Wiki Contributions

Comments

The difference is that life, given an infinite amount of time also has an infinite amount of options for things one can do. There are enough things to do forever, the only question is whether the specific individual will keep thinking of things that they want to do. The crux of our disagreement seems to be that you think people would get bored with literally everything if they lived long enough and I think that most people would find something worthwhile in the infinite possibilities. But neither of us have lived very long (cosmically speaking) so it is difficult to really know how we will feel if we live to be 500, 5000, or 5 million years old.

There might be thousands of years of novelty in that. Maybe millions. But the returns are diminishing. Just think of all the amazing stuff we completely ignore and are bored with already.

Returns are diminishing for one activity, but there are infinite possibilities of activities one might do in infinite time. I don't think diminishing returns applies to everything you could do at once. But again, I don't know, maybe continued existence would eventually become unpleasant. That's a possibility I'm not ignoring, but just because its a possibility doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to have immortality be an option.

Why wouldn't living forever be just like any other scenario where a good thing is multiplied by infinity? The novelty would wear off just like chocolate or sex. Things are "good" because they are scarce. Never-ending anything would become a burden.

If I get tired of eating chocolate or having sex it is because I want to do something else. I can't really 'do' anything besides living (death isn't me doing something because I no longer exist). We are also programmed to only want a certain amount of sex and chocolate, but we are for the most part programmed to want life as long as we can get it. Life also has a lot more options than more specific 'good' things. I always have too many things I want to do in a day. It is hard to conceive of waking up one day and thinking I was bored of life or just wanted to stop existing. I have to imagine pretty dire circumstances.

Then again, I haven't lived tens of thousands of years, I might very well get bored and decide I was done with life. But I still would like the option to live as long as I want, just in case I don't.

More polite, but probably less accurate. I could be wrong, but it was a conscious decision to word it that way

Death is the occurrence of life being lost, the event has value insofar as the living being had value.

If one wants to continue to exist, getting rid of the state of nonexistence seems like a fairly reasonable goal for that person to pursue. I want to exist, regardless of the fact that nonexistence is itself painless.

I consider the loss of everything a person is to be 'bad' because I value the unique intricacies of each person. I attribute value there because I find that complexity mind-blowingly incredible. And I think it is sad when something so incredible and unique goes away forever.

Also I want to point out that you don't actually have a reason (at least not that you've stated) for why you think you don't want to live forever, you just say that you find the desire "odd" without explanation.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone on here claim that biological immortality will fix all the problems of the world, just that reducing death is a good thing and that we should definitely do it if we can. Because the loss of the massive complexity that is a human being is really, really bad.

I've asked quite a few people this question, even older people. I don't have wider statistics on it (maybe you do and if so I'd be interested in seeing them) but the people I ask very rarely say they would not like to live longer if they could stay young and be with their friends and families. I have even been told yes by some very religious people in their seventies.

I hadn't seen this before. Hanson's conception of intelligence actually seems much simpler and more plausible than how I had previously imagined it. I think 'intelligence' can easily act as a Semantic Stopsign because it feels like a singular entity through the experience of consciousness, but actually may be quite modular as Hanson suggests.

Wasn't the idea to not be sated until the end of the day and thus have a clearer head and be more productive? I'm not concerned about losing weight, which I have heard skipping dinner is pretty good for.

Same. I'm completely fine if I skip lunch though. I think I might try doing that regularly and see how it goes.

Load More