The reason I responded was to let you know that so that you could decide if you wanted to adjust your approach or not with more complete information in the future.
But defeating aging will never mean that we've defeated death. Accidents, murder, disease, and disasters would still happen. And the 2nd law of thermodynamics would still reign supreme eventually, even over effectively "immortal" humans.
So it's important to understand and accept death, even if we continue to work towards a world where nobody has to die of old age.
Our brains aren't big enough to hold an eternity of memories, so you would forget who you were to make room for what you'll become. What's the point of immortality without continuity? That's a living death.
And forget about actually cheating death. Imagine if somehow you survived long enough to witness the heat death of the universe. Stuck on some Dyson sphere around a white dwarf for billions of years as the entire universe fades to black and all the things you used to do become impossible because there isn't enough energy to do them. And in the end you still get sucked into a black hole like everyone else, wondering if you are the last living thing in the universe.
Nah I'll just die when the sun still shines.
This is already the case anyway.
I still want to live even if I don't remember everything and who I am have changed over time
I think some (maybe many?) people aren’t afraid of “being dead” they’re afraid of all the things they know exist and are enjoyable.
Life is the greatest, and most tragic blessing. Once you know you can’t un-know.
The mistake is in projecting the current emotions of attachment to the current capacity to experience all the things to a time where no such capacity exists. If you do that you will feel afraid of death in this way. If you see pre-birth as fundamentally exactly the same as post-life and aren't bothered by the pre-birth phase, then you have no problems.
I’m only not bothered by pre-birth because I wasn’t alive to understand the wonderful existence I have now.
It’s like being at a great party but knowing that your ride home is coming soon. I’d rather stay at the party.
Hmm. What I’ve said is basically that it’s the only party - but that’s to evoke a feeling not to be taken literally.
> You’re still projecting your aliveness onto the dead state
I’m not sure I follow. Can you elaborate? I’m speaking about specifically being alive and enjoying that, not fearing death in the act of being dead. I fear death as an alive person, not as a dead person.
When I say I fear death it’s not that I fear being dead. There won’t be anything. But as an alive person I know there’s lots of awesome stuff I’d like to be a part of. I would like to continue that experience. I don’t care what death holds.
Why do you fear it as an alive person? I get that you do, and I can make myself feel this way too if I indulge that same frame of reference. But why do you feel those emotions? Losing something hurts. But why do you feel bad about that loss? Most likely it's because you _can_ feel bad about it while you are alive. And, I certainly get that. It does make sense. But I see it as a fundamental error to feel this sense of loss about not being able to enjoy all the experiences of being alive because as a rule I take into account the fundamental state change that occurs after I'm dead. I look at that period only from the perspective of being dead, as that's how I'll be. If you look at being dead from the perspective of being alive, a frame in which you have emotions you can feel, then it feels bad, but this is some sort of strange faux-state that doesn't actually exist in reality as once you're dead you're dead, and while you're alive you're not dead. You're mixing aliveness and deadness together where I choose to cleanly separate them. I don't think about being dead from the perspective of being alive or having had been alive.
Why would you care and why would it matter if you do? Like what’s the point of being alive with such an outlook?
Two - you have expressed the sentiment beautifully. I may want to steal it later. Thank you sincerely.
Time arrow points in the direction of less beauty existing.
Life is good, we should try to get more of it by taking better care of ourselves, other people, and the fragile blue ball that carries us through space. Eventually the sun will explode and the blue ball will go away. Maybe we can take life far & fast enough to survive that! Heat death of the universe probably catches us eventually. Would it be better for a living things to be scared waiting for cosmic doom?
Sure you need some motivation to keep pushing forward. I think it's good to strive for more life. I think you can do that while simultaneously accepting that you cannot achieve infinite life.
To say that death isn't inevitable isn't the same as saying it's particularly likely that any of us will evade it, but the chance is not literally zero, and by my own estimates, I say it's non-negligible.
It's pretty uncontroversial to say that life extension technology is possible. There are times in the past when people didn't live as long as they now do. Finding more effective cancer/Alzheimer's/heart disease treatments is life extension. It's within the realm of possibilities that life extension tech will advance enough to let us live for some centuries. Cryonics (freezing yourself after death) is also something that could possibly work. It's possible that in the future, we'll figure out ways to successfully thaw and revive people who undergo cryonics.
Neither of these are immortality, exactly. For that you would need some sort of mind-state backup system or "consciousness uploading." That tech might not be available for a long time, but life extension/cryonics could hold many people over until it's available. Many people believe that it's either impossible, or that it wouldn't "be you" when you were restored from a backup. I think that these positions are wrong, but regardless, anyone who takes such a position has to allow that there's some possibility that they're wrong, and in fact such tech is possible and would work as intended. The theories of personal identity argued in Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit are relevant here.
I think it's important that we don't accept death as inevitable, because if people don't hold out hope of conquering death, then it's less likely that we'll conquer it in time.
I never struggled with an intrusive fear of death, so I don't have detailed suggestions for how to overcome it. But facing up to the fact that you are probably going to die, and introspecting into what specifically makes you so afraid, then taking measures to address it — that sort of thing — will probably help.
Measures that might help, depending on the nature of one's fear:
- Starting a mindfulness meditation practice to learn to notice when you fear death, and learn to dismiss the fear
- Seeking psychotherapy with a similar goal
- Study philosophy. It's possible that your intrusive fear of death stems from contradictory beliefs you hold, and you just haven't noticed the contradiction.
- Registering for cryonics, so that you know that you have done something to fight back against death (this might well increase your fear of death, beware)
- Switch careers to work on life extension technology. When vikings raid your village, you will be afraid. But the nature of your fear will depend on whether you decide to cower in fear or take up arms and fight back. Maybe you prefer the fear felt by someone fighting back.
But remember that death is horrible, and it's right and proper to fear it, as long as the fear isn't too intrusive.
I agree it's important and rational to push back against death even if it's impossible to conquer death.
I think you have to believe that Life is Good, and thus we should want More Life. Life extension tech is worth pursuing because additional healthy years give us more life. That's valuable even for relatively small gains.
In fact, I think the "conquer death" argument is counter productive! Nobody has ever successfully avoided death[0]. If you start your argument with "yeah, but what if we STOPPED dying" nobody will take this seriously. Because even if you're right, it's outside the realm of literally all human experience to date, which is a lot to sell someone on.
Better to just say "life is good, here's some tech that could produce more healthy life. Want some?" Because people definitely want some. Health and Wellness is like a $3B market[1]. Why make it more complicated than that?
[0] Maybe Jesus, but if you buy that one it implies a whole different world view.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-health-wellness-market...
It looks like you're making two different claims:
1. If you lived forever, there wouldn't be any reason to do anything.
2. Living forever isn't compatible with letting new people be born and live their lives.
To your first point: if you learned you were going to liber forever, would you stop spending time with your friends and family? Would you stop enjoying the time you spent together? I really don't see why you would. You might choose to put off some major life transitions, like having kids or starting a business, but would you put them off forever? If you really would put them off forever, are you sure that it's something you want to do, or do you just feel like you are supposed to do it? Is it a bad thing to let your twenties last 40 years, and only then settle down, because you know you have all the time in the world?
To your second point, I could go on about how there are a number of ways to make immortality compatible with new life, but sure, let's say that there isn't. Then the advent of immortality would be a radical change to the present order of the world. But would it be a bad change? The circle of life is beautiful, but the prospect of no one ever dying ever again is, I would say, good on the scale required to say that it might well be worth sacrificing the potential for new people to enter the world.
I'm more worried about the effect on the human species. How would my great great grandchildren act in the world knowing nothing of death or the fear of during from old age? I'm not so sure it's 100% a positive thing and it has the potential to be a very negative thing. Worse than what we have right now.
This is all very fascinating and it's really interesting to speculate though. There's probably just as many arguments in opposition as there are in support.
Death is a change, but it hold no more horror than pre-birth. Be at peace. Embrace your time. Live your life with purpose, love, humility and hope. Our ephemerality makes every moment meaningful, enjoy it.