[HN Gopher] We regret to inform you that your choice of Deathday...
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We regret to inform you that your choice of Deathday is no longer
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Author : flobosg
Score : 78 points
Date : 2022-06-18 10:59 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| ghastmaster wrote:
| This illustrates how immortality alone does not rid humanity of
| our problems(internal or external). As we see frequently in
| stories, immortality granted via a Faustian bargain without
| reading the fine print could end in literal hell. A similar fate
| could befall a human who has acquired immortality in the future.
| I for one, would not like to have immortality only to be
| kidnapped by a sadist, locked up and tortured for eternity. I
| suppose that is a risk I would take if given the opportunity to
| live forever.
|
| Imagine a detective getting assigned a case that is never
| resolved. The obsession to solve the case never subsides. The
| detective never gives up, endlessly pouring over the records for
| eons, in a similar manner to that of detectives that spend
| decades trying to solve cold cases to this day.
|
| The hope for immortality should always include other parameters.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| Science fiction in Nature? I didn't know they published any
| fiction at all. It's pretty good too.
| flobosg wrote:
| The journal includes Futures, a science fiction column. See
| them all at
| https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?searchType=journalSea...
| jokowueu wrote:
| This time line won't happen . By the time we acheive immortallity
| we would have figured out how to be blissed out of our minds
| antihero wrote:
| Mimosas aren't that good, calling bullshit on this.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| I liked this, all except one sentence.
|
| "I'm bored of knitting, bored of reading, bored of games, and
| there isn't a country I haven't visited less than three times."
|
| I think I know what she means, but I read it over and over and I
| can't get the double negative to work out right.
| mmastrac wrote:
| It's technically not a double negative- "I haven't visited" is
| used as a colourful version of "I have visited"
| cannonpr wrote:
| I think I understand those that fear immortality and youth, and I
| finally felt that fear my self after my fathers death, the grief
| and the loss, the question.. what if I outlast all that matters
| to me and all I have is grief ? It's terrifying. Still, I have a
| deep desire to live, till the stars them selves dim, till all
| matter collapses, or till we learn reality is something different
| than we expected.. Why die, there is so much to learn, being
| human is overrated, we can become new things in time.
| throwaway95828 wrote:
| I want at least a few extra decades to learn more deeply the
| subjects I'm interested in and to undertake more projects,
| technical and artistic.
|
| I think it is pure speculation to say that we would become
| apathetic in as little as a few centuries, which to our current
| lifespan seems an unfathomable amount of time, but in the grand
| scheme of things is still exceedingly short. We might continue to
| develop further beautiful and fulfilling depth that is
| unreachable given the measly few decades of youthful energy we
| have today.
|
| I spend a lot of my effort learning about and exercising my
| health. I'm wagering a bit of my energy now on catching the wave
| of advancing health and longevity research later. Some day I
| believe it will likely be possible for a person to ride this wave
| through extra healthy decades, catching scientific advances just
| in time to rewind their ticking clock by a few years, a few times
| or even indefinitely. It might be a pipe dream, but I think it's
| worth a shot. If this doesn't come true for me, I will at least
| likely have a longer than average healthspan.
|
| I admit that perhaps the human brain and psyche have not evolved
| for happiness and fulfillment beyond our disappointingly short
| deadline. Still, I have to wonder whether the psychological
| disengagement and decay that we observe in many of our elderly
| would be different given prolonged health of body and brain.
| enchiridion wrote:
| There's a quote I heard somewhere to this effect. I'm probably
| messing it up.
|
| "The trick isn't to live forever, it's to live long enough to
| live forever "
| toma_caliente wrote:
| You're gonna have to explain this to me because I don't get
| this quote.
| yurishimo wrote:
| If you live long enough, you may eventually live past the
| point where science makes it possible to live forever. For
| most of us, this is impossible because we lost the birth
| date lottery.
| bentona wrote:
| We don't currently have the means to live forever, but if
| you manage to live long enough, you might survive until we
| do.
| _0ffh wrote:
| You just have to live long enough for some new technology
| to appear to give you the extra years you need to wait for
| the next new technology.
|
| Even if at no point actual immortality is developed, you
| can go like this forever, finite life extension by finite
| life extension.
| andai wrote:
| If technological progress continues exponentially
| (including increases in human or machine intelligence to
| make them possible) then our understanding of biology and
| life-extension will continue to increase, and many such
| life prolonging-treatments will be made available to the
| public.
|
| If one life extension makes you live 5 years longer, and
| during that time an new one comes out that lengthens your
| life by a few more years, you can see how one might keep
| "catching" these just in time and thus gradually transition
| from mortal to immortal.
| nickt wrote:
| That's the core principal of Ray Kurzweil and Terry
| Grossman's book, "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to
| Live Forever".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage:_Live_Long
| _En...
| [deleted]
| jotm wrote:
| I already can't wait to die, and I've got plenty of time ahead.
| I mean, yeah, if you fit in/like the current systems, you might
| think living forever is cool.
|
| But what would you think during the next world war, for
| example? Or if there's some massive climate refugee crisis
| (more akin to a war, actually), are you on the side getting
| shot, doing the shooting, welcoming strangers (and being
| ostracized by "your own"), hating newcomers or ignoring
| everything? What do you think about yourself then? Death ain't
| all bad in dire circumstances.
| throwaway95828 wrote:
| Perhaps with more wisdom we might be able to solve our
| problems more effectively. Perhaps with more to lose (more
| years of life ahead), people would prioritize the future
| more.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I think it is pure speculation that we would become apathetic
| in as little as a few centuries
|
| Most people alive today need some kind of structure. Just look
| at the boomers who "retire" and then get antsy super fast. I
| took a handful of years off in my late 20s to do nothing and
| when I tell people about it, they're like "Didn't you get
| bored?"
| andai wrote:
| Could you elaborate on the "nothing" part? Yesterday I tried
| a meditation in which one learns to truly do nothing, but
| it's more likely you meant something like pursuing hobbies.
| paulcole wrote:
| I watched a lot of TV, went to the movies, read books, and
| exercised.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Bias warning here - I am pretty pro-meditation.
|
| I do think meditating and becoming comfortable with
| "nothing" is important to enjoying activities. If you can
| enjoy not just eg hiking but also the car ride to the
| hiking and packing your bag, then hiking as a whole has
| become enjoyable.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| This. I always find it extremely arrogant of all those people
| claiming to know what would happen if we had larger lifespans
| or infinite youths. It's find if you are a fiction author and
| want to create a cool world/story. But please don't conflate
| that with reality.
| Senpitio wrote:
| I hope Im allowed to die when im 70 or above.
|
| If you life to long I think you will loose yourself in just
| living in your routine.
|
| And I myself would not mind dying even younger than 70 much
| younger.
|
| I have the feeling that the big surprises in my lifetime are
| done. When I look at older people around me, non of them
| experience something I haven't yet and their day to day life's
| are boring I will be boring.
| throwaway95828 wrote:
| I think this is a choice. Many people make safe choices that
| lead to a boring life. If we knew our youth (or at least
| middle age) could be extended, we might be more daring,
| knowing that we can try again if we fail.
| paulcole wrote:
| YC salivating at the possibility of investing in a startup that
| gives away eternal life and then charges to kill people once they
| realize they hate it.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| Omg I think you nailed it. There's a black mirror episode about
| this.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's a long wait for a single payment. Ignoring everything
| else, that sounds like a terrible investment.
| justinpowers wrote:
| Nah, you can't subscribe to death. But...long, deep and
| recurring sleeps on the other hand...only to be jolted awake
| for another arduous day of boring existence until you pay the
| meter to be put back to sleep. Now that's a profit stream
| paulcole wrote:
| What a great idea. Are you looking for a nontechnical
| confounder?
| j7ake wrote:
| Would Einstein, Bardeen, and Fermi have been bored by
| immortality? I have a feeling not. There are endless curiosities
| in the universe.
|
| One is less easily bored if one goes deep. Doing superficial
| things like international travel does get boring, by contrast.
| beefield wrote:
| > There are endless curiosities in the universe.
|
| I suspect that people who like to say that they would like to
| live "forever" or think that they would be interested
| "endlessly" in new things have not really thought through what
| infinity means. You might want to check Grahams number. And
| then spend a while thinking that even that number is not even a
| microscopic fraction of infinity.
|
| And if you still think you want to live forever. How on earth
| are you going to use your puny 100 billion neurons to
| experience, store and decide the order of experiencing and
| studying the endless Graham numbers of curiosities without at
| some point getting into a loop after you have had your brain in
| every single possible state? And when your brain has been in
| every possible state for say a billion times, you think it is
| not going to get boring?
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Living forever is not possible. And it makes little sense to
| think about it. You have to substitute infinite with
| extremely long in these kind of conversations. And even if it
| were infinite. A human brain most likely doesn't have a
| finite state space.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| ...okay, but I can ignore all those very extreme numbers if I
| stick with the existing context of living on earth
| immortally, because that's "only" a few billion years.
|
| > And when your brain has been in every possible state for
| say a billion times, you think it is not going to get boring?
|
| I do think that, because if I'm back in a previous state then
| I'm not growing more bored.
| telesilla wrote:
| The TV series The Good Place had a really good take on this, by
| the final season. Worth a watch for the philosophy lessons.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Spoilers ahead.
|
| Buddhist cosmology holds that we do sort of live forever via
| reincarnation. But just like the last season of the show, the
| Buddha realised that such an existence would be a kind of
| cosmic horror. You would be stuck in a cycle of desire for
| all eternity. So the solution would be to seek an escape aka
| Nirvana.
|
| I believe the show itself was heavily influenced by Buddhist
| ideas.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| International travel can be superficial, but it can also be
| deep and meaningful.
|
| Get away from the tourist places, the tours, the cruises. Go to
| an area and try and stay in normal accomodations and eat the
| local spots and spend time with the people there. Strike up
| good conversations.
| Filligree wrote:
| The lady in this story didn't seem like she was going for
| 'deep'.
|
| Four hundred years, and her biggest hobby was... knitting?
| Which it seemed like she'd turned into a job. I can't say I
| see myself in this at all, nor could I imagine any of my
| friends or family acting this way, but-
|
| Well, I have no trouble imagining that we're self-selecting
| for that. A lot of people do seem like they function on rote
| habit and instructions, and I don't know what to do about
| that.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > A lot of people do seem like they function on rote habit
| and instructions, and I don't know what to do about that.
|
| Remove instruction. Encourage experimentation (and make
| failure cheap but not totally free).
| andai wrote:
| Plus, imagine how annoying airport security will be in another
| two thousand years!
| Rolpa wrote:
| Even gods eventually get bored.
|
| https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Wish_(episode)
| desro wrote:
| This was beautiful.
| Borrible wrote:
| "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with
| themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
|
| Susan Ertz
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