Our genes say we must soon die. I say they are not the masters.

[ryan]

I asked what is worse than death to explain why it should be a top priority.

If you hate death, there is no reason not to hate the only thing that guarantees it will occur. Prolonging life will not solve the problem, because everybody dies, even if you live for 1000 or 1,000,000 years. There is no such thing as birth without death.

You can't possibly know this. I expect that we will continue to gain power over ourselves and the environment at an exponential rate.

I think I do know it, because entropy will eventually prevail, won't it? Even in your wildest imagination, let's say you live for billions of years as some kind of god, impervious to the elements... won't everything around you eventually rip itself apart as the universe expands and the stars burn up all their energy? At some point, it has to come to an end, and when that happens you will be in exactly the same state you would have been if you'd died at 76, and it will suck just as hard.

Imagine that we figure out how to make a wormhole to go back in time, and hopefully reality splits each time to avoid the grandfather paradox.

Or what if we figure out how we can get energy from nothing in the form of positive and negative energy like how the universe supposedly did?

Imagine that everyone is a millionaire.

Imagine that everyone is a pacifist.

OK, I have done my bit to solve world hunger and achieve world peace.

Unless, of course, imagination achieves nothing without some kind of reality based plan to bring about the conditions being imagined. In that case, I have done nothing but waste time.

Imagination is as effective as prayer. Neither gets shit done.

Did you read what I was replying to? I gave reasons why it may be possible to exist forever. PyramidHead has to be certain that what I said is not possible.

 

[bilby]

I asked what is worse than death to explain why it should be a top priority.

If you hate death, there is no reason not to hate the only thing that guarantees it will occur. Prolonging life will not solve the problem, because everybody dies, even if you live for 1000 or 1,000,000 years. There is no such thing as birth without death.

You can't possibly know this. I expect that we will continue to gain power over ourselves and the environment at an exponential rate.

I think I do know it, because entropy will eventually prevail, won't it? Even in your wildest imagination, let's say you live for billions of years as some kind of god, impervious to the elements... won't everything around you eventually rip itself apart as the universe expands and the stars burn up all their energy? At some point, it has to come to an end, and when that happens you will be in exactly the same state you would have been if you'd died at 76, and it will suck just as hard.

Imagine that we figure out how to make a wormhole to go back in time, and hopefully reality splits each time to avoid the grandfather paradox.

Or what if we figure out how we can get energy from nothing in the form of positive and negative energy like how the universe supposedly did?

Imagine that everyone is a millionaire.

Imagine that everyone is a pacifist.

OK, I have done my bit to solve world hunger and achieve world peace.

Unless, of course, imagination achieves nothing without some kind of reality based plan to bring about the conditions being imagined. In that case, I have done nothing but waste time.

Imagination is as effective as prayer. Neither gets shit done.

Did you read what I was replying to? I gave reasons why it may be possible to exist forever. PyramidHead has to be certain that what I said is not possible.

I saw no reasons; just highly imaginative fantasies.

Perhaps we will find exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics.

It would be insane to hold your breath waiting for it to happen though.

The things you suggest are only 'possible' for the broadest definition of 'possible' - It would be very, very difficult to come up with any less plausible ideas.

 

[PyramidHead]

That was my point about the defeated army. It's not logically impossible for the Native Americans in the USA to somehow amass the resources to take back their ancestral land, but it's so incredibly unlikely that any individual Native American who devotes his life to that goal is probably wasting his time.

 

[ryan]

Did you read what I was replying to? I gave reasons why it may be possible to exist forever. PyramidHead has to be certain that what I said is not possible.

I saw no reasons; just highly imaginative fantasies.

Perhaps we will find exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics.

It would be insane to hold your breath waiting for it to happen though.

The things you suggest are only 'possible' for the broadest definition of 'possible' - It would be very, very difficult to come up with any less plausible ideas.

You are not understanding the discussion. PyramidHead made the positive claim, so it is up to PyramidHead to prove that all ideas are impossible.

There might be an infinite number of ways that we can live forever, and there is probably an infinite number of ways that we won't. I am trying to find the ways that we will.

 

[ryan]

That was my point about the defeated army. It's not logically impossible for the Native Americans in the USA to somehow amass the resources to take back their ancestral land, but it's so incredibly unlikely that any individual Native American who devotes his life to that goal is probably wasting his time.

This is my job. Most people hate their jobs. I find this interesting and empowering, not to mention the infinite reward if the goal is achieved.

So then what else is worth doing and why is it worth doing it?

 

[PyramidHead]

That was my point about the defeated army. It's not logically impossible for the Native Americans in the USA to somehow amass the resources to take back their ancestral land, but it's so incredibly unlikely that any individual Native American who devotes his life to that goal is probably wasting his time.

This is my job. Most people hate their jobs. I find this interesting and empowering, not to mention the infinite reward if the goal is achieved.

So then what else is worth doing and why is it worth doing it?

Silly ryan: nothing is worth doing, not even what you're doing, in the end.

 

[ryan]

This is my job. Most people hate their jobs. I find this interesting and empowering, not to mention the infinite reward if the goal is achieved.

So then what else is worth doing and why is it worth doing it?

Silly ryan: nothing is worth doing, not even what you're doing, in the end.

Exactly, so why not do this? And what if we succeed?

 

[bilby]

Silly ryan: nothing is worth doing, not even what you're doing, in the end.

Exactly, so why not do this? And what if we succeed?

Time is limited. Wasting it is stupid. Trying to achieve immortality is less likely to be successful than trying to win the lottery; the answer to 'Why not do this?' is the same as the answer to 'why not spend all my money on lottery tickets, so that next week I can buy a luxury yacht?'; And the answer to 'And what if we succeed?' in both cases is a confident 'You won't' - the difference being that in the case of buying lottery tickets with your life savings, your chance of success is rather higher - although both are close enough to zero as to make no real difference.

 

[Bomb#20]

Those who do not want to die are responsible for doing something about it. Nobody wants to die, yet they do next to nothing about contributing to knowledge and technology that will let them control their lifespans. ...
Letting people have control over how and when they die, anticipating emergent problems from extending lifespans and finding solutions to them, in my opinion, should be everybody's top priorities. What the hell is worse than death?

Pain. Despair. Letting people have control cuts both ways. Two people I knew with incurable diseases wanted to die; they killed themselves.

...
I fully agree with you about controlling the circumstances of our death, but that's much more complicated than controlling aging. Think about it: wouldn't most people want to die of old age anyway, if given the choice, instead of dying in a horrible accident or by disease?

Dying of old age is dying by disease. And dying by disease is dying in a horrible accident: a horrible accident at the cellular level. Death by natural causes isn't as much fun as it's cracked up to be.

 

[Bomb#20]

Also, we may be able to one day upload our information and have a backup copy just in case of a freak accident.

This is key. Everything else we might do to prolong life just reduces the chance of death in a given year to some finite level, which means when you integrate to infinity the total probability of death goes to 1. To have any chance of living forever, you have to keep reducing the chance per year again and again, and never stop. Since any one backup copy can be destroyed, that means you have to keep increasing the number of backup copies, and keep dispersing them to locations further and further away, without limit. If you ever decide a million backup copies in a million different galaxies is enough insurance, then you will eventually die.

You can't possibly know this. I expect that we will continue to gain power over ourselves and the environment at an exponential rate.

I think I do know it, because entropy will eventually prevail, won't it? Even in your wildest imagination, let's say you live for billions of years as some kind of god, impervious to the elements... won't everything around you eventually rip itself apart as the universe expands and the stars burn up all their energy? At some point, it has to come to an end, and when that happens you will be in exactly the same state you would have been if you'd died at 76, and it will suck just as hard.

Assuming the universe is infinitely large, and assuming it's "open", i.e., just a big bang without a matching big crunch, in theory there's no heat death. (Source: one of Steven Weinberg's books.) An expanding universe is its own inexhaustible heat sink.

When the stars all burn up you'd have to switch to a different technology, something not based on starlight. Whatever the new technology is, eventually the universe will be too cold for it to operate, so you'll have to switch to a different technology again, and so forth. Each technology runs slower and colder than the previous one. At some point your computer will be the size of a galaxy, built out of billions of black holes orbiting one another, and each of your thoughts will take billions of years. At some further point, Hawking radiation will destroy your black holes and you'll have to switch to a different technology again. But as long as you can keep discovering new science, in principle it's possible to have a non-zero chance of outrunning death.

 

[bilby]

This is key. Everything else we might do to prolong life just reduces the chance of death in a given year to some finite level, which means when you integrate to infinity the total probability of death goes to 1. To have any chance of living forever, you have to keep reducing the chance per year again and again, and never stop. Since any one backup copy can be destroyed, that means you have to keep increasing the number of backup copies, and keep dispersing them to locations further and further away, without limit. If you ever decide a million backup copies in a million different galaxies is enough insurance, then you will eventually die.

You can't possibly know this. I expect that we will continue to gain power over ourselves and the environment at an exponential rate.

I think I do know it, because entropy will eventually prevail, won't it? Even in your wildest imagination, let's say you live for billions of years as some kind of god, impervious to the elements... won't everything around you eventually rip itself apart as the universe expands and the stars burn up all their energy? At some point, it has to come to an end, and when that happens you will be in exactly the same state you would have been if you'd died at 76, and it will suck just as hard.

Assuming the universe is infinitely large, and assuming it's "open", i.e., just a big bang without a matching big crunch, in theory there's no heat death. (Source: one of Steven Weinberg's books.) An expanding universe is its own inexhaustible heat sink.

When the stars all burn up you'd have to switch to a different technology, something not based on starlight. Whatever the new technology is, eventually the universe will be too cold for it to operate, so you'll have to switch to a different technology again, and so forth. Each technology runs slower and colder than the previous one. At some point your computer will be the size of a galaxy, built out of billions of black holes orbiting one another, and each of your thoughts will take billions of years. At some further point, Hawking radiation will destroy your black holes and you'll have to switch to a different technology again. But as long as you can keep discovering new science, in principle it's possible to have a non-zero chance of outrunning death.

But a copy of your consciousness is not 'you', and will diverge from 'you' as soon as it is created.

It is no more justifiable to overwrite a copy with an update to match it to your recent experience; or to delete or switch off an unwanted copy, than it is to harvest organs from your identical twin.

And a copy would no more be 'you' than your identical twin is 'you'.

Somebody might survive indefinitely by this technique, but it is vanishingly unlikely to be you. You may as well 'survive' by having descendants.

 

[ryan]

Exactly, so why not do this? And what if we succeed?

Time is limited. Wasting it is stupid. Trying to achieve immortality is less likely to be successful than trying to win the lottery; the answer to 'Why not do this?' is the same as the answer to 'why not spend all my money on lottery tickets, so that next week I can buy a luxury yacht?'; And the answer to 'And what if we succeed?' in both cases is a confident 'You won't' - the difference being that in the case of buying lottery tickets with your life savings, your chance of success is rather higher - although both are close enough to zero as to make no real difference.

People work at jobs. They do this for fulfillment but mostly for income. Some people actually enjoy their jobs.

For many people, this job would satisfy all three, but it's not for everyone.

 

[ryan]

This is key. Everything else we might do to prolong life just reduces the chance of death in a given year to some finite level, which means when you integrate to infinity the total probability of death goes to 1. To have any chance of living forever, you have to keep reducing the chance per year again and again, and never stop. Since any one backup copy can be destroyed, that means you have to keep increasing the number of backup copies, and keep dispersing them to locations further and further away, without limit. If you ever decide a million backup copies in a million different galaxies is enough insurance, then you will eventually die.

There will probably be much better ways than this. Can you imagine what we will know in a 1000 years if technology and knowledge increases roughly the same as it is now? Moore's law predicts that computers will have the power to simulate the universe in about 600 years. We would know what parts of the universe would be safe and for how long. This is not to mention what artificial intelligence will advise us to do.

If the world would just step up biomedical research, we could all see this happen.

 

[Bomb#20]

But a copy of your consciousness is not 'you', and will diverge from 'you' as soon as it is created.

It is no more justifiable to overwrite a copy with an update to match it to your recent experience; or to delete or switch off an unwanted copy, than it is to harvest organs from your identical twin.

Nobody said the copy has to be operationalized while you're still functional. It's just backup data, no more alive than a photograph.

And a copy would no more be 'you' than your identical twin is 'you'.

Thank you, Dr. McCoy. McCoy may have angsted over the metaphysical question of whether the reconstituted material at the other end of the transporter beam was really "him"; but that didn't stop him from going along on the ride when the alternative was likely to be lethal.

 

[Bomb#20]

There will probably be much better ways than this. Can you imagine what we will know in a 1000 years if technology and knowledge increases roughly the same as it is now?

Possibly. But scientific advance doesn't affect the mathematical requirement -- that the probability of death per year mustn't ever stop decreasing.

Moore's law predicts that computers will have the power to simulate the universe in about 600 years.

Actually it doesn't. For Moore's law to keep operating for 600 years, a chip will have to have more components than there are currently known subatomic particles in a chip. That can only happen with advances in fundamental physics, i.e. if we discover new sub-subatomic particles. If such particles exist, then a simulation of the universe will have to simulate them, which means the simulation will take a lot more computation than current estimates. In other words, calculations that we'll be able to simulate the universe in 600 years are based on inconsistently assuming that the universe is both more complicated than we currently realize, and not more complicated.

 

[bilby]

Nobody said the copy has to be operationalized while you're still functional. It's just backup data, no more alive than a photograph.

I am sorry, I had no idea that you were so far along in developing this technology as to be able to make a backup copy of a person that persists while not 'operationalized' - or are you pulling this functional knowledge from thin air?

And a copy would no more be 'you' than your identical twin is 'you'.

Thank you, Dr. McCoy. McCoy may have angsted over the metaphysical question of whether the reconstituted material at the other end of the transporter beam was really "him"; but that didn't stop him from going along on the ride when the alternative was likely to be lethal.

McCoy did (and thought) whatever the scriptwriters wanted him to do.

Non-fictional characters however are not so easily mollified.

Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that the transporter is supposed to record the position and motion of every particle in McCoys body; that information is then transmitted to another location - the surface of a nearby planet - and used to build an exact replica. Meanwhile, the 'Real McCoy' is disintegrated (and presumably the material recycled).

If the disintegration and recycling part fails, we now have two McCoys - one on the Enterprise, the other on the planet. Both believe that they are the Real McCoy - leading to many interesting issues; for the purpose of this discussion, the question is whether it was morally acceptable to try to disintegrate the original. Essentially the transporter has made an identical twin McCoy; and when working as designed, kills the McCoy that we started with; While this helps to resolve any argument about who gets to sleep with his wife on their return to Earth, it seems a little extreme.

Assuming that the transporter successfully disintegrates the Real McCoy, then he has done the exact opposite of achieving immortality. He is dead; and his twin lives.

Of course we can take a different view - if the pattern is the person - neatly avoiding dualism - then there are now two McCoys, and both are real. But in that case, your 'photograph' analogy breaks down. If the stored information is sufficient to model a person, then it is a person. Perhaps one 'Frozen' to be reanimated later, but a person nonetheless. Immortality in a 'Frozen' state is indestinguishable from death - unless and until the frozen image is 'operationalized'. If the universe retains the means to 'awaken' such images, then an indefinite life is possible - but there is no way to ensure that state of affairs, and every reason to expect it not to occur.

If the price of immortality is spending eternity 'asleep' as a 'non-operationalized' image, then it is too high - immortality that is indestinguishable from death is pointless.

 

[Perspicuo]

Ya, but how long will they be pissed off for? A few decades to a century max and then those poverty-stricken whiners will die off. It's not too big a deal.

When that happens, who will change my oil?

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be changing my oil
When I'm six-hundred sixty-four?

 

[ryan]

Possibly. But scientific advance doesn't affect the mathematical requirement -- that the probability of death per year mustn't ever stop decreasing.

Did you mean to put "increasing"?

Moore's law predicts that computers will have the power to simulate the universe in about 600 years.

Actually it doesn't. For Moore's law to keep operating for 600 years, a chip will have to have more components than there are currently known subatomic particles in a chip. That can only happen with advances in fundamental physics, i.e. if we discover new sub-subatomic particles. If such particles exist, then a simulation of the universe will have to simulate them, which means the simulation will take a lot more computation than current estimates. In other words, calculations that we'll be able to simulate the universe in 600 years are based on inconsistently assuming that the universe is both more complicated than we currently realize, and not more complicated.

You can significantly reduce the data needed by finding redundancies in the universe.

 

[Kharakov]

I am sorry, I had no idea that you were so far along in developing this technology as to be able to make a backup copy of a person that persists while not 'operationalized' - or are you pulling this functional knowledge from thin air?

The backup copy isn't even necessary. Future spacetime manipulation technology allows us to snatch every soul in existence at the moment of death and insert it into a new scenario. The event horizon of soul snatch may be a bit slippery to probe, but eventually we'll be able to get inside it in order to cause reemergence of the soul post snatch.

 

[DBT]

I am sorry, I had no idea that you were so far along in developing this technology as to be able to make a backup copy of a person that persists while not 'operationalized' - or are you pulling this functional knowledge from thin air?

The backup copy isn't even necessary. Future spacetime manipulation technology allows us to snatch every soul in existence at the moment of death and insert it into a new scenario. The event horizon of soul snatch may be a bit slippery to probe, but eventually we'll be able to get inside it in order to cause reemergence of the soul post snatch.

That happens to be the theme of Philip Jose Farmer's RiverWorld series.