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Comment by Omnus | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's huge problem to face, but I never understood this response to immortality/transhumanism. The alternative is, as far as we know, eternal oblivion for you and everyone you love. That, as opposed to using our rationality and creative powers to at least attempt to solve the societal problems that immortality presents.

People often further respond with something like: "I don't know about you, but I'd prefer that me and my loved ones die - the universe would get boring after so long". Of course, the vast majority of these people would still yearn for life even on their death beds at age 97 - and if technology and medicine allowed us to have sound minds and bodies by that age, the yearning would be even greater.

Who wants oblivion when eternal adventure could await us?

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There's no dignity in lingering after it's time to move on.

Certainly most people wish that they could relive their childhood, do things differently, treasure how carefree it is to be a child, without the responsibilities of adulthood. But that is not what childhood is: the ignorance of what is to come is what gives childhood its essential character. Life, likewise, derives its character from its immutability: our inability to experience more than one Everett branch. That immutability is what gives our decisions meaning: they are truly final.

Immortalism is, I think, an obstinate rejection of life's finitude. The immortalist would like to live ten trillion lifetimes, sampling all varieties of conscious experience. But this is not compatible with a single continuous lifespan. To properly experience all that reality has to offer, the immortal would have to "start over" countless times, erasing their memory and transferring their consciousness into every variety of body, human and non-human. What distinguishes this process from death as we know it?

In other words: maybe you already are the Immortal.

I did some thinking along exactly the same lines as you, long ago, and asked the same question: if you want to live forever, but your capacity to retain memories is necessarily limited, you have to basically forget. If you only remember the last 1000 years, then you're only living to 1000 in some sense and your experience as a whole is made up of numerous life spans that do not overlap at all, experientially. So what is the difference between that and death?

The answer I came up with: quite simply, the difference is that you don't ever die. Old memories fade away and are forgotten. But we have experience with that already in our limited lifetimes and a lot of it is not too horrible, compared to dying. If it's slow and gradual, and you always retain the recent memories that are relevant to your current life, this "continuous dying" may not be such a bad alternative.

That isn't materially different than what currently exists, which is basically that your memories last your lifetime, you "die" and essentially become conscious as something else in the same way that you found yourself in your current body.

It's different because dying is fearsome and possibly agonizingly painful. Even in the absence of these problems, a change from your current body into some other form (such that your consciousness and memories continue) is extremely disruptive. Not to mention that you lose contact with those who haven't passed through that change, even if temporarily.

It is categorically different. If your memories of 1000 years ago gradually fade away, only that old version of you is "gone" (in present experiential sense). You and your family and friends have known you as a consistent "self" with mental continuity throughout your whole lifetime. When you die in the current times, you and your family grieve and experience suffering as a result of the lack of your mental continuity. When parts of you later end up in a tree or squirrel, that is not a particularly consoling idea to those who would prefer you continued to exist as a human.

Interesting, but this sounds like a human perspective on being trans-human.

Consider that you will no longer need to procreate to have kids. They can and will likely be engineered. You'd probably not think the same way about families. Emotions could be something you can more readily control and so on...

I'm up for the challenge of trans-humanism, but I'm also okay with death if that's what comes to pass.

Really, you don't have a choice in our current understanding of physics. It's not a matter of if, but rather of when or how long.

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