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Comment by kls | Hacker News Reader

Well if we want to take it to it's extreme end, death is a certainty. At some point all nature will decay and the universe and all energy will stop, it will all be used up. Nature will be used up and gone, barring the supernatural we will be too, so at that point even if we become naturally immortal we will die, because nature and more importantly energy will be no more. At this point Tesla, Newton et. al. will not matter, not a thing will matter, because the universe will be dead. So if we die in 85 years or x billion of years the final result is the same. Death is part of life and at some point even our contributions, no matter how great they are will be of no value. The old wisdom nothing last forever is true.

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Now that I think about it, even this viewpoint is invalid. Perhaps we simply have an insufficient understanding of the universe. In 5000 years, they might ridicule the people of their past (us) for ever thinking that the end of the universe is inevitable. Just because we can't conceive a workaround yet does not mean that there isn't one.

"travelling faster than 40 miles an hour is impossible" "communicate with someone on the other side of the world instantly? Impossible!" "fly to the moon?" "end death?"

I'm sure that if we sat down, we could come up with thirty things that we have daily today, but were 'impossible' a hundred years ago.

This isn't correct. You're falling victim to a fallacy sometimes known as privileging the hypothesis. When you look back and say, "Look at all the things people thought were impossible but are now possible!" you're ignoring all things that people thought were impossible and are still impossible. Moreover, you're looking over all the things people thought were possible but are actually impossible.

The entire frame of your questions shows the fallacy because you explicitly abandon all other notions to just come up with things that were thought impossible but are now mundane.

It's true that we don't know everything, but implying that because we don't know everything we know nothing is absolutely ridiculous. All current knowledge of physics points towards entropy, and moreover the second law of thermodynamics, as being one of the most important and consistent laws of physics. It's so important that one of the most well-known physicists in the world is so well-known because he created a theory of black holes that meshes with our existing theory of entropy, proving that the second law still holds. The idea that we should abandon this knowledge because, well, it's inconvenient strikes me as being disingenuous in the highest order.

Anyone can say, "Well, you don't know everything, so you may be wrong." That doesn't make it an informed or useful comment.

Haha, I guess I wasn't clear enough there; my bad.

In my defense, I was not saying "since we achieved all these awesome things, we'll surely eventually avoid the heat death of the universe". Instead, I was claiming that right now, we're probably still to ignorant to know that with confidence. Perhaps we will find a way to escape into a different universe.

Thanks for the reminder (and good username!)

I can't find any examples of privileging a hypothesis in the grandparent comment. Could you clarify that?

Personally I chose to ignore this point of view as it would imply that absolutely everything is completely without a point. What's the value in following such a line of thinking?

Why? Because one eventually realizes that your conclusion here is incorrect. You have constructed "meaning" as a very particular thing here. There are other ways to see meaning in the world.

And also because it's true. The best science we have tells us that everything decays in the end. If you're going to start ignoring facts just because you don't like them, where do you stop?

>Because one eventually realizes that your conclusion here is incorrect. You have constructed "meaning" as a very particular thing here. There are other ways to see meaning in the world.

But what you're describing sees no meaning in anything ever. Simply because you can say that eventually the sun will burn out and we'll all die anyway doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things as good as we can while we are here.

>If you're going to start ignoring facts just because you don't like them, where do you stop?

No, I'm ignoring facts that have no relevance or no useful action to take. If everything is going to end in a trillion years, what should I do about that exactly? Does that mean I should try to cure aging now?

Do you have a job? Why, the universe will end in some billions of years. Oh, you want to have as nice a life as you can while you are here? So do I.

You've got me wrong. I agree entirely that we must make the most of what we have. Which is why I think it's important to face the inevitability of death. If you aren't realistic about what you have, you can't make the best use of it.

Which is exactly what this article illustrates. Death comes for us all, and not facing that yields waste and suffering. Not in some abstract sense, either. As the author writes, "At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture." And the amount spent on futile end-of-life care is staggering.

I think you have me wrong as well. I'm not for making deteriorating 90-year-olds suffer in bed for another 10 years to bump some stats. I'm talking about eliminating aging and natural death.

As things stand today, of course it doesn't make sense to hang on when you're only going to get a few more years of agony. But more research could be done in eliminating the effects of aging, etc. We've already lost many great minds but if we can stop this trend or even slow it down then it's worth persuing.

Personally I chose to ignore this point of view

I don't think this is an issue of point of view, entropy and thermodynamics are very real and as of now, the best models of reality point to it being a certainty.

imply that absolutely everything is completely without a point

I personally don't subscribe to that philosophical position, I brought up the topic of the eventual end or the universe as a thought experiment about the acceptance of death and at that point all relevance will be gone, but in saying that, I personally feel that, even if nature is temporal, things can have a point and have meaning now even if they don't have permanent meaning in this nature. Further we cannot rule out the existence of a higher natural order in which there is further purpose. That being said, meaning, point and the eventual lack of both have little to do with the reality that this nature will end, until it does end. Even if purpose is absolutely temporal it is significant in that temporal space, which is enough to give it a point. Acknowledging that a temporal space will end, does nothing to minimize the point of that temporal space and the actors within it. Rather it is a realization that it is a self contained system and that the point or meaning exists within that system, the value is within the system not external to it. Once the system is gone it has no value, but that does nothing to diminish the value inside of the system.

Personally I chose to ignore this point of view as it would imply that absolutely everything is completely without a point.

Who told you there was "a point?"

And why did he tell you that?

The fact that the destination is the same does not mean that the journey doesn't matter. Most people are not indifferent to dying in 6 hours or in 60 years.

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