Why do all you SUCKERS think you're gonna die?

[thedorf]

Dammit. I try to avoid this forum because i feel like I already had all these conversations in my college dorm 15 years ago but maybe this will actually lead to some new information.

Here's the way I see it. Generally we get people who either believe that god's gonna take care of things, that we're gonna become compost, or that just don't think they know either way. Why don't more of you who have resigned yourself to eternal dirt and decomposition seek eternal life right here in the good ol' secular universe? You seem to waste so much time trying to tell all these religious folks why they're wrong when you could be searching for eternal life yourself without ever acknowledging a higher power. Why do you let them monopolize the possibility of eternal life?

Here's why i think you're missing the boat. There is no law that says that someone can't live for, say, 10,000 years. Theoretically, individual cells can very easily be frozen for even longer than that and come right back to life like nothing ever happened. The vast majority of organs and organisms cannot endure such freezing and thawing because cells burst under such conditions (an exception is the wood frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Frog) which freezes solid and stops all bodily function in the winter only to be "resurrected" in the summer.). But that doesn't mean that the freezing of organs or organisms will ALWAYS lead to the death of individual cells; or that we can't just get our bodies to act more like that of the wood frog sometime in the not so distant future.

Cryogenics/cryonics seems to be for the wackos right now but wackos also brought us a spherical world and the non-earth-centered universe. i'm not trying to advocate that people sink money into getting their bodies frozen when they die because at this point in time that seems to be a sucker play...BUT, it seems to be an even bigger sucker play to waste time telling people how jesus couldn't possibly be all knowing, all good, his own father, who happens to send people to hell that he knew were going there in the first place because they couldn't have free will BLAH BLAH BLAH, when you could be working on something with much more practical importance.

Why don't you guys try looking through some brain scans to find individual identity (I'm referring to what the believers would call the soul). Some of you might call it the "self". What is it and how can we save it or preserve it somewhere?

Did you ever consider that intelligence might be the ultimate survival trait? That we're supposed to use it to live indefinitely long and reproduce indefinitely? Instead we use it to build a better bomb, make a faster selling electric toothbrush and convince people that jesus and ghosts aren't real. Not that I think these things are unimportant but I do think they are quite trivial if humans are capable of living vastly longer lives through major technological advancement. If they are, I guarantee you guys will save a lot of breath trying to convince someone in the year 5062 that they are not really going to heaven.

Or, fine, maybe I'M the wacko for believing that any of this is even possible. I would love to hear how I'm the wacko so I can stop worrying about why anyone worries about anything other than staying alive for the next ten thousand years.

[vhawk01]

Lots of things are possible.

I'm going to guess you aren't great at poker?

[revots33]

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BUT, it seems to be an even bigger sucker play to waste time telling people how jesus couldn't possibly be all knowing, all good, his own father, who happens to send people to hell that he knew were going there in the first place because they couldn't have free will BLAH BLAH BLAH, when you could be working on something with much more practical importance.

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By this logic everyone who doesn't believe in the afterlife should stop playing poker, going to movies, debating theology, playing tennis, etc. All we should be doing is working to find a way to extend the human lifespan to 10,000 years. The problem is, I like playing poker and going to movies and debating theology and playing tennis. So I guess someone else will have to work on extending my life to 10,000 years.

This post reminds me of those Low-Calorie-Starvation-Diet people who practically starve themselves because they think it will extend their lifespan. Even if it does, is it a worthwhile tradeoff? Not to me. I like food too much. Quality of life is about more than longevity.

I'd much rather see sickness and disease conquered (an attainable goal) than see humans live to be 10,000. Dying peacefully in my sleep at 100 or so, free from suffering and with my mental faculties still intact, sounds just fine to me.

[CallMeIshmael]

http://www.crapfilter.net/images/fry_yahoo.jpg

[m_the0ry]

Isaac Asimov proposes that sentience would eventually transcend physical manifestation and become a network of entities - individuals in the classical sense - and information that flows without resistance. See "The Last Question". The idea of technology stagnating on cryogenics for tens of millennium as a means to transcend time or space is far more ridiculous than Isaac's proposition.

By all means, go ahead and freeze yourself. Let me know how it goes.

[PokeReader]

Ummm, having survived Stage 4 cancer as a teenager, I am not sure why you need to either deny death or have a belief in the afterlife. I am sure it is probably comforting for most people, because they do not see death as a normal part of life, but it is. I believe in a ethical life. I cannot know if there is anything else. So I will do the most I can with today. I don't understand why you would argue with anyone about their religious beliefs? They are entitled to believe what they choose. For most people this is actually is positive thing in life. Why do you need to have anything to do with it? I only discuss this via a vi people not being consistent/authentic with their religion or trying to convert other to their religions or belief set. Even if this was the spiritual equivalent, (which I am not saying it is), of the placebo effect, what harm does it do? It has a benefit, it is none of your concern, and you cannot know anyone is wrong until your 10,000 years are out!

[thedorf]

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BUT, it seems to be an even bigger sucker play to waste time telling people how jesus couldn't possibly be all knowing, all good, his own father, who happens to send people to hell that he knew were going there in the first place because they couldn't have free will BLAH BLAH BLAH, when you could be working on something with much more practical importance.

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By this logic everyone who doesn't believe in the afterlife should stop playing poker, going to movies, debating theology, playing tennis, etc. All we should be doing is working to find a way to extend the human lifespan to 10,000 years.

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You're right. What I should have focused the OP on was the fact that so few people take the idea that we could possibly live for 10 thousand years seriously. Can anyone tell me why so few people do?

[thedorf]

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Lots of things are possible.


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Yes, but out of all of the potentially possible things that we currently deem IMpossible, living for 10-thousand years would seem to be a subject that should get a lot more attention than it currently does.

[thedorf]

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See "The Last Question".

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I think i will.

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The idea of technology stagnating on cryogenics for tens of millennium as a means to transcend time or space is far more ridiculous than Isaac's proposition.

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I don't know what this means.

[thedorf]

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Ummm, having survived Stage 4 cancer as a teenager, I am not sure why you need to either deny death

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I'm actually not. What I'm really talking about is living for an EXTREMELY long time. But not as long as forever.

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I don't understand why you would argue with anyone about their religious beliefs? They are entitled to believe what they choose. For most people this is actually is positive thing in life. Why do you need to have anything to do with it?

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I'm not trying to argue with anyone about their religious beliefs. In fact, I don't think technology that allowed us to live for 10 thousand years would necessarily preclude people from having religious beliefs. I think it would have a profound effect on them but would certainly not act as an argument against any religion that i can think of.

[AWoodside]

Transhumanism (http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/) is something you should look into.

[guids]

Ya, it sounds good in theory, that our sole focus should be to figure out how to live forever, but who wants to be the guy to waste his whole life doing it if we cant figure out how to.

[Metric]

I, for one, think I have a reasonable chance of outliving the sun. Nowhere close to a lock of couse, but a distinct possibility that warrants consideration.

~10 years ago, the cloning of large mammals was sci-fi, we had identified a few percent of the human genome, wireless tech. was essentially non-existent in its current form, ipods were non-existent, the price performance of computing was orders of magnitude less than it is today, and the internet was just beginning to get popular. And the next ten years will be significantly greater that that in terms of technological growth, milestones, and revolution. And the ten after that, etc. etc. etc.

[Subfallen]

I can't believe that Kurzweil's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil) book (http://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Voyage-Live-Enough-Forever/dp/0452286670/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-8185528-2888106?ie=UTF8&s=books&sr=8-1) hasn't been mentioned yet.

[DrunkHamster]

With all the crap our generation is doing to the planet, would you really be willing to put yourself up for trial in 1000 years time?

[felson]

What a dumb post. Obviously the real issues are why we're not living 10 billion years or moving galaxies with our thoughts. Or maybe I'm the wacko!

[thedorf]

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With all the crap our generation is doing to the planet, would you really be willing to put yourself up for trial in 1000 years time?

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If the alternative is complete nothingness, wouldn't you? Even if life is torturous at that time, I would still take temporary torture over eternal nothingness.

[thedorf]

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I, for one, think I have a reasonable chance of outliving the sun. Nowhere close to a lock of couse, but a distinct possibility that warrants consideration.

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This makes a really good point. Actually, my whole argument is not that it simply warrants consideration, but that it might warrant much more consideration than other major issues like global warming or the Iraq war. I think it especially has a place when talking about personal nutrition, health, and fitness because those things, if considered very carefully can get you to the age of maybe 120. To that I say, "who cares?" I'm sure if you treat your body right you can live a moderately fulfilled life beyond the age of ninety but not fulfilled enough in my book to pay so much attention to it. Dying at 80 and dying at 120 seem close enough to the same difference.

I think the fact that you mention that it's no where near a lock is important too. I would go along with that but it's sort of a pot odds problem at that point. There's very little chance that that bottom pair is good to but if it costs you 20 dollars into a 300 pot you're more likely calling.

The chances of living 10 thousand years appear quite small right now but the pot is enormous.

by the way, the nutrition, health and fitness issue plays a role in the extreme life expansion discussion because it makes a lot of sense to live for 120 years if extreme life expanding technology is, say, only 90 years away.

[Metric]

I agree on most points, but there are eough scoffers that I don't really feel the need to preach to them -- exponential trends will become more and more obvious as time goes on, anyway. Merging with technology might not be as far off as you think, though. The current computer chip-making paradigm (without going to quantum computing or complex 3D chip structure) is already sufficient to support Moore's law into the mid 2020's, which will have home PC's rivaling the human brain in sheer comptations per second. AI tech and human/machine interfaces will also be exponentially better by then. My wild, hand-waving guess is that if you can make it to 2040 being financially pretty well-off, you may be able to live for 10,000 years (assuming some combination of horrendous events doesn't mess up the technology curve in the intervening years) -- more or less in line with Kurzweil's timeline and estimates.

[Piers]

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Why don't more of you who have resigned yourself to eternal dirt and decomposition seek eternal life right here in the good ol' secular universe?

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Afraid we are going have to wait for the biologists to work that one out. Not much the rest of us can do.

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Here's why i think you're missing the boat. There is no law that says that someone can't live for, say, 10,000 years. Theoretically, individual cells can very easily be frozen for even longer than that and come right back to life like nothing ever happened.

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If I am going to live for 10000 years I wont to be conscious otherwise it does not really count.

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Cryogenics/cryonics seems to be for the wackos right now

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I think curing old age is the way to go, not cryogenics.

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Why don't you guys try looking through some brain scans to find individual identity (I'm referring to what the believers would call the soul).

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Again a job for neurobiologists, not us laymen.

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Did you ever consider that intelligence might be the ultimate survival trait?

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I am sure a lot of people have.

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That we're supposed to use it to live indefinitely long and reproduce indefinitely?

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“Supposed to”? Did you really mean that? Who but us is going to care one-way or the other?

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faster selling electric toothbrush

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What’s wrong with electric toothbrushes? If I am going to live for 10000 years I want to keep all my own teeth.

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Not that I think these things are unimportant

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Good maybe you do realise the importance of tooth hygiene.

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so I can stop worrying about why anyone worries about anything other than staying alive for the next ten thousand years.

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Its quite simple. Most people have never even considered the possibility, most of the rest could not do anything about it anyway.

Very interesting to see where the biological sciences will be in fifty years time.

[CORed]

I'm going to address just the cryogenics thing. While the idea, if you are terminally ill, of having yourself frozen in the hopes that someday they will find a cure for the cancer or whatever it is that's about to kill you, what I can't figure out is why people in the future would want to thaw out somebody who will probably be broke and have no useful job skills.

[Metric]

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I'm going to address just the cryogenics thing. While the idea, if you are terminally ill, of having yourself frozen in the hopes that someday they will find a cure for the cancer or whatever it is that's about to kill you, what I can't figure out is why people in the future would want to thaw out somebody who will probably be broke and have no useful job skills.

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Why would the company responsible for the freezing job want to continue to pay the expense of keeping them in the deep freeze indefinitely?

[Duke]

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I'm going to address just the cryogenics thing. While the idea, if you are terminally ill, of having yourself frozen in the hopes that someday they will find a cure for the cancer or whatever it is that's about to kill you, what I can't figure out is why people in the future would want to thaw out somebody who will probably be broke and have no useful job skills.

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Compound interest, baby.

[VictorOfAveyron]

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With all the crap our generation is doing to the planet, would you really be willing to put yourself up for trial in 1000 years time?

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If the alternative is complete nothingness, wouldn't you? Even if life is torturous at that time, I would still take temporary torture over eternal nothingness.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some of you seem to be afraid of nothing.

[Bork]

Let's say your physical body is shredded and replaced nearly instantly by an exact copy. Is the copy you? What if the copy is created somewhere else?

I think there is a reasonable chance that there is some form of reincarnation, that doesn't involve any kind of divine involvement.

That is someday there will be another version of me in the future or in another universe that experiences the exact same things I do. That person won't be me (I don't believe), but they will think they are me... This is not good stuff to think about late at night. Like if you wonder whether the world was just created .1 seconds ago, and all your memories are implanted.

[thedorf]

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Let's say your physical body is shredded and replaced nearly instantly by an exact copy. Is the copy you?

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I'm not talking about copying the body, I'm talking about copying the "you." Relatively speaking, copying the body is child's play.

[thedorf]

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I'm going to address just the cryogenics thing. While the idea, if you are terminally ill, of having yourself frozen in the hopes that someday they will find a cure for the cancer or whatever it is that's about to kill you, what I can't figure out is why people in the future would want to thaw out somebody who will probably be broke and have no useful job skills.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a very legitimate risk. But considering the payout, it's one I'd be willing to take.

[thedorf]

So, Metric, since you're one of the few people who is actually taking this seriously why do you think there are so few people who actually take this seriously.

Why do you think important issues like the Iraq war and global warming get so much more attention (not to metion less important issues like paris hilton and american idol).

My guess is that the first moon landing got quite a bit of press before it actually happened and I'm sure the first extra atmospheric earth orbit did too. It seems we are at a time where we can envision the technology that will allow us to live 10,000 years and yet nobody's talking about it.

[Jcrew]

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Compound interest, baby.

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It is impossible in real terms to get ahead just using a savings account since taxes are applied to nominal gains.

[Metric]

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So, Metric, since you're one of the few people who is actually taking this seriously why do you think there are so few people who actually take this seriously.

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1) People typically invest a lot of psychological energy in coming to terms with the inevitability death in on way or another (whether they are religious or not). Ideas like this force one to dig up issues that people were happy to have neatly compartmentalized and stored away.

2) In terms of techological progress, people tend to think linearly. At the "current rate of progress" these things are more than a century away (i.e. they don't apply to me) -- but of course we will not stay at the current rate of technological progress. Technological development is an exponential process.

Point #2 means that there isn't enough psychological insentive for people to overcome point #1 -- i.e. I don't want to have to change my basic thoughts on life, death etc. if I'm basing it on a long shot. But as it begins to appear like less and less of a longshot over the next couple of decades, people will begin warming up to the idea fast.

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Why do you think important issues like the Iraq war and global warming get so much more attention (not to metion less important issues like paris hilton and american idol).

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Bad news trumps good news in the press (especially somwhat speculative good news). And pop culture has somewhat wider appeal than strategic planning and engineering for the future.