Our bodies undergo wear-and-tear, like the mailbox we had to fix last week. Only, in the case of our bodies, we don't yet have a way to fix or replace most of our parts. After a while, too many parts get worn down until they are no longer able to continue, and everything about us - the parts that allow us to think, the parts that allow us to feel - just stops.
Sadly, fixing our biology is harder than fixing mailboxes, and while we're learning more and more about how to do it every decade, we won't be able to fix everything for the foreseeable future.
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Too accurately:
So why aren't we trying harder to fix it? You see, son, society has been dealing with death for many thousands of years, and people have developed coping mechanisms to deal with its apparent inevitability. The majority of people simply don't think about it. Public figures have even rationalized death as a good thing, and boy have they said the darndest things. For example, I've recently read of someone comparing our bodies to legos in a fixed sandbox - as if people literally need to be disassembled before others can be born - and no one bats an eye! Another person pointed out that scientific progress would be slowed down without the older generation of scientists dying - sure, billions of non-scientists may die every few decades, but hey, science is a bit faster as a result!
The point is, society has created a culture of either ignoring or accepting death, and it shapes the very way we think. Sure, that culture might have been harmless back when we really had no chance of combating problems like old age, but now? The vast majority of researchers, of funders, don't even bother to think about what should be some of the most important problems of our generation. Until we have progressed to the point where it becomes blatantly obvious that the technology to combat old age exists, it is unlikely anyone will even notice it. In other words, we're all screwed and you were born a few hundred years too early.
> we're all screwed and you were born a few hundred years too early.
It's not a great option, but cryonics seems way better than nothing. (Under the assumptions that the preservation is reasonably high-quality, the storage facilities stay operational, humanity doesn't destroy itself, and advanced medical technology gets developed; see waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html )
An example of someone who wanted to live a long time but was genuinely screwed and was born a couple hundred years too early:
The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity, and give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labor and double its Produce; all Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity! -Benjamin Franklin
So keep answering until you can't, and then say "I don't know". Curiosity is something to be fostered, not shutdown with lies.
When they're a little older and have more capacity to understand a fuller, more accurate, discussion is possible.
Only thing I can come up with is to wish everybody health and a long life.
The aspect of it that people are objecting to is that it does try to explain why. It says "Your father needs to go back in the box so we can make other people", which simply isn't true.
That said, I'm not a parent, and I realise it's easier to be idealistic in theory.
The lego analogy expresses the fact that we are not different from these other beings, and that we too must die so that life can continue. The death of an individual in this chain is always painful, but as part of the whole, it is just as it should be.
It's either that, or your child's future partner will have to deal with them losing faith in their parents, after so many things they were told turned out to be bullshit said to shut them up.
The analogy is not perfect. To create new Lego creations you have to destroy the old ones first. But analogies are never perfect. They're just a starting point to get a rough understanding.
As Peter says, "[my children] will grow up with me in their DNA, on Youtube as endless conference talks, and in writing."
I think there are interesting ideas around seeing individuals as part of a greater whole. Not even in a spiritual sense, but just in a plain biological sense. It's rare to consider things that way, but it makes me feel better about my place in the world.
A statement that I agree with, but which is of course meaningless to those who are filled with a total dread of death... Unfortunately this is one of those things that can't really be communicated. "You have to figure it out for yourself", etc...
I'm not sure I've successfully communicated my feeling about this. It's less like a total dread of death and more like a total dread of losing life, if that makes any sense.
Do you have any close loved ones---a younger brother, a daughter, a close friend? Anyone for whom you might consider sacrificing yourself; anyone who you believe to be a shining light unto the world. Say that person is eaten by cancer. Once they are dead, they feel no pain; this is clear to me, and is not central in my judgement.
What is central is the lost blossoming of a mind. A rich internal experience, a reflective world with joy, dreams, and curiosity, is not a thing that should be destroyed. A mind that wishes to continue seeing the world and its people, and other minds wishing that mind to continue shining its light, annihilated---don't look away from the pain! If you look away from the pain, you lose your already slim opportunity to fight back.
The human body has many enviable traits over a machine: self repair, remarkable efficiency, etc etc.
But there's one really awesome aspect of machines we should get to work on: a machine, if broken, will sit indefinitely until repaired.
Imagine! You are rent limb from limb in a horrific accident, your body ... stops. A good Samaritan happens upon it later, stitches it back together, puts in some fresh blood, gives it a bit of a kick-start, and away you go!
Screw cryonics: I want to keep indefinitely at room temperature, with no special (post-mortem) treatment.
I don't buy the "population slots". 100 years ago, the "population slots" were limited to at most 2 billion, back before Harber-Bosch[1]. There's a lot of space to use - we can live under the sea, we'll finally have an economic reason for that Mars colony. And we can stop making children so much too. Those things are actually easier than beating death, so - with added incentive to actually making them happen - you can expect them coming before people actually get immortal.
[0] - http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-X-Large-Gray-Baseplate-628/dp/B00...
A lot of the stubborness comes from facing death. When you think in terms of forever, it helps you to think a lot bigger than petty personal politics.
Or, at least, it should.
(1) people say things to children because it is more pleasant or convenient, not because it is true, and
(2) these misleading statements have negative effects later.
In this case, it seems potentially worthwhile to keep in view that death is actually not a good thing, and that it would better if there weren't death, and that we want to keep an eye out for opportunities to prevent death. "You do not make peace with darkness!"
> (2) these misleading statements have negative effects later.
Yes. And I had to fix that damage in people too. You know, sharing an interesting tidbit of information with a person close to me only for her to suddenly realize it was another thing her father mislead her about. Lying to children is like placing relationship landmines - your kids will step on them many years later and it will damage your relationship with them.
There might be more clever options, like cryopreserve everyone who dies; this does not consume many resources (the only recurring cost is liquid nitrogen, which is pretty cheap). Then we can wait to revive everyone until we have the medicine and the resources to support everyone, avoiding overpopulation.
Besides that, it is immaterial. We are all going to die someday and there is nothing we can do about it. The people seeing cryogenics are largely snake-oil salesmen. I don't believe anybody will ever find immortality (at least not in this life).
Do you think this problem is merely very difficult, or literally impossible to solve (e.g. because of some physical law)? I think that if a bunch of really smart humans tried really hard to solve this problem, and you predicted very very confidently that they would fail, then I would be pretty skeptical of your confidence. Just as an example, you suggest getting some more Earths. Sounds like one solid approach; expand humanity to other planets!
>We are all going to die someday and there is nothing we can do about it. [...] I don't believe anybody will ever find immortality (at least not in this life).
This might literally true, in the sense that we probably can't survive the heat death of the universe in however many bazillions of years. But do you think it is implausible that advanced medical technology could e.g. keep us alive, healthy, and sane for, say, thousands of years? This sounds both plausible and quite desirable to me, and I'm confused by your statements---for instance, I can't tell whether you are making a factual claim or an aesthetic claim.
>The people seeing cryogenics are largely snake-oil salesmen.
Eh? They seem pretty sincere; the people who run these organizations (Cryonics Institute, Alcor) are generally themselves signed up for cryonics, and speak passionately about life extension as a desirable goal. Cryonics is not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.
Why? Do you think this would withstand a thousand years of human ingenuity? I'm confused where you're getting this very confident prediction.
It also still seems to me that long lifespans are extremely desirable, albeit difficult to obtain, and I'm not sure whether you agree. This is relevant because if we want to decide e.g. where to put research effort, it's useful to know what we want.
The article you linked is kind of long, and looks like it mainly consists of sneering at various people; could you point to the part that's relevant? All I saw was some stuff about Alcor messing up a preservation, which is pretty unfortunate, but not really strong evidence that they have bad motivations.
Also note that your current (probably?) western lifestyle puts several times more load on the environment than mine 3rd world-like one. It is the wasteful lifestyle choices made by living people that are really a problem, not the quantity of people in itself.
(Clarification: I think we'd obviously be better off if no one involuntarily died.)
I don't think I've been hasty in my thinking. What is the most central concern that you have about life as a good thing?
There are deep unsolved problems around long life. E.g., how do you grow as a mind that has existed for 4,000 years? A normal human mind would probably not be able to handle this, so we'd need some way to expand without losing the parts of ourselves that we value. Similarly, I don't know how to grow as a community of huge, ancient minds.
But, as the saying goes, those are very difficult problems, and I intend to work on solving them for as many centuries as it takes! Of course I can't literally claim to possess an absolute truth, but I think there is a very strong argument---or rather, I think most people would simply agree if they thought longer and more sanely about the question---that life can be awesome given some work, and it is precious, and we don't want to just give up on our vast adventure because, like, medicine is hard to figure out, or cryonics seems like something weird people do, or whatever.
I don't know if hasty was the right word; I don't mean to just dismiss what you're saying. Clearly you've considered this at length.
I cannot easily accept that perpetual life is a good thing and death is something which should be avoided (obviously, in a grander sense). I don't have a concern about life as a good thing in the same way I don't have a concern about death being a bad thing. Life and death are complementary. I can't fathom anything else.
Hm, I hear people say this a lot, but I genuinely can't empathize with where they are coming from. This is a blank spot in my map. Could you say more about the intuition behind this statement, and why this makes death seems desirable or less bad?
To illustrate how I emotionally parse the statement "Life and death are complementary", I want to make a possibly distressing analogy, so apologies in advance, and:
TRIGGER WARNING...
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TRIGGER WARNING: abstract discussion of rape
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That statement reads to me like:
"Being raped and not being raped are complementary. Members of higher animal species rape each other in the natural course of life, and humans have committed rape throughout history. Rape is a part of nature, so it is foolish to think that we humans could or should eliminate rape forever."
This is an obviously abhorrent position, and I genuinely don't see much of a difference talking about death instead. Clearly horrible thing is clearly horrible.
Again, I am absolutely not trying to imply you are evil, or thinking inside my head that you are evil, or anything remotely like that; I am just trying to convey how I kneejerk-emotionally react to your statement about life and death, in case it helps you say things to me that will cause me to understand where you are coming from.
Your inability to parse why I see life and death existing in a sort of balance is similar to my inability to have the same clarity that you do that death is inherently bad and should be eliminated. It's certainly something I'm going to think about.
So it seems quite worth it to fight death. I don't know if avoiding involuntary death should seem so implausible---humans are machines that can be fixed when they start breaking; that's how ordinary medicine works! I think it would actually be surprising if we could extend lifespans from 30 years all the way up to 100+ years, but couldn't possibly go much further, even given massive future advances in our understanding of biology, neurology, and technology.
Some might say the next logical step isn't to wish to live forever, but to die, and hope your genes and ideas live on. We're not the eternal ones in this universe, no matter how big our capacity to wish for that.
I only mean that we're machines enough so that medical techniques work. We are made of parts that break and can be fixed. This is on extremely solid empirical footing.
>Some might say the next logical step isn't to wish to live forever, but to die, and hope your genes and ideas live on. We're not the eternal ones in this universe, no matter how big our capacity to wish for that.
Do you say that? I wish to live a very long time, and I wish the same for my loved ones and anyone who wants. I would keep wishing this even if it were an impossible wish. Also, it happens to probably not be impossible.
That it is currently inevitable does not mean it doesn't suck, or that we shouldn't try to change that.
Life and death are part of the same simultaneous process. For a living thing to grow, it must die at the same time. Death is life's change agent.
"Controlled death of cells is as much a part of embryonal development as is cell proliferation and differentiation."
In my estimation, the "whole human mind" or "soul" of a person is not annihilated when someone dies. Our minds are an amorphous network constantly in intercourse with and dependent upon eachother.
When a loved one dies, all of the love they gave and words they said exist in some form or another within us, within our hearts and minds which we then pass on to others in turn.
Picture a field full of one type of flowers. If that one type of flowers grows old but never dies, soon enough there is no room for newer or better flowers to grow and evolve.
So as old minds pass away, new minds are born which draw upon the old minds' knowledge but also build upon that knowledge with newer and better ideas.
Alan Watts - Acceptance of Death
Some small parts of a person can be transmitted to the outside world, but this leaves out the vast, rich internal world each mind carries with it. If I picture a loved one dying, I feel pretty concerned with the part where they don't keep being alive, keep pursuing their goals and having rich experiences and exploring and loving and being loved and creating and etc. How does this compare with your thoughts?
This may be painful to think about in detail. But I think it is actually important to think about anyway, because there are actual important decisions we have to make (whether to do research in to life extension, whether to sign up for cryonics, etc.), and we seem to be making the wrong decisions when we don't have everything in view; including the most painful parts, which happen to be the most important!
I'm also pretty confused why people bring up supposed benefits of society; to be frank, it sounds to me like people are suggesting "we should kill (let die) all the old and sick people to free up floor space" or "we should kill (let die) all the old and sick people so we don't have to spend any time dealing with their backwards ideas".
Yes, but all of that would still exist if they didn't die, so it's irrelevant.
>Acceptance of Death
There's a difference between coming to terms with the likelihood of ones death, and thinking it's a good thing.
Death is a horrible thing that we should seek to prevent if at all possible.
I think it's an incredibly pessimistic view of humanity to suggest social change can only come about through death.
Moreover, I think this argument tends to come solely from people trying to excuse death, rather than any kind of reasonable analysis.
Yes, this is a pessimistic viewpoint, but I think it's also a realistic one.
My point is that death sucks, and when I say that, I'm talking about children crying because they can't see granny any more. Talking about cell death is a distraction.
And if food consumption truly became limiting, would you prefer a society that kills people at a certain age, or one that limits the birth rate?
Neither. I'd prefer one smart enough to understand the demographic economic paradox and successfully raise the standard of living so that the problem of overpopulation solves itself naturally.
I'm asking what you do if population growth starts to outpace food production despite your best efforts? Do you start killing old people, or do you stop letting people have babies?