In arguments, it’s pretty common for people to argue for the traditional “decay and die before living even a hundred years” system with arguments against literal immortality. I’ve seen this happen so many times.
“What if you’re getting your liver continuously ripped out by disagreeable badgers?” the argument goes. “Immortality would be potentially super-painful! And that’s why the life expectancies in the society in which I happened to be born are about right.”
The easiest way to bypass this semantic confusion is to explicitly say that it’s about always having the option of continuing to be alive, rather than what people usually mean by immortality.
(P.S: Calling the necklace a phylactery would also be fun.)
The easiest way to bypass this semantic confusion is to explicitly say that it’s about always having the option of continuing to be alive, rather than what people usually mean by immortality.
1) Death can still happen from any number of causes—tornadoes, for example.
2) That may bypass some of the most conscious semantic confusion, in the same way declaring that whenever you said any number, you always meant that number minus seven would clear up some confusion (if you did that). There is a better way.
In arguments, it’s pretty common for people to argue for the traditional “decay and die before living even a hundred years” system with arguments against literal immortality. I’ve seen this happen so many times.
“What if you’re getting your liver continuously ripped out by disagreeable badgers?” the argument goes. “Immortality would be potentially super-painful! And that’s why the life expectancies in the society in which I happened to be born are about right.”
The easiest way to bypass this semantic confusion is to explicitly say that it’s about always having the option of continuing to be alive, rather than what people usually mean by immortality.
(P.S: Calling the necklace a phylactery would also be fun.)
1) Death can still happen from any number of causes—tornadoes, for example.
2) That may bypass some of the most conscious semantic confusion, in the same way declaring that whenever you said any number, you always meant that number minus seven would clear up some confusion (if you did that). There is a better way.
3) It’s probably not true.