Hacker News Reader

Comment by cultureulterior | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree, and you shouldn't force those of us who don't agree to die.

You're going to die eventually whether you like it or not. Better to get comfortable with this fact, rather than fight it.

Doesn't that argument prove too much? In the past, people's lives were shorter and more full of misery. Every improvement we've gotten has been due to people rejecting your philosophy. Assuming one can live longer (without being frail and demented) why not?

It seems like if most people could choose, they'd prefer to have the mental and physical abilities of a 20-something while living as long as they wanted. Eventually, medical technology will get to the point where that is possible. Why not hasten such a day rather than let more people get old and frail? Yes, people will still eventually die, but living for 300 years in peak condition seems better than the status quo.

so do you really prefer society putting effort in very complex labour that is unknown than making people aware of how important is a good diet and exercising often?

as the website article typed, there is a long way to tickle trustable keys to preservation, let alone reviving a frozen body, let alone understanding what we have to do to live in peak capacity for 50 years, let alone to live 300…

i sincerely prefer public and private money being wasted on improving our ‘short’ lives than MAYBE discovering some esotericism that probably very few people will have access

We have 8 billion people, no need for either ors.

i mean, is better to have a solid foundation to discover and create things… some people still do not have access to proper nutrition

There is so much money spent on crap by organisations and individuals around the world, and we should save money for the abjectly poor or to promote healthy habits and prevention by not trying to radically improve the human condition itself?

As for a solid foundation to discover and create things, you need to be healthy and have time first of all. The logistics of life just suck as it is now unless you are really lucky. It used to be much worse but it can get much better.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

I reject your reality and substitute my own. I'm immortal and I will make it so

Is there a proof that we have to die? Or that immortality for a human is impossible? Seems more like a lot in the medical field have experienced so much death that they simply have accepted it for a fact.

If you asked someone centuries back if we would go to the moon, they will laugh you out of the room. Similarly, if you said that people will consistently live to their 90+ years of age.

It seem pretty likely that we have to die, based on the second law of thermodynamics. The whole universe has to end eventually, after many trillions of years. There's no physical law that would stop a person sticking around for those trillions of years, but it would be technologically very difficult.

If you were going to die tomorrow, and if you had the option to live another day, what would you choose? Then days become months and months become years and so on and so forth.

What a strange statement, who said anything about forcing anyone to do anything?

Do you think GP's decision not to focus their work on life extension is forcing you to die?

In a hopeless situation, I would not prolong my life. But that would be my choice for myself. I don't get to make that choice for others. Why should you?

The trick is that's hard to know the hopeless situation. Many people get away with cancer so are you ready to deny yourself one more chance to live?

You'd have someone else wipe your ass rather than embrace death? How dignified.

His choice. Not yours.

It's a legitimate consideration.

It’s funny on HN tonight. We have one thread where a county in rural Tennessee lets houses burn down for want of a $75 free or 0.13% tax increase, because freedom.

And here, because freedom, people are advocating for the freedom to pretend death isn’t approaching, at the cost of millions to society.

How do you equate some people's denial of death with a cost of millions to society rather than as costs to the indovidual?

The point of drug discovery to slow down or stop aging is not to keep people in that frail state of life for as long as possible. Instead is to keep people in their 30s for as long as possible. Most research out there is trying to solve aging, not death.

I think the person you're replying to is referring to cryonics (the topic of the original article), which is still illegal in many jurisdictions.

We all die eventually. This isn't the Sandman Universe [1].

[1] https://majorspoilers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Sandman...

We all die eventually, so far...

you'd figure if biology was capable then it would have found a solution by now. But as far as I'm aware immortality isn't a trait of any multi-cellular organism that has ever lived on this rock.

I mean maybe we can stick some pipes in a corpse and get it to move around or make a digital echo of a dead personality and have that rattle around inside a robot. However, I feel like we're drifting into wishful thinking if we figure genuine immortality is a going to be a some sort of scientific given.

Consider that death may actually not be as selected against in nature as you seem to imply. An everliving organism would not as easily adapt to a changing environment, if and until a new mechanism of evolution is generated. We may be stuck in a local minima.

Nature doesn't have goals. Humans, as far as I can tell, very much do. Put another way. Evolution didn't find a way to get life onto the Moon. Humans did.

>if biology was capable then it would have found a solution by now

It did though.[0]

There is likely very little evolutionary pressure for immortality, therefore this kind of thing isn't more widespread. If anything, at population level evolution might generally select for the population that produces a new generation and dies quicker.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii

Oh cool, thanks for that. I would argue that's not exactly the sort of immortality we have in mind when we discuss it though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com