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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

>> "Nobody wants to die."

I do. Living for ever, or even much longer than our current life expectancy doesn't appeal to me at all. I like my life, but I also like that someday it will end. Back when I was religious (I'm not now) the idea of heaven or eternal life seemed strange to me as it was 'the goal' yet not something I wanted and the idea that I had to 'live forever' was quite worrying.

I'm curious if I'm in a minority on this. It's probably important to point out I don't want to die anytime soon but the idea that I continue living for longer than another 80 years for example is not appealing.

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I wonder where that comes from, too. You're definitely not the only one - I've seen plenty of people expressing similar opinions here on HN.

That said, for me the idea of eternal life seems very appealing. There are so many things I'd like to do, so many areas of knowledge I'd like to explore, etc. that it would take me 10 lifetimes and it still would not be enough. I'm nearing 30, which means that I'm almost halfway through life. Life feels too short.

I agree. I'm 50, and am in no way conceivably done living. Just the programming projects I want to do in the short term will take me a couple of decades to accomplish. If I knew I could stay at a reasonable level of health for another 100 years minimum, I'd tackle some harder problems that could take much longer.

Also, as a spectator in this world of ours, I'd like to see what happens, good and bad, over the next century or two (or more).

It's hard to say if I'd actually like to live, say, a thousand years — neither I nor anyone else has experienced even a fraction of that, so who knows what it's like? I certainly don't want to die in the next few decades, but that's what's likely to happen. The life expectancy for a male in the US is about 75 years. I'm almost halfway there, but I don't feel like I'm halfway done living. Assuming you're still kinda young, do you really expect to hit 40 and think, "Bring on the decrepitude and death"?

If you were in some parts of Africa, your life expectancy would be 50...Why does current life expectancy matter? As long as you still maintain quality of life and can be happy, why die? I think as soon as you are not happy and have no contributions to society, then there's less reason to increase life expectancy.

>> "Why does current life expectancy matter?"

It doesn't - I was using it as an approx. number instead of putting a specific age. What I meant was living into my 80's is sufficient for me.

How old are you now? It's very easy to say you're not scared of dying when it's a distant, abstract concern that you aren't really confronted with.

Some people, upon becoming terminally ill, suddenly realize that dying is a much bigger deal for them than they thought, now that it's an imminent possibility.

>> "How old are you now? It's very easy to say you're not scared of dying when it's a distant, abstract concern that you aren't really confronted with."

That's the odd thing - I'm definitely scared of dying. I don't want to die - now. But I can definitely see a tipping point. I guess it maybe depends on how happy you are with your life. If I was financially secure and could spend my life doing what I liked 100% of the time then maybe there isn't a reason not to keep living. Otherwise I just feel like eventually I'll get exhausted overcoming one challenge after the other.

It is not like this kind of longevity would be impossible to opt out of. Why not try it first instead of dissmissing it out of hand?

It might be quite hard to opt out of unless society vastly changes it's views on dying. I brought this up in another comment. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272372

If living forever were the default, would you choose to intentionally kill yourself?

Hell - in a world where living forever is the default, you can always kill yourself if and when you get bored.

It would be the last new experience, after everything else had been done to death...

It's not like people haven't done it before, or does it not count if you get a revive after 30 minutes without any brain activity?

It only counts if you don't know that there is a revive available ;)

There are many situations where it would make sense to intentionally let yourself die. Are your neighbors starving? Maybe let the younger generations eat instead of you.

If we can successfully cure death, I don't think we'll have a shortage of people willing to fund the spread of that cure universally. And once we have it, perhaps all remaining deaths will start to seem sufficiently tragic and avoidable that we'll do something about those, too. My reaction to your scenario is not "better die then", it's "better work faster and solve the problem then".

> If we can successfully cure death, I don't think we'll have a shortage of people willing to fund the spread of that cure universally.

This is optimistic and naive. It will be another privilege for the rich; it is the only way we will have any chance to avoid overpopulation.

I, like you, would probably not sign a paper where it stated that I would live eternally, but I'm sure we both agree that having the choice to live for as long as we want (or rather, choosing when we want to stop living) is a pretty good choice to have. I think that's what most humans would want.

I do agree it's a good choice to have. Would we be given that choice though? I could be stricken with an incredibly painful disease tomorrow and have zero quality of life - and even if I wanted to die (and couldn't do it myself) nobody would be allowed to help. Now we're talking about a perfectly healthy person wanting to die. There's also your question of responsibility to others (young children for example) and whether or not you're making a rational decision or one clouded by temporary mental illness. Society will need to change massively before we have the choice to die when we want (assuming eternal life).

I agree with you. It's actually a pretty interesting point of view, because I've thought about it too. Once we have enough knowledge to cure aging completely, we will probably have enough knowledge to cure depression and the likes. I support anti-aging research, but I agree that there are quite a few points that need to be discussed.

So maybe anti-aging for you just means you die at age 100 by falling off a cliff you're free climbing, instead of languishing for a decade in some crappy nursing home.

I too share the worry of living forever. I am still religious but I wonder what will you do if you live forever.

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