To our resident transhumanists

[dystopian]

So if Dr. Jim Jones told you he has successfully copied your consciousness would you drink his kool aid afterwards?

What kind of retarded analogy is that? Obviously I'd require some actual science behind it before I'd believe it, and there's no reason to 'drink any koolaid' at that point.

Granted a mind copy is a far more plausible promise of an afterlife than ones based on incoherent bronze-age myths. But it still takes faith to believe your getting what's being promised.

Again; no, it doesn't. Yes, right now, believing that this tech *will absolutely* be developed, no question about it, would take faith. However, assuming it *does* get developed at some point, then it does *not* take faith to believe you're getting what's being promised; all it takes is A) an understanding of the process involved, and B) a proper vetting of the clinic you're getting it from. It'd be no more a matter of faith than going in for a hip replacement requires you to have 'faith' you're getting what's being promised.

Maybe you're confused, and you're thinking about this in too much of a 'metaphysical' manner. Are you under the impression that we think that such a technology would allow for a seamless and continuous experience of death->resurrection? Because that clearly can not be the case for the original mind; only for the new copy. You're thinking too much of the experience from the perspective of 'you', the original. Try placing yourself in the shoes of the resurrected copy. Suppose your original body/mind has died, but your mindstate had been copied mere moments before death and has now been transferred to a perfect replica of your body... you will think of yourself as 'you'... identical in every way to the original. You have all of the original's memories, his personality, and your body is the exact same too. From your perspective, it makes absolutely no sense to think of yourself as a 'copy'.

Edit: In fact, this is arguably something you *already* have to do deal with, since you're already technically a copy of yourself... not a single cell in your body is one you were born with, after all, assuming you're past a certain age. All the original cells are dead. So, are you a copy? Or are you you?

 

[Unbeatable]

Ridding us of unwanted suffering, IMO. The number one cause of pain, fear, panic, sadness, vengeance, anger, etc. is the wiring of our nervous systems. Death is just one of various stimuli which trigger these sorts of negative feelings. Life provides so many more triggers. I don't want to live forever with those other triggers.

I've never understood this argument.

I don't expect you to. It's apparent to me that while ryan has his own issues, you simply have this oppositional mindset where you can't and/or won't exercise affective or even cognitive empathy for people who don't share your passion for immortality, and I'm about as deep into the "no passion for immortality" camp as you can get. That's fine, but don't expect me to waste what little energy I have explaining why I feel the way I do to someone who's bound to dismiss it no matter what.

I just wanted to let it be known that there is a "transhumanist" project which more directly addresses what ryan was portraying as the rationale behind his push for immortalism. I might add that your argument, what I'll call the positive utilitarian argument for immortality, is a more reasonable one(albeit one I can't personally relate to) than ryan's relatively negative utilitarian argument for immortality, because negative utilitarianism is ultimately an argument for suicide (unless, like ryan, you're afraid that we live in a mind-body dualist universe where consciousness survives bodily death and retains the capacity for infinite suffering).

You've experienced all of these triggers... so why aren't you dead yet? Why haven't you just committed suicide? Because you've moved on, obviously.

No, I haven't moved on. That you could think that's the obvious explanation reflects an ignorance too deep for me to correct here. I would suggest this book if by some chance you're actually curious about what actually causes, prevents, or delays suicide.

 

[Jokodo]

This is a silly argument; first of all, a lot of those predicted things in fact were/are perfectly possible to do, and the reason they didn't come to pass has nothing to do with science and everything with economy and the like. Second of all, look at all the science-fiction examples of things that people thought would take us hundreds of years to accomplish at least, but were in fact accomplished within decades or even less; or look at all the real-world predictions of technological progress that turned out to be hilarious conservative. If we were to add up all the different technology predictions of the past, both positive and negative, I have no doubt that the takeaway will be that tech progress faster and beyond what the predictions estimate.

Just because some sci-fi writer of the past hasn't seen his 'predictions' (I don't really understand how you can mistake a sci-fi story for a serious prediction, but whatever) come true, doesn't mean much. I'd also like to actually know what 'examples' you're talking about about things so-predicted that we now 'know to be impossible'. I honestly can't think of a single such example that we flat-out 'know' to be impossible.

Flat out impossible: Bullet to the moon (Jules Verne). The acceleration would kill anybody, and if it didn't, the capsule would evaporate before leaving the atmosphere.

And there's quite a lot of interstellar travel going on in the second half of the 20th century if you look at works from the first half.

Nothing of what we've been talking about is in fact prohibited by our understanding of physics at all. Nobody's predicting the development of anything that turns the laws of physics on their hand.

OK, forget the speed of light. You won't get around the inverse square law, though. Sending an update of a brain requires bandwidth, and sending those kinds of information over interstellar distances requires energy. A lot of it. When they send a laser to the moon to measure it's distance, the beam is spread out over 6.5 km by the time is arrives there, and that's barely over a lightsecond away.

You're forgetting one of the other options I presented; the development/control of micro-wormholes.

I'm not forgetting it. I'm ignoring it because I consider it science-fiction.

These do not violate our understanding of physics; it IS plausible that a sufficiently advanced society could utilize them. A micro-wormhole could be used for communication, which would get around the problem you're describing. And that's a solution we, with a scientific knowledge that's going to be laughably simplistic compared to that of a society much more advanced than us, can think of today; it is not inconceivable that there are many solutions to the problem.

Fine. Then let whoever is so inclined have a scan of their brains, store those scans in a safe place, and let them consider themselves immortal by virtue of the possibility that someone could resurrect them in 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 years. With that out of the way, we can get back to actually making this world a better place for all of us instead of hunting some fantasy.

This is ridiculous. First of all, developing the tech so that people can have their mindstates scanned and stores for later resurrection is something that DOES make the world better for everyone: it is better for some version of you to exist than none at all, after all.

You can't say "after all" here. "After all" is reserved for referring to a fact we all agree to. I don't.

Secondly, you may dismiss it as fantasy, but lots of things are fantasy before they are realized; so that's not really an argument of any weight. Thirdly, why are you acting like it's one or the other? There's 7 billion of us... we can do more than one thing at a time, as a species.

Since the "immortality" being discussed in this thread proposes some type of consciousness banking how would all of you feel if you were told your brain scans have been saved as of right now and will be reconstituted once your current body dies. Would you rejoice upon learning that you are now "immortal."

I would consider it better than nothing. Far better, in fact. Naturally, I would prefer that this body doesn't die at all, but I'll take what I can get.

If you're into "taking the pain, fear, panic, sadness, vengeance, anger, etc out of the human condition", a more productive path would be to stop obsessing about death. I'm positive that I'll die, more likely than not within the next 60 years, and it doesn't give me any of those.

Uhm what? How the hell is that a "more productive path"?

It's more productive because we know it's possible.

The only way you can make that claim is if you believe that life can't be extended at all;

Not at all. I do accept the possibility that it might become possible to extend life to maybe as much as 200 or 250 years with technology that may become available within my lifetime. I don't think I'll opt for it, but ask me again when I'm 85. But here I'm talking with people who's primary goal in life is to stave of death indefinitely. I'm looking at you, ryan.

which is just demonstrably false. On the other hand, my life is going to be a hell of a lot more productive if I live to be 200 years old than if I live to be 80 years old; to say nothing of even longer lifespans. If being 'productive' is all you care about (Speaking of, it seems odd to me that you'd on one hand complain about people wanting to take all those human emotions out of the equation, but on the other hand seem to consider being 'productive' as being all-important; it's not), then surely accepting an 80 year lifespan when you don't have to is absurd.

Why? Even though I believe that the best time of my life lies ahead of me (I'm in my thirties), I wouldn't particularly mind dying before Christmas except for the pain it would inflict on those dear to me. 50 more years seems just fine.

So your idea of a better future is one where people kill each other over food? Are you serious?

Also, overpopulation: It's not a thing. Birth rates sort themselves out whenever and whereever populations reach a certain level of prosperity and education (and crucially women's rights). The only way it can become a thing is if that process is offset by death rates dropping to zero -- i.e. by immortality.

This has been brought up on the old forum; and it wasn't particularly convincing there either. First off; contrary to what many people believe, the Earth could conceivably sustain hundreds of times our current population with the development of certain technologies and social models.

100s of times our current population isn't going to last long on geological timescales if you have a zero death rate and a non-zero birth rate. And, frankly, if I'm to choose between 0/0 and non-0/non-0, I'll take the latter any day of the week.

There is a long list of technologies coming down the pipe (to say nothing of things a little further off) that could accomplish this. Food is not going to be much of a problem. Secondly, you're assuming no natural equilibrium will develop in an immortal society... this of course is absurd. The population will stabilize if there is not enough food being produced... it will do this REGARDLESS of whether or not the population is 'immortal'.

So you're going to die from starvation. What use is "immortality" then? If I get to pick between dying of old age and dying of starvation after having made senescence a thing of the past, I'll pick the former. And we already live in a world were dying of starvation is unnecessary, and where it can reasonably be made a thing of the past within the century. That's what I mean when I say focus on what's achievable, or "more productive": I prefer a world were nobody dies of hunger or fully preventable infectious diseases to one where "immortals" die from poverty-induced conditions.

What exactly are you imagining? A world in which people will continue to pop out babies ad infinitum even though the food supply is such that everyone now has only one grain of rice per year to eat? How exactly does that work?

And of course, all this assumes that we're staying here on earth. Which is silly. Put a few greenhouse colonies in orbit and you solve any food problems that might arise.

You may not know this, but the universe (at least the part of it that can be reached from here at sub-lightspeeds) is finite as much as the planet. Exponential growht converges to infinity. Going off planet doesn't solve any problems, at best it staves them off for a few centuries, millenia at best. A blink of the eye if eternity is what you're measuring against.

 

[ryan]

Ridding us of unwanted suffering, IMO. The number one cause of pain, fear, panic, sadness, vengeance, anger, etc. is the wiring of our nervous systems. Death is just one of various stimuli which trigger these sorts of negative feelings. Life provides so many more triggers. I don't want to live forever with those other triggers.

I've never understood this argument.

I don't expect you to. It's apparent to me that while ryan has his own issues, you simply have this oppositional mindset where you can't and/or won't exercise affective or even cognitive empathy for people who don't share your passion for immortality, and I'm about as deep into the "no passion for immortality" camp as you can get. That's fine, but don't expect me to waste what little energy I have explaining why I feel the way I do to someone who's bound to dismiss it no matter what.

I just wanted to let it be known that there is a "transhumanist" project which more directly addresses what ryan was portraying as the rationale behind his push for immortalism. I might add that your argument, what I'll call the positive utilitarian argument for immortality, is a more reasonable one(albeit one I can't personally relate to) than ryan's relatively negative utilitarian argument for immortality, because negative utilitarianism is ultimately an argument for suicide (unless, like ryan, you're afraid that we live in a mind-body dualist universe where consciousness survives bodily death and retains the capacity for infinite suffering).

Are you saying that suffering requires dualism? I hope that there is no mind-body dualism because it would make it easier to only have to store the body as physical information. The good news for transhumanists is that there doesn't seem to be a nonphysical consciousness or "soul". If there is a nonphysical consciousness, then it is going to make the job much more difficult.

As for my motivation, we know that there is no way out of reality. The universe, god or no god, may do whatever it wants to us. But, we may have some control; how we use this little control is infinitely important.

As for everything else, I only know through infinity or a limited amount of time that my life is possible in this universe. We may have come from infinity, in which case it should be no surprize that we are here and probably will be here again. If reality is limited, then I am a little more at ease. But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

 

[Unbeatable]

Are you saying that suffering requires dualism?

No.

But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

I have no objections to you working towards it. I just don't share your feeling that curing death is more important than curing suffering. I don't understand the rest of your post, so I'll decline to comment.

 

[Jokodo]

Ridding us of unwanted suffering, IMO. The number one cause of pain, fear, panic, sadness, vengeance, anger, etc. is the wiring of our nervous systems. Death is just one of various stimuli which trigger these sorts of negative feelings. Life provides so many more triggers. I don't want to live forever with those other triggers.

I've never understood this argument.

I don't expect you to. It's apparent to me that while ryan has his own issues, you simply have this oppositional mindset where you can't and/or won't exercise affective or even cognitive empathy for people who don't share your passion for immortality, and I'm about as deep into the "no passion for immortality" camp as you can get. That's fine, but don't expect me to waste what little energy I have explaining why I feel the way I do to someone who's bound to dismiss it no matter what.

I just wanted to let it be known that there is a "transhumanist" project which more directly addresses what ryan was portraying as the rationale behind his push for immortalism. I might add that your argument, what I'll call the positive utilitarian argument for immortality, is a more reasonable one(albeit one I can't personally relate to) than ryan's relatively negative utilitarian argument for immortality, because negative utilitarianism is ultimately an argument for suicide (unless, like ryan, you're afraid that we live in a mind-body dualist universe where consciousness survives bodily death and retains the capacity for infinite suffering).

Are you saying that suffering requires dualism? I hope that there is no mind-body dualism because it would make it easier to only have to store the body as physical information.

Suffering doesn't require dualism. Infinite suffering despite a finite bodily life does.

The good news for transhumanists is that there doesn't seem to be a nonphysical consciousness or "soul". If there is a nonphysical consciousness, then it is going to make the job much more difficult.

As for my motivation, we know that there is no way out of reality. The universe, god or no god, may do whatever it wants to us. But, we may have some control; how we use this little control is infinitely important.

As for everything else, I only know through infinity or a limited amount of time that my life is possible in this universe. We may have come from infinity, in which case it should be no surprize that we are here and probably will be here again.

What does this even mean? are you bringing out your old hobby horse again? If you're afraid that in an infinite universe, perfect copies of your consciousness is going to re-emerge after your death and suffer endlessly, exactly how is keeping this copy alife going to stop that from happening?

If reality is limited, then I am a little more at ease. But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

 

[dystopian]

I don't expect you to. It's apparent to me that while ryan has his own issues, you simply have this oppositional mindset where you can't and/or won't exercise affective or even cognitive empathy for people who don't share your passion for immortality, and I'm about as deep into the "no passion for immortality" camp as you can get. That's fine, but don't expect me to waste what little energy I have explaining why I feel the way I do to someone who's bound to dismiss it no matter what.

...what? So, me not understanding how someone could just 'give up' on lots of future happiness because it must also necessaly contain future sadness, somehow means I "won't" exercise 'cognitive empathy' for you? Huh? I'm honestly trying; but to me, the stance you're taking is no different than the stance taken by a depressive person who says 'what's the point?'. Obviously I can 'understand' that stance, having experienced it myself... however, it's hardly a stance I can *accept* when I'm not suffering from depression. On the other hand, if you're not depressive, and you're still taking what is essentially the same stance only on a more long-term scale, then *that*, I absolutely can not understand. It does not compute.

I just wanted to let it be known that there is a "transhumanist" project which more directly addresses what ryan was portraying as the rationale behind his push for immortalism. I might add that your argument, what I'll call the positive utilitarian argument for
immortality, is a more reasonable one(albeit one I can't personally relate to) than ryan's relatively negative utilitarian argument for immortality, because negative utilitarianism is ultimately an argument for suicide

But see this is what I don't understand in relation to what I said earlier. I think your argument/stance is *also* ultimately an argument for suicide. If you have the technology to live forever (or an exceptionally long time), but you choose to opt-out of that because of the potential for future suffering, then I would consider that a form of slow suicide.

(unless, like ryan, you're afraid that we live in a mind-body dualist universe where consciousness survives bodily death and retains the capacity for infinite suffering).

I'd honestly welcome infinite suffering over non-existence, so I'm not particularly afraid of that possibility.

No, I haven't moved on. That you could think that's the obvious explanation reflects an ignorance too deep for me to correct here. I would suggest this book if by some chance you're actually curious about what actually causes, prevents, or delays suicide.

I've had to have my stomach pumped twice when I was younger. I'm quite aware of the causes, prevention, and delays of suicide. But okay, maybe I chose the wrong words. Some people move on; others just carry on through. There's no real difference for the sake of my argument though; even if you haven't moved on from suffering, here you are... still carrying on through. Why? Why would you have an arbitrary line where you say "I'll suffer through (say) another 40 years of pain until I die of natural causes"; but won't accept another 80, or 8000 years? If you can suffer through 40 years of pain, you can suffer through 80 years of pain. And if you can suffer through 80 years of pain, you can suffer through 800 years of pain. And of course, that's assuming all that time will be spent with nothing but suffering, which isn't true for even the most depression-prone individual (and that's assuming there'll never be a fix to that depression proneness).

 

[dystopian]

Flat out impossible: Bullet to the moon (Jules Verne). The acceleration would kill anybody, and if it didn't, the capsule would evaporate before leaving the atmosphere.

Actually, no, this is not necessarily impossible. It's impossible with our current technology. You're completely ignoring the development of better means of cushioning acceleration. Who'se to say that we won't develop a future gsuit capable of dispersing the g-forces enough to allow a pilot to survive? So no; not impossible. The same goes for the capsule evaporating... I'm not even sure this is the case with some of our current advanced materials... to say nothing of future materials. If this is something you think of as an actual example of a 'prediction' that's turned out to be 'flat out impossible', then I'm afraid you haven't thought it through very well.

And there's quite a lot of interstellar travel going on in the second half of the 20th century if you look at works from the first half.

That's not an issue with technology prediction but a timeline prediction. Interstellar travel is hardly impossible. In fact, it's not even necessarily impossible with the technology of the 2nd half of the 20th century; there's been a number of interstellar ship designs that could've been built if the political will and money had been there.

I'm not forgetting it. I'm ignoring it because I consider it science-fiction.

Of course it is. ALL technology is science-fiction before it exists. What's your point? Do you even realize how silly you're being? You're throwing up problems that you think would arise from the hypothetical future development of life-extension technologies; but you're not even willing to consider the possibility of *other* hypothetical future technologies being developed that can address those problems. Huh? Wormholes themselves are hardly something that only science fiction authors have talked about, you know. There have been some very eminent physicists who not only predict the existence of wormholes, but that they could be made traversable as well. Wormholes are absolutely a plausible future tech. You can't just wholesale ignore shit.

You can't say "after all" here. "After all" is reserved for referring to a fact we all agree to. I don't.

Nope. The obviousness of a fact is not changed by how many people agree to it. I can, with absolute confidence, say that it is *better* for you to exist in some fashion, than it is for you to not exist at all. Whatever emotional sentiments you have that may lead you to undervalue your own existence to such a degree that you'd reject this doesn't change its basic truth.

It's more productive because we know it's possible.

That's not what being productive is about. If that were the case, we'd have never developed mass production in the first place, and we sure as fuck wouldn't be as productive as we are today. What is and what is not more productive is not determined by whatever some conservative and unimaginative individual 'knows to be possible'; it is determined by the actual end state of your production run. If it *does* turn out immortality or some fascimile of it is possible, then you with your natural life are going to be about as productive compared to the people who take advantage of the new possibility as a medieval peasant is compared to a modern automated factory.

Why? Even though I believe that the best time of my life lies ahead of me (I'm in my thirties), I wouldn't particularly mind dying before Christmas except for the pain it would inflict on those dear to me. 50 more years seems just fine.

Why? The whole reason is because on the one hand, you were making an argument that laments people wanting to take human emotion out of the equation, but on the other hand you're here denying some of the most basic facets of human existence. It is a very human thing to *not* accept the way things are. We see a way to improve on what nature has given us, we fucking take it. It's what's gotten us out of the savannah right to where we are today. To look at the human body and say; "We can do better"; is perhaps one of the most human things we can say about it.

100s of times our current population isn't going to last long on geological timescales if you have a zero death rate and a non-zero birth rate.

...come again? So you have a population that literally can't die, but also can't reproduce... and you imagine they're not going to last long geological timescales? What are they going to do? Die out? Oh wait, they can't.

And, frankly, if I'm to choose between 0/0 and non-0/non-0, I'll take the latter any day of the week.

Thing is, even in the future utopia I'd want to see happen, there wouldn't be a 0/0 split there. There'd certainly be a provision for people like you, who'd want to commit suicide (whether they do it by jumping into a blackhole or just turning off whatever makes them immortal and then living for another 60 years until they die of natural causes). Either way, an equilibrium would still be achieved.

So you're going to die from starvation. What use is "immortality" then?

Who said *I* was going to die of starvation? I wouldn't be the stupid motherfucker who keeps popping out babies even though the food supply is dwindling. Populations stabilize due to lack of food LONG before *every* member of the population actually experiences the starvation.

If I get to pick between dying of old age and dying of starvation after having made senescence a thing of the past, I'll pick the former. And we already live in a world were dying of starvation is unnecessary, and where it can reasonably be made a thing of the past within the century. That's what I mean when I say focus on what's achievable, or "more productive": I prefer a world were nobody dies of hunger or fully preventable infectious diseases to one where "immortals" die from poverty-induced conditions.

Great; so, you think we're smart enough to solve world hunger and infectious diseases... but also somehow dumb enough that when we become immortal (with all the increased time to educate ourselves to degrees impossible now that brings with it too, mind), we somehow lose the ability to solve these exact same problems.

You may not know this, but the universe (at least the part of it that can be reached from here at sub-lightspeeds) is finite as much as the planet. Exponential growht converges to infinity. Going off planet doesn't solve any problems, at best it staves them off for a few centuries, millenia at best. A blink of the eye if eternity is what you're measuring against.

Which is irrelevant, since you were the one talking about a society with a zero birthrate. Also, this is the exact same argument I've heard on the old forum, and again; was addressed in a number of ways. The worst part of this argument is that it assumes an exponential growth... which is just ridiculous; even if the future immortal race consisted of nothing but inbred retards who can't realize that they should stop growing at that rate, and even if we had all the food we wanted, there are still plenty of other limiters to growth that would prevent it from staying exponantial for long.

Then of course, there's the whole ignoring of things like mind uploads, and given the fact we've already figured out ways to achieve information densities as high as 20 bits nm−2; we wouldn't run out of space anytime soon even assuming no further advances beyond that density.

 

[ryan]

No.

But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

I just don't share your feeling that curing death is more important than curing suffering.

Even with the current level of suffering, we tend to value life more with the suffering. We know this because people are not committing suicide every time they suffer. Suffering should be a high priority but not higher than life.

I don't understand the rest of your post, so I'll decline to comment.

I was trying to explain how I am more justified by assuming that my consciousness will be recreated in the universe than it not being recreated. There is no dualism needed.

 

[ryan]

Are you saying that suffering requires dualism? I hope that there is no mind-body dualism because it would make it easier to only have to store the body as physical information.

Suffering doesn't require dualism. Infinite suffering despite a finite bodily life does.

The good news for transhumanists is that there doesn't seem to be a nonphysical consciousness or "soul". If there is a nonphysical consciousness, then it is going to make the job much more difficult.

As for my motivation, we know that there is no way out of reality. The universe, god or no god, may do whatever it wants to us. But, we may have some control; how we use this little control is infinitely important.

As for everything else, I only know through infinity or a limited amount of time that my life is possible in this universe. We may have come from infinity, in which case it should be no surprize that we are here and probably will be here again.

What does this even mean? are you bringing out your old hobby horse again? If you're afraid that in an infinite universe, perfect copies of your consciousness is going to re-emerge after your death and suffer endlessly, exactly how is keeping this copy alife going to stop that from happening?

If reality is limited, then I am a little more at ease. But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

All I know is that there is suffering in the universe, and we can exist in this universe. In this life/consciousness, we seem to have some control over our suffering. The control mechanism may not be available to us next time.

On top of that, I am happy to exist forever with this stream of consciousness and starting from this situation, rather than take my chances on what comes next.

One more thing, don't start a thread and then accuse someone of having a hobbyhorse when it is this closely related to the discussion.

 

[Jokodo]

Are you saying that suffering requires dualism? I hope that there is no mind-body dualism because it would make it easier to only have to store the body as physical information.

Suffering doesn't require dualism. Infinite suffering despite a finite bodily life does.

The good news for transhumanists is that there doesn't seem to be a nonphysical consciousness or "soul". If there is a nonphysical consciousness, then it is going to make the job much more difficult.

As for my motivation, we know that there is no way out of reality. The universe, god or no god, may do whatever it wants to us. But, we may have some control; how we use this little control is infinitely important.

As for everything else, I only know through infinity or a limited amount of time that my life is possible in this universe. We may have come from infinity, in which case it should be no surprize that we are here and probably will be here again.

What does this even mean? are you bringing out your old hobby horse again? If you're afraid that in an infinite universe, perfect copies of your consciousness is going to re-emerge after your death and suffer endlessly, exactly how is keeping this copy alife going to stop that from happening?

If reality is limited, then I am a little more at ease. But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

All I know is that there is suffering in the universe, and we can exist in this universe. In this life/consciousness, we seem to have some control over our suffering. The control mechanism may not be available to us next time. <snip>

Please be a bit more specific about this "next time" thing.

 

[ryan]

All I know is that there is suffering in the universe, and we can exist in this universe. In this life/consciousness, we seem to have some control over our suffering. The control mechanism may not be available to us next time. <snip>

Please be a bit more specific about this "next time" thing.

Somehow I have a consciousness that extends through an interval of time in existence. I now know that this consciousness is possible in existence; I also know that it is not impossible. I have one piece of data suggesting that existence has created me in its potentially unbounded realm. If I die, 10^1*(largest real number ever imagined)^2*(largest number ever imagined)^ ... (largest number ever imagined)*(largest number ever imagined) years may go by, and it will only feel like a second. So no matter how far away the "next time" is, it is not far away when you consider a period of time without consciousness.

So when we are alone, and we feel that scary feeling of death, it is just our common sense surfacing. Unfortunately people push that truth/warning down until it peaks again the next time. I will not do that; I will use it as motivation to take on this responsibility, why not?

 

[Jokodo]

Actually, no, this is not necessarily impossible. It's impossible with our current technology. You're completely ignoring the development of better means of cushioning acceleration. Who'se to say that we won't develop a future gsuit capable of dispersing the g-forces enough to allow a pilot to survive? So no; not impossible. The same goes for the capsule evaporating... I'm not even sure this is the case with some of our current advanced materials... to say nothing of future materials. If this is something you think of as an actual example of a 'prediction' that's turned out to be 'flat out impossible', then I'm afraid you haven't thought it through very well.

And there's quite a lot of interstellar travel going on in the second half of the 20th century if you look at works from the first half.

That's not an issue with technology prediction but a timeline prediction. Interstellar travel is hardly impossible. In fact, it's not even necessarily impossible with the technology of the 2nd half of the 20th century; there's been a number of interstellar ship designs that could've been built if the political will and money had been there.

"timeline prediction" my ass. You did claim that "If we were to add up all the different technology predictions of the past, both positive and negative, I have no doubt that the takeaway will be that tech progress faster and beyond what the predictions estimate."

I'm not forgetting it. I'm ignoring it because I consider it science-fiction.

Of course it is. ALL technology is science-fiction before it exists. What's your point? Do you even realize how silly you're being? You're throwing up problems that you think would arise from the hypothetical future development of life-extension technologies; but you're not even willing to consider the possibility of *other* hypothetical future technologies being developed that can address those problems. Huh? Wormholes themselves are hardly something that only science fiction authors have talked about, you know. There have been some very eminent physicists who not only predict the existence of wormholes, but that they could be made traversable as well. Wormholes are absolutely a plausible future tech. You can't just wholesale ignore shit.

You can't say "after all" here. "After all" is reserved for referring to a fact we all agree to. I don't.

Nope. The obviousness of a fact is not changed by how many people agree to it.

It's obvious only in your head.

I can, with absolute confidence, say that it is *better* for you to exist in some fashion, than it is for you to not exist at all.

You can say it, but show it you can't.

Whatever emotional sentiments you have that may lead you to undervalue your own existence to such a degree that you'd reject this doesn't change its basic truth.

No emotional sentiments there. I'm happy with my life. I expect to be happy for most of the roughly 40-60 years that remain of it, and I probably would do just fine for most of another 300 years too. I just don't see much added value from those additional 250 years. If you want to maintain that the value of one's existence increases linearly with duration, you're going to have come up with something better than just assume it declare it "obvious".

It's more productive because we know it's possible.

That's not what being productive is about. If that were the case, we'd have never developed mass production in the first place, and we sure as fuck wouldn't be as productive as we are today. What is and what is not more productive is not determined by whatever some conservative and unimaginative individual 'knows to be possible'; it is determined by the actual end state of your production run. If it *does* turn out immortality or some fascimile of it is possible, then you with your natural life are going to be about as productive compared to the people who take advantage of the new possibility as a medieval peasant is compared to a modern automated factory.

Why? Even though I believe that the best time of my life lies ahead of me (I'm in my thirties), I wouldn't particularly mind dying before Christmas except for the pain it would inflict on those dear to me. 50 more years seems just fine.

Why? The whole reason is because on the one hand, you were making an argument that laments people wanting to take human emotion out of the equation, but on the other hand you're here denying some of the most basic facets of human existence. It is a very human thing to *not* accept the way things are. We see a way to improve on what nature has given us, we fucking take it. It's what's gotten us out of the savannah right to where we are today. To look at the human body and say; "We can do better"; is perhaps one of the most human things we can say about it.

100s of times our current population isn't going to last long on geological timescales if you have a zero death rate and a non-zero birth rate.

...come again? So you have a population that literally can't die, but also can't reproduce... and you imagine they're not going to last long geological timescales? What are they going to do? Die out? Oh wait, they can't.

Where does this "can't reproduce" come from all of a sudden? Also, I didn't say the population would die out. Individuals will die -- as you've fairly explicitly said yourself when you argued that the population will stabilize for lack of food. Individuals like you or me. There goes your immortality out of the window. Even if you finish the 21st century as Supreme Dictator of the Western Regions of the Milky Way who has guaranteed priority access to all resources, you can't expect to remain in such a position for eternity.

And, frankly, if I'm to choose between 0/0 and non-0/non-0, I'll take the latter any day of the week.

Thing is, even in the future utopia I'd want to see happen, there wouldn't be a 0/0 split there. There'd certainly be a provision for people like you, who'd want to commit suicide (whether they do it by jumping into a blackhole or just turning off whatever makes them immortal and then living for another 60 years until they die of natural causes). Either way, an equilibrium would still be achieved.

I doubt it.

So you're going to die from starvation. What use is "immortality" then?

Who said *I* was going to die of starvation? I wouldn't be the stupid motherfucker who keeps popping out babies even though the food supply is dwindling. Populations stabilize due to lack of food LONG before *every* member of the population actually experiences the starvation.

And you know you're going to be on the lucky side because? Do you have a pact with the devil or something?

If I get to pick between dying of old age and dying of starvation after having made senescence a thing of the past, I'll pick the former. And we already live in a world were dying of starvation is unnecessary, and where it can reasonably be made a thing of the past within the century. That's what I mean when I say focus on what's achievable, or "more productive": I prefer a world were nobody dies of hunger or fully preventable infectious diseases to one where "immortals" die from poverty-induced conditions.

Great; so, you think we're smart enough to solve world hunger and infectious diseases... but also somehow dumb enough that when we become immortal (with all the increased time to educate ourselves to degrees impossible now that brings with it too, mind), we somehow lose the ability to solve these exact same problems.

Not at all "the exact same problem". A whole new problem: The problem that the planet, and indeed the universe, is finite (which is not as such a problem now).

You may not know this, but the universe (at least the part of it that can be reached from here at sub-lightspeeds) is finite as much as the planet. Exponential growht converges to infinity. Going off planet doesn't solve any problems, at best it staves them off for a few centuries, millenia at best. A blink of the eye if eternity is what you're measuring against.

Which is irrelevant, since you were the one talking about a society with a zero birthrate. Also, this is the exact same argument I've heard on the old forum, and again; was addressed in a number of ways. The worst part of this argument is that it assumes an exponential growth... which is just ridiculous; even if the future immortal race consisted of nothing but inbred retards who can't realize that they should stop growing at that rate,

Bullshit. Any rate will come in conflict with the fact of a finite universe sooner or later. I may even have used a death rate of 1/10 our current one for illustrative purposes over in the old forum (too lazy to look up right now).

and even if we had all the food we wanted, there are still plenty of other limiters to growth that would prevent it from staying exponantial for long.

So people are going to die of starvation. You just said it again. So don't tell me off for pointing out that, in your "utopia", people will starve to death.

Then of course, there's the whole ignoring of things like mind uploads, and given the fact we've already figured out ways to achieve information densities as high as 20 bits nm−2; we wouldn't run out of space anytime soon even assuming no further advances beyond that density.

I would consider inert storage dead. You can only call anything alive if it interacts and processes stuff (at the very least information). And that's going to cost energy on whatever medium you're doing it.

 

[Jokodo]

All I know is that there is suffering in the universe, and we can exist in this universe. In this life/consciousness, we seem to have some control over our suffering. The control mechanism may not be available to us next time. <snip>

Please be a bit more specific about this "next time" thing.

Somehow I have a consciousness that extends through an interval of time in existence. I now know that this consciousness is possible in existence; I also know that it is not impossible. I have one piece of data suggesting that existence has created me in its potentially unbounded realm. If I die, 10^1*(largest real number ever imagined)^2*(largest number ever imagined)^ ... (largest number ever imagined)*(largest number ever imagined) years may go by, and it will only feel like a second. So no matter how far away the "next time" is, it is not far away when you consider a period of time without consciousness.

So when we are alone, and we feel that scary feeling of death, it is just our common sense surfacing. Unfortunately people push that truth/warning down until it peaks again the next time. I will not do that; I will use it as motivation to take on this responsibility, why not?

If you don't die, why wouldn't that happen all the same? So how exactly would your not dying prevent any of what you fear?

As far as I can tell, the probability of matter arranging itself in a configuration that represents your mind at any one point in time somewhere zillions of lightyears away and zillions of years in the future are not affected by whether or not you continue to live here in this little galaxy of ours.

 

[ryan]

Please be a bit more specific about this "next time" thing.

Somehow I have a consciousness that extends through an interval of time in existence. I now know that this consciousness is possible in existence; I also know that it is not impossible. I have one piece of data suggesting that existence has created me in its potentially unbounded realm. If I die, 10^1*(largest real number ever imagined)^2*(largest number ever imagined)^ ... (largest number ever imagined)*(largest number ever imagined) years may go by, and it will only feel like a second. So no matter how far away the "next time" is, it is not far away when you consider a period of time without consciousness.

So when we are alone, and we feel that scary feeling of death, it is just our common sense surfacing. Unfortunately people push that truth/warning down until it peaks again the next time. I will not do that; I will use it as motivation to take on this responsibility, why not?

If you don't die, why wouldn't that happen all the same? So how exactly would your not dying prevent any of what you fear?

As far as I can tell, the probability of matter arranging itself in a configuration that represents your mind at any one point in time somewhere zillions of lightyears away and zillions of years in the future are not affected by whether or not you continue to live here in this little galaxy of ours.

Well, if there is a clone of me in some galaxy in another universe, then there is nothing that I can do about it. If he was a perfect clone of me, then he would be doing the same things as me. Furthermore, if there was a perfect clone of me here on Earth, and somebody poked us both, then I still felt my pain and not my clone's pain. Or, if someone poked him and not me, I won't feel my clone's pain. It will be up to him, like any other person, to take on this challenge.

Our "streams of consciousnesses" might be unique. In this case, it is going to be quite hard to keep them "streaming" if you will.

***added***

I forgot to answer your first question. I believe that we have some freewill. If we do, then we can help avoid dying and possibly becoming a body that can't avoid suffering. As we learn more and more about the biology of suffering, hopefully we will do a better job of avoiding it.

 

[Unbeatable]

No.

But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

I just don't share your feeling that curing death is more important than curing suffering.

Even with the current level of suffering, we tend to value life more with the suffering. We know this because people are not committing suicide every time they suffer.

Committing suicide requires a person to face death. Facing death is scary. Fear is a form of suffering. In other words, suffering is a factor which both causes and inhibits suicide(granted, like behavioral inhibitions in general, it can be overcome eventually, but those prone to overcoming it easily tend to remove themselves from the gene pool). Being alive can merely be a state of sticking with "the devil you know". To the extent that this can be described as valuing life, it is an instrumental value. Staying alive through one sort of suffering is a way of avoiding a worse sort of suffering.

Obviously, for the vast majority of people, staying alive is more than just a way to avoid suffering; it's a way to experience happiness(which means it's still merely instrumental). But an explanation of why people don't commit suicide every time they suffer doesn't even require me to go into the issue of happiness. Happiness has more to do with why people tend not to seriously consider suicide, whereas suffering has more to do with why people who seriously consider it tend not to do it.

I don't understand the rest of your post, so I'll decline to comment.

I was trying to explain how I am more justified by assuming that my consciousness will be recreated in the universe than it not being recreated. There is no dualism needed.

Just quantum mysticism, apparently. Science marches on. I wonder, if you get your life extension, what the next century's scientific theories will offer in terms of justifications for fearing death. Not that I don't relate to the fear, but since I intend for my life to be finite, I try to avoid these sorts of post-hoc rationalizations of instinctual programming.

 

[ryan]

No.

But, I would still work towards this because there isn't any work that is worth more of one's time.

I just don't share your feeling that curing death is more important than curing suffering.

Even with the current level of suffering, we tend to value life more with the suffering. We know this because people are not committing suicide every time they suffer.

Committing suicide requires a person to face death. Facing death is scary. Fear is a form of suffering. In other words, suffering is a factor which both causes and inhibits suicide(granted, like behavioral inhibitions in general, it can be overcome eventually, but those prone to overcoming it easily tend to remove themselves from the gene pool). Being alive can merely be a state of sticking with "the devil you know". To the extent that this can be described as valuing life, it is an instrumental value. Staying alive through one sort of suffering is a way of avoiding a worse sort of suffering.

Obviously, for the vast majority of people, staying alive is more than just a way to avoid suffering; it's a way to experience happiness(which means it's still merely instrumental). But an explanation of why people don't commit suicide every time they suffer doesn't even require me to go into the issue of happiness. Happiness has more to do with why people tend not to seriously consider suicide, whereas suffering has more to do with why people who seriously consider it tend not to do it.

You need life to even ponder whether it's worth living with suffering. Thus, life takes priority over suffering, so that there can even be an option.

I don't understand the rest of your post, so I'll decline to comment.

I was trying to explain how I am more justified by assuming that my consciousness will be recreated in the universe than it not being recreated. There is no dualism needed.

Just quantum mysticism, apparently.

Who mentioned "quantum"?

Science marches on. I wonder, if you get your life extension, what the next century's scientific theories will offer in terms of justifications for fearing death. Not that I don't relate to the fear, but since I intend for my life to be finite, I try to avoid these sorts of post-hoc rationalizations of instinctual programming.

Does avoiding them change what will be - of course not. The universe does not seem to be kind to us when we don't think ahead.

 

[Unbeatable]

Even with the current level of suffering, we tend to value life more with the suffering. We know this because people are not committing suicide every time they suffer.

Committing suicide requires a person to face death. Facing death is scary. Fear is a form of suffering. In other words, suffering is a factor which both causes and inhibits suicide(granted, like behavioral inhibitions in general, it can be overcome eventually, but those prone to overcoming it easily tend to remove themselves from the gene pool). Being alive can merely be a state of sticking with "the devil you know". To the extent that this can be described as valuing life, it is an instrumental value. Staying alive through one sort of suffering is a way of avoiding a worse sort of suffering.

Obviously, for the vast majority of people, staying alive is more than just a way to avoid suffering; it's a way to experience happiness(which means it's still merely instrumental). But an explanation of why people don't commit suicide every time they suffer doesn't even require me to go into the issue of happiness. Happiness has more to do with why people tend not to seriously consider suicide, whereas suffering has more to do with why people who seriously consider it tend not to do it.

You need life to even ponder whether it's worth living with suffering. Thus, life takes priority over suffering, so that there can even be an option.

You're changing the subject to one that doesn't interest me. Do you understand the points I have made above about suicide, suffering, instrumental valuation, etc.?

 

[ryan]

Even with the current level of suffering, we tend to value life more with the suffering. We know this because people are not committing suicide every time they suffer.

Committing suicide requires a person to face death. Facing death is scary. Fear is a form of suffering. In other words, suffering is a factor which both causes and inhibits suicide(granted, like behavioral inhibitions in general, it can be overcome eventually, but those prone to overcoming it easily tend to remove themselves from the gene pool). Being alive can merely be a state of sticking with "the devil you know". To the extent that this can be described as valuing life, it is an instrumental value. Staying alive through one sort of suffering is a way of avoiding a worse sort of suffering.

Obviously, for the vast majority of people, staying alive is more than just a way to avoid suffering; it's a way to experience happiness(which means it's still merely instrumental). But an explanation of why people don't commit suicide every time they suffer doesn't even require me to go into the issue of happiness. Happiness has more to do with why people tend not to seriously consider suicide, whereas suffering has more to do with why people who seriously consider it tend not to do it.

You need life to even ponder whether it's worth living with suffering. Thus, life takes priority over suffering, so that there can even be an option.

You're changing the subject to one that doesn't interest me. Do you understand the points I have made above about suicide, suffering, instrumental valuation, etc.?

Yes, I understand. We can test this. I can ask myself if the years that I have been alive is worth it? In other words, we can ask ourselves if we would rather have lived up until now, or would we rather not have existed at all. If your life is what you choose, then life with the good and the bad is better than no life at all.

Now, the longer we live, the more we will understand how to master ourselves, medicine and eventually the universe. This means more life and a greater ratio of happiness/life.

 

[Jokodo]

Please be a bit more specific about this "next time" thing.

Somehow I have a consciousness that extends through an interval of time in existence. I now know that this consciousness is possible in existence; I also know that it is not impossible. I have one piece of data suggesting that existence has created me in its potentially unbounded realm. If I die, 10^1*(largest real number ever imagined)^2*(largest number ever imagined)^ ... (largest number ever imagined)*(largest number ever imagined) years may go by, and it will only feel like a second. So no matter how far away the "next time" is, it is not far away when you consider a period of time without consciousness.

So when we are alone, and we feel that scary feeling of death, it is just our common sense surfacing. Unfortunately people push that truth/warning down until it peaks again the next time. I will not do that; I will use it as motivation to take on this responsibility, why not?

If you don't die, why wouldn't that happen all the same? So how exactly would your not dying prevent any of what you fear?

As far as I can tell, the probability of matter arranging itself in a configuration that represents your mind at any one point in time somewhere zillions of lightyears away and zillions of years in the future are not affected by whether or not you continue to live here in this little galaxy of ours.

Well, if there is a clone of me in some galaxy in another universe, then there is nothing that I can do about it.

And that's it. With this admission, your argument collapses.

If he was a perfect clone of me, then he would be doing the same things as me. Furthermore, if there was a perfect clone of me here on Earth, and somebody poked us both, then I still felt my pain and not my clone's pain. Or, if someone poked him and not me, I won't feel my clone's pain. It will be up to him, like any other person, to take on this challenge.

Our "streams of consciousnesses" might be unique. In this case, it is going to be quite hard to keep them "streaming" if you will.

What is a "stream of consciousness", and how can you declare that two objects with the same configuration but no causal chain between one each other share one if they're temporally non-overlapping (as in, you die, and someone else close enough to be declared a copy of you despite technically having arisen independently), but not when they're overlapping? How do you even define synchrony between two points in the universe that are to far apart to communicate?

***added***

I forgot to answer your first question. I believe that we have some freewill. If we do, then we can help avoid dying and possibly becoming a body that can't avoid suffering.

The discussion of "Free will" is not pertinent. What's pertinent is that you have no consistent argument for why you'd dread "becoming a body that can't avoid suffering", and even if you did, you have given no reason to believe that avoiding to die would be any help.

As we learn more and more about the biology of suffering, hopefully we will do a better job of avoiding it.

Possible. And? You were trying to argue for the concept of immortality, weren't you?