Comment by imakesnowflakes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by imakesnowflakes | Hacker News Reader

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imakesnowflakes

>Death is a vile, atrocious thing, the biggest enemy humanity has.

You have a time on this earth. When it is up, you make way for new generations. What is atrocious about it? What is atrocious and vile is the longing of some people for living indefinitely. We have a name for things that does not die and multiply uncontrollably. Cancer. Human beings are already cancerous in nature by their disregard/disrespect for everything that has been given by nature. Now you want to perpetuate that indefinitely by not dying?

>Just because it seems inevitable, we should not make it socially acceptable to give up and view death as anything but the wickedness it is.

Socially acceptable? Death? You put it as some kind of social custom that we obediently follow.

>People spin death to be a positive, often under some guise of Deep Wisdom.

Deep wisdom? How much wisdom do you need to see that the resources are limited? Human beings have no right to even want to live indefinitely until they have figured out how to live the limited time we got here without fighting and killing each other, how to live and expand without reckless destruction of nature/environment, how to expand life to other worlds, planets etc etc.

> Socially acceptable? Death? You put it as some kind of social custom that we obediently follow.

Because we do. We mourn and go on, and we expect to obediently die when our time is up. Your whole comment is the reflection of that custom.

If it weren't for it, then any reasonable human would be doing everything in their power to get rid of death entirely. As a civilization we'd be probably already done, but we aren't, because almost everyone is used to death as a "natural order of things" and/or delegates ending it to a deity.

> Human beings have no right to even want to live indefinitely until they have figured out how to live the limited time we got here without fighting and killing each other, how to live and expand without reckless destruction of nature/environment, how to expand life to other worlds, planets etc etc.

Human beings have all the rights they give themselves, there's no external entity to tell us what we're allowed or not allowed to do. Maybe you want to die. Go ahead then, nobody will stop you. But I, and many others, don't. Living is better than being dead. And it doesn't mean being in conflict with limits of our planet, maybe if people lived longer than ~80 years they'd actually start thinking about the long run, since they'd have a stake in it. Part of the reason we're exploiting the planet so much is that because we're not going to be around to see the consequences.

>because almost everyone is used to death as a "natural order of things"

It is. That you don't like it doesn't make a difference.

It is. But so is polio, and so was the smallpox. So was dying of common cold. And so is warfare, since living things are in constant state of war with each other.

We are the first beings on this planet with capability to transcend it all. We invented aspirine, got rid of smallpox, are in progress of eliminating polio, and we do our best to limit war and destructive competition. We're the first living things to decide what's Good and what's Bad, and we know that natural order of things is not Good, it's just the default.

> natural order of things is not Good, it's just the default.

Ok. But human beings are horribly short sighted. Something that may appear beneficial in the short term and on a small scale. but may turn out to be horrible in the long term and on a larger scale.

We have eliminated some diseases. But we have also created new, much horrible and powerful ones. We have discovered antibiotics, but that have also created disease causing agents that are resistant to them.

When ever we change something fundamental, that has resulted in the creation of much bigger evil. I think this is because we don't have capability to see the whole picture. We look at a small portion of it and think. "hey, we can make it better". But ends up messing up the bigger picture making it grotesque. So my point is, this is not an easy decision that should be made so lightly.

> We have eliminated some diseases. But we have also created new, much horrible and powerful ones. We have discovered antibiotics, but that have also created disease causing agents that are resistant to them.

> When ever we change something fundamental, that has resulted in the creation of much bigger evil.

I disagree with the assertion. Sure, sometimes we screwed things up big time (e.g. climate), but sometimes the change really was for the better. For instance, even though we're facing super-germs, life is much better for everyone than before we had antibiotics. Sure, we may end up defeated by the resistant germs, but it's not certain - that's why we have to push science and technology further, develop new methods like bacteriophages, because we can keep up with nature and have it our, better way.

> I think this is because we don't have capability to see the whole picture. We look at a small portion of it and think. "hey, we can make it better". But ends up messing up the bigger picture making it grotesque. So my point is, this is not an easy decision that should be made so lightly.

That I will agree with. We often suck at seeing the bigger picture. That doesn't mean we're screwed, because a lot of things can be dynamically adjusted and fixed as needed, but it does mean we should be careful with significant interventions into established systems. Death itself, for instance, is something that underpins a lot of our social structures and systems, so it is something we need to be extra careful about, but it doesn't mean we can't, or shouldn't change it.

Longer lives would help people be more sustainable because the problems of future generations would become problems of this generation.

I have thought about this. How do people who are at the heads of large corporations okays destruction and pollution of environment. Is it because they don't care about the world their kids will inhabit? Or they just don't understand the seriousness and view it that way.

If it is the former (which I really doubt), then longer lives can help. Or else, it will be just the same.

A more realistic answer might be publically funded companies are answerable to the masses (people who buy shares), and the masses only care about the quarterly reports. And again, longer lives will not help much here. Because you buy a share for you to make a profit out of it. Even if the public is fully aware of the environmental issues, I am not sure people will take that into consideration while buying shares.

Again, longer lives won't help us there.

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