Do you rationalize death?

[zago]

I have no idea where people stand here with regard to current events in the search for a cure to aging, but it clearly isn't talked about enough given its significance. There is a damn good chance that few of us will ever die, involuntarily of disease at least. In my humble opinion everyone should be talking about this and looking to spread the word and possibly contribute to the cause, because it affects not just us but our loved ones.

The first hurdle, before any of the difficult science that needs to be overcome, is reversing our way of seeing death as a society. As death has hitherto been inevitable to everyone to live, people have come up with ways to rationalize it and lessen its emotional impact. There is no sense living in fear of death if there is nothing that can be done about it, so we have gone so far as to even convince ourselves that death is a good thing and gives meaning to life...

Perhaps mortality is not simply an evil, perhaps it is even a blessing—not only for the welfare of the community, but even for us as individuals. How could this be? I wish to make the case for the virtues of mortality. Against my own strong love of life, and against my even stronger wish that no more of my loved ones should die, I aspire to speak truth to my desires by showing that the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual, whether he knows it or not.
-Leon Kass, then bioethics adviser to president G.W. Bush

It doesn't even stop there. People are so desperate to rationalize life's shit that they even fight FOR smallpox and equally atrocious phenomena. The following were said against Dr. Zabdiel Boylston in 1721:

[Smallpox is] a judgment of God on the sins of the people, [and] to avert it is but to provoke him more.

[Innoculation is] an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite.

So my intention for this thread is to make sure we are all on the same page here. If you think stuff like this, you are wrong. Death is murder by age. You've been conditioned to accept it, but it is time to start asking what's really true.

An introductory video which does a nice job of covering all the necessary bases:

A few more flimsy objections are possible, like the problem of overpopulation and "won't it be boring to live forever?" The first is something technology also helps solve, as it has in the past. If the present population of the Earth were given instead the technology of a thousand years ago, almost everyone would starve. Our future progress will, among other things, open up the oceans for drinking water, abolish the practice of raising livestock for meat, and give us nigh-limitless cheap energy, among other awesome changes. As for the second objection, it is ridiculous on its face, but it is obviously preferable to live and be healthy for as long as one wants, rather than getting Alzheimer's or cancer by surprise one day and withering away for months or years.

Others simply doubt the feasibility of curing aging in the first place, citing the complexity of it, as if people can't and never do figure out complex things. My guess is that as long as some regime doesn't outlaw this from happening, longevity escape velocity will happen within the next few decades. Biotechnology is going to be extremely powerful, but nanotechnology will surpass even that. Nanotechnology is going to be pants-shittingly powerful. Further off in the future still, it will probably become possible to upload consciousness to machines, or simply opt for cryonics until the tech does become available.

So to sum up, the main thing holding us back is our own inability conceive of life being different than it has ever been. We are so used to aging and death, we can't accept the possibility that we can conquer those things and end them for good. I figure the sooner and the more people know about this, the faster we will begin to move toward the problem of solving it. This should be our top priority, really, because we and our loved ones are in a race against time. Years matter. 100,000 people are lost every day.

Quick/easy further readings:
No, extreme longevity won't destroy Earth
Would it be boring if we could live forever?

 

[Rasofy]

I really don't think that's gonna happen in our lifetime, unfortunately.

Also, accidents/crimes would eventually limit an arguably theoretically possible eternal life. An eventual 'backup' would likely mean a different person being originated.

Fear of death would likely grow exponentially as people cease to see it as a natural thing.

Quite interesting thread idea, nonetheless.

 

[WhoCares]

This thread gave me some interesting internal reactions. Not least of which is how I feel about a life eternal. Lets say I was going to live another millenia, at what point will I lose mmories of say 2003? Would I lose them, and if I didnt would my brain start producing more brain cells to cope with the now increased load of memories? Would I grow a second brain for example? If not and I did lose memory at a certain point would life eternal be no different to life now? I would lose me from say 1980-2061 one day and effectively be continually reborn as me from xxxx-yyyy, day by day. So important things in my life would become non-existent everytime I slept. I might be bilingual today but only english speaking tomorrow. So in effect it coud be like having Alzheimers eternally except you wouldn't know you had it as things would simply go away with no awareness of them.

 

[WhoCares]

Post shower thoughts....

So along these same lines, back in the middle ages people didn't experience aging, they just experienced early death. No-one knew that living to 100 would bring with it the complications we know today, because no-one had lived that long. So by extension, while its tempting to imagine an eternal life in a healthy body as being some kind of mid thirties groundhog day where you get to keep every memory ever created and remember your life from 1980 to 2165, for example. The reality may be very different. What does an eternally fit body do with 500yrs or more of existence? Would the length of incarnation throw up new kinds of mental illnesses from failing to either process or forget aspects of ones life. I've only been around four decades but I already have incredibly entrenched patterns of thinking, would me at 1060 be mentally calcified to such a degree that my existence becomes insufferable? Wiuld my brain start making connections between completly disconnected events simply because they are connected by a single expanse of existence? Would I become overly paranoid, or would I become intuitivey brilliant because I have already lived through all possible permutations that any group of actions produces? Would the body start producing weird outcomes as a result of a life without decay? My second brain growing out my arse for xample? While we may prevent death and aging do we have the necessary tools to then deal with the as yet undiscovered consequences of a lack of death? Not talking about the human load on the planet, I'm talking about the personal consequences of living in a body that retains cell memory and moves through time perpetually.

And one final question - is a ZZ Top styled beard necessary for finding the foundtain of youth.

 

[Alea_iacta_est]

Immortality is a very tricky thing. One of the things that would be seen as extremely difficult to manage would be the amount of memory the brain can hold. Eventually, after a thousand years or so, the brain would be full on capacity and perhaps begin purging memories so that it can convert memories from a now abnormally large short-term memory storage (due to this storage being the only spot for memories when long-term memory is filled up) to long-term memory. This would lead to some very strange circumstances where people are so old they remember nothing of their original selves/memories (The original lifespan, 80 or so years).

Another thing to worry about would be that if everyone is immortal, then we all have to face the one thing that will kill us unless we expand to the stars, something that is looking more like a fleeting dream today. A supernova would be a frightening way to die, being able to see the Sun expand across the sky and draw closer to Earth.

 

[zago]

I really don't think that's gonna happen in our lifetime, unfortunately.

Also, accidents/crimes would eventually limit an arguably theoretically possible eternal life. An eventual 'backup' would likely mean a different person being originated.

Fear of death would likely grow exponentially as people cease to see it as a natural thing.

Quite interesting thread idea, nonetheless.

I am fairly convinced it will happen in our lifetime. I'm 28. My grandparents seem to live to around 85, but one of them is still hanging around looking pretty strong nearing 90. I'll be 85 in 2070.

What will 56 more years' worth of technological progress bring? Well, 56 years ago it was inconceivable that humans would ever land on the moon. But of course, exponentially more will occur in the coming 56 years than in the past.

In 2070 a typical computer will have vastly more computing power than all human brains combined. It's hard to imagine a scenario in 2070 where the process of aging and cellular repair still baffles us. Even now we are beginning to see awesome technologies that are solving age-old problems. Getting cystic fibrosis, for example, is no longer a death sentence in one's late 20s. You can pretty much live a normal life thanks to genetic therapy. 3d printing tissue and whole organs is fast becoming a reality. In 2070 those things will be laughable kinda like using leeches a couple hundred years ago is laughable now.

This one (note it is logarithmic) shows that our computing power will reach the level necessary to simulate a human brain around 2025. As of today, we can simulate 1 second of brain activity, but it takes about an hour to do so, and even then it is partial. In a couple of decades that will have fallen exponentially and will be a full possibility. Then tack on a few more decades. It's hard to believe, again, that we will not have figured out how to put ourselves in full virtual reality by this point at the very least, which would enable immortality. We'll likely do that much sooner, though.

Another logarithmic plot showing the exponentially falling price of DNA sequencing. Soon enough your toilet will be doing it for you when you piss. Medicine is going to become an extraordinarily precise, cheap information technology. What we have today is piddlesticks compared to what we'll have in 2030 alone.. forget about 2070--our medicine in 2070 is going to be simply unimaginable.

Ah, the exponential rise of nanotechnology. Graphene, nanotubes, etc. are looking like they are going to hit the market around 2020. That's going to change the fuck out of this world, but those are hardly the beginning of nanotech. I'm talking about APM - atomically precise manufacturing. Molecular machines build whatever we want and swim around in our bodies doing things our immune system never dreamed of. This is expected to happen in the 2030s. I'll be around 50.

---

As for accidents and crime, I would hardly worry about those. Obviously they have been decreasing throughout history and will continue to do so. Self driving cars alone, which will dominate by the 2020s, are going to pretty much completely eliminate the leading cause of accidental death, car crashes. Most other causes are things you can easily avoid if you are truly worried.

Crime and violence in general is decreasing as well (look up some Steven Pinker stuff if you're interested), so the chances of that ending your life fall. Nonetheless, most people aren't murdered. If murder were the only thing that could kill us, I'm fairly certain most people would have no problem living hundreds of years. Then again, there will be little reason to murder anyone as the future progresses. Abundance is steadily increasing, poverty is set to disappear by 2030, and our anti-depressants are about to be bitching.

That's an important one. Our ways of making ourselves happy will increase as well. Chemicals help and can do a lot, and so can things like deep brain stimulation. It would be odd to use those forever, though - do we give babies anti-depressants at birth? Actually we will begin to guide genetics itself towards a more happy genome. When parents are able to select traits in their young (and actually they already can, legally), they are going to pick happy, smart babies. Those of us who didn't get to be selected will be able to use genetic therapies. Eventually we should be able to edit pernicious, Darwinian facets of our minds out if we so choose, as they have become obsolete and undesirable. Envy, violence, psychopathy, things like that. Gone, gone, gone.

 

[zago]

This thread gave me some interesting internal reactions. Not least of which is how I feel about a life eternal. Lets say I was going to live another millenia, at what point will I lose mmories of say 2003? Would I lose them, and if I didnt would my brain start producing more brain cells to cope with the now increased load of memories? Would I grow a second brain for example? If not and I did lose memory at a certain point would life eternal be no different to life now? I would lose me from say 1980-2061 one day and effectively be continually reborn as me from xxxx-yyyy, day by day. So important things in my life would become non-existent everytime I slept. I might be bilingual today but only english speaking tomorrow. So in effect it coud be like having Alzheimers eternally except you wouldn't know you had it as things would simply go away with no awareness of them.

Our memories will be vastly enhanced as time goes on, but you are already losing your memories of 2003 on a daily basis. Getting dimmer all the time! But how is that any different from life as it has ever been. Part of life has always been forgetting the past. Who truly remembers much about their childhood? This will merely be extrapolated and eventually become normal. But then again, I do think our intelligence will be so enhanced that it won't be the case. Even now, there are people who literally video record their entire waking lives. I imagine a time that could be incorporated in the human mind.

As I often try to point out, superintelligence is already here and no one notices or cares. If I were sitting behind a curtain with my smart phone and a man from 1900 were asking me questions, I would know an ASTONISHING amount - he would think I was an ultra-mega-genius. Now, I realize my smart phone isn't a part of my body, but I pretty much treat it like one, and it increasingly will become one. I've come to terms with that fact. We will ease into these sorts of things as we are ready for them. My current superintelligence is nothing compared to what it will one day be.

Post shower thoughts....

So along these same lines, back in the middle ages people didn't experience aging, they just experienced early death. No-one knew that living to 100 would bring with it the complications we know today, because no-one had lived that long. So by extension, while its tempting to imagine an eternal life in a healthy body as being some kind of mid thirties groundhog day where you get to keep every memory ever created and remember your life from 1980 to 2165, for example. The reality may be very different. What does an eternally fit body do with 500yrs or more of existence? Would the length of incarnation throw up new kinds of mental illnesses from failing to either process or forget aspects of ones life. I've only been around four decades but I already have incredibly entrenched patterns of thinking, would me at 1060 be mentally calcified to such a degree that my existence becomes insufferable? Wiuld my brain start making connections between completly disconnected events simply because they are connected by a single expanse of existence? Would I become overly paranoid, or would I become intuitivey brilliant because I have already lived through all possible permutations that any group of actions produces? Would the body start producing weird outcomes as a result of a life without decay? My second brain growing out my arse for xample? While we may prevent death and aging do we have the necessary tools to then deal with the as yet undiscovered consequences of a lack of death? Not talking about the human load on the planet, I'm talking about the personal consequences of living in a body that retains cell memory and moves through time perpetually.

You're thinking of the future in today's terms. The only real threat I see for future health is hackers and computer virus attacks, which is admittedly frightening, but I believe our defenses will evolve quite well. See my reply to rasofy.

 

[Rasofy]

Envy, violence, psychopathy, things like that. Gone, gone, gone.

Anyways, the rest was pretty solid.

 

[zago]

Immortality is a very tricky thing. One of the things that would be seen as extremely difficult to manage would be the amount of memory the brain can hold. Eventually, after a thousand years or so, the brain would be full on capacity and perhaps begin purging memories so that it can convert memories from a now abnormally large short-term memory storage (due to this storage being the only spot for memories when long-term memory is filled up) to long-term memory. This would lead to some very strange circumstances where people are so old they remember nothing of their original selves/memories (The original lifespan, 80 or so years).

Another thing to worry about would be that if everyone is immortal, then we all have to face the one thing that will kill us unless we expand to the stars, something that is looking more like a fleeting dream today. A supernova would be a frightening way to die, being able to see the Sun expand across the sky and draw closer to Earth.

Regarding the first point, it is hard to imagine life as we know it won't change. It will. Maybe the first 100 years will be seen as a childhood that becomes mostly forgotten, just as we see the first 10 years now. Or maybe it won't. As I've mentioned, our minds will be incredibly enhanced by the time this becomes a reality.

As for the second, with the kind of technology we will have in the second half of the 21st century, moving the Earth out of harm's way won't be difficult. We will be able to take care of problems that today seem impossible. The really crazy thing is, if faster-than-light travel is possible, human consciousness will have permeated the entire universe well before the end of the 22nd century at it's current rate of exponential growth.

I am guessing you are well aware of this phenomenon, but for those who aren't, ask yourself whether you'd rather have a hundred dollar bill, or a penny doubled 100 times. If you chose the latter, congratulations, you now have roughly $10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. You're an octillionaire. Same thing goes for human-related doublings. If our rate of doubling continues to grow as it historically has, universe = conquered soon.

 

[zago]

Immortality is a very tricky thing. One of the things that would be seen as extremely difficult to manage would be the amount of memory the brain can hold. Eventually, after a thousand years or so, the brain would be full on capacity and perhaps begin purging memories so that it can convert memories from a now abnormally large short-term memory storage (due to this storage being the only spot for memories when long-term memory is filled up) to long-term memory. This would lead to some very strange circumstances where people are so old they remember nothing of their original selves/memories (The original lifespan, 80 or so years).

Another thing to worry about would be that if everyone is immortal, then we all have to face the one thing that will kill us unless we expand to the stars, something that is looking more like a fleeting dream today. A supernova would be a frightening way to die, being able to see the Sun expand across the sky and draw closer to Earth.

Regarding the first point, it is hard to imagine life as we know it won't change. It will. Maybe the first 100 years will be seen as a childhood that becomes mostly forgotten, just as we see the first 10 years now. Or maybe it won't. As I've mentioned, our minds will be incredibly enhanced by the time this becomes a reality.

As for the second, with the kind of technology we will have in the second half of the 21st century, moving the Earth out of harm's way won't be difficult. We will be able to take care of problems that today seem impossible. The really crazy thing is, if faster-than-light travel is possible, human consciousness will have permeated the entire universe well before the end of the 22nd century at its current rate of exponential growth.

I am guessing you are well aware of this phenomenon, but for those who aren't, ask yourself whether you'd rather have a hundred dollar bill, or a penny doubled 100 times. If you chose the latter, congratulations, you now have roughly $10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. You're an octillionaire. Same thing goes for human-related doublings. If our rate of doubling continues to grow as it historically has, universe = conquered soon.

 

[WhoCares]

You're thinking of the future in today's terms. The only real threat I see for future health is hackers and computer virus attacks, which is admittedly frightening, but I believe our defenses will evolve quite well. See my reply to rasofy.

Not really, degenerative disease is not new, they have always existed, but we have only enountered them recently by living longer. I am asking, what else is exsting that we are yet to encounter because we are now living 50-100 times the lifepan we know now. We can have all the technology in the universe but if its a new problem then we havent solved it yet. Its sheer arrogance to imagine that it will all be roses and there wont be issues we'll encounter. Also arrogant to imagine that we will be able to instantly solve those problems.

As for the gradual forgetting of things, well then what would be the point in living forever if you dont benefit from it. If I'm only going to retain the information of a century for example then I may as well die anyway, I will effectively have been reincarnated over and over as I forget who I was and remeber only who I am. Sure you can store info in a computer but you will lose facility, practical applcation of knowledge. Things like langage you havent used, musical ability with an instrument, practiced moves with the body like athletic ability and dance.

Put into this perspective I'm not even sure living forever is something I want to do.

 

[zago]

Anyways, the rest was pretty solid.

You don't think so?

I think well-being has increased and negative emotions and violence have clearly decreased, and will continue to do so. Even 1-2 centuries ago life was brutal in ways we today can't imagine.

England, vanguard of the developed world, had a predilection for burning people, even its rulers alive or hanging them up and mutilating them for the public to see. Of particular interest is the story of King Edward II, who was tortured and killed mostly for being a bad king and gay. They stuck a red hot iron poker up his butt to kill him. And they took his gay lovers, and in front of large crowds, pulled out their intestines, cut off their genitals, cut out their hearts and beheaded them, placing the heads in highly visible places.

Now, say what you will about some of our recent presidents, but I don't think most people believe they deserve that or would tolerate it being made a public spectacle. Life changes, usually for the better. I think and hope that our psychopathic tendencies will, in the future, disappear.

 

[zago]

Not really, degenerative disease is not new, they have always existed, but we have only enountered them recently by living longer. I am asking, what else is exsting that we are yet to encounter because we are now living 50-100 times the lifepan we know now. We can have all the technology in the universe but if its a new problem then we havent solved it yet. Its sheer arrogance to imagine that it will all be roses and there wont be issues we'll encounter. Also arrogant to imagine that we will be able to instantly solve those problems.

The human machine is a finite thing. Once you understand it, you understand it. It's not much different from a car. If I want, I can make a car last effectively forever by simply maintaining it and replacing parts as needed. There never would come a point at which "unforeseeable" problems would arise. A car is just a car. Once you can fix it, that's it.

If your body is perpetually identical to a 25 year old's, no new problems can arise because your body is literally a 25 year old biological body. The chances of what you're saying might... exist, I guess.... but they are kind of like, small in the sense that the LHC might create a black hole and destroy the world. That is, one in quintillions or something.

As for the gradual forgetting of things, well then what would be the point in living forever if you dont benefit from it. If I'm only going to retain the information of a century for example then I may as well die anyway, I will effectively have been reincarnated over and over as I forget who I was and remeber only who I am. Sure you can store info in a computer but you will lose facility, practical applcation of knowledge. Things like langage you havent used, musical ability with an instrument, practiced moves with the body like athletic ability and dance.

Put into this perspective I'm not even sure living forever is something I want to do.

Who cares if you don't want to live forever? That's hardly the point. The point is that you can if you want. If you want to die when you are 300, you will be able to choose to do so, peacefully and in excellent health. No process of horrid deterioration necessary. You can live however much you want.

The issue of identity is far more complex than you have even begun to describe. What will things be like when we can merge and de-merge from other people? What will things be like when I can switch my gender at will, or erase memories I don't like on the spot? Life is going to change, not a little, but so much so that you can't conceive of it right now. We are basically like bacteria talking about humans right now, compared to the intelligence and awareness of the future. It is common for us to project today's worldviews on the future, but not sensible.

 

[Rasofy]

You don't think so?

I think well-being has increased and negative emotions and violence have clearly decreased, and will continue to do so. Even 1-2 centuries ago life was brutal in ways we today can't imagine.

I disagree here. Violence, yes, but I don't think negative emotions have changed much. They are just manifesting through different and less barbaric ways.

Depression was likely non existent when merely remaining alive was a challenge for everyone.

Cheating is (for the most part) no longer punished with death, but nowadays it's very recurrent (I've seem statistics showing a 50% cheating rate for married people {it's hard to verify that with accuracy, I realize that}) and the emotional impact is substantial.

Even though no one (usually) gets killed, pride, lust, and envy are vices that are still quite present in the our daily lives. I think the only way to eliminate them would be doing the equivalent of a lobotomy. People would get docile, but their substance would also disappear.

 

[zago]

I disagree here. Violence, yes, but I don't think negative emotions have changed much. They are just manifesting through different and less barbaric ways.

Depression was likely non existent when merely remaining alive was a challenge for everyone.

Cheating is (for the most part) no longer punished with death, but nowadays it's very recurrent (I've seem statistics showing a 50% cheating rate for married people {it's hard to verify that with accuracy, I realize that}) and the emotional impact is substantial.

Even though no one (usually) gets killed, pride, lust, and envy than are vices that are still quite present in the our daily lives. I think the only way to eliminate them would be doing the equivalent of a lobotomy. People would get docile, but their substance would also disappear.

Then again, people are alive today who wouldn't normally have lived. Depression is a problem that... often transcends material abundance, but that's not at all to say it is insurmountable. In future generations of anti-depressant, nootropic, (entheogen, empathogen, entactogen), medications, depression won't be a difficult problem to solve. It is merely a question of neurochemistry.

It would hardly be a lobotomy to modify someone's dopamine level, for instance. And your answer begs the question, do people who experience less pride, lust, and envy than others have the equivalent of lobotomies? I think it is clear that they don't, and those things can be mitigated or eliminated without losing any part of what is valuable that makes us human. They are even manageable through talk therapy, and I would hardly call that lobotomizing (and we are getting better at it, too).

But I completely agree with you that those things are still present and we have a long way to go. It just doesn't mean we haven't made progress. Back in "the day" just 50-60 years ago, we had little understanding or empathy for people outside of what we would have then called the norm or even within it, like women, other races, homosexuals, autistics, etc. People physically fought more, parents spanked their children more, and I do think people were just as depressed, but perhaps it wasn't recognized or was poorly treated. People depended on harmful chemicals to a greater degree. It was common, after all, to take things like laudenum, and coke literally did have COKE in it lol. Alcoholic husbands coming home and beating their wives was practically a staple of shared experience.

Make no mistake, people used to be angry, bigoted, psychotic assholes. We have an equal tendency project the present on the past as we do the future. Things used to SUCK in a way we really can't imagine today. It's just that back then it was normal so people didn't notice like we would today.

As for your comment on marriage, personally I don't think that has much to say, but I do think marriage is on the decline. Back when people died more often earlier in life, marriage was easier to keep together longer. Now that 40 is the new 20, people who get married at 22 can wake up 18 years later and realize they have tons of time ahead of them and to commit to one person for all that time is almost nonsensical. This trend will only continue.

Edit: also, marriage is losing its practical basis. Whereas before it combined 2 people's wealth and aspired to produce children who could help with the family work, now it is more of a financial burden to have kids at least, and most people don't desperately need to combine wealth with others. To do so would be gauche at this point anyway.

Edit 2: I believe depression has only come majorly on the scene now because people used to have actual things to be upset about, whereas now you can be unhappy for what appears to be no reason. Misery was pretty widespread, though, back in the day, more so than now. Read some Dickens or Joyce if ya need a reminder

 

[Ginkgo]

Some people are personally opposed to the idea of an afterlife simply on the basis that it would be uncomfortable/boring to them if they lived eternally.

I think the only solution to the anxiety that comes with facing mortality is to appreciate the present moment.

 

[zago]

Some people are personally opposed to the idea of an afterlife simply on the basis that it would be uncomfortable/boring to them if they lived eternally.

That's because they project their present feelings and state of mind into eternity. If they were to arrive in heaven and heaven were as good as it could be, their worries about a boring eternity would evaporate faster than a microscopic black hole created by the LHC.

We are trapped within a sort of Darwinian malaise at this point in history, but won't always be. Ever take drugs? The kinds of euphoria you can experience from LSD and mushrooms, for example, are utterly inconceivable to the drug naive mind, even to people who have taken them before. States of such heavenly bliss and love are possible and may one day become common, and people will look back on us in the present day as horribly depressed psychopaths.

I think the only solution to the anxiety that comes with facing mortality is to appreciate the present moment.

As someone who has spent years practicing meditation and studying Buddhism and other forms of nonduality, I can safely say, the present moment alone sucks. There's more nuance to a statement like that than people think, but that doesn't stop a boatload of hype over it caused by bastardized and mangled interpretations of Eckhart Tolle.

Appreciating the present moment requires resolution in the past and future. It does not have to do with simply focusing on physical sensory perception. I've been there, done that, and it is lame.

Rather, appreciation of the present moment comes from doing what makes you happy right now instead of suffering for one outcome or another. Paradoxically, but not really, what makes us happy in the present involves planning for the future. Like with me, my biggest fascination IS the future. I love reading about it and imagining it, reading science fiction, and teaching myself things like philosophy so I will know them in the future. Working toward a goal is enjoyable, if you like the goal and you don't push yourself too hard.

This, however, has nothing to do with the anxiety facing mortality, except for the fact that you are now able to see it for what it is and realize that something needs to be done about it. This is what has compelled generations of people to cure diseases and work for more freedoms and stuff like that, stuff that makes the future better.

 

[Alea_iacta_est]

Another thing you might want to consider is what happens if you give people immortality. Some people carefully plan out and self-restrain their lives so that they can live out the rest of their days being happy, but what happens when you take away the rest of their days? What if they have an infinite lifespan that they can do anything with? They can do absolutely anything without having to worry about screwing up their life, as they can just start again at the ripe age of 170 in some other land. Suddenly you have a people that simply do things out of momentary pleasure rather than building something worthwhile under the short time frame that is a lifespan. Another thing to consider would be imprisonment for those who commit crimes and are immortal. If progressive movements today succeed, the death penalty will be considered cruel and unusual punishment, and that would mean that life in prison would literally mean stacking people in jail forever and having to build behemoth sized maximum security prisons the size of planets eventually.

And, even more grotesquely in this capitalistic society, which company is going to control infinite lifespans, and how much per month or year will it be?

 

[zago]

Another thing you might want to consider is what happens if you give people immortality. Some people carefully plan out and self-restrain their lives so that they can live out the rest of their days being happy, but what happens when you take away the rest of their days? What if they have an infinite lifespan that they can do anything with? They can do absolutely anything without having to worry about screwing up their life, as they can just start again at the ripe age of 170 in some other land. Suddenly you have a people that simply do things out of momentary pleasure rather than building something worthwhile under the short time frame that is a lifespan.

I don't think much can be said about how people would act. I don't think it would increase impulsiveness either. People are already extremely impulsive. I think a lot of that actually comes from knowing they are going to die anyway, and whatever they build will be annihilated by death. If they knew their efforts would continue to last decades and centuries, they might have less of a problem with undertaking pursuits that could take, well, decades or centuries.

Personally, I'd love to read all the works of Shakespeare, but it's too low on the list of priorities to worry about now. If I had infinite time, I'd be like sweeeeeeet, I'm gonna spend the next 10 years studying Shakespeare!

Another thing to consider would be imprisonment for those who commit crimes and are immortal. If progressive movements today succeed, the death penalty will be considered cruel and unusual punishment, and that would mean that life in prison would literally mean stacking people in jail forever and having to build behemoth sized maximum security prisons the size of planets eventually.

The obvious answer is that you stop making up arbitrary prison terms and you simply let people out when they have been reformed. I am certain that we will have better ways of being able to tell if that has occurred in the future. Also, it is possible to imprison people to varying degrees. Some people just have ankle monitors now. That's something they didn't have before. Our capacities in that regard will also expand. Not a major problem.

And, even more grotesquely in this capitalistic society, which company is going to control infinite lifespans, and how much per month or year will it be?

Who knows, but that's still better than the alternative. I think that is a somewhat paranoid and unrealistic scenario, though. Companies created cures for cancer and those cost money, but as time goes on they get cheaper and finally they become free and ubiquitous (look at all the diseases we have eradicated). I sincerely doubt that just ONE company will come up with immortality, and if it does, monopolize it forever. That's absurdly unlikely.

 

[WhoCares]

The human machine is a finite thing. Once you understand it, you understand it. It's not much different from a car. If I want, I can make a car last effectively forever by simply maintaining it and replacing parts as needed. There never would come a point at which "unforeseeable" problems would arise. A car is just a car. Once you can fix it, that's it.

But the human body is not a car, it's not technology human's created and therefore implictly understand every single part of it and how all of that interrelates with the rest. Our understanding of the human organism is at best, rudimentary. We can slice and dice the body with varying results and pump it full of drugs with highly variable results, and suddenly we think we are masters of it. The video you posted even mentions that undertstanding just metabolism alone is something presently beyond our grasp. What makes you think that in 10 or 20yrs time we will have such a complete understanding of this extremely complex machine that we can safely tamper with it?

It's not the first time humans have declared themselves masters of the universe and created more problems with their interference than they solved. It certainly will not be the last time that nature will teach us just how little we know regardless of how large our ego's may be.

If your body is perpetually identical to a 25 year old's, no new problems can arise because your body is literally a 25 year old biological body. The chances of what you're saying might... exist, I guess.... but they are kind of like, small in the sense that the LHC might create a black hole and destroy the world.

And there has never been a 25yr old in history that hasn't had a problem with their body? Things with a very small probability of occuring have never occured? The more complex the system the more chaotic it becomes. Unexpected results do happen all the time, things we cannot forsee come up. Even in a system as basic as a large computer network throws up bugs no-one predicted. You are talking about one of the most complex machines ever created and yet you are convinced that our pitiful level of knowledge will ensure that nothing new will result.

Such utopian views of technology and it's virtues are just as one eyed as a religious zealot convinced God is going to rescue the world. Every post here bringing up possibilities for discussion is whitewashed with your 'but technology will change everything' optimism. It seems to lack balance and is unconvincing.

Who cares if you don't want to live forever? That's hardly the point.

It might not be a point you are interested in but it is a point that will interest a great number of people. You're beloved scientist is looking for money for research, he's trying to drum up interest in a concept that supposedly has been the holy grail of existence, but where is the support for it? I will not be the only person to ever ask the question Is this even a desirable outcome?

The issue of identity is far more complex than you have even begun to describe. What will things be like when we can merge and de-merge from other people? What will things be like when I can switch my gender at will, or erase memories I don't like on the spot? Life is going to change, not a little, but so much so that you can't conceive of it right now. We are basically like bacteria talking about humans right now, compared to the intelligence and awareness of the future. It is common for us to project today's worldviews on the future, but not sensible.

And it's common for drug fuelled visions to create interesting reads either in publication or on the internet. My mission isn't to shoot down the vision but to question it, and it's value to me and humanity at large. Who says I even want my identity merged, or to change my gender or erase memories at will. Those are all things which clearly you find desirable but not everyone is the same. We could (given enough technological advancements and time) colonise Mars. But whether we should I think is the more interesting question to be asking.