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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

I see it in another way, a bit nihilistic though. Sure, there are plenty of exits. But we will all have to make the final exit at some point. Either now or 10 years or 50 years. We will all have to go. And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim. And 100 years is, in the grand scheme of things, a blink of an eye.

Even 1000 years would be inconsequential. So why fret about it? Life is yours. It is the only thing that is truly yours. Deal with it as you see fit. Including not wanting to deal with it anymore. It is all your choice and, in the end, we are all the same.

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Yep, even famous people in their time are quickly forgotten. How often does anyone under age 60 think about JFK? In another 50 years he’ll be a name among many in a history class, which is more than most people get but that will be the extent of it.

At the risk of being glib, QAnon adherents do.

But your point is well taken, how many people have thought of D.R. Griffith, Jimmy Steward or Paul Newman this week?

We spend too much time thinking about them

I see Paul Newman's face on my salad dressing every time I open my fridge, but I guess I don't really think about it.

I think about JFK all the time. In fact, I'm in JFK right now.

> And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim

FWIW I've been building a family tree recently and I've made it back to 1890. Don't know a lot about those folks but I do have pics. And they're the only tie I have to some family in Germany who I met just recently.

Bit of a tangent though. I don't think I'll optimize for rememberability.

That's thoroughly nihilistic :)

I am curious about this line of thinking..."being remembered"

Even if you are remembered in 100 years... So what? Should be a consideration? Vanity?

I think it stems from the same reason people care about what others think of them. That has some benefits, but people care about it directly rather than the indirect benefits it brings themselves.

Because if you care about what people think of you, why could that change just because you’re dead?

That wider society sees opinions like - that you are mortal, furthermore, you are only alive for the time being, so make sure not to undervalue the richness of life! - as synonymous with nihilism, has always been a little bit amusing for me. To me, strictly speaking, something like this is like the exact opposite of nihilism, possibly even the most non-nihilistic statement I can think of :) [0]

[0] I mean, when I consider the whole possible space of questions I could ask about life, and the answers that I could arrive at just sitting in my armchair, I think it's quite a rare thing to be comforted in knowing I can easily know in my bones that the answer is correct: that the time to start living is TODAY!

> And statistically, the chance that you would be someone who is remembered 100 years from now is kind of slim.

You won't be remembered. The image of you is remembered. Not even that. It would be a photograph of a photograph of photograph of an image. We don't remember julius caesar or george washington. We remember the image of them. They themselves ( who they are or were ) doesn't matter. Just like we remember the image of Jesus Christ, even though the guy might not have even existed. Besides, eventually, there won't be anyone left to remember the image of you. So what's it all about?

It almost sounds like you're making an argument in favor of the "digital afterlife" trend, whereby you essentially leave an LLM of yourself.

About being forgotten:

There is a good fiction book in Russian on the topic: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82_%D0%B...

Plot: After you die, you get to another place, call it heaven.

Every time someone who is alive remembers about you, you get a coin.

Coins are used in this afterlife community for food, entertainment, labor, etc

You cannot steal them, although can give as gift to another afterlife person.

Of course, in the beginning you are rich, people miss you. Then income drops...

When you are out of coins - you die second time, most likely forever.

Well written, good plot, etc.

But! In this after world Hitler and cavemen whose body is part of the exhibition in natural sciences museum live better and longer than any "normal" and "ordinary" person, especially in the long time perspective.

P.S. You still can do many things in this world to make people remember you for a long time after you are gone.

how did they explain the caveman surviving the centuries between first death and the body being found?

Inflation. His coins were worth a lot more back then.

Sounds like an interesting book, this one. Thanks for sharing

We spent a lot of time finding historical data from across the world and building our family tree back a few hundred years. But records didn’t keep as well back then. Now everyone is posting everything everywhere all at once. Do you think there’s a greater chance someone 20 generations from now will be able to look at TikTok and Threads archives and understand and get to know their forebears from 1,000 years ago? I think there’s a good chance of that.

I feel I'll outlive TikTok and Threads, and that paper in records offices will ultimately turn out to be the most durable of current record formats in 20 generations.

I have already outlived many of the websites where I posted information in my teens, and in recent days we've heard about even big sites like Twitter losing some historical data. Not to mention all the users of sites like Orkut, Google+, Friendfeed, Bebo, that one where you checked in your location that I can't even remember the name of...

Four Square, got bought by twitter and I kinda hope they lost all my checkin data at this point.

Too late to edit but this is dead wrong. According to wikipedia they’re still out there chugging along.

Yup

Twitter/X is evidently seriously bitrotting [0]. Evidently, links to all pre-2014 pics & vids are now dead. Supposedly still on the servers, but whether this is just failing infra or Musk considering destroying all the old data, or putting it behind a paywall is unclear. Either way, all this data is very ephemeral.

[0] https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/1692922211416334597

> > Even 1000 years would be inconsequential so why fret about it?

Being remembered many years in the future is very correlated with conspicuous consumption during the individual lifetime

Especially for leaders, but even for artists who get to work for leaders and have their lifestyle subsidised

So even if your goal is just abundance of stuff and experiences then seeking a position that would have you remembered 1000 years from now is the way to go

> So why fret about it?

Well, it's the only life I'll ever have. I'd to get the most out of it I can.

We're all going to fall into a black hole anyway.

The death of a living entity is a black hole in itself: matter just get rearranged. Assuming black holes are just galactic sized blenders that leak matter out, eventually.

Another thing that is an unchanging constant, but also changes.

“Black holes have so much gravity that nothing can escape it, not even light”

“Except for all those particles there, and there, it’s called hawking radiation, and eventually the black hole which nothing can escape, not even light, will evaporate from everything escaping it”

Makes perfect logical sense

“They say you die twice - first when your heart stops beating and the second after the last person on earth thinks about you”

Your comment is naive. What does it mean to "deal with it"? Life is trying to understand precisely that.

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