[HN Gopher] Immortality vs. Society
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Immortality vs. Society
Author : notpushkin
Score : 16 points
Date : 2021-02-20 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (grishka.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (grishka.me)
| maria_weber23 wrote:
| Wow, the author must be a bit depressed or something. I don't
| even know where to start.
|
| > If I'm going to cease to exist, it doesn't matter what would be
| in a world without me.
|
| Oh yeah, egoism at its best lol. If I die, why shouldn't everyone
| else?
|
| > children make a human a slave of circumstances for at least 15
| years. For what? For nothing, just because.
|
| Okay... He is also realizing that children are not his "helper
| bots". I am assuming he is a he, because a women would never say
| these things... I don't know in what world you live in to think
| of children this way. Have you ever played with a child or seen
| it grow up? This is atrocious. Seriously man, get help or
| something, this almost borders on psychopath level of apathy.
|
| > (Children, again) It's like a new branch in a version control
| system, if you know what I mean.
|
| Okay I am out. You really should get help. Definitely.
|
| > So no, children are not our immortality. They are the best way
| to kill time (and eventually yourself).
|
| Yep... Totally get it. Obviously children are not our
| immortality. Are they the best way to kill time? I mean if you
| are a robot, that's probably true.
|
| > We've already superseded the evolution, so we don't actually
| need it any more.
|
| We are far away from that. Right now our gene pool is actively
| deteriorating because we managed to eliminate natural selection.
| And yet, we still can't live forever and we can't fix the common
| cold. Good luck to our species.
|
| > The nature isn't our friend. It's our enemy.
|
| Okay :D. Just dig yourself a concrete hole and live in there from
| bottles of Soylent and see what happens. There are tons of
| studies who show you how important a connection to nature is for
| the human body and mind, but well...
|
| > The meaning of life is to keep on living.
|
| Yeah, that's maybe the only thing I can agree with in this "text"
| or whatever it is. But it definitely doesn't follow from the
| brainfarts that came before.
|
| I am now actually pitying the coworkers of this person and
| actually anybody he interacts with, if any.
|
| Look, there is only one thing that differentiates humans from
| robots. It is that humans are nothing like you want to make them
| in your article. If humans were like you, I would wish this race
| would get replaced by actual robots asap, because at least then,
| there is an excuse for behaving the way you do.
| Retric wrote:
| > because we managed to eliminate natural selection.
|
| Evolution is alive and well. Drunk driving for example kills
| young people. Disease similarly kills plenty of people to kick
| evolution into action. Suicide is tragic enough people don't
| think of it as evolutionary pressure, but dead is dead.
|
| Etc. Etc. It's not as obvious as dealing with actual lions, but
| the developed world is well below the replacement rate. That's
| some serious evolutionary pressure.
| airocker wrote:
| Haha, same thought. I agree with the evolution bit though. But
| if all humans decide to not have children, machines are not
| smart enough to keep evolving themselves yet or in the near
| future.
| amarant wrote:
| There was an ai at Google that designed ai for specific
| purposes better than the human engineers. Doesn't seem that
| far off to me!
|
| https://futurism.com/google-artificial-intelligence-built-ai
| ben_w wrote:
| Broadly agree except
|
| > Right now our gene pool is actively deteriorating because we
| managed to eliminate natural selection
|
| Is it? I've not heard any serious claim of deterioration
| before.
| majkinetor wrote:
| > For what? For nothing, just because. Don't seek a rational
| explanation, you won't find it. It doesn't exist.
|
| Having a child is type of experience and commitment that has no
| parallel in any domain of life. It shapes you in certain ways if
| you are devoted to it. I want to be that type of person because I
| recognize some qualities that I admire (like being way less self-
| centric).
|
| My body is designed so that it can do this. Hence, not having
| children is against the design. Its like using oven as newspaper
| holder - nothing wrong with that, but using oven by design is
| something else which you can't really describe to non-oven people
| who never tasted cooked dishes. However, it takes time and there
| are number of responsibilities involved and there are huge number
| of people who think its just waste of time when they can simply
| go burger king or avoid eating at all until they must.
|
| That is not nothing.
|
| Yes, it can go bad, like anything else in life. You can die in
| fire using oven too.
|
| I think this is rational explanation.
|
| So called "Socratic procreation" (in short, where your procreate
| via recognized work/ideas instead of sexual act) on the other
| hand, is IMO meaningless (and maybe even compensation) for the
| very reasons mentioned in the blog post.
|
| That said, I do want to have a health span (not life span) as
| long as possible and that has nothing to do with all of this. I
| can freeze my head in a jar but that doesn't really count as
| health (while it could be counted as life).
| kiba wrote:
| Your body isn't designed to do anything. We are like viruses in
| the sense of whatever works, works. While folks who don't
| reproduce are summarily eliminated from the gene pool.
|
| Not because they don't have value, but because they don't
| 'work'.
|
| The fact that you find having children fulfilling is about you,
| not about anybody else.
| XiJInPaddington wrote:
| I would give so much to live in a society where people like
| Aubrey de Gray are heroes like Elon Musk is in ours. The fact
| that people die does not have to be immutable fate. We look back
| at people seeking the fountain of youth or the philosophers stone
| with sneering contempt but at least they had the right goal. Our
| acquiescence of death is the greatest tragedy ever and
| collectively we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
| kiba wrote:
| Sneering contempt because it's currently impossible, and we
| built up all sort of cultural artifacts to dissuade people from
| doing or coping mechanism with the fact that immortality isn't
| possible.
|
| The Epic of Gilgamesh(you should listen to it once) is one of
| our first written story which basically state this opinion
| about immortality.
| rayiner wrote:
| Immortality would be spitting in the face of humanity. A race
| of immortals has no need) or very little need) for children.
| Such a society would be joyless and without vitality, without
| the "firsts" that happen only once in a lifetime no matter how
| long you live.
|
| People imagine that life extension would mean that people would
| have time to see the world, to read every book, etc. But that's
| not what makes most people happy. Most people won't read
| Shakespeare no matter how long they live. Immortality would
| condemn your average person to a pretty awful existence.
| kiba wrote:
| Excuse me? Lot of people enjoyed life without having
| children.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not about individuals having children, but a society
| that collectively has few to no children. 9 out of 10
| people age 45+, if they had to do it all again, would have
| had children: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-
| children-norm.asp.... Only 1 in 10 wouldn't have had kids
| if they had to do it over. Immortality would universalize
| the experience of the 10% to the other 90% of the
| population.
| XiJInPaddington wrote:
| That's pure speculation. We don't know what they would want,
| what they would do, how their society would be arranged. The
| only thing we know about a race of immortals is the fact that
| they are immortal.
| Nursie wrote:
| Massive, sweeping, baseless assertions there.
| malthejorgensen wrote:
| The first part rings dangerously close to solipsism in my ears,
| and once you're there nothing much matters. Just trash the
| planet, use people and move on. Cause once you're dead it doesn't
| matter? I might be wrong but you can't build a civilization in
| that way.
|
| Second thing is that immortality creates conservatism. Old age
| does too, but it seems to me immortality over-indexes self-
| preservation over progress of civilization, where the former is
| just slightly less of a concern for the individual when lifetimes
| are as short as they are now.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| This is very very stupid. I mean it: stupid.
|
| The act of planning is not about the future, it's about the
| present. I haven't experienced the future yet, so it has no value
| to me. But a chained sequence of events that have a certain
| likelihood of occurring does have value to me _now_ in the form
| of the _expectation_ (which I experience _today_ ) of the
| outcome.
|
| The author also presumes no one can value _states of the world_
| except insofar as they are directly, materially experiencing that
| state of the world, but this is wrong.
|
| For example, I've never visited Australia, but I would value a
| state of the world where Australian cryptography laws and email
| surveillance laws are reformed. I get value just from the concept
| of that state of the world. I suppose it's similar to getting
| value from consuming a fictional work of art - I experience the
| concept of it, but it doesn't materially exist in my presence. I
| don't benefit from it (say, like an Australian citizen would),
| but I benefit from the _concept of it_ and associated
| probabilities of the world changing to a certain state.
|
| So if I am on my death bed with a special button laid out in
| front of me, which if pressed will automatically cause all
| Australian politicians' pants to fall down until they vote to
| reform cryptography laws, and I believe there's high probability
| the button would work and the embarrassment would work, then my
| impending death _should not_ make me indifferent to pressing the
| button. With those precious few moments of life, I am
| experiencing something materially of value (a chained sequence of
| cause & effect with high probability to lead to a state of the
| world I value). The world I _am in_ contains aspects of value I
| can experience that are functions of sequences of events leading
| to worlds I _am not in._ There's nothing irrational, non-
| utilitarian or inconsistent about this.
| spicyramen wrote:
| Hard to follow for me and depressing at the same time
| darkerside wrote:
| Is there nothing worth dying for?
| Tenoke wrote:
| Maybe there is but I doubt you'd call the reasons why the
| majority of people die as something that's 'worth it'.
| thret wrote:
| I do agree with this thesis in the sense that leaving an
| inheritance has no benefit to you. I've tried to explain to
| people that life insurance is a waste of money for this very
| reason but it is hard to put into words.
|
| I think they are undervaluing procreation though. You should do
| it because it makes you happy - I have never met a parent who
| regretted having children.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I think they are undervaluing procreation though. You should
| do it because it makes you happy - I have never met a parent
| who regretted having children
|
| People do but a small proportion:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-
| norm.asp.... About 90% of people 45+, if they had to do it
| again, would have kids. The 7% who had kids but would choose
| not to have done so is basically cancelled out by the more than
| half of people who had no kids but wish they had.
| amarant wrote:
| I've never met a parent tho didn't regret having children!
|
| I've also never met I've who would admit to regretting it
| openly. Now ask them if they would recommend it for you, and
| they'll spill the beans for you...
| 5nlight wrote:
| "a modern human because he can adapt to anything himself, and do
| so a billion times faster and more efficiently. People are going
| to the space because they've invented rockets and space suits"
|
| so, is this what you believe here on HN? genuinely curious.
| ben_w wrote:
| We are diverse.
|
| Myself? This blog entry reads kinda like the Wiccan self-help
| books I was into in a big way as a teenager and no longer care
| for.
|
| I _hope_ to live long enough to benefit from SENS. I'm
| _planning_ as if I don't, because I have no control over which
| reality I will face and doing what I'm doing has the best
| expected utility given that uncertainty.
|
| Then there's the limits of any plausible form of immortality:
| While the idea of being part of a starlifting project to extend
| the lifespan of Sol by a factor of a thousand (and of being
| able to enjoy the benefits of that project ten trillion years
| from now) appeals greatly, curing ageing and all disease --
| leaving only injuries both accidental and malicious as causes
| of death -- still leaves humans with a half-life of something
| like 800 to 1200 years. Give us mind-backups (which also appeal
| to me, but less so when I consider the likelihood of misuse)
| and you still have to consider the radical change in what it
| means to _be_ over such timescales.
|
| I don't know what the future will bring, and I will plan for
| all too short a season, even though I will embrace life
| extension and do what I can to stay around for as long as I
| can.
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