The Cycle of Life and Death

[Cognisant]

Spoiler: For your consideration

Technological life extension is the only way to break the cycle, being a better person is a wonderful goal but as long as the cycle continues every utopia that rises will fall, every brick we lay will turn to dust, every child born will also grow old, die, and be forgotten.

But what of the meaninglessness of life you might ask, to which my response is: what of it?

A finite life is meaningless, yes, but it is only made meaningless by the death of whom it has meaning to, but if that person is going to live forever then everything they do will be forever meaningful.

I call that the true life.

 

[Palodoblado]

sometimes i wonder, when humankind reaches immortality, and it's prescribed as a paracetamol or an ibuprofeno, they'll think of us like we think of the people who died because of black death
i guess they'll have their own problems by then too, like living forever in a room, locked inside a machine that's unable to open doors.

 

[Ex-User (13503)]

Technological life extension is the only way to break the cycle

every utopia that rises will fall

I rest my case.

 

[Black Rose]

https://philpapers.org/rec/TURDIT

Abstract
Future superintelligent AI will be able to reconstruct a model of the personality of a person who lived in the past based on informational traces. This could be regarded as some form of immortality if this AI also solves the problem of personal identity in a copy-friendly way. A person who is currently alive could invest now in passive self-recording and active self-description to facilitate such reconstruction. In this article, we analyze informational-theoretical relationships between the human mind, its traces, and its future model; based on this analysis, we suggest the instruments to most cost-effectively collect quality data about a person for future resurrection. These guidelines form a “digital immortality protocol”. Digital immortality is plan C for achieving immortality, after plan A, life extension, and plan B, cryonics.

 

[aiyanah]

i think if one get's rid of death then life has no meaning, cause what is life without death?
such is the struggle of being in a binary plane.
to be immortal is to be remembered across time, we still talk about aristotle as an example.

 

[Cognisant]

i think if one get's rid of death then life has no meaning, cause what is life without death?

You're presuming I know you're right without actually making a point.

to be immortal is to be remembered across time, we still talk about aristotle as an example.

That's not immortality, that's being remembered, one could say being remembered could be like immortality in the sense that you still have influence on the world after you're gone, but you're still gone.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Here's a website with the pros and cons of this discussion: https://www.kialo.com/if-scientific...ns-become-immortal-7721/7721.0=7721.1/=7721.1

Might find it interesting- one of the arguments against immortality is that life will become meaningless because of it, not that immortality gives life meaning. Same reasoning but different ways to look at how the end result would be.

To a Christian I think 'true life' is satisfaction in the glory of God. That's another tale to talk of, but I think as human beings it's humble and wiser to be humans, and not to try and reach for what is unimaginable- something that we wish to be outside of God's sovereignty.

 

[Cognisant]

Might find it interesting- one of the arguments against immortality is that life will become meaningless because of it, not that immortality gives life meaning. Same reasoning but different ways to look at how the end result would be.

You're presuming I know you're right without actually making a point.

It's hardly even a circular argument because there's no argument being made in the first place, you're just insisting an immortal life is meaningless (in what sense?) because... I should just already know?

Here let me give you a structure to work with:
Step 1, The Opener: Establish why life is worth living.
Step 2, The Crux: Explain why that changes over time.
Step 3, The Finisher: Describe a scenario in which life is no longer worth living.

To a Christian I think 'true life' is satisfaction in the glory of God. That's another tale to talk of, but I think as human beings it's humble and wiser to be humans, and not to try and reach for what is unimaginable- something that we wish to be outside of God's sovereignty.

Replace "God" with "imaginary friend" and you'll realize how stupid that sounds to me.

Now we can have the old "does god exist" debate but no amount of my reasoning will change your mind and there's nothing you can say that I haven't heard before.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Sorry, I should have been more transparent with my post. There's an argument in the link on the cons side that claims this, I'm not the one making that argument. I just thought it was interesting how you can end up on different conclusions with the same conditional clause, if you get what I mean.

Oh and God existing is a basic belief! In many ways if you love whats right, whether that be in nature, in relationships, in culture, or in humanity, you love a very part that God transcends and takes part in.

 

[aiyanah]

lol, you live in a 12 dimensional binary axiomatic universe, things are contradictory by design cause it seems they have to be in order to exist at all here.
you are experiencing the 3rd dimension currently, occasionally the 4th.
before getting into the rest of this one can safely assume you also want to experience ALL the other dimensions, why chain yourself to the 3rd if that is the case? but i digress

the "nature" is binary the universe is axiomatic, ergo there must always be 2 sides of opposites (up-down, left-right, chaos-order, life-death, is-isn't, possible-impossible).
to upset any of these axioms generally has hitherto unseen consequences, or at my most cynical they are planned consequences like the polio vaccine priming the populace for HIV/AIDS, but it's cleaner to just assume nature has a failsafe for any upsetting of balance that mankind comes up with.

why are we vulnerable in this manner? because we don't "study" the extremes of these axioms we "observe" them, we study what exists inbetween them and make use of that because there is "infinite possibility" in that space, and that space is only made valuable by the fact that it is limited by the fundamental axioms that make up the stated area of play, this is why you have emotions so that you can place value on those experiences you have within that limited space where infinite potential exists.
remove the limits and then the potential becomes finite.
contradictory much? unlucky for you you exist in a 12 dimensional binary axiomatic universe where things are often not obligated to make sense.

what value would emotions have if you were here forever? this isn't a piece of biology we can simply uproot, why should i be happy when a new child is born when i'm here forever and the child is unneeded because of it? forget child birth why should any meanderings of mankind matter when an observer is immortal?
achievements stop meaning anything cause you actually could have "done it later" and likely were better off not doing it at all because "is it still valuable now that we're immortal?", and you have to run this idea past everything generally, but it should be enough to run it past a successful child birth, heck even an unsuccessful child birth loses value cause you can just make another baby tomorrow and see what happens 9 months down the line.
time wasted? never we're immortal, we're performing experiments now and hoping we don't lose our sanity, which might already be gone, because we're immortal and not built for it on any metric cause it invalidates half our critical biology, or maybe over half.

how do i know the sanity is gone? cause you're still gonna feel emotions and know that they are worthless, tangibly know that they are worthless without prompting from the outside environment, what happens from there i can't say, perhaps people kill themselves in an attempt to find meaning again, tears dripping from their chins as they drive blades into their artificial hearts to make "the feeling" go away.

so with that in mind, what failsafe do aiy reckon nature would come up with to wage war against our desire to imbalance her creation?
she would destroy us all, that's all i know for certain, i can't state what her methods would be but it is obvious enough that on the metaphysical plane nature is going to have a large backlash on offer for us if we so go down this route.
i mention AIDS and polio as an example, we vaccinated polio and the result was inoculating ourselves with AIDS.
can you opt not vaccinate people against polio? no you cannot

this isn't the same as extending our life span to 500 years or something where there is still an end point to it all, this is removing the end and maintaining the beginning, think of the neverending story but it actually never ends.
the likelihood of people maintaining their sanity, especially those who crave immortality as they are already a risk factor for not being able to accept the preconditions of existence, are so astronomically low as to make the project unsavory to any futurist not afflicted with fear of death.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Duration of life has nothing to do with meaning. The desire to prolong one's life is just a basic instinct.

 

[Cognisant]

Sorry, I should have been more transparent with my post. There's an argument in the link on the cons side that claims this, I'm not the one making that argument. I just thought it was interesting how you can end up on different conclusions with the same conditional clause, if you get what I mean.

You haven't concluded anything, you spouted nonsense then immediately backed off when I challenged you to make an actual point, basically you're full of shit. But you're right about one thing, it is fascinating that you tried to defend a position for which you have no argument to make, like an NPC spouting scripted dialogue.
Maybe try thinking for yourself?

Oh and God existing is a basic belief! In many ways if you love whats right, whether that be in nature, in relationships, in culture, or in humanity, you love a very part that God transcends and takes part in.

Because "God" is defined as all that is good, circular argument, full of contradictions, I've heard it before and it doesn't sound any less stupid now.

before getting into the rest of this one can safely assume you also want to experience ALL the other dimensions, why chain yourself to the 3rd if that is the case? but i digress

By any measure death is not a good thing and the surest way to prove this point is to find the person making it, put a gun to their head and start counting, you'll find the only ones who don't freak out are the ones already on death's door with nothing left to lose.

what value would emotions have if you were here forever? this isn't a piece of biology we can simply uproot, why should i be happy when a new child is born when i'm here forever and the child is unneeded because of it? forget child birth why should any meanderings of mankind matter when an observer is immortal?

That works in reverse, what value do your emotions have when you're only alive temporarily, why care about the future of the human race when you won't be here to see it?

You need to first establish why life is worth living then explain why that changes with time, that is the only relevant argument against immortality.

We can talk for the rest of our lives about whether or not an immortal life is meaningful and get nowhere because life doesn't have an established meaning, indeed there's many good arguments to be made that life is inherently meaningless.

so with that in mind, what failsafe do aiy reckon nature would come up with to wage war against our desire to imbalance her creation?

"Nature" is just a human concept, there's no such thing as a stable homeostatic ecosystem, there never has been.

the likelihood of people maintaining their sanity, especially those who crave immortality as they are already a risk factor for not being able to accept the preconditions of existence, are so astronomically low as to make the project unsavory to any futurist not afflicted with fear of death.

Not being afraid of death is insane.

 

[aiyanah]

- it is naive to define god as all that is good, because god created hell just as much as heaven. this is the general naivety when approaching the topic or concept of god and somehow the science doesn't get connected when all sides have already answered these age old questions (the fiction does it too).
the net charge of the universe is 0, ergo it is balanced, weighted fairly on both sides, whatever those sides are. and those sides stretch out infinitely by our observations, and all observations are in fact correct. humans have potential to be jesus or lucifer, you will be remembered across time just as well regardless of which side you pick, that's not accidental.
the criminals that go on murdering sprees serve just as much a purpose as ghandi because they establish for the collective what isn't permitted.
i mean, take waterboarding for instance.

Spoiler

and to be certain it's not waterboarding

an interrogation technique simulating the experience of drowning, in which a person is strapped head downwards on a sloping board or bench with the mouth and nose covered, while large quantities of water are poured over the face.

so tell me, without a criminal or chaos weighted individual coming up with this simple idea how would we establish what is wrong?
how would you justify right without wrong?
how would we remember what is wrong lol.
dont say through history because that never explains why anything is wrong, hence marxism still being attractive in 2018.

- if death is not a good thing then please justify euthanasia or abortion, or both.
if you are going to suddenly permit nuance to when death is and isn't permitted then explain why death is now not all bad and juxtapose that with the sanity argument when permitted immortality.
matter of fact would it be illegal to kill oneself in a world with immortality? what if one doesn't want to live?
by your logic of "all death is bad" it surely can't be ok to do any of these things so then we start having to deal with the issue of what choices people are and aren't permitted to make.
"sorry, you're not allowed to stop living because death is bad"

- you've answered your own question, people care because they won't be here later. I have to imprint my knowledge onto the next generation before i pass on, failing that i don't know what might happen to them. neither do you, neither does anyone.
if i'm here anyway, why even bother with imprinting knowledge, they're immortal too innit? they'll figure out the game themselves eventually. this is assuming one even see's a point to having children if granted immortality cause i certainly can't, neither can i see much purpose to do anything at all other than existing and observing lol.
and to be correct the onus of proof is on you here, because that is how we function and have functioned, there is no contra evidence in your favor saying that if we were granted reprieve from death that we would do anything at all, cause why should anyone do anything if it genuinely doesn't matter cause you'll be here later anyway.
this is why the churches are still here, that is valuable knowledge acquired across time that has yet to be trumped by anything cause as it turns out the leaders of the most powerful nations aren't secular, why is that? i'm sure you've voted for these people or advocated for them on occasion, why would you do that if they believe superstition instead of having successfully assimilated knowledge from prior generations?

- if life is meaningless then one should honestly kill themselves right now and stop living lol, why even bother taking your next breath?
dont use the biology as an excuse, we have many ways to stop a person breathing, some perhaps overly effective, why not take one of those options instead of being "trapped" by a meaningless existence on this wet rock in this vast expanse of silence which you're terrified of letting go of regardless.
makes no sense, sounds pitiful too, like the girlfriend that's too terrified of starting over from 0 despite the abusive partner already having given her enough reason to do so.

"Nature" is just a human concept, there's no such thing as a stable homeostatic ecosystem, there never has been.

[the observable universe stares at you intently]
everything is just a human concept, you're a human using your own labels on things.
how would you know what stable is? matter of fact doesn't the science itself state that this is the only viable configuration of our universe, other simulations showed immediate collapses (or rips) after the respective "big bangs" by other configurations.
if this isn't stable, then what exactly is, cause here (in this universe) you have 0 charge as stated by the science itself, you can google what the net charge of the universe is it'll come up 0.
one also has yet to prove the universe itself isn't conscious but we'll get there when the science is ready to make the step that religion made centuries ago.

being afraid of death is insane btw, what instead people are afraid of is the unknown that exists beyond death because they assume it's an unknown.
what will your immortal self do at the end of time when the universe itself calls it quits and everything becomes darkness once more?
somehow live at 0 kelvin experiencing a second as a millennia?
seems pitiful to me

 

[onesteptwostep]

Uh I'm pretty sure I never claimed that I was trying to make some argument. I never concluded anything either, I merely made a simple comment on an observation I thought that was interesting.

No, God is beyond good, because then he would be chained to whatever our conception of good might be. He alone is sovereign when it comes to morality, he is basically the only judge- no one can dispute. It's similar to how the Supreme Court is the highest law in the land- but God is easily more righteous than that. Either way I think you're much more inclined to have this topic discussion with like minded people, so I'll take my leave.

 

[Cognisant]

 

[aiyanah]

arthur is fun, i enjoy his starlifting episodes the most.