4 ms·

This has nothing to do with escaping death, aging is only one of the causes of death, making life longer will just expose you to more risk of accident, suicide,

by oulipo 11y ago

This has nothing to do with escaping death, aging is only one of the causes of death, making life longer will just expose you to more risk of accident, suicide, or illnesses, this is not what makes you immortal. There are other more philosophical problems with the notion of an ever-expanding life length -- your brain will probably not remember everything, so after a while it will only remember a part of what you have been, so is it really you? and if it is no longer "you", what is the point, you are not extending "your" life, you are extending the life of the person you will become after you have forgotten who you are. Same applies if you "upload your consciousness to the Internet" Reversing aging will improve your quality of life, but will also force your death to be brutal, since the only cause of death is now accidental or some illness. So you'll die not wanting to peacefully go away as people aging in good condition do, but you will die wanting to live, hurting badly. I'll stick with buddhism.

Techowl 11y ago
In contrast, I believe that reversing aging would likely also improve a person's quality of death. Death by aging can be a horrifically prolonged and painful process. In the case of Alzheimer's, you slowly watch your mind and identity slip away. In the case of cancer, you may submit to vomit-inducing therapies to prolong your life; whether or not you do, you may end up dying slowly and painfully while bed-ridden and utterly exhausted. Spending years in a nursing home while someone else wipes your bottom isn't exactly a glamorous, graceful way to go. On the other hand, the "brutal" deaths you complain about involve what -- something between a fraction of a second and a few hours of physical pain? When my time comes, sign me up. As an ancillary point, there is no such thing as "aging in good condition". Aging is the process by which your body gradually fails to function until it can't function at all. It can be better or worse, but not good.
- oulipo 11y ago
  Reversing aging has nothing to do with cancer, on the contrary, by living longer you expose yourself more to die from a painful illness than from a age death
mc32 11y ago
Of course what I say is not feasible at the moment, but as a thought exercise, I'd rather re-cycle through life rather than potentially extend life more or less indefinitely, because, as I see it, as you grow older, you start tiring of things. You tire of others' silliness or injustice or immaturity or seriousness or selfishness or suffering and one could more easily become disillusioned. Re-cycling through, at least you go through the learning and pains again, so all those ills aren't that distant or unsavory, they're more personal. So difference is live one life to 500, or Live 5x100. Come back at 10 or 1 or whatever. I know this idea is totally fantastic, but, as a thought experiment, I'd prefer this.
- vectorjohn 11y ago
  How would you know you prefer it? If you reverse to 10 and you know it, well, you really lived one life to 500. If you don't know you reversed to 10, you have nothing to compare your short life to.
fixermark 11y ago
> so after a while it will only remember a part of what you have been, so is it really you? I think you've just described everybody as they currently exist. there's a lot of memory from childhood that my brain has stripped of detail and archived; probably more that I don't even know I've forgotten. This does not fill me with existential quandary. I look at my hands, and I'm still here. shrug ;)
- oulipo 11y ago
  Sure, but this is a part of life on which we have no choice, this is different from actively pursuing something which would not make sense as though it had some sense. I'm not saying living 500 years would be a problem (I'm pretty sure we will have the medical possibility to do this very soon), I'm saying trying to extend it without any limit makes little sense as it is not really different from dying
  - fixermark 11y ago
    I strongly suspect the individual would perceive it to be very different from dying, yes---both on the experiential level ("I look at my hands and I'm still here") and on the memory level. Memories don't randomly vanish; there's pretty good evidence that the brain does retain useful content. So if you're arguing that "500-years-in-the-future you would be such a different person that we might as well say now-you is dead in 500 years," I think the burden of proof is on that claim because we don't make it for modern elderly people. It passes neither the common-sense sniff test nor the extrapolation test ("What's special about 500 years out as opposed to 70 years out that breaks continuity?").
    - oulipo 11y ago
      It was not about 500 which I think we can live to, it was about searching a boundless expansion of life -- until a certain time where the physical limit of information stored in the brain is too large

by oulipo 11y ago

Techowl 11y ago

In contrast, I believe that reversing aging would likely also improve a person's quality of death. Death by aging can be a horrifically prolonged and painful process. In the case of Alzheimer's, you slowly watch your mind and identity slip away. In the case of cancer, you may submit to vomit-inducing therapies to prolong your life; whether or not you do, you may end up dying slowly and painfully while bed-ridden and utterly exhausted. Spending years in a nursing home while someone else wipes your bottom isn't exactly a glamorous, graceful way to go. On the other hand, the "brutal" deaths you complain about involve what -- something between a fraction of a second and a few hours of physical pain? When my time comes, sign me up. As an ancillary point, there is no such thing as "aging in good condition". Aging is the process by which your body gradually fails to function until it can't function at all. It can be better or worse, but not good.

oulipo 11y ago
Reversing aging has nothing to do with cancer, on the contrary, by living longer you expose yourself more to die from a painful illness than from a age death

mc32 11y ago

Of course what I say is not feasible at the moment, but as a thought exercise, I'd rather re-cycle through life rather than potentially extend life more or less indefinitely, because, as I see it, as you grow older, you start tiring of things. You tire of others' silliness or injustice or immaturity or seriousness or selfishness or suffering and one could more easily become disillusioned. Re-cycling through, at least you go through the learning and pains again, so all those ills aren't that distant or unsavory, they're more personal. So difference is live one life to 500, or Live 5x100. Come back at 10 or 1 or whatever. I know this idea is totally fantastic, but, as a thought experiment, I'd prefer this.

vectorjohn 11y ago
How would you know you prefer it? If you reverse to 10 and you know it, well, you really lived one life to 500. If you don't know you reversed to 10, you have nothing to compare your short life to.

fixermark 11y ago

> so after a while it will only remember a part of what you have been, so is it really you? I think you've just described everybody as they currently exist. there's a lot of memory from childhood that my brain has stripped of detail and archived; probably more that I don't even know I've forgotten. This does not fill me with existential quandary. I look at my hands, and I'm still here. shrug ;)

oulipo 11y ago
Sure, but this is a part of life on which we have no choice, this is different from actively pursuing something which would not make sense as though it had some sense. I'm not saying living 500 years would be a problem (I'm pretty sure we will have the medical possibility to do this very soon), I'm saying trying to extend it without any limit makes little sense as it is not really different from dying
- fixermark 11y ago
  I strongly suspect the individual would perceive it to be very different from dying, yes---both on the experiential level ("I look at my hands and I'm still here") and on the memory level. Memories don't randomly vanish; there's pretty good evidence that the brain does retain useful content. So if you're arguing that "500-years-in-the-future you would be such a different person that we might as well say now-you is dead in 500 years," I think the burden of proof is on that claim because we don't make it for modern elderly people. It passes neither the common-sense sniff test nor the extrapolation test ("What's special about 500 years out as opposed to 70 years out that breaks continuity?").
  - oulipo 11y ago
    It was not about 500 which I think we can live to, it was about searching a boundless expansion of life -- until a certain time where the physical limit of information stored in the brain is too large