It makes dying an optional choice, rather than an inevitable necessity.
Yes.
Talk to an 80 year old person about the “joys” of aging—any proper immortality means that you don’t age. With a longer lifespan, people will tend toward a long term view (at least a little). You can enjoy more things, or accomplish more things, with a longer life.
Okay. Eliminating aging and all the negatives involved with it makes sense.
Even people who have said they’d rather die than live as an invalid, almost always change their tune when they become an invalid—so why should I believe that you’d rather die than live as a healthy man in the prime of life? Go ahead, research this one thing.
I’m not sure what research you think I should do. I accept that many circumstances we can imagine are much different when we actually have to deal with them in the present reality.
If as you fear immortality drains motivation, the immortals will be out-competed by the mortals, so the world won’t be harmed.
I’m not worried about the world being harmed by immortality, per se. I suppose there are lots of interesting implications that would arise, but I’m not concerned.
And remember also that full immortality means finding a way around the laws of thermodynamics and the death of the universe—“forever” might necessarily be limited to a few billion years.
Sure. That makes sense.
With a longer lifespan, people will tend toward a long term view (at least a little). You can enjoy more things, or accomplish more things, with a longer life.
This seems to be the argument. I don’t find it compelling it all. Can you help me understand why “tending toward a long view” is valuable? And how is accomplishing and enjoying more things always good indefinitely? I think enjoying and accomplishing things is cool, but I’d imagine there are some diminishing returns on almost anything.
I’m hearing… “death is obviously bad and the only way you could disagree is because you are biased” and “more years can equal more utilons”.
Am I off base? How?
Death is just the end of your conscious experience. You won’t know your dead. Life is cool, but it isn’t as if the stakes on the table are life or eternal torture. That would be a HUGE problem worth freezing bodies or severed heads over.
This seems to be the argument. I don’t find it compelling it all. Can you help me understand why “tending toward a long view” is valuable? And how is accomplishing and enjoying more things always good indefinitely? I think enjoying and accomplishing things is cool, but I’d imagine there are some diminishing returns on almost anything.
A longer term view is valuable because it would decrease things like “it’s OK to pollute, I’ll be dead by the time it gets bad”.
I’m hearing… “death is obviously bad and the only way you could disagree is because you are biased” and “more years can equal more utilons”.
It’s just that many of us don’t see any benefit to involuntary death. (Voluntary death also remains unpopular, even in surprisingly bad circumstances). In fact, I don’t know of any product which is marketed as being superior to another product due to having a shorter lifespan (“Because our product will cease to function unexpectedly, you can enjoy it more now before it does!”), while things like “lifetime guarantee” are routinely praised as positive. I mean, for houses, tools, toys, vehicles, pet animals, longer lifespan == better, and I don’t see why it should be different for my children.
As a thought experiment:
Most people would, if they could, take a pill that eliminated the effects of aging, but causes multiple organ failure at about their original life expectancy. You seem to agree that aging is inconvenient, so I assume you’d take this pill. Would you?
But what if that pill also extended your lifespan indefinitely, as well as curing aging? Not true immortality, of course, since your body would still be susceptible to disease and accident, but it would mean that every year you’re as likely to die as you were last year, ie your chance of dying doesn’t increase with age. Now, there are a lot of people who say death is a good thing. In the interest of pleasing these people, while also providing the elimination of aging, scientists develop a second substance, which causes multiple organ failure at about your expected lifespan. By combining this substance with the immortality pill, they create a cure for aging that does not have immortality as a side-effect. Which of these pills would you prefer, or would you reject both?
Now, if you’re not a consequentialist, the second pill no doubt seems like it has the stigma of suicide, even though its effects are identical to a previous example which perhaps seemed both positive and non-suicidal. This stigma would vanish, even if the pill were identical, if the pills had been developed in reverse order, with the immortality pill being a refinement of the anti-aging pill to remove a substance that causes eventual multiple organ failure. Or perhaps simply the existence of both options would make them both repugnant to you, one because it stinks of suicide, and the other one because you don’t want immortality?
On a different note, there are in fact some legitimate advantages of death by limited lifespan, and some that might be considered both advantageous and disadvantageous. A limited lifespan allows for permanent retirement. Solving death would be a huge problem for the politicians who have to kick people off retirement, with a risk that they’d rather go bankrupt than anger our elderly. A huge chunk of our taxes are estate taxes “aka death tax”. Death is a great equalizer: it will eliminate any specific tyrant and any specific individual who is accumulating “too much” wealth. Making death technically not inevitable would decrease our courage to do dangerous or violent things, such as soldiering, volunteering to test drugs, violent or non-violent resistance to a corrupt regime. The combination of immortal tyrant with decreased opposition from internal resistance or external liberators, is particularly worrisome. Unlimited lifespan will increase procrastination. Death eliminates old people set in their ways from positions of power and authority, making way for new ideas. Death makes all your problems go away or become someone else’s problems. With limited lifespans, you won’t outlive your friends by more than ~100 years. Even with all that, there’s an equally impressive list for the benefits of a longer lifespan, plus I can point to about 7 billion people who think living is better than dying.
As a thought experiment: Most people would, if they could, take a pill that eliminated the effects of aging, but causes multiple organ failure at about their original life expectancy. You seem to agree that aging is inconvenient, so I assume you’d take this pill. Would you?
I think I would, yes.
But what if that pill also extended your lifespan indefinitely, as well as curing aging?
I don’t think so, no.
stigma of suicide
More than a stigma, suicide is very consequential. It’s a deep trauma for many people surrounding the victim. I think it is a net zero for the victim, however.
Overall, I still see the main argument as this: If you lived forever, you’d be able to accumulated ulimited fuzzies and utilons. And that is objectively better than fewer fuzzie and utilons. Therefore, death is bad.
I’m not “for” death. But life is an accident, an unintended side-effect of physical laws and processes. While I think you point out some good practical examples of advantages and disadvantages for the option of immortality, I sense my objections are of a bit different sort.
We, as living things, have evolved to fight to live, and live to fight. You want to live because nature has designed you to want to live. That is it. We glean some pleasure and meaning in the process of fighting/living/surviving, and that is cool. I sense the novelty of this will run out eventually.
Death isn’t a problem. If future AI finds a way (and have some reason) to keep humans alive and torture them for eternity, then that is a big problem.
People all over the globe starving and enduring suffering via war, disease, etc. is a problem.
Aging leading to Alzheimer’s, et al, is a problem.
Death is empty of any value. It is neither good or bad. It isn’t a problem unless ego makes it one.
More than a stigma, suicide is very consequential. It’s a deep trauma for many people surrounding the victim. I think it is a net zero for the victim, however.
It may be zero for you. If you think it should be zero for others too, I’d like to see some reasoning. That I can’t experience death is obvious, but not convincing. If I only valued things I directly experience here and now, I don’t think I could have any plans whatsoever. The fact that my death is a trauma for others also motivates me not to die. Doesn’t it motivate you?
The fact that my death is a trauma for others also motivates me not to die. Doesn’t it motivate you?
Absolutely. But that is a completely separate issue.
However, I sense that is related to some of what is happening when people speak about death in regard to opportunity costs. When mourning the loss of a younger person, it is common to hear people say “S/he had so much potential that now is lost.” I’ve said that before.
But what are we really saying? What did somebody who is no longer conscious or aware in anyway really “lose”?
In reality, and as you point out, we the still living are the one who are losing something. We lose a friend or a family member. We may lose a bit of motivation when confronted with that reminder of our eventual mortality. Or maybe we lose some peace of mind (or add some anxiety) for the same reason.
It isn’t my argument that death isn’t bad for those who keep living. I would argue their loss would be mitigated if (a) the associated negative aspects of death (pain, trauma, aging, disease, etc.) were eliminated and (b) they meditated on the actual, practical implications of death for the deceased.
I’m not sure what would convince you or count as proper reasoning.
It’s basically an opportunity cost argument that is being made against death. That’s fine with me. I guess there isn’t much I can do to rebut that.
Opportunity costs only seem to make sense in terms of their effect on our current conscious experience.
If I chose not to travel after college when I was single and unattached, I might regret that now that I’m settled down and don’t possess that opportunity (or the memories and life experience I would have gained) given my current commitments and obligations.
If I chose not to invest in Google when I had the cash to do so, I rue that decision, since buying that stock would have contributed to all sorts of potential good things in my present and future, and make me feel less anxious right now.
But death negates all such considerations. If I were to snap my finger and you and I would be dead, opportunity costs would be practically absurd to speak of in our cases.
I concede that the math works for immortality—A years x B utilons/fuzzies per year = Total Awesomeness. As long as B is positive, then maximizing A always increases awesomeness, and making A infinite leads to infinite awesomeness.
If I only valued things I directly experience here and now, I don’t think I could have any plans whatsoever.
It is interesting you phrase it that way. I’ll ask in the spirit of Eckhart Tolle: Is there some way you know of to experience value in things outside of here and now?
Opportunity costs only seem to make sense in terms of their effect on our current conscious experience.
Are you sure the problem isn’t unusual use of language?
Is there some way you know of to experience value in things outside of here and now?
I meditate regularly, I know what you mean and the answer to the meaning of your question is no. I also think this kind of a question with this particular intended meaning is abuse of language, and insisting on using common language to describe the insights you’ve gained through meditation mostly yields nonsense. When people say future they mean future, not the present moment and if you insist otherwise you lose information.
I value things not here and now all the time. They’re just not yet here and now and don’t necessarily have to ever be.
Are you sure the problem isn’t unusual use of language?
Please say more about this.
I value things not here and now all the time. They’re just not yet here and now and don’t necessarily have to ever be.
I don’t understand. When is it that you find value in them? In what way can you experience anything, in the future or the past, outside of the present moment? Can you “value” something without “experiencing” it? If so, how do you define the distinction?
I’ll do so tomorrow with a fresh brain. I find my chances of communicating anything useful poor though. Specialized vocabulary would be nice. I suppose mindful religions have that, too bad it’s buried in religious scripture.
The fact that my death is a trauma for others also motivates me not to die. Doesn’t it motivate you?
Absolutely. But that is a completely separate issue.
However, I sense that is related to some of what is happening when people speak about death in regard to opportunity costs. When mourning the loss of a younger person, it is common to hear people say “S/he had so much potential that now is lost.” I’ve said that before.
But what are we really saying? What did somebody who is no longer conscious or aware in anyway really “lose”?
In reality, and as you point out, we the still living are the one who are losing something. We lose a friend or a family member. We may lose a bit of motivation when confronted with that reminder of our eventual mortality. Or maybe we lose some peace of mind (or add some anxiety) for the same reason.
It isn’t my argument that death isn’t bad for those who keep living. I would argue their loss would be mitigated if (a) the associated negative aspects of death (pain, trauma, aging, disease, etc.) were eliminated and (b) they meditated on the actual, practical implications of death for the deceased.
If everyone was immortal and healthy by default, do you think it would even occur to you suggest death as a harmless alternative?
If someone tried to convince you that a 50 year lifespan is better than what we have now, what would be your reaction? Don’t you find it interesting that your intuitions support a very narrow optimum that just happens to be what you already have?
Do you argue that “death is just the end of your conscious experience” in the case of anyone who dies prematurely? Try to imagine actual deaths in real life and their outcomes.
If everyone was immortal and healthy by default, do you think it would even occur to you suggest death as a harmless alternative?
Good question. I’d suggest death is a harmless alternative, and it would only be analogous with actual, literal, harmless alternatives. (Also, I notice you are conflating non-healthyness and mortality.)
If a reality like death didn’t exist, I guess it would be like any other non-existent, yet imaginable state. In fact, death is a state of non-existence, it is imaginable, and it is harmless.
If someone tried to convince you that a 50 year lifespan is better than what we have now, what would be your reaction?
Most arguments for which exact lifespan is better would seem arbitrary to me. I can see some merit to a lifespan that allowed you to have kids, or grandkids. Maybe a lifespan where you reached full, mature adulthood makes some sense. But 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years… arbitrary.
Don’t you find it interesting that your intuitions support a very narrow optimum that just happens to be what you already have?
Yes, very interesting. Though it is also your intuition, and intuition generally, that opposes (and fears?) death so intensely. It is part of our eons-evolved programming. This death-avoidance intuition exists so that we will be best equipped as vehicles for the replicators we carry. That is all is was designed for. The fact you are arguing for some intrinsic value to indefinitely extended consciousness beyond its instrumental value as a tool of the replicators is simply a glitch; a side-effect to the necessary importance every surviving organism and species must attach to surviving.
Do you argue that “death is just the end of your conscious experience” in the case of anyone who dies prematurely? Try to imagine actual deaths in real life and their outcomes.
I don’t “argue” it. That seems tacky, since I would be arguing only with the deceased friends or loved ones… since the deceased themselves would be...dead.
I do, however, think it is a helpful meditation to ponder the implications of death, immortality, etc. I read and discuss my understanding of Buddhism with lots of people (these, for example), and I find explorations to better understand the human desire for permanence and striving for lasting satisfaction to be very insightful and helpful.
From your cited fable...
Stories about aging have traditionally focused on the need for graceful accommodation. The recommended solution to diminishing vigor and impending death was resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in practical affairs and personal relationships. Given that nothing could be done to prevent or retard aging, this focus made sense. Rather than fretting about the inevitable, one could aim for peace of mind.
Today we face a different situation. While we still lack effective and acceptable means for slowing the aging process, we can identify research directions that might lead to the development of such means in the foreseeable future. “Deathist” stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are no longer harmless sources of consolation. They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action....
...The argument is not in favor or life-span extension per se. Adding extra years of sickness and debility at the end of life would be pointless. The argument is in favor of extending, as far as possible, the human health-span. By slowing or halting the aging process, the healthy human life span would be extended. Individuals would be able to remain healthy, vigorous, and productive at ages at which they would otherwise be dead.
I did not read the whole fable, though I skimmed it (I get it, I think) and read the moral of the story.
What I notice is that the author appears to be conflating the nasty parts of aging with death. They are not at all the same. They are not the same problem, and the should not be confused.
I am 100% for bringing about technologies that eliminate gratuitous suffering. That includes much of what happens we humans age. People often end up in horrible mental and physical states for years, or decades, near the end of their lives. I am all for getting rid of Alzheimer’s, for instance. And, as a personal example, my grandmother spent the last eight years of her life effectively paralyzed and unable to speak due to a series of massive strokes—I am 100% for technology that would make this never happen to anyone ever again.
None of that has anything to do with the end of a human’s localized meat-computer-generated conscious experience. Healthyness does not = no death.
I love that he called it “Deathism”, the “ideologies that counsel passive acceptance”. I’ve often thought the sort of “stay alive at any cost” thinking I often encounter on LW could be appropriately labeled “Lifeism”, and now I feel validated for thinking so.
Let me ask: Can you imagine any scenario, say, a billion years into your life, when you might opt for permanently switching off your consciousness (i.e. death)? Why or why not? What would be different at one billion years vs. one million? One million vs. 100,000? 100,000 vs. 10,000? (I’m not asking rhetorically...)
Are you sure you didn’t think you were replying to someone else? You made a lot of false assumptions about my mindstate.
I’d suggest death is a harmless alternative
So what has made you decide to live so far?
Also, I notice you are conflating non-healthyness and mortality
I combined two situations because I thought that would be more acceptable to you. That doesn’t mean I’m conflating them. I do think there are good deaths and bad immortalities.
Most arguments for which exact lifespan is better would seem arbitrary to me.
If I couldn’t think of any interesting long term goals, I would have to agree. If that’s not how you mean it, then I don’t understand what you mean by arbitrary.
Though it is also your intuition, and intuition generally, that opposes (and fears?) death so intensely
It’s a value, and yes it’s programmed by the blind idiot god called evolution, but my core values don’t go away if I just think about them hard enough and why should they?
This death-avoidance intuition exists so that we will be best equipped as vehicles for the replicators we carry. That is all is was designed for
Why exactly does it matter why the value is there? It wasn’t designed for anything or by anything. It just is, and the genes were just selected for and thus they are. Genes have goals no more than they can plan and even if they did I have no reason to privilege them. Evolution is an unplanned process not optimizing anything in particular, how could it possibly glitch and why should I care?
“stay alive at any cost” thinking
Not my thinking.
Can you imagine any scenario, say, a billion years into your life, when you might opt for permanently switching off your consciousness
Any situation where my future could be expected to be net negative. Of course I can’t imagine such a scenario specificly, as I can’t reliably imagine what life is like even 20 years from now, so the extra years add nothing to the scenario. I can think of several situations that would make me end my life right now or a few years from now.
You made a lot of false assumptions about my mindstate.
Sorry.
So what has made you decide to live so far?
I’m alive. It is my default state.
I combined two situations because I thought that would be more acceptable to you. That doesn’t mean I’m conflating them. I do think there are good deaths and bad immortalities.
I’m talking about (1) aging and disease and suffering vs. (2) death. They have zero to do with one another and should not be combined in this discussion.
If I couldn’t think of any interesting long term goals, I would have to agree. If that’s not how you mean it, then I don’t understand what you mean by arbitrary.
Please give me an example of a long term goal that would require 10 Billion years? How about 1 Billion? 1 Million?
It’s a value, and yes it’s programmed by the blind idiot god called evolution, but my core values don’t go away if I just think about them hard enough and why should they?
Why exactly does it matter why the value is there? It wasn’t designed for anything or by anything. It just is, and the genes were just selected for and thus they are. Genes have goals no more than they can plan and even if they did I have no reason to privilege them. Evolution is an unplanned process not optimizing anything in particular, how could it possibly glitch and why should I care?
It does affect me quite a bit to know why my instincts and drives exist. Maybe it does nothing for you. Okay. That is interesting.
I meant only that I am alive, and I see no reason that death is preferable at this point.
If that’s how you want to have your definitions, I can live with that.
There is a difference beyond definitions here. We may have different definitions of death—I think it is the end of individual consciousness. But the suffering caused by aging and disease is separate from any definition of death. It is an important distinction that goes overlooked oft times.
No need for that. Just always have plans for tomorrow.
Fighting to live; living to fight. I see this a hamster wheel. It has some novelty, but I see no need to prolong it indefinitely. Or, if it can be prolonged, it shouldn’t be at the top of the list of problems facing humanity/the universe.
Why/how they exist and what for are different things. Conflating the two leads just to confusion in this case.
I’m not sure I understand what your point is.
I’m tapping on our conversation now. I’d be pleased to hear any responses you have.
I meant only that I am alive, and I see no reason that death is preferable at this point.
This could easily describe my preferences as well. Perhaps we just have different thresholds for logging out.
But the suffering caused by aging and disease is separate from any definition of death.
I fully agree with this distinction, but it doesn’t matter much to my preferences. I think permanent cessation of consciousness is bad. Some things in life are worse though, and could override this preference. Outcomes that we value don’t have to be directly experienced, and death is no exception. For example I don’t have to experience pain to want to avoid it. In addition living is instrumental to most of my goals.
It has some novelty, but I see no need to prolong it indefinitely.
I’m not bored yet. I can’t imagine how I could be. I wouldn’t choose immortality without the option of death however for various reasons. My ability to make long term plans will increase with technology. I might have million year plans, but can’t imagine what they could be. Imagination is a very limited tool.
I’m not sure I understand what your point is.
You seemed to think we exist for our genes. This is simply wrong. Evolution explains how we came to be, not what for. Cryopreserving some of your cells in a jar or backing up your sequenced genome in the cloud might maximize your genetic fitness but would feel strangely unsatisfying, don’t you think?
‘Let me ask: Can you imagine any scenario, say, a billion years into your life, when you might opt for permanently switching off your consciousness (i.e. death)? Why or why not? What would be different at one billion years vs. one million? One million vs. 100,000? 100,000 vs. 10,000? (I’m not asking rhetorically...)’
Yes*. And I can imagine it at one million as well, and 100,000, and 10,000. What I can’t do is know a priori which it’ll end up being, and I certainly wouldn’t want the decision to be made for me.
*Well, maybe. This actually might be one of the few scenarios in which I’d voluntarily undergo wireheading (as an alternative to death).
Yes.
Okay. Eliminating aging and all the negatives involved with it makes sense.
I’m not sure what research you think I should do. I accept that many circumstances we can imagine are much different when we actually have to deal with them in the present reality.
I’m not worried about the world being harmed by immortality, per se. I suppose there are lots of interesting implications that would arise, but I’m not concerned.
Sure. That makes sense.
This seems to be the argument. I don’t find it compelling it all. Can you help me understand why “tending toward a long view” is valuable? And how is accomplishing and enjoying more things always good indefinitely? I think enjoying and accomplishing things is cool, but I’d imagine there are some diminishing returns on almost anything.
I’m hearing… “death is obviously bad and the only way you could disagree is because you are biased” and “more years can equal more utilons”.
Am I off base? How?
Death is just the end of your conscious experience. You won’t know your dead. Life is cool, but it isn’t as if the stakes on the table are life or eternal torture. That would be a HUGE problem worth freezing bodies or severed heads over.
A longer term view is valuable because it would decrease things like “it’s OK to pollute, I’ll be dead by the time it gets bad”.
It’s just that many of us don’t see any benefit to involuntary death. (Voluntary death also remains unpopular, even in surprisingly bad circumstances). In fact, I don’t know of any product which is marketed as being superior to another product due to having a shorter lifespan (“Because our product will cease to function unexpectedly, you can enjoy it more now before it does!”), while things like “lifetime guarantee” are routinely praised as positive. I mean, for houses, tools, toys, vehicles, pet animals, longer lifespan == better, and I don’t see why it should be different for my children.
As a thought experiment: Most people would, if they could, take a pill that eliminated the effects of aging, but causes multiple organ failure at about their original life expectancy. You seem to agree that aging is inconvenient, so I assume you’d take this pill. Would you?
But what if that pill also extended your lifespan indefinitely, as well as curing aging? Not true immortality, of course, since your body would still be susceptible to disease and accident, but it would mean that every year you’re as likely to die as you were last year, ie your chance of dying doesn’t increase with age. Now, there are a lot of people who say death is a good thing. In the interest of pleasing these people, while also providing the elimination of aging, scientists develop a second substance, which causes multiple organ failure at about your expected lifespan. By combining this substance with the immortality pill, they create a cure for aging that does not have immortality as a side-effect. Which of these pills would you prefer, or would you reject both?
Now, if you’re not a consequentialist, the second pill no doubt seems like it has the stigma of suicide, even though its effects are identical to a previous example which perhaps seemed both positive and non-suicidal. This stigma would vanish, even if the pill were identical, if the pills had been developed in reverse order, with the immortality pill being a refinement of the anti-aging pill to remove a substance that causes eventual multiple organ failure. Or perhaps simply the existence of both options would make them both repugnant to you, one because it stinks of suicide, and the other one because you don’t want immortality?
On a different note, there are in fact some legitimate advantages of death by limited lifespan, and some that might be considered both advantageous and disadvantageous. A limited lifespan allows for permanent retirement. Solving death would be a huge problem for the politicians who have to kick people off retirement, with a risk that they’d rather go bankrupt than anger our elderly. A huge chunk of our taxes are estate taxes “aka death tax”. Death is a great equalizer: it will eliminate any specific tyrant and any specific individual who is accumulating “too much” wealth. Making death technically not inevitable would decrease our courage to do dangerous or violent things, such as soldiering, volunteering to test drugs, violent or non-violent resistance to a corrupt regime. The combination of immortal tyrant with decreased opposition from internal resistance or external liberators, is particularly worrisome. Unlimited lifespan will increase procrastination. Death eliminates old people set in their ways from positions of power and authority, making way for new ideas. Death makes all your problems go away or become someone else’s problems. With limited lifespans, you won’t outlive your friends by more than ~100 years. Even with all that, there’s an equally impressive list for the benefits of a longer lifespan, plus I can point to about 7 billion people who think living is better than dying.
I think I would, yes.
I don’t think so, no.
More than a stigma, suicide is very consequential. It’s a deep trauma for many people surrounding the victim. I think it is a net zero for the victim, however.
Overall, I still see the main argument as this: If you lived forever, you’d be able to accumulated ulimited fuzzies and utilons. And that is objectively better than fewer fuzzie and utilons. Therefore, death is bad.
I’m not “for” death. But life is an accident, an unintended side-effect of physical laws and processes. While I think you point out some good practical examples of advantages and disadvantages for the option of immortality, I sense my objections are of a bit different sort.
We, as living things, have evolved to fight to live, and live to fight. You want to live because nature has designed you to want to live. That is it. We glean some pleasure and meaning in the process of fighting/living/surviving, and that is cool. I sense the novelty of this will run out eventually.
Death isn’t a problem. If future AI finds a way (and have some reason) to keep humans alive and torture them for eternity, then that is a big problem.
People all over the globe starving and enduring suffering via war, disease, etc. is a problem.
Aging leading to Alzheimer’s, et al, is a problem.
Death is empty of any value. It is neither good or bad. It isn’t a problem unless ego makes it one.
It may be zero for you. If you think it should be zero for others too, I’d like to see some reasoning. That I can’t experience death is obvious, but not convincing. If I only valued things I directly experience here and now, I don’t think I could have any plans whatsoever. The fact that my death is a trauma for others also motivates me not to die. Doesn’t it motivate you?
Absolutely. But that is a completely separate issue.
However, I sense that is related to some of what is happening when people speak about death in regard to opportunity costs. When mourning the loss of a younger person, it is common to hear people say “S/he had so much potential that now is lost.” I’ve said that before.
But what are we really saying? What did somebody who is no longer conscious or aware in anyway really “lose”?
In reality, and as you point out, we the still living are the one who are losing something. We lose a friend or a family member. We may lose a bit of motivation when confronted with that reminder of our eventual mortality. Or maybe we lose some peace of mind (or add some anxiety) for the same reason.
It isn’t my argument that death isn’t bad for those who keep living. I would argue their loss would be mitigated if (a) the associated negative aspects of death (pain, trauma, aging, disease, etc.) were eliminated and (b) they meditated on the actual, practical implications of death for the deceased.
I’m not sure what would convince you or count as proper reasoning.
It’s basically an opportunity cost argument that is being made against death. That’s fine with me. I guess there isn’t much I can do to rebut that.
Opportunity costs only seem to make sense in terms of their effect on our current conscious experience.
If I chose not to travel after college when I was single and unattached, I might regret that now that I’m settled down and don’t possess that opportunity (or the memories and life experience I would have gained) given my current commitments and obligations.
If I chose not to invest in Google when I had the cash to do so, I rue that decision, since buying that stock would have contributed to all sorts of potential good things in my present and future, and make me feel less anxious right now.
But death negates all such considerations. If I were to snap my finger and you and I would be dead, opportunity costs would be practically absurd to speak of in our cases.
I concede that the math works for immortality—A years x B utilons/fuzzies per year = Total Awesomeness. As long as B is positive, then maximizing A always increases awesomeness, and making A infinite leads to infinite awesomeness.
It is interesting you phrase it that way. I’ll ask in the spirit of Eckhart Tolle: Is there some way you know of to experience value in things outside of here and now?
Are you sure the problem isn’t unusual use of language?
I meditate regularly, I know what you mean and the answer to the meaning of your question is no. I also think this kind of a question with this particular intended meaning is abuse of language, and insisting on using common language to describe the insights you’ve gained through meditation mostly yields nonsense. When people say future they mean future, not the present moment and if you insist otherwise you lose information.
I value things not here and now all the time. They’re just not yet here and now and don’t necessarily have to ever be.
Please say more about this.
I don’t understand. When is it that you find value in them? In what way can you experience anything, in the future or the past, outside of the present moment? Can you “value” something without “experiencing” it? If so, how do you define the distinction?
I’ll do so tomorrow with a fresh brain. I find my chances of communicating anything useful poor though. Specialized vocabulary would be nice. I suppose mindful religions have that, too bad it’s buried in religious scripture.
Absolutely. But that is a completely separate issue.
However, I sense that is related to some of what is happening when people speak about death in regard to opportunity costs. When mourning the loss of a younger person, it is common to hear people say “S/he had so much potential that now is lost.” I’ve said that before.
But what are we really saying? What did somebody who is no longer conscious or aware in anyway really “lose”?
In reality, and as you point out, we the still living are the one who are losing something. We lose a friend or a family member. We may lose a bit of motivation when confronted with that reminder of our eventual mortality. Or maybe we lose some peace of mind (or add some anxiety) for the same reason.
It isn’t my argument that death isn’t bad for those who keep living. I would argue their loss would be mitigated if (a) the associated negative aspects of death (pain, trauma, aging, disease, etc.) were eliminated and (b) they meditated on the actual, practical implications of death for the deceased.
If everyone was immortal and healthy by default, do you think it would even occur to you suggest death as a harmless alternative?
If someone tried to convince you that a 50 year lifespan is better than what we have now, what would be your reaction? Don’t you find it interesting that your intuitions support a very narrow optimum that just happens to be what you already have?
Do you argue that “death is just the end of your conscious experience” in the case of anyone who dies prematurely? Try to imagine actual deaths in real life and their outcomes.
Have you read this fable by Bostrom?
Good question. I’d suggest death is a harmless alternative, and it would only be analogous with actual, literal, harmless alternatives. (Also, I notice you are conflating non-healthyness and mortality.)
If a reality like death didn’t exist, I guess it would be like any other non-existent, yet imaginable state. In fact, death is a state of non-existence, it is imaginable, and it is harmless.
Most arguments for which exact lifespan is better would seem arbitrary to me. I can see some merit to a lifespan that allowed you to have kids, or grandkids. Maybe a lifespan where you reached full, mature adulthood makes some sense. But 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years… arbitrary.
Yes, very interesting. Though it is also your intuition, and intuition generally, that opposes (and fears?) death so intensely. It is part of our eons-evolved programming. This death-avoidance intuition exists so that we will be best equipped as vehicles for the replicators we carry. That is all is was designed for. The fact you are arguing for some intrinsic value to indefinitely extended consciousness beyond its instrumental value as a tool of the replicators is simply a glitch; a side-effect to the necessary importance every surviving organism and species must attach to surviving.
I don’t “argue” it. That seems tacky, since I would be arguing only with the deceased friends or loved ones… since the deceased themselves would be...dead.
I do, however, think it is a helpful meditation to ponder the implications of death, immortality, etc. I read and discuss my understanding of Buddhism with lots of people (these, for example), and I find explorations to better understand the human desire for permanence and striving for lasting satisfaction to be very insightful and helpful.
From your cited fable...
I did not read the whole fable, though I skimmed it (I get it, I think) and read the moral of the story.
What I notice is that the author appears to be conflating the nasty parts of aging with death. They are not at all the same. They are not the same problem, and the should not be confused.
I am 100% for bringing about technologies that eliminate gratuitous suffering. That includes much of what happens we humans age. People often end up in horrible mental and physical states for years, or decades, near the end of their lives. I am all for getting rid of Alzheimer’s, for instance. And, as a personal example, my grandmother spent the last eight years of her life effectively paralyzed and unable to speak due to a series of massive strokes—I am 100% for technology that would make this never happen to anyone ever again.
None of that has anything to do with the end of a human’s localized meat-computer-generated conscious experience. Healthyness does not = no death.
I love that he called it “Deathism”, the “ideologies that counsel passive acceptance”. I’ve often thought the sort of “stay alive at any cost” thinking I often encounter on LW could be appropriately labeled “Lifeism”, and now I feel validated for thinking so.
Let me ask: Can you imagine any scenario, say, a billion years into your life, when you might opt for permanently switching off your consciousness (i.e. death)? Why or why not? What would be different at one billion years vs. one million? One million vs. 100,000? 100,000 vs. 10,000? (I’m not asking rhetorically...)
Are you sure you didn’t think you were replying to someone else? You made a lot of false assumptions about my mindstate.
So what has made you decide to live so far?
I combined two situations because I thought that would be more acceptable to you. That doesn’t mean I’m conflating them. I do think there are good deaths and bad immortalities.
If I couldn’t think of any interesting long term goals, I would have to agree. If that’s not how you mean it, then I don’t understand what you mean by arbitrary.
It’s a value, and yes it’s programmed by the blind idiot god called evolution, but my core values don’t go away if I just think about them hard enough and why should they?
Why exactly does it matter why the value is there? It wasn’t designed for anything or by anything. It just is, and the genes were just selected for and thus they are. Genes have goals no more than they can plan and even if they did I have no reason to privilege them. Evolution is an unplanned process not optimizing anything in particular, how could it possibly glitch and why should I care?
Not my thinking.
Any situation where my future could be expected to be net negative. Of course I can’t imagine such a scenario specificly, as I can’t reliably imagine what life is like even 20 years from now, so the extra years add nothing to the scenario. I can think of several situations that would make me end my life right now or a few years from now.
Sorry.
I’m alive. It is my default state.
I’m talking about (1) aging and disease and suffering vs. (2) death. They have zero to do with one another and should not be combined in this discussion.
Please give me an example of a long term goal that would require 10 Billion years? How about 1 Billion? 1 Million?
It does affect me quite a bit to know why my instincts and drives exist. Maybe it does nothing for you. Okay. That is interesting.
Stop eating. Let’s see how default it is.
If that’s how you want to have your definitions, I can live with that.
No need for that. Just always have plans for tomorrow.
Why/how they exist and what for are different things. Conflating the two leads just to confusion in this case, because the what for doesn’t exist.
I meant only that I am alive, and I see no reason that death is preferable at this point.
There is a difference beyond definitions here. We may have different definitions of death—I think it is the end of individual consciousness. But the suffering caused by aging and disease is separate from any definition of death. It is an important distinction that goes overlooked oft times.
Fighting to live; living to fight. I see this a hamster wheel. It has some novelty, but I see no need to prolong it indefinitely. Or, if it can be prolonged, it shouldn’t be at the top of the list of problems facing humanity/the universe.
I’m not sure I understand what your point is.
I’m tapping on our conversation now. I’d be pleased to hear any responses you have.
This could easily describe my preferences as well. Perhaps we just have different thresholds for logging out.
I fully agree with this distinction, but it doesn’t matter much to my preferences. I think permanent cessation of consciousness is bad. Some things in life are worse though, and could override this preference. Outcomes that we value don’t have to be directly experienced, and death is no exception. For example I don’t have to experience pain to want to avoid it. In addition living is instrumental to most of my goals.
I’m not bored yet. I can’t imagine how I could be. I wouldn’t choose immortality without the option of death however for various reasons. My ability to make long term plans will increase with technology. I might have million year plans, but can’t imagine what they could be. Imagination is a very limited tool.
You seemed to think we exist for our genes. This is simply wrong. Evolution explains how we came to be, not what for. Cryopreserving some of your cells in a jar or backing up your sequenced genome in the cloud might maximize your genetic fitness but would feel strangely unsatisfying, don’t you think?
‘Let me ask: Can you imagine any scenario, say, a billion years into your life, when you might opt for permanently switching off your consciousness (i.e. death)? Why or why not? What would be different at one billion years vs. one million? One million vs. 100,000? 100,000 vs. 10,000? (I’m not asking rhetorically...)’
Yes*. And I can imagine it at one million as well, and 100,000, and 10,000. What I can’t do is know a priori which it’ll end up being, and I certainly wouldn’t want the decision to be made for me.
*Well, maybe. This actually might be one of the few scenarios in which I’d voluntarily undergo wireheading (as an alternative to death).