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Comment by ajkirwin | Hacker News Reader

Am I one of the few people who looks forward to death? To know that there WILL be an end to things is something of a comfort to me.

I'd like to live for a time, sure, but even five hundred years might be too long. I'd either get driven insane by the constant bow-shocks of ever advancing culture, or I'd lapse into some kind of boredom-induced stupor.

I have my little slice of spacetime, to do with as I wish. I could live a great and noble life, or a horrific and cruel one. I could live another five decades, or if I wanted to, end it all tomorrow.

No matter what I may do, or not do, in the end.. there are no regrets, no looking back. Just.. the steady decay of my body, the essential atoms of my makeup being reused by other organisms, processes, chemical reactions.

And I like it that way.

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Really? Or is that just a coping mechanism to deal with an inevitable reality?

I wake up every morning an evolved version of myself - how could I ever become bored as a result of becoming ancient and wiser?

I want a bigger slice of spacetime. If you were awarded 3 wishes, sure, you could wish for something nice, you could wish to have your wishes vanish.. and that is control. But the ultimate answer to the game is to wish for more wishes - it is the only rational answer that gives you any real control over this wonder.

'The steady decay...' is a disease. If you had a curable disease would you so effortlessly arrive at the same conclusion? Is this characteristic of being human stricken with, say, cholera, that we would lay in bed, slowly dying in pain, with 'no regrets'? No!! we are creatures of survival, of sustainability, of life. We will rise to our feet, or pick up the phone, and find the treatment, and live another day of beautiful human experience.

It's not wrong either for the rest of us to be curious.

I'm both curious about living for 1000+ years, since no human has ever lived so long before, and about what happens after death. Given the chance for a 1000-year lifespan, I'd readily take it knowing that I will die, Singularity or no, given the very long but finite lifespan of the universe, and taking the long lifespan would allow me to experience both.

Although a "healthy fear" is certainly in order, I don't understand the reflexive hatred of death. I think it's more likely that consciousness is nonphysical and that there is some form of spiritual survival. Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research is pretty solid. (If I'm wrong, I'll never know.)

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