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I read some Stoic writings and while I find some concepts useful, this is rather horrid. You don't lump "old age" in with maturity, sex and pregnancy. Old age i

I read some Stoic writings and while I find some concepts useful, this is rather horrid. You don't lump "old age" in with maturity, sex and pregnancy. Old age is just a gross euphemism. But I guess the writing is too obviously nonsensical when if you say "health and organ failure" "happiness and memory loss". To take what would be, if inflicted by another person, torture -- to call that "required by nature" and to welcome it is just vile. At best it's a grief counseling strategy, though I'm not sure on the ethics there. You should have disdain for death. It's a stupid, terrible, senseless thing. Just because we can't fix it yet[1] makes no difference to the terribleness that it is. Saying "death is part of nature" with a deep voice doesn't make it suddenly profound. You know what else is natural? Getting infected with botflies. 1: At least for fix=million year delay

amelius 12y ago
Fear of death is a product of the human mind. Animals, for instance, have no idea that they will one day die. Even when an animal is under attack, it will have fear, but not of death. Now, death itself, is, in a way, also a product of the human mind. For we are, on a fundamental level, all the same creature; it just happens that there are no neuronic connections between our brains, so it appears to us that we are different creatures, but we are not. So in effect, death does not exist in the way that most people envision it.
practicalpants 12y ago
>death... It's a stupid, terrible, senseless thing. And what is life then? Is it rational, great, makes sense? I do agree with you that viewing death as 'natural' is part of a questionable ideology about human nature, a kind of "circle of life" viewpoint that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. People make naive leaps when they say "here is our nature as told by biology, evolution, and evolutionary psychology; so we as humans should now construct identifications and take normative prescriptions based on it, which will instruct us how to relate to ourselves and the world." One could point out the glaring gaps between these two realms... I think that evo-psych reductionism, while in vogue, tends to suffer from oversimplification.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  If you're gonna take the position of being able to value judge anything, then, yeah, life's pretty special. Fair enough that not everyone would agree with my particular words. As to the rest: I've heard that called "can't get an ought from an is".
falcolas 12y ago
> to call that "required by nature" and to welcome it is just vile. Imagine, for a moment, that we have come up with a way to prevent aging and death tomorrow. How do you support the sudden 50% increase in population growth? Babies aren't going to stop being born. Old folks aren't going to stop consuming resources. Are you willing to give up your food to help feed the 56 million extra people alive every year? Are you willing to give up the right to have children so someone 100+ years old can continue to live and eat? There's a lot wrong with the Torchwood "Miracle Day" miniseries, but it's worth watching the first five episodes to see one writer's interpretation of how we would handle it. It's perhaps a tad bit cynical, but it's also not unreasonable. Until we have the ability to support exponential population growth (through the ability to populate the universe, or social controls on when or if you can have children), death is going to be a required part of life. You live, you die, you make space on this earth for the generations which follow. What's so vile about that?
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Well, uploading sidesteps a lot of those issues, and it seems that's the only conceivable thing that could happen "tomorrow". Optimized engineering should be capable of solving many problems (i.e. a world run by a single intelligent entity). The technology itself should have a major impact on birth rates, as, hopefully, such tech world instantly kill many memes that cause high birth rates. And in " highly developed " countries, we see people willing to postpone having children, so it stands to reason others would go along with that, given that their life expectancy just skyrocketed. But the idea that it's more acceptable to torture nearly every human on earth because "you live, you die" - that sounds like, at best, a local maxima. And even if there were insurmountable resource issues, we should still not hand wave things, but any explicitly admit our policy is to permanently destroy people, look them in the eye when we free their resources. Like a real world OOM killer.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >Well, uploading sidesteps a lot of those issues, and it seems that's the only conceivable thing that could happen "tomorrow". Optimized engineering should be capable of solving many problems (i.e. a world run by a single intelligent entity). You know, spouting transhumanism would be far more socially acceptable if you didn't answer the legitimate questions spawned by mild transhumanism with severe, world-dominating transhumanism. For instance, words like "world run by single intelligent entity" carry an extremely high prior chance of denoting an incredibly terrible idea. At the very least, you've taken something that was already an argument, statements that already required justification, and "fixed it" by appealing to statements that require far more justification. Basically, you've answered "Won't the elimination of aging cause a population boom?" with a combination of "Not if we do it in the way that most easily allows Malthusian population booms!" and "Not if someone I approve of is made Dictator of the World." And, of course, your next line is that your planned Dictator isn't even a human being in the first place. While I fully know where you're coming from on this point, it still requires far more justification and explanation than either of us can give in an HN comment, and should a priori be considered a bloody terrible idea.
philwelch 12y ago
But it is required by nature. Even if you could somehow extend human life significantly, at some point parts would wear out and faculties would diminish. Everything in the world eventually crumbles and erodes to dust or rust or rot, even the earth and stars. Why not us?
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  A million years isn't that long, cosmologically. I would not attempt to guess what computational powers we may figure out in that timespan. And even if we never do get unlimited computation, giving people eons seems like a better state than now.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    A million years isn't that long and if you could give everyone on earth an extra million QALY's that would be wonderful, but it still wouldn't circumvent mortality.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

amelius 12y ago

Fear of death is a product of the human mind. Animals, for instance, have no idea that they will one day die. Even when an animal is under attack, it will have fear, but not of death. Now, death itself, is, in a way, also a product of the human mind. For we are, on a fundamental level, all the same creature; it just happens that there are no neuronic connections between our brains, so it appears to us that we are different creatures, but we are not. So in effect, death does not exist in the way that most people envision it.

practicalpants 12y ago

>death... It's a stupid, terrible, senseless thing. And what is life then? Is it rational, great, makes sense? I do agree with you that viewing death as 'natural' is part of a questionable ideology about human nature, a kind of "circle of life" viewpoint that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. People make naive leaps when they say "here is our nature as told by biology, evolution, and evolutionary psychology; so we as humans should now construct identifications and take normative prescriptions based on it, which will instruct us how to relate to ourselves and the world." One could point out the glaring gaps between these two realms... I think that evo-psych reductionism, while in vogue, tends to suffer from oversimplification.

MichaelGG 12y ago
If you're gonna take the position of being able to value judge anything, then, yeah, life's pretty special. Fair enough that not everyone would agree with my particular words. As to the rest: I've heard that called "can't get an ought from an is".

falcolas 12y ago

> to call that "required by nature" and to welcome it is just vile. Imagine, for a moment, that we have come up with a way to prevent aging and death tomorrow. How do you support the sudden 50% increase in population growth? Babies aren't going to stop being born. Old folks aren't going to stop consuming resources. Are you willing to give up your food to help feed the 56 million extra people alive every year? Are you willing to give up the right to have children so someone 100+ years old can continue to live and eat? There's a lot wrong with the Torchwood "Miracle Day" miniseries, but it's worth watching the first five episodes to see one writer's interpretation of how we would handle it. It's perhaps a tad bit cynical, but it's also not unreasonable. Until we have the ability to support exponential population growth (through the ability to populate the universe, or social controls on when or if you can have children), death is going to be a required part of life. You live, you die, you make space on this earth for the generations which follow. What's so vile about that?

MichaelGG 12y ago
Well, uploading sidesteps a lot of those issues, and it seems that's the only conceivable thing that could happen "tomorrow". Optimized engineering should be capable of solving many problems (i.e. a world run by a single intelligent entity). The technology itself should have a major impact on birth rates, as, hopefully, such tech world instantly kill many memes that cause high birth rates. And in " highly developed " countries, we see people willing to postpone having children, so it stands to reason others would go along with that, given that their life expectancy just skyrocketed. But the idea that it's more acceptable to torture nearly every human on earth because "you live, you die" - that sounds like, at best, a local maxima. And even if there were insurmountable resource issues, we should still not hand wave things, but any explicitly admit our policy is to permanently destroy people, look them in the eye when we free their resources. Like a real world OOM killer.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >Well, uploading sidesteps a lot of those issues, and it seems that's the only conceivable thing that could happen "tomorrow". Optimized engineering should be capable of solving many problems (i.e. a world run by a single intelligent entity). You know, spouting transhumanism would be far more socially acceptable if you didn't answer the legitimate questions spawned by mild transhumanism with severe, world-dominating transhumanism. For instance, words like "world run by single intelligent entity" carry an extremely high prior chance of denoting an incredibly terrible idea. At the very least, you've taken something that was already an argument, statements that already required justification, and "fixed it" by appealing to statements that require far more justification. Basically, you've answered "Won't the elimination of aging cause a population boom?" with a combination of "Not if we do it in the way that most easily allows Malthusian population booms!" and "Not if someone I approve of is made Dictator of the World." And, of course, your next line is that your planned Dictator isn't even a human being in the first place. While I fully know where you're coming from on this point, it still requires far more justification and explanation than either of us can give in an HN comment, and should a priori be considered a bloody terrible idea.

philwelch 12y ago

But it is required by nature. Even if you could somehow extend human life significantly, at some point parts would wear out and faculties would diminish. Everything in the world eventually crumbles and erodes to dust or rust or rot, even the earth and stars. Why not us?

MichaelGG 12y ago
A million years isn't that long, cosmologically. I would not attempt to guess what computational powers we may figure out in that timespan. And even if we never do get unlimited computation, giving people eons seems like a better state than now.
- philwelch 12y ago
  A million years isn't that long and if you could give everyone on earth an extra million QALY's that would be wonderful, but it still wouldn't circumvent mortality.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]