 14y ago

This conversation is not good for mental health.

MartinCron 14y ago
One may argue that the denialist approach to mortality is even worse for mental health.
- Evbn 14y ago
  It is too late for us, but spare your friends and especially your children. We who search for all the answers suffer when find the unanswerable ones. The minds who are lucky don't encounter the darkest questions of life, and we should let them be happy, and help protect their innocence.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    Children can, in child-appropriate ways, understand that death is a part of life. Just today, my five year old daughter pointed out a dead fish floating in a tank at my local fish store. It was neither traumatic nor funny, it just was.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Death isn't an unanswerable question. It is, in a world with finite resources, a necessary inevitability. The only question is whether that death comes in orderly cycles, or catastrophically. Not everyone wants to live forever. My grandparents lived to their 80's. My father, who is a bit over 60, considers that to be a very reasonable number, and I feel the same way. I don't want to still be here in 60+ years straining the resources of my daughter's generation.
    - capisce 14y ago
      Let me know the day you feel you've had your fill and you're ok with pulling the plug, if not due to your body ceasing to function properly.

Evbn 14y ago

This conversation is not good for mental health.

diziet 14y ago

Strangely enough, the observed / estimated mortality rate is around 93% -- the seven billion living people haven't yet died. On another somber note, even if we could transcribe our consciousness to machines, achieve singularity, etc -- all we do is delay it by another number. The sun is going to burn out, explode an expand, and eventually stars in general will run out of fuel. Is only hope is to change your conscious understanding of life and existence to accept non existence?

rpm4321 14y ago
"all we do is delay it by another number" 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 > 80
- delinquentme 14y ago
  Thank you. I'm glad someone pointed this out.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  There are way too many zeroes in that number.
  - petercooper 14y ago
    For anyone interested in the various guesses at what the number could actually be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe... That said, it does seem even if we gain a mind-boggling level of energy manipulation, 10^20..10^40 years is a rough expectation for regular matter, as we know it, to continue to exist.
  - erre 14y ago
    True, but I think it illustrates his point further: given enough zeroes, it's close enough to infinity that it doesn't matter :)
14y ago

fusiongyro 14y ago

Americans are afraid to die, sure, but there's something we're much more afraid of which explains all of this so much better. We're afraid of old people fucking. We're afraid to know our parents had sex. We're afraid for our kids to know we have sex. We're afraid of what happens when we get old and wrinkly. We're afraid that when we're old and wrinkly, nobody taut and sexy will want to have sex with us. We're secretly afraid when we're old and wrinkly we won't be able to get it up. And, of course, we're terrified that our widowed grandparents might be having sex with other widowed grandparents. I think the whole youth and beauty thing falls out of this.

delinquentme 14y ago
coping mechanism to accept death.
marquis 14y ago
>I think the whole youth and beauty thing falls out of this. Yes, you're right but that is more of a side-effect of why we value youth and beauty: our primary drive for sex is to reproduce, and there is a nice bell-curve on the age of a person as to when that is optimal, made clearly obvious by their outward appearance of youth and beauty. Plenty of older people have sex, and I've heard anecdotally that retirement homes are a good place for finding a partner.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  > our primary drive for sex is to reproduce Clearly you and I are not watching the same pornography. > Plenty of older people have sex Sure. I'm just positing that the retirement home phenomenon is exacerbated by our cultural fear of finding out about this.

virtualwhys 14y ago

What luck, there is no you.

benched 14y ago

"the well are without mercy" This line jumped out at me, as if taken from my own thoughts of the day. I have found, anytime that I am functioning at anything less than 100%, that almost every other human becomes like a jackal. Nonchalantly, politely divesting me of whatever scraps are left of my spirit, dignity or bank account, with a smile. The same goes for people who are thought to be helpers, like doctors, nurses, counselors, social workers and the like. Human instincts to prey on the weaker seem to trump professional narratives in many cases. I see this in the way doctors treat my grandfather. I see it in the way well-off members of the family treat poorer. Life is brutal, and as ever, it's we who make it so.

Evbn 14y ago
You need to find better friends. There is a class of people who pour love and care out of themselves. Most of them aren't startup millionaires, though. (Some are.)
delinquentme 14y ago
By * all * measurable aspects we're living in the most peaceful time known in all recorded history. http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen... You should make a conscious effort to see this. Otherwise you're going to begin to believe the amygdala-driven "what is the world coming to" type statements.

Evbn 14y ago

This article is an obnoxious meander. It is an "anxiety" blog for heavens sake, not very productive. Getting care for the elderly is nice. Modern medicine is a mixed blessing, where we live long enough to get old with alzheimers and cancer. Make the most of the years you get, the last one will be bad no matter what you do, unless you die of a heart attack during sex. And set up your grandparents with Skype or FaceTime or Hangouts, the joy it brings them is beyond measure. Nothing is better for the cost of a device and Internet connectivity.

carleverett 14y ago

I'd like to point out first that this author has an awful attitude, and I'd also like to point out that his opinion about the "flattened bell curve" of life is factually incorrect. Most studies show a linear improvement in happiness during the twilight years of life - http://www.economist.com/node/17722567 http://www.economist.com/node/17722567 - it is in face a U-shape, the opposite of a bell curve. Don't let depressed assholes like Tim Kreider affect your outlook on life. You'll note that he, at age 45, is right next to the statistically lowest point of self-reported well-being. One day he, like his Mother, will learn to enjoy the good things in life and not look so morbidly at his pending doom.

helmut_hed 14y ago
It may be an awful attitude, but it coincides remarkably well with mine. And he's not an asshole - just a bit morbid, perhaps. I think we spend a lot of time and mental energy suppressing the fact of our own eventual decline and death, leading to stress and cognitive dissonance. It's nice to occasionally face the facts directly.

Eliezer 14y ago

The world doesn't have to be like this. Not anymore. It's too late for my little brother - but Kim Suozzi made it, and it's not too late for you, or any of your loved ones who are still alive. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics

rpm4321 14y ago
Hey Eliezer, what do you think it would take to bring the price point of cryonics down to a level where it could become commonplace? Right now, the primary barriers to its widespread addoption are still probably incredulity and religious objections, but I think those would quickly fall by the wayside if it didn't cost as much as a house. Perhaps an X-Prize style competition to develop more cost-effective technologies and techniques?
- nazgulnarsil 14y ago
  Much of the cost is due to regulatory burdens rather than technical.
- AngryParsley 14y ago
  The cost is low enough today that it could be much more common. Even the most expensive set-up (Alcor whole-body, whole life insurance) is about $130/month for a healthy person in their mid 20's. With term life and neuro (head-only), you could cut that in half. Still, only a couple thousand people are signed up. Alcor has published a cost break-down http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonicsTables.txt http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonicsTables.txt and explained it at http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonics.html http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonics.html A big chunk of cash is spent keeping a team on-site while waiting for the person to die. Assisted suicide for the terminally ill would help reduce costs significantly.
  - nodata 14y ago
    > for a healthy person in their mid 20's Oh come on, quoting the cheapest price isn't fair or realistic. How about showing us something more representative, or at least quoting the most expensive rate as well?

meric 14y ago

Death may be inevitable, but there is life to live yet.

hashbrown7 14y ago

We certainly start to come to grips with our own mortality as we age. At 28, I'm having thoughts and concerns about illnesses I never thought I would, even though I'm certainly more aware of what I put into my body than I was just years ago. I remember a conversation with my mom a few years back, where she started with something like "If I had died a few years ago." That was unfathomable to me because the thought of losing my parents is something I've always wrestled with and my mom is still very much youthful and carefree despite her advancing age. Its a great piece that highlights the fact that at sometime we can and do come to terms with the fact that we won't be here forever. It's a sobering thought, but one that gives us perspective on life about the things that matter. In addition, realizing that we are mortal makes us want to leave behind a legacy, whether its a family, a product, or a book, we all want to be remembered for something. I think we all come to this realization at different points in our lives.

delinquentme 14y ago

Life-extension as the pursuit of the every-man: " The mortality rate is holding at a scandalous 100 percent. " What are YOU doing?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

anonymouz 14y ago

"Hacker News"

dade_ 14y ago

The article states that films rarely have infirm or elderly characters, though a great film that does is "Away from her". It isn't the easiest to watch, but it is sobering. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/

MartinCron 14y ago
Similarly, I just saw the trailer for "the Quartet" with Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, and John Cleese and it looks remarkable.