Engaged in a spirited debate with another individual about the consequences of our mortality.
The other individual pointed out that if we exist in a universe where death is completely permanent, with no afterlife or any ability to continue living after biological death, then rationally we should spend every waking moment working on a way to stave off this undesirable outcome. Merely trying to live to the next day isn’t sufficient—around 100 billion humans have tried this strategy, and are all dead now.
The other individual thought that perhaps every waking moment should go to developing molecular nanotechnology in the basement or some other unlikely to succeed endeavor. I pointed out that to even touch the level of individual atoms requires on the order of a million dollars of equipment, and that developing productive nanosystems is an effort that would take the resources of an entire nation state or more. By analogy : plenty of individuals desire strongly to build nuclear weapons in their basement, but no group has succeeded without nation state level support. Self replicating nanosystems are more complicated than nuclear weapons, and might in fact require a larger investment in resources (time, equipment, etc) than was spent developing nuclear weapons.
This individual was unhappy with the cryonics mindset—basically, try to scrap together enough resources to preserve your remains post mortem so that there is a non zero chance of future survival. Pray that in the remaining decades of life an individual has (in my case, approximately 60 years), the preservation mechanisms will be better researched so the chance of ultimate survival is better. He thought that the only chance of avoiding death that has any plausible chance of success is to remain conscious and active the entire time.
Result towards self actualization : negative. Even considering how dim the olds of ultimate survival are is extremely depressing. I know the reality is that more than 100 billion individuals are dead, and no matter what choices I make, I may end up among that group. This is quite frightening, because the prospect of death makes pointless any event that happens in my life. It technically would not matter if I became a billionaire and explored the world and enjoyed a thousand beautiful women or was falsely convicted of a crime I did not commit and incarcerated for the next 60 years. Either life history becomes meaningless upon the moment of death.
There is more to life (extension) than cryonics and nanotechnology. You’ve overlooked the world of research going on in biology. That is where to focus your attention if you’re interested in survival without suspension. Try on the outlook that total rejuvenation is possible using only biological means—stem cells, RNA nanodevices, an ecology of special bacteria in your body rather than a nanobotic immune system. Not only is that sort of research something you can engage with that’s already happening on a huge scale—so you don’t have to do the impossible and invent nanobots in your basement—it’s actually easier to see how it’s relevant. The stereotype of a nanobot is a rigid diamondoid mechanism which engages in precise positional manipulation of similarly rigid bodies. A cell is a floppy set of nested membranes populated with self-organizing “soft machines” living in a gel of water and ions. Just trying to get a rigid nanobot to function in that environment would be a problem. It makes more sense to take maximum advantage of the flexible, powerful, and dynamic entities that already live and thrive there.
Two of your specific propositions about death are, first, so long as you’re at risk of death, you should spend every moment trying to stave it off, and second, that actually dying renders your life retrospectively meaningless. The first looks like it is supposed to follow from the second. But as for the second—please define “meaning”.
Once dead it doesn’t matter what happened or didn’t happen. This thought has been disturbing me for around 3 years now.
The context was this : it was the first week of medical school. We went to the anatomy lab, and looked at the cadavars. Practically from day 1 we had to do dissections that felt incredibly wrong and disturbing (chopping deep into the person’s back). So, while in the lab with the corpses, seeing everyone else around me cheerfully talking about various things, I could not understand everyone else’s irrational points of view. THIS was what mattered...who cares what our lives are like if we end up as stiff, cold corpses who remember nothing at all, our brains rapidly rotting to mush.
I think the worst part was going to a sheet of paper on the wall that had the tag number of each corpse, and a description of the age, cause of death, and prior occupation of the corpse. By cross referencing the two I realized that in fact death kills everyone equally without regard to occupation or age, and again, nothing matters after that.
Actually observing these horrors of existence directly changed my perspective radically. Before, I was happily willing to lie to myself and pretend there had to be some sort of afterlife or the world wouldn’t be very fair. After feeling the truth in my own gloved hands (and smelling the stink of decay), the objective, rational truth become apparent.
All my grand plans at that moment in time to become a great surgeon or something seemed meaningless...what difference did it make. Any patient I “saved” would only gain an extra few months to years before they died of something else, and on the day they died any effort I had made (and dollars that were spent) would be meaningless. They “might as well” have died earlier.
Unfortunately, I saw first hand the world of biology research. Progress is so glacially slow that I would be totally un surprised if there were no effective rejuvenative treatments at all available when it comes my time to die in ~60 years from today. The reasons why progress is so slow are myriad, but the key reason is that no one is willing to take risks, and so new treatments are almost never attempted.
That’s why I focus on cryonics because the basic concept of stopping the clock on degrading biological tissues seems like a winner.
Engaged in a spirited debate with another individual about the consequences of our mortality.
The other individual pointed out that if we exist in a universe where death is completely permanent, with no afterlife or any ability to continue living after biological death, then rationally we should spend every waking moment working on a way to stave off this undesirable outcome. Merely trying to live to the next day isn’t sufficient—around 100 billion humans have tried this strategy, and are all dead now.
The other individual thought that perhaps every waking moment should go to developing molecular nanotechnology in the basement or some other unlikely to succeed endeavor. I pointed out that to even touch the level of individual atoms requires on the order of a million dollars of equipment, and that developing productive nanosystems is an effort that would take the resources of an entire nation state or more. By analogy : plenty of individuals desire strongly to build nuclear weapons in their basement, but no group has succeeded without nation state level support. Self replicating nanosystems are more complicated than nuclear weapons, and might in fact require a larger investment in resources (time, equipment, etc) than was spent developing nuclear weapons.
This individual was unhappy with the cryonics mindset—basically, try to scrap together enough resources to preserve your remains post mortem so that there is a non zero chance of future survival. Pray that in the remaining decades of life an individual has (in my case, approximately 60 years), the preservation mechanisms will be better researched so the chance of ultimate survival is better. He thought that the only chance of avoiding death that has any plausible chance of success is to remain conscious and active the entire time.
Result towards self actualization : negative. Even considering how dim the olds of ultimate survival are is extremely depressing. I know the reality is that more than 100 billion individuals are dead, and no matter what choices I make, I may end up among that group. This is quite frightening, because the prospect of death makes pointless any event that happens in my life. It technically would not matter if I became a billionaire and explored the world and enjoyed a thousand beautiful women or was falsely convicted of a crime I did not commit and incarcerated for the next 60 years. Either life history becomes meaningless upon the moment of death.
There is more to life (extension) than cryonics and nanotechnology. You’ve overlooked the world of research going on in biology. That is where to focus your attention if you’re interested in survival without suspension. Try on the outlook that total rejuvenation is possible using only biological means—stem cells, RNA nanodevices, an ecology of special bacteria in your body rather than a nanobotic immune system. Not only is that sort of research something you can engage with that’s already happening on a huge scale—so you don’t have to do the impossible and invent nanobots in your basement—it’s actually easier to see how it’s relevant. The stereotype of a nanobot is a rigid diamondoid mechanism which engages in precise positional manipulation of similarly rigid bodies. A cell is a floppy set of nested membranes populated with self-organizing “soft machines” living in a gel of water and ions. Just trying to get a rigid nanobot to function in that environment would be a problem. It makes more sense to take maximum advantage of the flexible, powerful, and dynamic entities that already live and thrive there.
Two of your specific propositions about death are, first, so long as you’re at risk of death, you should spend every moment trying to stave it off, and second, that actually dying renders your life retrospectively meaningless. The first looks like it is supposed to follow from the second. But as for the second—please define “meaning”.
Once dead it doesn’t matter what happened or didn’t happen. This thought has been disturbing me for around 3 years now.
The context was this : it was the first week of medical school. We went to the anatomy lab, and looked at the cadavars. Practically from day 1 we had to do dissections that felt incredibly wrong and disturbing (chopping deep into the person’s back). So, while in the lab with the corpses, seeing everyone else around me cheerfully talking about various things, I could not understand everyone else’s irrational points of view. THIS was what mattered...who cares what our lives are like if we end up as stiff, cold corpses who remember nothing at all, our brains rapidly rotting to mush.
I think the worst part was going to a sheet of paper on the wall that had the tag number of each corpse, and a description of the age, cause of death, and prior occupation of the corpse. By cross referencing the two I realized that in fact death kills everyone equally without regard to occupation or age, and again, nothing matters after that.
Actually observing these horrors of existence directly changed my perspective radically. Before, I was happily willing to lie to myself and pretend there had to be some sort of afterlife or the world wouldn’t be very fair. After feeling the truth in my own gloved hands (and smelling the stink of decay), the objective, rational truth become apparent.
All my grand plans at that moment in time to become a great surgeon or something seemed meaningless...what difference did it make. Any patient I “saved” would only gain an extra few months to years before they died of something else, and on the day they died any effort I had made (and dollars that were spent) would be meaningless. They “might as well” have died earlier.
Unfortunately, I saw first hand the world of biology research. Progress is so glacially slow that I would be totally un surprised if there were no effective rejuvenative treatments at all available when it comes my time to die in ~60 years from today. The reasons why progress is so slow are myriad, but the key reason is that no one is willing to take risks, and so new treatments are almost never attempted.
That’s why I focus on cryonics because the basic concept of stopping the clock on degrading biological tissues seems like a winner.
If you had the choice between dying tomorrow and having died twenty years ago, would you have any preference between those options?