L/C Help me. Lack of an afterlife leads me do depression.

[mbillie1]

btw life necessarily has meaning, eg something provoked OP to make this post. the question is whether or not life has a given meaning. but life can be plenty meaningful without a given meaning. just try it sometime.

[tshort]

Why is this thread still going?

Didn't Not Ready put this to rest?

[mbillie1]

edit: nvm i forgot 3/8 of this board believes in goblins

[Subfallen]

I doubt death is really the source of your fear/discomfort.

You didn't exist for roughly 13.5 billion years of the universe's known lifetime. Does imagining that dark hitch1978-less time terrify you? Probably not. For 6-9 hours every day, you have little to no conscious awareness of your being. Does the idea of sleep terrify you? Probably not.

To me, inevitable death is a great comfort, so I certainly can't delve any deeper into the psychology of the matter. But the subject brings some Nietzsche to mind:

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The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity---and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

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If he was wrong about this, why so?

[FortunaMaximus]

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I realize you weren't saying anything about me specifically, just wanted to point out that in my case it's a rational decision that doesn't involve escapism nor denial (I recognize that I may have subconscious psychological biases that are functionally the equivalent, but I do at least attempt to proactively eliminate these). Also, I think you'd be surprised at the fraction of transhumanists that have a similarly level-headed and thoughtful approach.

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Only indirectly, and no harm meant really. It's just that I take a longer view of what such things will mean for the species. Once your singularity happens, what remains is to resolve the issue of bringing the dead back. When you're immortal and have uncountable millennia to resolve what's left of the Universe, you have expansion and then retrival.

I agree that transhumanists are by and far rational, at least moreso than Christians, who prefer to leave the solution to a unseen God. And reducing/minimizing risk and making sure you're on the front wave of such a shift in humanity is understandable.

But if it will happen anyway, taking any approach has an equal chance of getting you there.

Have you ever thought about how to fill the centuries? Millennia perhaps? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] The range of interests and depth of understanding simply isn't that deep and broad. But better to be there than not, right?

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Well, it wont necessarily happen. If the singularity occurred in the year, say, 2070, my lifestyle choices would have a huge barring on whether or not I made it. I agree that there are murky philosophical and metaphysical issues involved with applications of future technology to thing live reviving the dead. I'm signed up with a cryogenic freezing insurance policy myself, although I don't put much stock in it. As they say, "being cryogenically frozen is the second worst thing you can be" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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It would be a problem without solution and a solution would be tried. And it'd be a very challenging problem, even moreso than any expansion or population issues. Long-term view. At least cryogenics is a hedge with only positive benefit.

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As for filling the time, this is honestly the least of my worries. You seem like a quite intelligent fellow, and I'm confident that if you spent a relatively small amount of mental energy and imagination on the issue you could come up with a plethora of ways in which to spend 10, 100, even 1000 current lifetimes. With the augmented intelligence and perceptual capability that is sure to come with technological progress in the singularity-age (assuming we get there) this will only become easier. And, ultimately, if I ever find myself at the point where I feel like I've exhausted all the personally meaningful avenues the universe has to offer I have no moral qualms with simply offing myself. I can't really imagine that happening for a long long time though (we're talking heat death of the universe timescales).

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I already have, and basically realized I'd rather have the option of true immortality or I'd live out what my biology gives me, with the risks I choose to take. Several additional centuries wouldn't do the job for me. I take a rather simple approach to day to day life and would probably not get bored, but people seeking greater and greater challenges would.

Augumented intelligence I'd rather pass on though, and come to those conclusions on my own. It's personal bias, preferring to come to conclusions honestly and through my own effort rather than through technological aids.

It's good you have no moral qualms about suicide in such a scenario, because it would probably be the highest, if not only cause of death in such an illusory paradise. Illusory because there would be plenty of problems with the initial generations, a couple of which have been mentioned already in the thread.

Like you, I'd rather have the opportunity, but I realize it doesn't matter if it happens in '70 or in 2170, because it either happens and continues to accelerate, or we don't quite get there.

And maybe that's laziness on my part, but I recognize I don't need to be proactive in such a scenario, and if it happens, so be it. What's for certain is you take a healthier approach to getting there with more redundancy.

[AWoodside]

I do miss junk food a lot though imo [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Lestat]

PRECISELY because you believe/know that there is no afterlife, there is really nothing to fear in death.

Imagine that there really was an afterlife... Now you'd have all kinds of things to worry about. Will the Supreme Creator like you enough? Or will He send you to an eternal dungeon where you will suffer, and writh, and cry in agony, forever and ever until the end of time? How scary is THAT? And even if you yourself pass the muster, you have all this to worry about for your friends, family and loved ones as well. No THAT should depress you!

But forunately, you're wise enough not to fall for all that crap. So what is there to be depressed about or afraid of when you die? Nothing... Absolutely nothing. Think about all the thousands of years before you were born. Was that so hard for you? In the year 1573 were you afraid? Depressed? Did you have any uncomfort at all? Didn't think so... The year 2203 will be exactly the same, as will all the years after that. But here's what you SHOULD do...

Make the most of your life now. Love your children. Spend time with them and your family. Enjoy every minute with them that you can. Yes, it will end as all things must do, but you won't know it, so there's nothing to fear. What you should fear is stagnating in life. Don't waste it!

[yukoncpa]

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Imagine that there really was an afterlife... Now you'd have all kinds of things to worry about. Will the Supreme Creator like you enough? Or will He send you to an eternal dungeon where you will suffer, and writh, and cry in agony, forever and ever until the end of time? How scary is THAT? And even if you yourself pass the muster, you have all this to worry about for your friends, family and loved ones as well. No THAT should depress you!

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Small sample size here, but every Christian I know, figures hell is a pretty simple place for them to avoid. They don’t sit around and worry about themselves, so much as about unbelievers like me. I’m on half a dozen prayer lists, and it still hasn’t remedied me from this current losing streak.

P.S. I know you are addressing Hitch, who sounds like an unbeliever, so he has plenty to worry about I suppose. As for me, I so thoroughly don't believe in Hell, that I never give it a moments thought.

[yukoncpa]

Hey Hitch, does this help at all?

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Holding on to what you want to believe is fine -- there's nothing wrong with making a choice in that regard. But you really shouldn't do it out of fear.

Your consciousness will remain every bit a part of reality, even in the most atheistic sense. The distinction between future, past, and present is somewhat misunderstood -- they're all a part of the same state of the universe. You should not think of death as "an event which causes you not to be" -- you should think of death (along with conception) more as a boundary to the little region of spacetime defining your existence. That corner of spacetime will always be yours; you do exist -- you have been granted reality along with the rest of the universe -- and nothing can ever change that.


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Metric

[Hopey]

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I don't think Christianity is illogical. I think a universe without meaning is the definition of illogical.

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I think if he listens to your twisted version of Christianity, he'll only become even more depressed than he already is. Right now he's depressed because he believes that he'll one day blink into nothingness. However, if he starts believing what you have to say, he'll realize that rather than nothingess, he has an eternity of hell-fire to look forward to.