The Humanness of Death | Hacker News Reader

The Humanness of Death

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46 pointsDiabloD325 comments

Really now, what is so terrible about the prospect of failing to suffer years of hideous pain, disfigurement, and disability that it forces people to wax lyrical and beat their breasts and say, woe is me, we might have the chance to not suffer and not be diseased and not be forced into a painful death not of our choice?

I mean, I believe near everyone you can find to ask is generally in favor of cancer research. That's absolutely about preventing all of the above.

But the prospect of treating the medical condition we call aging and removing its consequences? Suddenly everyone is a poet, inclined to the morbid.

Haha, yeah, let's treat and prevent all the conditions that cause us to die, except all the conditions that cause us to die.

> Suddenly everyone is a poet, inclined to the morbid.

This is an equally eye-roll inducing over-generalization. Death is a profound topic to many people - the contemporary considerations of immortality may bring what you see as the superficiality of death, to light, for others. That's nothing to snub your nose at. While some may actually take immortality literally, for many people it is better thought of as a metaphor.

Cancer research is well into the realm of diminishing returns. Far more lives could be saved if the money were spent on things such as malaria prevention and potable water in the developing world.

Not to be callous, but diminishing returns for whom? Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical science, or humanity? Who is to say that research for cancer couldn't lead to breakthroughs in other important areas. Saying we shouldn't pursue X because you could do Y better strikes a bit hollow. Why do we explore space? We could spend that money on impoverished children.[0]

The fact is, people just aren't that inclined to give a damn about some kids wallowing in a third-world country as they are their dying grandmother, father, or child. There is nothing wrong with that. Human suffering is human suffering.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917045

8.2 million cancer related deaths in 2012:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/

627,000 malaria related deaths in 2012:

http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/

Lack of potable water is a harder one to pin down for things other than childhood mortality, but probably in the low millions per year:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html

Further, cancer research is far from being in the realm of diminishing returns. The next generation of targeted treatments such as immunotherapies, chimeric antigen related approaches, engineered viruses, etc, that work for many different varieties of cancer will be far more effective than today's staples of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

The reason there is malaria and potable water shortages in the developing world is that no one gives a shit, and cutting funding for cancer research isn't going to change that. There is absolutely no reason not to do both.

Also, disagree that cancer research is "well into the realm of diminishing returns". Seems quite fruitful to me.

We (in the west) have spent a lot of money doing that already. The local governments should take care of that anyway.

I would suppose that at the point we understand biology well enough to beat aging and death, overcoming the "ratchet" DNA degeneration mentioned in the article will be pretty trivial.

The irony. Is it really going to take the death of generations for people accept anti-ageing?

I find it somewhat amusing. I can't guarantee it'll be as funny once I've got cancer/heart disease/dementia, though.

I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if the cure for death was for sale that people would be lined up around the block. You have to remember to view this in light of a world in which such a thing is not available, and there's no good to be had in sitting in a corner constantly pining for it.

We're a species that's been telling stories about people seeking immortality and being disappointed (and/or paying a terrible price to achieve even the shadow of immortality) seemingly about as long as we've told stories. An instinct to treat promises of or speculation about immortality (in our corporeal form, anyway) as either snake oil or false hope is practically built in to our cultural DNA.

As you wrote, though, that doesn't mean people won't be lining up for it if it's ever for sale. We've been telling stories of disappointment in the search for immortality for millennia, but we do keep telling it. We're jaded about it, but the topic's been with us so long for a reason.

Could it be connected to the just world fallacy? Many if not most of our stories - from the very ancient to whatever it is on TV right now - follow some sort of "rule of conservation of fortune"[0], i.e. you can't have any good things happen to you without at least an equal and opposite amount of misfortune that will cancel-out the gift. You can't just go out there, stumble upon wealth and long life, and remain a good and happy person (unless your life before that was so miserable that this is a perfect compensation).

And that, I guess, is a primary difference between stories and real life - in the latter you can become better-off just like that, with no strings attached.

[0] - TV Tropes probably has a better name for that.

I'm not some enlightened guru (quite the opposite in fact), but I keep wondering whether the obsession with immortality is just another symptom of what prevents peace of mind and happiness in life in the first place which, if true, would mean the worst thing that can happen to those seeking personal immortality is to attain their goal (whether via biological or non-biological means).

Stockholm syndrome: the secret to happiness ;P

Would you really expect that a large majority of people who are interested in immortality, are interested in it because they don't like being alive?

Also, psychoanalysis-at-a-distance of broad groups of people is generally awful, even when the broad groups of people are unusual. Please don't.

Also, unbounded lifespan isn't the same as irreversible immortality. Irreversible immortality, assuming you can implement it somehow, seems like a sort of bad idea.

It's a valid point. If you aren't satisfied with 70 years of life, will having 700 really make you any happier? You'll still die eventually, and assuming there's no afterlife, you'll still spend almost infinitely more time dead than alive.

Regardless of whatever finite amount of time you have, can the best way to spend it be pining for more?

What I'm suggesting is that perhaps many people who are interested in immortality, are interested in it more because they are afraid of dying than because they enjoy living.

As for generalisations of broad groups of people - any attempted generalisation on observed phenomena will automatically be false, but saying that you can't make generalisations on phenomena because they are not absolutely true is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What I said was not a value judgement, and not an attempt at "psychoanalysis-at-a-distance" but my current assessment based on what I've learned so far about people and life. It could very well be false. Also, I'm no exception. Had I access to a magic pill that would be able to prolong a healthy life for my loved ones and myself as much as we want, I'd not hesitate to take it (as I think most people probably would), but I have a feeling there is a higher level of happiness one can seek than extending one's life indefinitely.

Oh for Heaven's sake. You know, couldn't someone bother to explain why we should be pro-mortality by way of good things about dying rather than by threatening us with various terrible collapses of society if we don't shut up and accept our mortality?

Also, evolution isn't a god. Don't worship it.

Journalist suggests mass death of a particular demographic appears to be the politically easiest path, and conveniently also a teleological imperative.

To all those who do not want immortality and prefer death - I will be very happy to take what you do not want, and let you have what you want.

Please let me have what I want. I promise I won't complain about immortality being boring and all that.

Thanks for your concerns about my immortal soul and whatever, but just give me what I want.

The author talks of evolution in terms of meaningful progress, what meaningful progress? It's just change and adaptation, eventually this primate race will die out or evolve into a dumber species. Eventually life on earth will return to simple life before the sun runs out. Meaningful progress!

> into a dumber species

Why necessarily dumber? I know that there is a trend for lower educated families to have more children, but also smart people tend to marry other smart people, so there is selection for intelligence at play.

>evolve

So over the next say 100 years, the contribution of Darwinian evolution to "evolution" of human species will be unnoticeably small, just as the contribution of technology will be larger than ever before.

"This is how evolution works..." - no it doesn't, almost every child in a rich country is saved and given a chance to procreate.

We should calculate when we are going to die: http://deathdate.info/s/death ;)

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