You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

smk comments on Disability Culture Meets the Transhumanist Condition - Less Wrong Discussion

31 Post author: Rubix 28 October 2011 07:02PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (150)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: smk 31 October 2011 10:11:34PM 2 points [-]

we'll have to abandon at least as large a chuck of our current mortal deathist cultures when we defeat death

Speaking of that, can anyone recommend some fiction that deals with the cultural changes that come with defeating death (or mostly defeating it), and doesn't come out on the side of deathism?

Comment author: lessdazed 31 October 2011 10:43:34PM 0 points [-]

A lot of religious material, particularly Christian, might qualify.

Comment author: Nornagest 31 October 2011 11:00:51PM *  0 points [-]

How do you mean? I've read a fair bit of Christian doctrine and apologia, and I've never seen any substantial volume of material dealing with the actual mechanics of an immortal existence. Usually it's described in terms of an existence of perfect concordance with God's wishes, which implies perfect bliss by some theological sleight of hand but doesn't imply much detail as to what that actually involves, experientially speaking. Certainly nothing concrete on the cultural changes that we'd reasonably expect after defeating the last enemy that shall be destroyed.

The Muslim afterlife's much more detailed, incidentally, but it's just your standard feasts-and-gardens paradise, more or less equivalent to Valhalla but with different cultural foci of enjoyment. I don't find it much more eternity-term compelling than what little we can infer of the Christian version, although I'd probably be more inclined to visit it as a holiday destination.