Am I the only one who thinks immortality is a nightmare? I don't understand people who want to live forever.
We’d all still die at some point — at current rates, even without ageing, 0.1% would die in any given year, though it isn’t clear how that would change long term — we just wouldn’t get age-associated degeneration such as Alzheimer’s and forget the concept of left and how to count past four like my mum did: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/alzheimers/
I don’t know what you’re imagining that makes you see a nightmare.
My wife has lost a sister, and she's witnessed a murder. Neither she nor I are the same after those experiences. I don't think we will ever be.
If we lived forever I think we would all become more and more anxious and excentric as time progressed and our souls inevitably became more "scarred".
Maybe it's a "challenge" that will also be solved - with memory erasure or what not - but it seems like an overlooked issue to me.
Not sure, you could apply the same reasoning to people who go thru active wars: the first time they see someone die, they care, but by the time they see hundreds of people dead it does not matter to them anymore.
I am starting to think we might reverse biological aging before we resolve psychosocial crises associated with it.
It wouldn't be the first time humanity has introduced physical tools they weren't ready for.
This is good. I always say rich people can't be weird, only eccentric. And chances are if you live for a long time, you have more money :)
Getting to know your grandchildren and embrace their changing world is probably a good defence in this regard.
To the extent I agree with the parent commenter about it being "a nightmare", the danger lies in exacerbating inequality. As with all medicines, those with access to life-improving medicines will be first world, wealthier people.
But of course that's no good argument against progress, just an unfortunate short-term side effect of it.
I think PTSD is a good example of that.
Who's talking about immortality anywhere? It would be already great if you could die in great shape, not stuck on a wheelchair for years.
We can't stop death, therefore we tell ourselves its ok and something that we actually want, in order to cope with the terror of death.
[1] - The mechanism to avoid concentrated power is a drop in for many other things. For example, I believe if societal structures could effectively optimise for ethical behaviour, individuals would be less likely to crave for power lust and greed.
One of my personal goals is to tell the great grandchildren of people my age what their great grandparents were like since most of them won't write down the interesting bits of their lives and instagram/snapchat/facebook leaves a distorted image and may not even exist in the future.
I'd actually disagree with you - under the premise, you'd be able to end your life as you will.
In that case, hell yes, I'm in for that. I'm in my mid 20s and the past years have been filled with burn-out, depression and literal still stand career-/ education- wise. I can now really grasp how short life actually is. It's so easy (I did it!) to actually waste a notable portion of your life span.We're talking more than half a decade. It gives me shivers. I have so many interests and I'm never bored. I can find interesting topics in any domain and if I could, I'd stay in university my whole life. So, to make this short, I'd be the ultimate dream of mine to not have to care about what to fill my life with. It steamrolls me and I get a lot of fear out of it. But not the fear that drives you, the fear that paralyzes.
But I think it boils down to where you are in life. No-one would like endless suffering.
As for my own stance on this, i wouldn't want this to happen simply because it will greatly exacerbate the gap between the haves and have-nots, the poor and the well-off. It will completely throw the current social equilibrium out of the window.
And I'm mainly talking about life extension, since i find immortality a foolish/impossible goal.
Myself, I think that longevity treatments are unlikely to remain unaffordable to the poor for very long after they are invented — even in a cynical world where the rich are greedy enough to try and keep it for themselves, old-age healthcare is really expensive, so societies which cause this to be cheap will outperform those that keep it for just the powerful.
Elite capture under the parameter of current human lifespans is extant and difficult to counteract. It stands to reason those negative consequences associated with elite capture would only be exacerbated under longer lifespans.
It’s simply an acknowledgment of a likely negative consequence.
Given that is the case and everything else being equal, I would prefer that exact scenario with an opportunity to live forever. Even if that means someone I don't like gets to try that too.
Doesn't one of the Koch sons sell Hawaiian print t-shirts?
As far as I can tell, "I don't want to live forever anyway" is just cope.
Nobody wants immortality because they miss being constipated.
What is the point and purpose of life, beyond avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure? Even the ancient pursuit of honor and memory is rather ephemeral and lame.
That's generally how most people define imortality.
If you take that + remove suffering, it is one hell of a carrot.
> What is the point and purpose of life, beyond avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure? Even the ancient pursuit of honor and memory is rather ephemeral and lame.
That is something we all have to discover for ourselves. Many people find that through religion, and as long as they aren't hurting others i don't begrudge them of it, but there are lots of paths to finding existential meaning.