Why do people want to be immortal?

[DarthSka]

Well, considering that by the time the Sun does explode, we'll have most likely set up space travel to somewhere far away, so that seems like a moot point. However, I don't think I'd want it, because I would get a little tired of everyone around me dying. I imagine it would get to the point that I would stop trying to forge bonds with anyone so I would just end up lonely anyway.

 

[Boom129]

end of the day, dying is bad, its that simple

Not really, death is generally a very good thing. Death promotes change. Death promotes evolution. The death of the old makes way for the birth of the new. Also, the body is nothing more than a complex machine, and machines break down and stop working over time. I don't know about you, but I would rather die than sit around forever while my body decays. It's bad enough that I might live long enough to see myself lose my sense of hearing, sight, my memory, my ability to reason, my strength and dexterity, my mobility, my flexibility, my ability to fall on my face without breaking every bone in my body ... following that to its logical conclusion gives a horrifying picture, does it not? I would much rather skip all that.

I think Eliezer Yudkowsky sums it up nicely here http://vimeo.com/17513355, death is a condition that we try to rationalise because it has been and still is one that we find inevitable. If, for the past 1000 years, everyone was hit in the head with a baseball bat once a week, all the top philosophers would present reasoning for this being a good thing, "it makes your head stronger" or "days where you aren't hit in the head will seem all the more special", but that doesn't mean people in our society are lining up to be hit in the head.
"Is it good to be alive?" isn't a trick question, "is health better than sickness?" is not a trick question. There is near infinite potential within the universe and I don't want to miss any of it if I can help it.

 

[DarthFennec]

I think Eliezer Yudkowsky sums it up nicely here http://vimeo.com/17513355, death is a condition that we try to rationalise because it has been and still is one that we find inevitable.

Well yeah. I couldn't imagine how painful life would be if I were constantly telling myself how horrible death is. If something is inevitable, is it not beneficial to find the good in it? Beats being depressed about it all the time. If you can't change something, why stress over it?

If, for the past 1000 years, everyone was hit in the head with a baseball bat once a week, all the top philosophers would present reasoning for this being a good thing, "it makes your head stronger" or "days where you aren't hit in the head will seem all the more special", but that doesn't mean people in our society are lining up to be hit in the head.

... no, if everyone were being hit on the head once a week with baseball bats for the past 1000 years, all the top philosophers would not be trying to rationalize it. That's what everybody else would be doing. The philosophers, meanwhile, would be trying to discern exactly why we were getting hit with baseball bats, what would happen if we weren't getting hit, and what's stopping us from not getting hit. Because a philosopher's job is to ask the question of why, not to come up with reasons for why not.

I'll give you an example of what I mean: For the last 1000 years or so, people have been hitting their misbehaving kids with belts. Everyone's been doing it, and it seems inevitable. Most people don't even think about it, and when they do, they rationalize it and say it's a good thing. It builds character, it teaches right from wrong, the child deserves it, etc. Not much different from your baseball bats, is it? Well fairly recently, some philosophers have started to ask, why? Does this really help children? Would it be better if we didn't do this? And of course, the answer to this is a resounding yes. We don't need physical punishment to teach our kids how to behave. And we don't need baseball bats every week.

The great thinkers of the human race are smart enough to understand that extremely common, seemingly inevitable things might still be wrong. So they explore everything on the same objective basis, and they draw conclusions from that. And believe it or not, they do that with death all the time, and they often conclude that death serves a very real and important function in the world, unlike getting hit with baseball bats all the time.

"Is it good to be alive?" isn't a trick question, "is health better than sickness?" is not a trick question. There is near infinite potential within the universe and I don't want to miss any of it if I can help it.

I don't know what you mean by `trick question', I don't think anybody's trying to trick anyone. But it is true that those questions are not easily answered, especially given the fundamentally opinionative nature of the ideas of `good' and `bad'. What's good from your perspective might easily be bad from mine. In this case, you apparently see this as a black-and-white matter of personal wish-fulfillment, while I see your opinion as being very selfish because you fail to take into account the effect it would have on everything else. Or, I would see it as selfish if I didn't already recognize it as simple shortsightedness.

end of the day, dying is bad, its that simple

Let's dissect this, shall we? Dying is bad. What do you mean by `bad'? Or, what makes it bad? I'll assume you mean it in the same sense that just about everyone means it in this context, that dying is detrimental to the achievement of some state or process that you deem `good', which in this case I assume is your personal wish to miss out on as little of the universe's infinite potential as you possibly can. But would lack of dying really help you achieve this? I doubt it.

Death promotes change and growth. Without death, things would change extremely slowly. I'll give an example: The older you get, the more difficult it is to accept new modes of thought. This is because you have so much experience with the world from the perspectives you are already accustomed to, so the more experience you get, the harder it is to accept new information. If people didn't die, those old perspectives would never be lost, and there wouldn't be any room for new ideas. Therefore, if death didn't exist, we wouldn't make any philosophical or scientific progress, and as a result, you wouldn't be able to achieve your goal of learning about the world and its infinite potential.

This can also be applied on a biological level. Death is what drives natural selection, which is a key aspect of evolution. Without death, there would be no natural selection, and therefore no evolution. Without evolution, there would be no specialization. Without specialization, there would be no such thing as intelligence, consciousness, or self-awareness. That means that without death, you wouldn't exist in the first place. And I'm fairly certain that your nonexistence is detrimental to any goal that you might have.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to use science to minimize the effects of aging and disease. I'd love to live 800 years without health problems. But death will still exist, no matter what we do to prolong life. It doesn't matter if we live a thousand or a million years, death will still come and our lives will still have been nothing in the vastness of the universe. No matter what medicine does for aging or disease, I can still drown, be shot in the head, be decapitated, be burned alive, and even if I do manage to live for as long as I possibly can, it still won't be forever, because the universe will eventually fall victim to entropy, and I'll go with it. Immortality just isn't an option, and if it were (for reasons previously explained) it would be a very bad one.

 

[Siyano_v1legacy]

for me immortality is impractical or bring too many question.
1) Do you still have to eat / sleep?
2) You still have to work almost everyday (to pay stuff)
3) You need to find a lot and a lot of different hobbies to entertain youself
4) How far can your immortality can go? Can you die from anything? being shotted?
5) It would suck to be trapped somewhere
6) you will eventually go insane, no matter what
7) How does immortality works on your brains? Will it tired off eventually anyway?

 

[Boom129]

Well yeah. I couldn't imagine how painful life would be if I were constantly telling myself how horrible death is. If something is inevitable, is it not beneficial to find the good in it? Beats being depressed about it all the time. If you can't change something, why stress over it?

Inevitable huh? Here;s some food for thought, the top causes of death worldwide were Heart Disease, Stroke, Lower respiratory infections, COPD, and Diarrhoeal diseases, all curable diseases. Also consider the fact that age is the result of genetic damage sustained during cell replication, a problem that can be fixed by extending protective Telomeres, while this can't be done right now research is being done that may make this usable within our lifetimes. While this won't stop a bullet to the head indefinite lifespans will be possible eventually.
(unless you believe in the afterlife, in which case good luck with that)

... no, if everyone were being hit on the head once a week with baseball bats for the past 1000 years, all the top philosophers would not be trying to rationalize it. That's what everybody else would be doing. The philosophers, meanwhile, would be trying to discern exactly why we were getting hit with baseball bats, what would happen if we weren't getting hit, and what's stopping us from not getting hit. Because a philosopher's job is to ask the question of why, not to come up with reasons for why not.
I'll give you an example of what I mean: For the last 1000 years or so, people have been hitting their misbehaving kids with belts. Everyone's been doing it, and it seems inevitable. Most people don't even think about it, and when they do, they rationalize it and say it's a good thing. It builds character, it teaches right from wrong, the child deserves it, etc. Not much different from your baseball bats, is it? Well fairly recently, some philosophers have started to ask, why? Does this really help children? Would it be better if we didn't do this? And of course, the answer to this is a resounding yes. We don't need physical punishment to teach our kids how to behave. And we don't need baseball bats every week. The great thinkers of the human race are smart enough to understand that extremely common, seemingly inevitable things might still be wrong. So they explore everything on the same objective basis, and they draw conclusions from that. And believe it or not, they do that with death all the time, and they often conclude that death serves a very real and important function in the world, unlike getting hit with baseball bats all the time.

You have a good point there, and many people do wonder if indefinite life is possible. (see above)
Also throughout much of the 20th century there have been intellectuals who argued that societal oppression of minorities and women was wrong, so that isn't necessarily true.

I don't know what you mean by `trick question', I don't think anybody's trying to trick anyone. But it is true that those questions are not easily answered, especially given the fundamentally opinionative nature of the ideas of `good' and `bad'. What's good from your perspective might easily be bad from mine. In this case, you apparently see this as a black-and-white matter of personal wish-fulfillment, while I see your opinion as being very selfish because you fail to take into account the effect it would have on everything else. Or, I would see it as selfish if I didn't already recognize it as simple shortsightedness.

No U :3
Life being a good thing may be subjective, but being in opposition in this case essentially means being suicidal. I suspect the vast majority of people would agree that existence is better than the cessation thereof. Also, since when is survival selfish, try telling someone who lost a loved one that wanting them alive is "wrong" and see how they react. And while indefinite lifespans would come with inherent problems (namely overpopulation) I do believe that it would still be worthwhile.

P.S. yes entropy would put a hard limit on existence barring the manipulation of dark matter to revert to quantum singularity (as in 2nd big bang). But aside from heat death of the universe it would be possible (hence the term "indefinite lifespan")

 

[DarthFennec]

Inevitable huh? Here;s some food for thought, the top causes of death worldwide were Heart Disease, Stroke, Lower respiratory infections, COPD, and Diarrhoeal diseases, all curable diseases. Also consider the fact that age is the result of genetic damage sustained during cell replication, a problem that can be fixed by extending protective Telomeres, while this can't be done right now research is being done that may make this usable within our lifetimes. While this won't stop a bullet to the head indefinite lifespans will be possible eventually.
(unless you believe in the afterlife, in which case good luck with that)

P.S. yes entropy would put a hard limit on existence barring the manipulation of dark matter to revert to quantum singularity (as in 2nd big bang). But aside from heat death of the universe it would be possible (hence the term "indefinite lifespan")

Well this thread is about immortality, not the ability to live for a really long time. It's perfectly natural to want to prolong life, but no matter how long your life is, you will eventually still have to deal with the process of dying. And when that happens, no matter if you lived a hundred or a thousand or a million years, you will look back and see the things you're leaving behind and you will say, `I wish I had more time'. But you don't have more time. And that's what I assume you mean by `dying is bad'.

No U :3
Life being a good thing may be subjective, but being in opposition in this case essentially means being suicidal. I suspect the vast majority of people would agree that existence is better than the cessation thereof. Also, since when is survival selfish, try telling someone who lost a loved one that wanting them alive is "wrong" and see how they react.

I never said life was a bad thing. I only said eventual death was not necessarily a bad thing. Again, I'm down with trying to prolong life. But if you don't die sooner or later then nothing will change in society, and that's no good either. The world needs both to stay healthy.

And while indefinite lifespans would come with inherent problems (namely overpopulation) I do believe that it would still be worthwhile.

But now we're talking about something completely different. I initially assumed that you were describing a universe where death never existed, not where medicine was used to prolong life. In the case that death never existed, every life form that ever lived would still be alive, from the earliest of bacteria to the dinosaurs to everything alive today, and in that case we would have an absurd overpopulation problem, and it would be much larger factor than it would be with what you're talking about.

I'm not arguing against living as long as you can, I'm arguing against the idea that death is a bad thing. But more to the point, I'm arguing against the making of such ungodly general statements without putting some thought into them first. And I suppose what I'm really, truly arguing against is the notion of responding to a question like `why do people want to not die?' with an answer like `death is bad'. That doesn't explain anything, you're just repeating the question in the form of a statement. Your answer means nothing, and I guess I was just trying to show you that.

EDIT:

I suspect the vast majority of people would agree that existence is better than the cessation thereof. Also, since when is survival selfish, try telling someone who lost a loved one that wanting them alive is "wrong" and see how they react.

Also, if shit like this is going to be part of your argument, then you might as well believe in an afterlife, because: 1) The vast majority of people believe in an afterlife, and 2) try telling one of those people that the afterlife doesn't exist and see how they react.

 

[gnaskar]

Well this thread is about immortality, not the ability to live for a really long time. It's perfectly natural to want to prolong life, but no matter how long your life is, you will eventually still have to deal with the process of dying. And when that happens, no matter if you lived a hundred or a thousand or a million years, you will look back and see the things you're leaving behind and you will say, `I wish I had more time'. But you don't have more time. And that's what I assume you mean by `dying is bad'.

The conclusion I draw from this is that dying is bad.

I never said life was a bad thing. I only said eventual death was not necessarily a bad thing. Again, I'm down with trying to prolong life. But if you don't die sooner or later then nothing will change in society, and that's no good either. The world needs both to stay healthy.

I disagree on both counts.

A) How can death, your death, my death or Boom129's death, ever be a good thing?

The laws of logic dictate that to prove the statement "death is not necessarily a bad thing" true, one must find at least one case of death not being a bad thing. And I'm drawing a blank.

The one obvious counter point would mentioning people like Starlin or Genghis Khan, but both of these are victims of their society. People adapt to the society around them and the reality of their situation. In short, people change.

B) Why is social stagnation a necessary side effect of immortality?

Just because people stop dieing there is nothing to support that people would stop being born, stop moving into new conditions and environments. People change and adapt; it's kind of our thing.

I'm not arguing against living as long as you can, I'm arguing against the idea that death is a bad thing. But more to the point, I'm arguing against the making of such ungodly general statements without putting some thought into them first. And I suppose what I'm really, truly arguing against is the notion of responding to a question like `why do people want to not die?' with an answer like `death is bad'. That doesn't explain anything, you're just repeating the question in the form of a statement. Your answer means nothing, and I guess I was just trying to show you that.

http://vimeo.com/17513355

My turn to link you to the Singularity Summit, where a better public speaker than I can point out that yes, you can in fact make it that simple. The statement "Death is bad" is true unless it is proven false, by constructing a situation where death is bad...

Which you have, of course, done. I have to concede to that. So let me rephrase the answer to make the meaning behind it more clear: "Sentient death is bad". No one is claiming we should feel guilty for the salad or carrots that had to die for our dinner.

 

[DarthFennec]

The conclusion I draw from this is that dying is bad.

Yeah, I was restating what I thought he was talking about. My point is, he's trying to argue that science can make everything better, and that's just not true. We all die, it's the same for each and every one of us, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Dying won't stop because of indefinite life. It wouldn't be any different than it is today.

How can death, your death, my death or Boom129's death, ever be a good thing?

The laws of logic dictate that to prove the statement "death is not necessarily a bad thing" true, one must find at least one case of death not being a bad thing. And I'm drawing a blank.

The one obvious counter point would mentioning people like Starlin or Genghis Khan, but both of these are victims of their society. People adapt to the society around them and the reality of their situation. In short, people change.

And I think everyone's death is a good thing. Mine, yours, Boom's, everyone's. Just because you draw a blank doesn't mean everybody else does. Also, asking someone to prove that dying is good is like asking someone to prove that country music is good. You can't prove it, because it's subjective, an opinion. Which is partly what I was trying to show Boom. Making a statement like `dying is bad' and trying to pass it off as fact just doesn't get anyone anywhere.

Why is social stagnation a necessary side effect of immortality?

Just because people stop dieing there is nothing to support that people would stop being born, stop moving into new conditions and environments. People change and adapt; it's kind of our thing.

Well if people did continue to be born, I assume it would cause an overpopulation problem, which would cause massive food shortages, which would cause starvation and a hell of a lot of death, if we're talking from the `lives have been medically extended indefinitely' point of view. If not, and we're just immortal no matter what, we would have an overpopulation problem anyway, and soon there wouldn't be room to stand on this planet. I guess we'd move to different planets, and then the life of our race would be similar to that of the Elder Things of the Cthulhu mythos, expanding and colonizing from planet to planet. I guess that would work, but we'd need a new planet for every generation of people, and they would all have to be roughly earthlike if we want to actually function socially. We would expand throughout the galaxy, and then the rest of the universe, growing exponentially, and it wouldn't be long before we take the whole damn place over. And then we'd probably blow up each other's planets because people like war or something.

I guess I don't really understand how immortality does not lead to social stagnation. The older someone is, the harder it is for them to look at things from a new perspective. So the longer the average lifespan is, the longer those old stagnant ideas will be around. If they're around forever, it slows progress to a crawl. Even if there are new ideas, we'd be constantly fighting the old ones, which slows progress even more.

My turn to link you to the Singularity Summit, where a better public speaker than I can point out that yes, you can in fact make it that simple. The statement "Death is bad" is true unless it is proven false, by constructing a situation where death is bad...

Which you have, of course, done. I have to concede to that. So let me rephrase the answer to make the meaning behind it more clear: "Sentient death is bad". No one is claiming we should feel guilty for the salad or carrots that had to die for our dinner.

Boom already linked me to that video. It doesn't present any better argument than either of you have. Also, death of non-sentient beings was never ever part of my argument, I've been talking about death of humans specifically. I know I don't have to feel sorry for the tasty cows I eat every day. So I don't know where you pulled that one from ...

Oh yeah, basic rule of logic: Nothing is ever `true until proven false'. That's fucking ridiculous. Actually the ridiculousness has a name, it's `appeal to ignorance' and it's a fallacy. It basically means that if someone says something like `there is a teapot orbiting the planet, and you can't prove it false so it's true' then he is ignorant of how logic works, just like if someone says something like `death is bad until it is proven to be good' then he is ignorant of the subjective nature of the ideas of goodness and badness, especially the fact that ideas like true and false don't apply there. What I'm getting at is, the goodness or badness of death, like any other subjective problem, is very complex and has a great many different and equally viable responses, so anyone who only sees one obvious and simple answer to it is clearly not examining the problem very deeply or carefully.

 

[PhantomEcho]

Immortality?


Sure. I'd dig immortality. I'm already constantly bored. It's not like there's ever going to be a time I'm MORE bored than I am now. And hell, I love messing with people. I'd have an infinite amount of time to mess with Humanity and every civilization to come after.

And then when the universe ends... and time starts to unravel...

... I'll be the last goddamned man standing!

And then I'll take a nap.