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If you're that old then you should be investing in cryonics. Same logic. Death is for people who don't understand technology.
by Eliezer 17y ago
If you're that old then you should be investing in cryonics. Same logic. Death is for people who don't understand technology.
- anigbrowl 17y agoThere's more to death than just getting old, and expecting to buy one's way out of it with technology is a bit over-optimistic. You don't have to accept it passively, but nor is it fundamentally awful. One might question, for example, the overall value of medical enhancements which lead to gerontocracy, and the subsequent economic and political disadvantage to the generation that comes along afterwards, a problem that the developed world is beginning to experience.
- dmm 17y agoYou and I have different understandings of death. You've been dying since the moment you were born. I was once a child. That child is nowhere in the world. He is dead. In his place is a young man. Some day, very soon, that young man will no longer exist and in his place someone else will live. Death and rebirth are constant processes. You cannot live without changing. And what is death but change? Three weeks ago I was a man who was ignorant of opengl. That man is now dead forever. In his place, reborn, is a man who has a passing knowledge of it. The event we normally call death is simply a dramatic version of what occurs every day, every possible moment.
- sho 17y agoWhile I can sympathise with anyone who has learnt OpenGL, I think he is talking about non-metaphoric, actual death, the kind that results in you being actually dead, ie heart stopped, not breathing, will never see or speak again - that kind of death.
- dmm 17y agoOh I know. I was just trying to challenge the statement "Death is for people who don't understand technology." by pointing out a different view. Duality is one of the triumphs of western thought. It has allowed us to escape superstition and is the basis of science and engineering. It keeps the bridges from falling down, but it is not a perfect description of reality and it falls apart if expected to be. What I'm saying is that so far as it is meaningful to specify things* are "you" and parts of "you", these things do not end or disappear with real, physical, heart-stopping, rotting in ground death. The things which are lost with physical death are in constant flux, so they are constantly being lost anyway. * No need for a soul or some sort of material ectoplasm. You are in constant subtle contact with everything.
- arakyd 17y agoThe things which are lost with physical death are in constant flux, so they are constantly being lost anyway. Actually, no. When the Great Flux fluxes and the flux that is you goes away, it is not exactly the same thing as when the flux that is you fluxes and the flux that is some property of you goes away. Let's not interpret Taoism as yet another rationalization of death.
- dmm 17y agoHa I'm lost. Sorry if my posts didn't make any sense. I don't know anything about taoism.
- dennisgorelik 17y agoI don't see how you came up with the conclusion about investing into cryonics. If person A offered me blue pill for $1000 and I refused [because I don't see any proof] -- does it mean that I have to accept next offer for the red pill [which also have no proof] whatsoever?