Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

The thought of everlasting life seems at first glance to be quite enticing, yet the inevitability of death is what gives life its value and meaning. In some ways, this reminds me of a metaphor: a fetus not wishing to leave its mother's womb. The womb is comfortable, familiar, and safe - much like our lives. However, without birth, the opportunity to experience the world in all its beauty and complexity, in all its highs and lows, would remain unrealized.

We find ourselves fearful of death, not because it is inherently terrifying, but due to our limited comprehension of its nature. Our collective fear of the unknown compels us to seek perpetual life as a means to sidestep this uncertainty. Yet, death is as much a part of life as birth, and perhaps our trepidation stems from misunderstanding, rather than the event itself.

In much of life, as with the natural world, there exists a cyclical pattern of transformation - not an abrupt cessation. If we look to Buddhist philosophy, for example, we see the belief that our ego-mind, the part of us that clings to transient moments and shies away from change, is what dreads the idea of letting go. It's this ego-mind that is afraid of losing itself, of losing control.

Yet, Buddhism also teaches us the concept of Anatta, or non-self, a notion that suggests that this clinging ego-mind isn't our true nature. By holding on so tightly to our lives, we may be disregarding the beauty and wisdom inherent in change, in letting go, and perhaps, in death itself.

Just as a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, maybe death is not an end but a metamorphosis, a transcendence into a different state of existence that our current understanding simply cannot grasp. After all, every living being encounters death. This universality suggests that it holds purpose and significance in the grand scheme of life's narrative.

I think, before we leap into the pursuit of eternal life, perhaps we should first strive to better understand, accept, and make peace with the cycle of life and death.

Perhaps. But if I had the opportunity to investigate those concepts by meditating for several centuries, as one part of an even longer life, I'm not so sure that'd be a bad idea. Buddhism also, after all, includes the concept of Bodhisattvas, who don't need to incarnate but choose to do so anyway, out of compassion for others.

I guess we have to accept that this perspective will be at the bottom of such threads.

But this is the conclusion I’ve come to as well. I used to fear death, now I fear wasting my life.

The more I learn about the natural world, the more I can see that death is a gift, a mechanism for renewal as well as for protecting things which have existed for millions of years.

Nothing I have in my brain is that special, compared to what the collective of life has created. I’m happy to give up living and become a more background part of what comes next. It’s an honor. And I hope I can honor it.

It’s very interesting to read this thread though and remember that so many people see death as a simple black line that might just as well be evaded as understood.

I feel similarly to you, and yet there is always such a strong negative reaction to this sort of sentiment in anti-aging threads. I wonder what people outside the HN bubble think of this, since I've always thought that coming to terms with death and your own mortality was just a part of growing up.

Coming to terms with death is a necessary adaption to the fact that we're all going to die in a fairly short time. If we had an expected lifespan of ten thousand years, then I wonder how many people would think that the way to "grow up" is to give up 99% of that time, rather than living those years and learning whatever lessons they bring.

Perhaps, when the solar system is full of 5000-year-olds, they'll marvel that we infants were able to muddle through at all.

I cannot comprehend people who say things like this... Unless they believe in an afterlife (which is also some kind of immortality).

The only reason to accept death would be if it was inevitable. But if we'd have the chance...

I urge you to read The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

https://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

> the inevitability of death is what gives life its value and meaning.

By what mechanism does it do that? How do you conclude that life has any meaning or value? What is the value and meaning of life according to you?

I believe the concept of 'meaning' is inherently human because we are intrinsically teleological beings. We habitually seek meaning, purpose, or goal-orientation in every aspect of our existence.

I also believe that the concept of 'meaning' exists only within the realm of human consciousness. Outside the human experience, the concept of 'meaning' is virtually non-existent. For instance, the cosmos doesn't assign 'meaning' to celestial events; they simply occur in adherence to the laws of physics.

Well, that partly answers the second question but what about the other two? As for the second, how does the fact that we seek it and that it is would have to be psychological entail that it exists and that we find it?

You sound like a Cartesian dualist. Consider the following:

1. Why should "human consciousness" have a teleological character, while everything else in the universe should be devoid of it? This means that "human consciousness" is different from the rest of the universe in some intrinsic, substantial way. Hence, dualism, and in the Cartesian scheme, this division is expressed in the distinction between res cogitans and res extensa. But then if human consciousness (or res cogitans) is distinct, then we can at least entertain the possibility of the immortality of personal human consciousness as it is not subject to the flux of the remainder of the universe in which things pass into and out of existence.

2. What is a law of physics? Where can I find one? Does it haunt the universe like a ghost, enforcing obedience to its will on otherwise inert "stuff"? That sounds like either another consciousness, or a third category of thing. Or it is perhaps just a convenient way of summarizing observed regularities, regularities that must be accounted for by, say, appealing to the the nature of a kind of thing? The difference matters, because now we must begin to talk telos.

3. How do you explain efficient causality without final causality? How can you account for regularity? If I strike a match against a matchbox, I can predictably cause fire. Fire is predictably the result, not the manifestation of an elephant or a cheeseburger or Beethoven's 9th symphony. The match is causally ordered in a way that, when the right cause comes along, the effect of fire is achieved. That is all that telos is, the ordering of things toward effect or end. The nature of a thing is realized--actualized--in the effecting of what it is ordered toward. (People confuse telos with conscious, deliberative purpose, but that is but a species.)

4. What is meaning? Do you deny that things are what they are, that they are intelligible for what they are? If you do, then what business do you have telling us what the universe and human consciousness is like? Are you a nominalist[0]? If so, what business do you have making general statements about the universe and human consciousness?

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11090c.htm

Buddhism's "solution" is essentially personal suicide. "How can I die, if I am not, save in some non-personal sense?" But nobody really cares about a "non-personal" survival, making this an effectively nihilistic way of dealing with the subject.

(A nice, short summary of various positions you might find interesting: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07687a.htm)

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