Death is the occurrence of life being lost, the event has value insofar as the living being had value.
If one wants to continue to exist, getting rid of the state of nonexistence seems like a fairly reasonable goal for that person to pursue. I want to exist, regardless of the fact that nonexistence is itself painless.
I consider the loss of everything a person is to be ‘bad’ because I value the unique intricacies of each person. I attribute value there because I find that complexity mind-blowingly incredible. And I think it is sad when something so incredible and unique goes away forever.
Also I want to point out that you don’t actually have a reason (at least not that you’ve stated) for why you think you don’t want to live forever, you just say that you find the desire “odd” without explanation.
Death is the occurrence of life being lost, the event has value insofar as the living being had value.
If you say so. Though I’ve yet to hear a compelling reason why this is so. The loss will never be experienced as a loss because death removes your ability to experience loss. The idea that life ending is an ongoing loss is some sort of bad opportunity cost calculation.
I consider the loss of everything a person is to be ‘bad’ because I value the unique intricacies of each person. I attribute value there because I find that complexity mind-blowingly incredible. And I think it is sad when something so incredible and unique goes away forever.
This is perhaps just a novelty that would disappear given enough time. You are X years old; give it 1000X and see how you feel about the intricacies of the species or whatever else tickles your fascination bone.
Also I want to point out that you don’t actually have a reason (at least not that you’ve stated) for why you think you don’t want to live forever, you just say that you find the desire “odd” without explanation.
I see it to be an odd extrapolation of the adaptive will to survive. Lower animals want to live perpetually. They seem hardwired to just do survival things for the sake of survival. They don’t ask why or stop to think about the Sisyphean absurdity of trying to survive forever. You, as a human, can consider this. And I think it’s odd when you (and other humans) do not identify the absurdity.
Why wouldn’t living forever be just like any other scenario where a good thing is multiplied by infinity? The novelty would wear off just like chocolate or sex. Things are “good” because they are scarce. Never-ending anything would become a burden.
My sense is the “lifeism” community at LW and elsewhere (those obsessed with cryonics, immortality, etc.) is simply making a bad calculation about the value of life based on some intuition gone haywire. It’s a cognitive glitch where life = good, so life x infinity = good x infinity. The formula fails to recognize the inherent scarcity in goodness, as well as seeing the loss of life as paying out some ongoing residual opportunity cost for failing to achieve immortality.
The one immortality scenario I think is difficult to argue against would be a perfect infinite wireheading scenario. If you could create a situation of perfect bliss and contentment for eternity, then I don’t see a technical problem. It would, I think, require the participants to become unconscious to the reality of the scenario, but still.
To the thread below: You’re not being impolite. I thought you were clear.
Why wouldn’t living forever be just like any other scenario where a good thing is multiplied by infinity? The novelty would wear off just like chocolate or sex. Things are “good” because they are scarce. Never-ending anything would become a burden.
If I get tired of eating chocolate or having sex it is because I want to do something else. I can’t really ‘do’ anything besides living (death isn’t me doing something because I no longer exist). We are also programmed to only want a certain amount of sex and chocolate, but we are for the most part programmed to want life as long as we can get it. Life also has a lot more options than more specific ‘good’ things. I always have too many things I want to do in a day. It is hard to conceive of waking up one day and thinking I was bored of life or just wanted to stop existing. I have to imagine pretty dire circumstances.
Then again, I haven’t lived tens of thousands of years, I might very well get bored and decide I was done with life. But I still would like the option to live as long as I want, just in case I don’t.
The “programmed” bit is where I see a problem. It’s humans’ ability to think and reason outside the replicator-level lizard brain urges that makes immortality problematic. We are able to recognize the fight to live, live to fight cycle of life.
I don’t think life in general is that different from any specific “good” thing—given enough time, the novelty will wear off.
The option of immortality seems okay. Though it seems a bit arbitrary whether someone lives to 80 or 800 or 80 million. The more life = more utilons math never makes sense to me.
I’ve always thought it was interesting to think what you would actually do with eternity… You could have kids...like 1,000 kids. And fall in love every week. And win Nobel Prizes in everything. And travel to the edge of the Universe. Or create your own Universe and be the God of it. Etc. Etc. There might be thousands of years of novelty in that. Maybe millions. But the returns are diminishing. Just think of all the amazing stuff we completely ignore and are bored with already.
I’ve always thought it was interesting to think what you would actually do with eternity… You could have kids...like 1,000 >kids. And fall in love every week. And win Nobel Prizes in everything. And travel to the edge of the Universe. Or create >your own Universe and be the God of it. Etc. Etc. There might be thousands of years of novelty in that. Maybe millions. >But the returns are diminishing. Just think of all the amazing stuff we completely ignore and are bored with already.
I understand that boredom is an issue for many people, but I never really get bored so it’s difficult for me to relate. 1,000 years of various things like the ones you mention seems like it would be a lot of fun to me.
The difference is that life, given an infinite amount of time also has an infinite amount of options for things one can do. There are enough things to do forever, the only question is whether the specific individual will keep thinking of things that they want to do. The crux of our disagreement seems to be that you think people would get bored with literally everything if they lived long enough and I think that most people would find something worthwhile in the infinite possibilities. But neither of us have lived very long (cosmically speaking) so it is difficult to really know how we will feel if we live to be 500, 5000, or 5 million years old.
There might be thousands of years of novelty in that. Maybe millions. But the returns are diminishing. Just think of all the amazing stuff we completely ignore and are bored with already.
Returns are diminishing for one activity, but there are infinite possibilities of activities one might do in infinite time. I don’t think diminishing returns applies to everything you could do at once. But again, I don’t know, maybe continued existence would eventually become unpleasant. That’s a possibility I’m not ignoring, but just because its a possibility doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to have immortality be an option.
Most people want to live, and so because they want to live they want to avoid dying.
But it would be more polite not to say things like “you don’t actually have a reason for why you think you don’t want to live forever,” and just say “you don’t have a reason not to want to live forever” or something similar.
Death is the occurrence of life being lost, the event has value insofar as the living being had value.
If one wants to continue to exist, getting rid of the state of nonexistence seems like a fairly reasonable goal for that person to pursue. I want to exist, regardless of the fact that nonexistence is itself painless.
I consider the loss of everything a person is to be ‘bad’ because I value the unique intricacies of each person. I attribute value there because I find that complexity mind-blowingly incredible. And I think it is sad when something so incredible and unique goes away forever.
Also I want to point out that you don’t actually have a reason (at least not that you’ve stated) for why you think you don’t want to live forever, you just say that you find the desire “odd” without explanation.
If you say so. Though I’ve yet to hear a compelling reason why this is so. The loss will never be experienced as a loss because death removes your ability to experience loss. The idea that life ending is an ongoing loss is some sort of bad opportunity cost calculation.
This is perhaps just a novelty that would disappear given enough time. You are X years old; give it 1000X and see how you feel about the intricacies of the species or whatever else tickles your fascination bone.
I see it to be an odd extrapolation of the adaptive will to survive. Lower animals want to live perpetually. They seem hardwired to just do survival things for the sake of survival. They don’t ask why or stop to think about the Sisyphean absurdity of trying to survive forever. You, as a human, can consider this. And I think it’s odd when you (and other humans) do not identify the absurdity.
Why wouldn’t living forever be just like any other scenario where a good thing is multiplied by infinity? The novelty would wear off just like chocolate or sex. Things are “good” because they are scarce. Never-ending anything would become a burden.
My sense is the “lifeism” community at LW and elsewhere (those obsessed with cryonics, immortality, etc.) is simply making a bad calculation about the value of life based on some intuition gone haywire. It’s a cognitive glitch where life = good, so life x infinity = good x infinity. The formula fails to recognize the inherent scarcity in goodness, as well as seeing the loss of life as paying out some ongoing residual opportunity cost for failing to achieve immortality.
The one immortality scenario I think is difficult to argue against would be a perfect infinite wireheading scenario. If you could create a situation of perfect bliss and contentment for eternity, then I don’t see a technical problem. It would, I think, require the participants to become unconscious to the reality of the scenario, but still.
To the thread below: You’re not being impolite. I thought you were clear.
If I get tired of eating chocolate or having sex it is because I want to do something else. I can’t really ‘do’ anything besides living (death isn’t me doing something because I no longer exist). We are also programmed to only want a certain amount of sex and chocolate, but we are for the most part programmed to want life as long as we can get it. Life also has a lot more options than more specific ‘good’ things. I always have too many things I want to do in a day. It is hard to conceive of waking up one day and thinking I was bored of life or just wanted to stop existing. I have to imagine pretty dire circumstances.
Then again, I haven’t lived tens of thousands of years, I might very well get bored and decide I was done with life. But I still would like the option to live as long as I want, just in case I don’t.
The “programmed” bit is where I see a problem. It’s humans’ ability to think and reason outside the replicator-level lizard brain urges that makes immortality problematic. We are able to recognize the fight to live, live to fight cycle of life.
I don’t think life in general is that different from any specific “good” thing—given enough time, the novelty will wear off.
The option of immortality seems okay. Though it seems a bit arbitrary whether someone lives to 80 or 800 or 80 million. The more life = more utilons math never makes sense to me.
I’ve always thought it was interesting to think what you would actually do with eternity… You could have kids...like 1,000 kids. And fall in love every week. And win Nobel Prizes in everything. And travel to the edge of the Universe. Or create your own Universe and be the God of it. Etc. Etc. There might be thousands of years of novelty in that. Maybe millions. But the returns are diminishing. Just think of all the amazing stuff we completely ignore and are bored with already.
I understand that boredom is an issue for many people, but I never really get bored so it’s difficult for me to relate. 1,000 years of various things like the ones you mention seems like it would be a lot of fun to me.
Scope insensitivity seems to be a strong possibility here.
The difference is that life, given an infinite amount of time also has an infinite amount of options for things one can do. There are enough things to do forever, the only question is whether the specific individual will keep thinking of things that they want to do. The crux of our disagreement seems to be that you think people would get bored with literally everything if they lived long enough and I think that most people would find something worthwhile in the infinite possibilities. But neither of us have lived very long (cosmically speaking) so it is difficult to really know how we will feel if we live to be 500, 5000, or 5 million years old.
Returns are diminishing for one activity, but there are infinite possibilities of activities one might do in infinite time. I don’t think diminishing returns applies to everything you could do at once. But again, I don’t know, maybe continued existence would eventually become unpleasant. That’s a possibility I’m not ignoring, but just because its a possibility doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to have immortality be an option.
Most people want to live, and so because they want to live they want to avoid dying.
But it would be more polite not to say things like “you don’t actually have a reason for why you think you don’t want to live forever,” and just say “you don’t have a reason not to want to live forever” or something similar.
More polite, but probably less accurate. I could be wrong, but it was a conscious decision to word it that way