genetic engineering? ai singularity perhaps? How do you intend to live forever?
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No plans. I die like a real man.
I’m gonna die and like it.
Who wants. To live. Forever?
Who dares. To love. Forever?
There’s no chance for us
Yes, that’s my plan too, to behead another highlander.
But what if the eternal prize is just a scratchcard or a McDonalds coupon?Forever? Perhaps not, until I clean up my gaming/reading/watching backlog? Perhaps.
That might as mean forever as well though.
I don’t intend to live forever, that sounds rough as hell.
Depends on what kind of forever. If it’s truly forever and there’s nothing you can do about it, that sounds like hell (imagine being the only thing floating in the universe after the heat death!) but if you can decide after 200, 500, 1000 years you’ve had enough, it really sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
Fuck forever, just let my upcoming prostate biopsy be negative. I’m retiring and I have shit to do that doesn’t involve sitting in front of the TV wearing a diaper.
good luck, friend. this internet stranger will be keeping you in mind. nobody deserves some of the shit life dishes out, i sincerely hope this goes well for you.
I don’t? It sounds like a horrible curse. Part of the reason life is meaningful is that we’re only temporary witnesses of the universe.
I’ve never gotten this attitude. Why does only having temporary existence make life meaningful?
Because, for instance, choices carry more weight when you can make finitely many of them.
Knowing you only have a limited time forces you to try and realise what’s meaningful to you and what’s not, and to actual act upon it.
If you live forever, have time to learn everything, experience everything… Then do you really? At which point does the amount of different experiences you run after stop painting a coherent picture of one’s life, values and identity, and start looking like noise in a random checklist? Finding meaning in an eternal life would be a sisyphean task.
And also, ageing and dying are part of the human experience. Accepting your own mortality, your own limit in time, when you subjectively feel like you’ve always existed, is a meaningful journey. Becoming immortal robs you of that chance.
Because, for instance, choices carry more weight when you can make finitely many of them.
Ah, but on the other hand, they can only have finite impact. If one were immortal, then the consequence of each choice would last forever, giving it more weight rather than less.
Knowing you only have a limited time forces you to try and realise what’s meaningful to you and what’s not, and to actual act upon it.
Perhaps, but plenty of people get so absorbed in their lives that they don’t do this anyway, even with only finite time available to them.
If you live forever, have time to learn everything, experience everything… Then do you really? At which point does the amount of different experiences you run after stop painting a coherent picture of one’s life, values and identity, and start looking like noise in a random checklist? Finding meaning in an eternal life would be a sisyphean task.
Our identity already changes significantly over time; for example, I am a very different person in many ways than I was a decade ago. Thus, change is an inevitable feature of existence that we already need to embrace even for a finite lifetime.
Put another way, if one is seeking meaning through a lifelong stable identity, then one is looking in the wrong place because there is no such thing.
And also, ageing and dying are part of the human experience. Accepting your own mortality, your own limit in time, when you subjectively feel like you’ve always existed, is a meaningful journey. Becoming immortal robs you of that chance.
This is circular reasoning. If it were possible to be immortal–which is the hypothetical being considered–ageing and dying would no longer be a necessary part of the human experience, so there would need to be a better reason to choose them than “ageing and dying are part of the human experience”.
each choice would last forever, giving it more weight rather than less.
From my finite point of view, each of my choice lasts for my whole life, there is no subjective difference.
Perhaps, but plenty of people get so absorbed in their lives that they don’t do this anyway, even with only finite time available to them.
True, my initial comment should read “can be meaningful” rather than “is meaningful”.
Our identity already changes significantly over time; for example, I am a very different person in many ways than I was a decade ago. Thus, change is an inevitable feature of existence that we already need to embrace even for a finite lifetime.
Put another way, if one is seeking meaning through a lifelong stable identity, then one is looking in the wrong place because there is no such thing.
There is a whole spectrum between “misguidedly trying to be one and only one thing” and being an entropy machine.
This is circular reasoning. If it were possible to be immortal–which is the hypothetical being considered–ageing and dying would no longer be a necessary part of the human experience, so there would need to be a better reason to choose them than “ageing and dying are part of the human experience”.
You mean like the sentences after that?
From my finite point of view, each of my choice lasts for my whole life, there is no subjective difference.
Fair enough, but either way we arrive at the same conclusion that being immortal does not make choices less weighty.
There is a whole spectrum between “misguidedly trying to be one and only one thing” and being an entropy machine.
Hmm, I think our disagreement here depends what exactly would happen to the human mind over arbitrarily large time scales, because I don’t think that constantly changing is the same thing as inevitably converging towards being nothing at all in particular as you do.
Of course, this is in part an engineering issue because the human brain is not designed to last for more than ~ 120 years anyway, so one solution might be to just not take away our natural tendency for memories to get fuzzier the further they are in the past. This also would have the advantage that it would let us re-experience things as if it were for the first time, so that life never completely loses its novelty.
(Honestly, you could argue that this is essentially what reincarnation would do anyway, but reincarnation kind of scares me because most human and animal bodies have short and horrifying lives, so I would rather not take my chances if I do not have to.)
You mean like the sentences after that?
Hmm, I reread your comment to try and figure out what you are trying to get at with this but could not figure it out. Could you explain?
Fair enough, but either way we arrive at the same conclusion that being immortal does not make choices less weighty.
If you define the weigh of each choice as being the subjective length of time of it’s effect solely, then I would agree. But that is only one way to look at it. The other one, from my initial comment, was that each choice is more “precious” (willfully using a different term here for clarity rather than anything deep) if you only can make finitely many. In that sense, the weight of a single choice is that you know it will rob you of the opportunity of the other ones that you could have made. If you are immortal, you can just also make them later.
Hmm, I think our disagreement here depends what exactly would happen to the human mind over arbitrarily large time scales, because I don’t think that constantly changing is the same thing as inevitably converging towards being nothing at all in particular as you do.
Ok, my “entropy machine” statement was very vague and only moderately clearer in my head. For the sake of the argument, could we assume there is no physical issue with our brains over long periods of time? Say it feels like a healthy 20-30 year old mind forever.
My entropy thing had more to do with what one would do or chose to do. I was thinking about it vaguely in terms of “if someone or something can do everything, it communicates no information about that thing”.
What would be the point of trying to do everything apart from filing the time that you have? Maybe things would have meaning for N years with N very large? Doesn’t matter how large, it’s still nothing. And then you need to keep at it even though it’s lost meaning to you, or try something else, again, with the knowledge this is an inescapable cycle.
This also would have the advantage that it would let us re-experience things as if it were for the first time, so that life never completely loses its novelty.
So that’s starting to be interesting. If we add the forgetting, then you have sort of this sliding window of memories, yeah you address part of my above points. I was going to say that it could lead to being just trapped in sort of a periodic pattern largely, and that that would be meaningless, but I realised that would have been dishonest. First of all because of the unproven assumption, but more importantly because we have been talking about subjective meaning so far rather than objective meaning. So even if true, that would not necessarily render the experience meaningless subjectively.
All I can say is that, if I were given the choice in how to be made eternal, that would have to be part of the deal to soften the blow. Also this is not what I took it to mean so not what I had in mind when commenting. There’s room for arguing about objectives meaning but I feel like even agreeing on whether that’s a thing is a whole other conversation.
(Honestly, you could argue that this is essentially what reincarnation would do anyway,
Damn, I’m going to really sound like a contrarian I am sorry. I disagree with this. There is a fundamental difference to me between reincarnation, which involves death (or indeed, the erasure of the knowledge of your past life) and a discrete jump to another one and a sliding window of perceived memory but with continuous consciousness. I wouldn’t call reincarnation “immortality” in the context of this argument because we have been talking about subjective experience, and subjectively, even assuming reincarnation, you only ever experience one incarnation with no knowledge of prior ones.
Hmm, I reread your comment to try and figure out what you are trying to get at with this but could not figure it out. Could you explain?
Yes but it was more of an additional remark. I was just arguing death made for a meaningful experience. But it’s not the only meaningful experience one can have, so it does not reinforce my initial point.
Ok, my “entropy machine” statement was very vague and only moderately clearer in my head. For the sake of the argument, could we assume there is no physical issue with our brains over long periods of time? Say it feels like a healthy 20-30 year old mind forever.
Yes and no. I am fine with assuming that there is no physical issue with our brains, but in a sense that only addresses the hardware end and not the software end. It is not a given that our minds, when viewed as information processing systems, have the ability to remain stable indefinitely, a bit like how AIs in science fiction stories often go insane because instabilities build up. In fact, in a way some of the problems you are describing with what it would be like to be immortal could be viewed as examples of how the mind could break down over time.
So given this, there is a good chance we will need to apply a software patch to the mind, or some other form of engineering, to make the experience of being an immortal livable in practice. One possibility is that the information system simply cannot inherently hold an arbitrarily large number of memories so we need to engineer it to forget over time–though again, this might not actually be that invasive since our minds already forget most of what happens to them. However, maybe there are other possibilities as well, and when you get the procedure to become immortal you get to choose which one you want. (I actually really liked the The Golden Oecumene series about a post-singularity society because a major part of the setting was that there were lots of different ways that people wired their brains.)
(All of this is pure speculation, of course! I find it unlikely that any of this will come about any time soon, if civilization ever figures it out before destroying itself in one of many various ways.)
What would be the point of trying to do everything apart from filing the time that you have? Maybe things would have meaning for N years with N very large? Doesn’t matter how large, it’s still nothing. And then you need to keep at it even though it’s lost meaning to you, or try something else, again, with the knowledge this is an inescapable cycle.
I think that it is important to distinguish having the freedom to do anything from the attempt to do everything.
It reminds me a bit of Groundhog Day: what made Bill Murray happy in the end was finding meaning and contentment in his repeating life, rather than fighting against it.
I wouldn’t call reincarnation “immortality” in the context of this argument because we have been talking about subjective experience, and subjectively, even assuming reincarnation, you only ever experience one incarnation with no knowledge of prior ones.
Oh, yeah, to be clear, I totally do not consider it to be immortality either. It’s just that, completely as an aside, if reincarnation is a thing, then it is technically an alternate solution to the “novelty” problem, and it is often sold as such in Eastern religions. (I thought of this just because another commenter brought it up.)
Yes but it was more of an additional remark. I was just arguing death made for a meaningful experience. But it’s not the only meaningful experience one can have, so it does not reinforce my initial point.
If the conclusion is that death provides a significant element of meaning to your life, then fair enough!
For me, it just is what it is, and my life would not be any less meaningful if it were taken away. Having said that, if someone walked up to me and offered me immortality then I would be very hesitant because if things go bad then you might end up suffering from all eternity.
Novelty. When you’re a kid, every experience is new, fresh, wondrous. That shit eventually gets old as you may have noticed
Fair enough, but that sounds more like “enjoyable” than “meaningful”.
tho, from another perspective, I can make more and more enjoyable songs for eternity. Same with nearly any artistically creatable thing.
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Thanks to denial, I’m immortal!
Mortality is a state of mind!
I’m supposed to have a plan for this?
Obviously. Immortality is hard without a solid plan.
Shit man I’ve just been winging it my whole life. Fuck I guess I’ll sit down this weekend and come up with something solid. 😓
Only insane billionaires plan for that.
I’m not looking to live forever. Just another 40 to 50 years as long as I’m healthy. Only plan for that is to eat somewhat healthy and get a couple hours of cardio and strength training in a few times a week. Nothing obsurd just enough to maintain strength as I age and get the heart pumping.
There are treatments in development to keep you healthy much longer that currently.
I don’t want em
That is totally OK. You don’t, others do. You have no obligation to use them 👍
I have “kidnapped” a small child and am brainwashing them to think like me.
they will be me, essentially.
one day they will do the same, and “I” will live on for eternity.
I only plan for things that are possible so no plan to live forever.
Having said that, scientists are working on a cure for aging. Even if they sort that out before I die, the treatments will be too expensive for me.
If you are under 40 and in age appropriate health, you have reasonable chance to benefit from anti-aging therapies. Start prepare 😉
Most probably they will be expensive af at the beginning. And similar to microwave ovens or mobile phones, they will become very affordable with time (economies of scale, experience curve, competition, expiration of patents). Probably even many countries will subsides them because they will keep people healthy longer (so they could work out be generally productive, rather then costing a lot of money on treatment of chronic diseases).
Just fly a rocket into a stable orbit near a black hole and wait until the time dilation causes 1000s of years to pass on earth, then go back and hope someone has figured it out.
“Forever” is a long time. Only this universe still has a few billion years to go. Washing my dishes every day for all this time would be boring. No thanks!
I mean, it’s more of trillions of trillions of trillions… (repeat many times more) and that’s only until the heat death, the universe will continue to exist, though it would be a pretty boring place to visit after the black holes die.
Look at the world around you, do you really want to live forever? The more time passes the more death seams like retirement from life.
I plan to die like a normal human being.
Have no idea why people want to cling to this life for super long. It really isnt that amazing.
The fun part of quasi-immortality is that you can make your life pretty amazing!
Money isn’t really that much of a problem if you don’t have the certainty of being old and unable to provide for yourself.
I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to learn a lot and gain a lot of wisdom (though starting like a fool helps a lot with the latter!), and yet there is still so much more room to learn and grow, so the prospect of cutting that process short makes me sad, even if it is inevitable.
I think we are just souls inside bodies and we come back again and again to learn. But if you dont believe that, then I understand if life feels very important to hold on to.
For me, many things have created this perspective on life. But its impossible to tell others to believe it. You have to experience it for yourself.
Reading about reincarnation experiences that is hard to explain, or talking to mediums and getting to talk to your dead parents… There are many ways to explore these things, and you should look for anything they say that is literally impossible to explain.
I am agnostic as to whether reincarnation/rebirth is a thing, but if it is then I follow the Eastern view that the best thing to do about it is to become one with Brahman/attain nirvana so that this is the last life as a separate being. I have had ambitions to spend more time and energy on spiritual practices towards this end, but unfortunately I have had numerous health problems that have drained my energy and made it hard to focus. (I also used to be in pretty good physical shape and lost most of it over the last year or two.) It would be really nice if I at least had enough time and energy to make it to stream entry in this life.
