anonymouse71

My philosophy professor would say exactly that, and then counter it with the fact that without desire you can’t make the most of anything because you can’t do anything that you’ll find meaningful. To desire is a very human thing to do and denying all desire is probably closer to death than not, no?

It is oddly comforting to see it written out like this. Probably because this is mostly mirroring my thought process. I also think about the people who didn’t (won’t have? will not?) make it past whatever medical breakthrough allows us to renew our bodies indefinitely. And then those who die on the way to the doctor’s office to have the procedure done. And somehow seeing that written by someone else makes me feel mildly better that I’m not alone thinking about this and maybe someone out there will figure out some of the answers in my lifetime.

And you are right that it’s probably best to enjoy the ride while on it and not worry about what happens when you get off. Just need to realign my brain to not have it remind me every five seconds that falling off the ride sucks. Or that I might get off and the ride will keep going without me and that I might be the one who misses the news and improved ride by like six months or a day or ten years or ten centuries or whatever.

Of the things I’ve read in these comments so far, this and the link to the Harvard researcher working on cell regeneration have been the two things that calmed me down the most. Yeah this one more so, which I found surprising. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah HN didn’t let me put everything I wrote in the post so I see a lot of people are seeing only the third that made it into the post and not the main parts.

Definitely anxiety. Definitely need to address that regardless. Unlikely that I’ll go back to religion as to me it rings false. Not trying to invalidate anyone else, just have enough experience with my brain to know that I can spend my life believing in a god just to question it at the very end in a very uncomfortable way. Plus, sinners have more fun when they aren’t anxious messes is what I was told by my local satanists :)

Thanks. I sampled a good number of religions and spirituality. I know for a fact I can train my brain to believe that I have an invisible soul that will live on. Or only if I die in battle. Or only if I wear a cross that has been blessed by the Pope. Or only if I smoke the right sacred herbs. Or only if body is preserved a certain way. But I am afraid of self delusion, which is ultimately why I feel like religion is a bit of a cop out.

I did this a while ago and came out on the other side feeling like I fully explored this field as an option. I can’t quote you the Bible, but I understand the principle of the thing. Same with other spirituality and different philosophies. Also ideas like we are in a simulation. In the end they all fall short of being logical enough to be believable. Especially since lots of them simply demand blind belief.

But I am aware of their existence, no? If not, would we be discussing them?

They aren’t in the same category. You have a choice of which wedding to go to. It may be annoying but your ability to choose something isn’t taken away, you are forced to make a choice. If your life stretched infinitely mathematically, you could assume that you will experience everything at some point.

Thanks. Clearly this is a thing that has motivated at least some subset of our species to try to figure it out. Part of it is that I feel like there is no purpose. Each of us is an accident of one of a few hundred billion sperm produce on a given day meeting one of tens of thousands of eggs that was released near that day, multiplied by all our ancestor’s probabilities of having existed. Philosophy and religion seem to me to be the initial crude attempts to understand. And thinking about this lately I’ve been contemplating how we probably just don’t have the brain structures to contemplate a lot of these concepts in the first place and can only talk about them by analogy (god is like a man that lives in the sky; or an AI that is emergent behavior from machines we can build. That kind of thing.). Maybe that’s why imagining our own death is so terrifying: we can’t understand it. But it also seems so simple because we see it every day in one form or another. I can name a pencil Steve, break it in half and feel loss.

I’ll maybe check out The Good Place when I feel less vulnerable and hope it brings me some measure of comfort.

Thank you. This is super interesting. And hopeful.

I don’t remember it but I am aware of it. After death there is no awareness.

You describe perfectly the experience I had at one point many years ago. I don’t want to experience every cubic meter of the universe. And I lived my life for at least the past decade with the idea that I will chart my own path of what I want to experience and largely succeeded so far.

But what I am after is fundamentally different than experiencing the whole universe as individual pieces. It’s more that I don’t want to be limited. I don’t want to go away because that takes away my choice. If I die at 90, I don’t get to see my great grandkids get married at 120. If I die at 120 I don’t get to fall in love at 150. That’s my problem. I don’t want to become the universe. I want to remain human or as close to it as possible and for death to not be an eventuality forced upon me.

My dog is sentient. But she does not contemplate her end. I am cursed with it and it feels like the only way to beat it is to not die.

I have thought about whether this is my body telling me something. That’s why, as I put in my large comment, I have an appointment with my primary care next week. I have cut out news about two months ago, but I get triggered by a lot of different things: video games, books I’m reading, conversations with people I like, etc. The biggest thing though: it all feels like lying to myself that it will be ok and knowing that it won’t. It will happen and I don’t want it to.

I don’t really know what to say except this is what I already know and it’s not helping. I know I’m not in a good place Brian chemistry-wise. But even when I feel happy and put together and logical, I don’t want to die on general principle. I know it’s an animal instinct but it’s also an idea and “just accept it” doesn’t seem to work no matter how I spin it.

The problem is that this is the exact perspective I don’t want. I missed out on half the eternity and really don’t want to miss out on the other half.

My problem is that I can do this but I know all it will do is make me temporarily forget, not fix the fundamental problem I feel I am facing. I am afraid of self deception I guess.

Just now I wrote up all my thoughts on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25524409

I am well aware that with the state of the world and the winter’s short days are clearly affecting my reactions to these thoughts. I know that and am taking steps to try to fix my brain chemistry. I have an appointment with my primary care coming up where I plan to discuss changes to my medications that might help make me not panic. But ultimately I am not after simply being calm as I get older and closer to death. The idea that I can just pop some pills and be less afraid of the only thing I as a consciousness should be afraid of is the opposite of comforting. Nevertheless, I realize the first step is to get my head on straight and emotions in check.

Things I have tried to at least slow down the panic:

Talked to my therapist. Her advice was to try to distract myself until coping mechanisms come back and help me protect myself from whatever is triggering me. All true but doesn’t change the fundamental facts. I don’t want to think of this stuff with more clinical detachment. I want to think of it with hope bordering on certainty.

Tried various anti-anxiety medications. This helps temporarily but same as above: doesn’t change fundamental facts. As I said above, going to try to adjust them again with my doctor to try to dial them in better for short term comfort.

Tried distractions like talking to friends and family. This is a mixed bag. When I look at my children I see the intrusive thoughts flash across my mind about their mortality and how I am powerless to change it. With friends it can often take my mind off things for a bit but they aren’t sitting by my bedside telling me distracting stories as I fall asleep the way my mother did when I was 4.

Talking to my partner. They are not nearly as afraid of death and think of it as very much a part of life. They are supportive but I think me explaining my reasons for being suddenly terrified like this take a lot out of them and I don’t want to make this their problem. When I need concrete things they are 100% there but I don’t want to offload this problem on them as they will take it on and if they can’t succeed will likely fall into the same situation while trying.

In distant past I have flirted with spiritualism and religion. My rational mind cannot accept a system that requires blind belief or that has some obvious logical flaws. And besides if I really am just getting a short 60-90 years to exist I don’t want to spend them worshipping something, be it a bearded man in the sky or some eternal light.

Briefly looked into brain upload/brain replacement. This brought me 48 hours of comfort. Some people believe the singularity is coming and that as early as 2045 we might have brain upload technology. This was almost what I want to latch onto as my mental life boat, but in the end these predictions sound a lot like predictions in the 1970s about cold fusion and AI: off by decades or centuries. Besides, who is to say that it would actually work correctly and not just create another copy that thinks it is me but I am not the one seeing through my optic nerves, so to speak. Or that if it’s available that it would be available to me? Or that it would allow me to be even a little bit human afterwards and not some beige box in my grand kids’ basement server rack?

Think about if there is anything I can do. I am not an unintelligent person; is there something I can contribute? Or do I really want to devote my life to pursuing something that five centuries from now will be a footnote in some college textbook? Or do I pursue things like status and monetary gain to be able to buy my and my family’s way into whatever brain upload type solution we as a species might find? Or do I accumulate wealth and invest it into this kind of research? Or medical life extension for myself and my loved ones until such time that a-mortality (if not immortality) is an option.

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I am asking this on HN because this to me is the most accessible community of people who are very smart and a lot are much smarter and more educated than me. It’s like I am hoping to get into a debate with someone where I argue about why death is inevitable, and then lose handily to someone who can show me why I should have hope because concrete solutions are coming. Solutions that aren’t religious or other forms of make-belief, overly-sentimental in the vein of people living on in others’ hearts, or unrealistic from a physics standpoint, or would only be available to the ultra rich/powerful/people deemed worthy. Any help or advice is appreciated. Any questions, happy to answer.

P.S.: I am sorry if this triggers anyone else. This isn’t a good time of year or a good year for this.

P.P.S.: say we manage to upload brains into new bodies with preserving the self and make the process perfect (no accidents at the body factory, no power outages during the procedure), AND solve the resource/environment problem of humans never dying, and manage long distance space travel. Won’t heat death of the universe be our final stop anyways? Or do we get to break out and keep going? What good is it to live a trillion trillion years just to freeze to death while starving?

The part about always dying... I have struggled with this concept since I was a child. If anyone has any words of advice on dealing with that that aren’t “just accept it” or religious in nature, that would be helpful.