Who will remember you in 100 years?

Many times, in my career while negotiating something with another party I've said, "Let's get this fixed, it won't mean much to either of us in 50 years and in 100 nobody will remember either of us."

I've managed to solve some pretty hairy problems saying that, the other party usually pauses and realizes the futility of our disagreement and we work something out.

Call me morbid but I started saying that when I was 18 years old.

I also say, "I raise my kids for me to die". It shocks people when I say it but what parent wants to outlive their children? Honestly my goal is to teach them how to make good decisions and find what feeds their soul for their short stay in this world.

I’ve read many things over the years about the deep need for humans to somehow push death out beyond their consciousness because otherwise it would destroy them to think every day could be the end of them.

I don’t see it that way, I feel like I borrowed these atoms my body is assembled from and it’s my goal to use them to learn, love and enjoy the amazing reality we live in every day. Today could be my last, so what, at some point I must give my atoms back to the universe for whatever purpose they find in the future. Today they’re mine, and I’m happy to have them just a bit longer to discover a tiny bit more about our existence and the people around us all.

I sometimes pay attention to the sheer number of people I cross paths with in life, and think: see this person going by in their car, or that guy jogging up the street. I know almost nothing about what their life has been about, what struggles they've faced, what successes they've had, what it was like for them growing up, what are they thinking and feeling right now. I'd wager that the large majority of people out there, I know nothing about and anything they've gone through hasn't even crossed my mind. So most don't even need to be gone 100 years, to be largely unknown on an intimate level except to a relatively small circle of people.

I can find myself believing (perhaps due to a survival instinct) that what I believe, think, do, etc matter greatly. The truth is, those things matter to me and perhaps several others in my close circle. Sure, I can do things to engage in greater society and provide a positive influence on others. That doesn't change the fact that, in all likelihood, a large portion of the world isn't even aware of or concerned much about my existence.

I like a quote from the book of the samurai (hagakure) that says: "this world is vanity indeed. People always forget this." I've made up how important things are and probably will continue to as part of human nature. So I'll try to have a life I can appreciate and enjoy while it's here, because I want to -- and most other people won't even notice, much less care, if I do.

Living your life with a goal to be remembered in 100 years sounds more like living life to impress people you aren't even sure will regard what you are doing as important. Politicians, whether they changed the world for good or bad, are more likely to be remembered that 99% of who are contributing positively to this world.

Death makes life fair because we all end up with nothing. The universe itself won't last forever. In terms of justice and equality, this is very comforting.

I don't understand all these people who are funding research to cure death. Even if you manage to cure natural death, you definitely won't be able to cure occupational death.

I know some things about my grandfather from 120 years ago, because he'd write letters.

http://walterbright.com/trip/chas.html

I suppose the stuff I post on the internet will last forever :-)

Even contemporary fame and success is no guarantee of being remembered. I've stumbled across Wikipedia articles on countless authors who were hugely successful in the 19th and early 20th century, often publishing dozens of widely-read books, but who are already almost entirely forgotten. I'm sure they imagined they had done enough to secure a personal legacy, but it seems not.

That's one thing that has always bothered me about grave yards: how little the people end up leaving behind. An entire life gets reduced to a few meaningless facts about a person that don't really tell us anything about who they were. It would kind of be nice in that sense if there was more information available about a person to perhaps leave something behind. Maybe some wisdom or entertaining historical facts from the person... I dunno.

This is somewhat of a joke but: put sha256 hashes on grave stones that identify contracts on a decentralized cloud storage system and then fund them with enough coins to enforce their content for the next 1000 years. Technically you could use time-lock encryption to reveal progressive challenges to the hosting nodes to prove that the content still exists overtime so that an autonomous system that enforces content could be made (existing protocols somewhat depend on an active system to prove that the content still exists but this is getting a bit technical now... Or otherwise just embed content into a blockchain if its small enough.)

I guess there is also tomb stones that have QR codes on them that let you do something similar with an app but there's no guarantee that the company will still be around in the next 100 years. With a self-organising autonomous storage system you could have a way to intelligently reallocate content without any kind of human intervention. So that overtime if the people hosting content go down or decide to stop doing it, the storage contracts can be dynamically reallocated to new nodes who will collect fees from the contracts.

Much like a DropBox that never dies - it would far outlive anyone today and so long as the funds for hosting content still existed on some blockchain - so too would the content. And that my friends, is why blockchains are over-hyped and stupid. LMAO, blockchains for dead people? Did you really buy that. I mean, seriously.

I was putting working a genealogical tree today (using gramps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramps).

Even within your family it is hard to remember people after a couple of generations.

It's also important to remember "will you care?".

"Your most ambitious and daring dreams, no matter if they succeed or not, will mean absolutely nothing when you are gone."

I need to remember this when I'm freaking out about an interview or a presentation.

I remember my great-grandfathers: Gilbert, Clyde, Coit, and Sam. They mean something to me because I would not be me if they weren't them. Something would be different if their lives were different. There are connections. Life continues.

Yes, we should live our lives not worried about appearances to others. Most of our accomplishments will be fleeting at best, but the lives we live influence our children and our grandchildren, and that influence passes along, whether they remember my name - because of a shared passion for family genealogy - or not.

I'm curious what the policies are for the persistence of cemetery plots in different areas. I thankfully have had no personal interaction with the funeral industry yet, but the article's matter-of-fact mentioning of gravestones being uprooted and hauled elsewhere (or even destroyed) after some period of inactivity seemed hideous to me. A bit of research ( http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery-pl... ) suggests that the US (where I reside) seems to have more permanence in burial plots than Europe does. I suppose it makes sense given the limitations of space and accumulated time that Europe has had to deal with as opposed to the US, but there is something aesthetically horrifying to me about the idea of evicting dead bodies for failure to "pay rent." Moving graves for new development is one thing, but for it to be a policy of an active cemetery seems like such an alien concept.

In a similar way, I've found myself less happy with the idea of modern cremation the more I learn about it. The mental picture of "body goes into the fire, ashes come out of the fire" seemed beautiful, but the use of the cremulator ( essentially a blender to crush up all the bits of bone that didn't turn to ashes, as seen in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTclbBKxKk ) gives me pause. It may be an irrational thought in our modern materialistic world, but that last act of push-button pulverization feels violent and overly industrial. Perhaps embalming is not much better, but at least that connects with a familiar historical tradition. I wonder how far back the use of cremulation in cremation goes -- in modern times can you request that your cremation keeps the bits of bones "unprocessed"?

Well, an interesting and yet humbling, depressing read.

What a way to start my morning.

Depends on how much of my consciousness I am able to put into the AI that becomes the singularity.

In all seriousness,

Who cares? I don't.

It's like discussing life after death. I'm fine with just this one.

In many countries, cemeteries aren't managed so well as this one in Sweden. I've toured my share, and recall seeing graves that were hundreds of years old. In some places, thousands.

Not that it matters, of course.

From the epilogue of Barry Lyndon: "It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

Is it possible to remember someone without having shared experiences with that person?

I don't think so.

Otherwise you're just remembering a short list of their most significant accomplishments and not really the person themselves.

So if no one is alive who interacted with me in 100 years, then, by definition, no one will remember me. A few people might recollect my accomplishments, but it will only have been done through 3rd party accounts and documents like my notes/books or photographs.

If any software I work on today survives that long without any major rewrites I just hope they are not yelling and cursing my name because I missed a 100 year old bug.

With today's networked data, assuming enough technological acceleration that all the web content gets archived, your Tweets, posts, and other writings could be available indefinitely. Not so sure that that's a good thing.

Well there's a very good chance we'll be alive in 100 years.

The pale blue dot will

Easy: the internet. Archive.org if it still exists

TLDR: YOLO!