My girlfriend/SO's grandfather died last night, running on a treadmill when his heart gave out.
He wasn't signed up for cryonics, of course. She tried to convince him, and I tried myself a little the one time I met her grandparents.
"This didn't have to happen. Fucking religion."
That's what my girlfriend said.
I asked her if I could share that with you, and she said yes.
Just so that we're clear that all the wonderful emotional benefits of self-delusion come with a price, and the price isn't just to you.
I think it needs to be confronted because simply taking things as given leads to sloppy moral reasoning. Your preference for self-preservation seems to be an impulse like any other, no more profound than a preference for chocolate over vanilla. What needs to be confronted is what makes that preference significant, if anything. Why should a rationalist in all other things let himself be ruled by raw desire in the arena of deciding what is meaningful? Why not inquire, to be more sure of ourselves?
Again, this is the ultimately important part. Wherever the goals come from, we can cooperate and use politics to turn them into results that we all want. Further, we discipline ourselves so that our goals are clear and consistent. All I'm saying is that you may want to look into the basis of your own goals and systematize them to enhance clarity.
I'm very interested in those questions and have read a lot on evolutionary psychology and the evolutionary basis for our sense of morality. I feel I have a reasonably satisfactory explanation for the broad outlines of why we have many of the goals we do. My curiosity can itself be explained by the very ... (read more)