Yes, we are generally very anti-aging here. It is probably one of the core parts of our culture.
If you are not hating your life but not loving it very much either, then the idea of dying in a few decades IMHO sounds logical and good.
My response would be: my desire to continue living or die would depend on my expected future utility of continuing to live. That is, if I expected that my future utility would be negative and would continue to always be negative, I might want to die, but that is not the case.
I don’t consider myself someone who is either ecstatically happy or depressed. Like you I am in the middle. However, I feel that this middle state still has an overall positive utility.
But even if I was currently suffering so much that I considered my life to be negative utility, I would still want to live if I expected things could improve in the future, which I do. If we observe the course of human civilization, life conditions have generally improved greatly for almost everyone in society over long periods of time, and will probably continue to do so if our civilization continues to advance technologically, economically, socially, etc.
Thus, I do not wish to ‘only live a few more decades and then die’. Instead, I anticipate that the utility of my living could continue to increase in the far future, and might actually be significantly better than it is now.
For many people in our current time, quality of life declines as they get old, especially near the end, due to health decline, loss of social connections due to friends deaths, etc. As a result, many people ‘accept’ that death is necessary, as life would only keep getting worse anyway.
But if we are able to cure and reverse aging, this would no longer necessarily be the case. We may be able to reach a point where we are able to restore youth, energy, and health to people. If so, living forever would not be a state of being an old., decrepit person with no social life, but would be a return to the healthful youth state that many associate with the best years of their life!
Regarding having a purpose for one’s life: If you do not feel that you have a purpose for you life, this does not mean that you would never find one in the future, especially if one were to live a very long time. For example, if you knew you were going to live forever, and you didn’t have to deal with some of the sufferings and energy drains of your current life, would you then perhaps be more motivated to find such a purpose?
If you are afraid of running out of different experiences to enjoy, consider that people are continually inventing new things to be interested in. Stories, games, knowledge, shared cultural experiences, etc. People are generating new information that you can consume at a rate faster than you can consume it, and in a future more advanced world this would only become more and more true.
f you think you will get bored of everything that there is, consider that we now have ideas and experiences and potential hobbies which were almost inconceivable 100 years ago, and in a universe that allows for infinite complexity we can continue to generate them for as long as the universe lasts, for as long as there is negentropy left for us to consume.
I want to see the future, not just because I think living has positive value, but because I anticipate that value might increase in the more technologically advanced future.
I don’t think I could ever run out of things to explore, but if I did, and I eventually wanted to not live anymore, I would rather make that choice myself when I reached that point, and not have it forced upon me too soon because of accumulated damage to my mitochondrial dna, loss of telomeres, accumulation of mutations, and/or whatever else is the cause of the aging process.
Welcome to LessWrong!
Yes, we are generally very anti-aging here. It is probably one of the core parts of our culture.
My response would be: my desire to continue living or die would depend on my expected future utility of continuing to live. That is, if I expected that my future utility would be negative and would continue to always be negative, I might want to die, but that is not the case.
I don’t consider myself someone who is either ecstatically happy or depressed. Like you I am in the middle. However, I feel that this middle state still has an overall positive utility.
But even if I was currently suffering so much that I considered my life to be negative utility, I would still want to live if I expected things could improve in the future, which I do. If we observe the course of human civilization, life conditions have generally improved greatly for almost everyone in society over long periods of time, and will probably continue to do so if our civilization continues to advance technologically, economically, socially, etc.
Thus, I do not wish to ‘only live a few more decades and then die’. Instead, I anticipate that the utility of my living could continue to increase in the far future, and might actually be significantly better than it is now.
For many people in our current time, quality of life declines as they get old, especially near the end, due to health decline, loss of social connections due to friends deaths, etc. As a result, many people ‘accept’ that death is necessary, as life would only keep getting worse anyway.
But if we are able to cure and reverse aging, this would no longer necessarily be the case. We may be able to reach a point where we are able to restore youth, energy, and health to people. If so, living forever would not be a state of being an old., decrepit person with no social life, but would be a return to the healthful youth state that many associate with the best years of their life!
Regarding having a purpose for one’s life: If you do not feel that you have a purpose for you life, this does not mean that you would never find one in the future, especially if one were to live a very long time. For example, if you knew you were going to live forever, and you didn’t have to deal with some of the sufferings and energy drains of your current life, would you then perhaps be more motivated to find such a purpose?
If you are afraid of running out of different experiences to enjoy, consider that people are continually inventing new things to be interested in. Stories, games, knowledge, shared cultural experiences, etc. People are generating new information that you can consume at a rate faster than you can consume it, and in a future more advanced world this would only become more and more true.
f you think you will get bored of everything that there is, consider that we now have ideas and experiences and potential hobbies which were almost inconceivable 100 years ago, and in a universe that allows for infinite complexity we can continue to generate them for as long as the universe lasts, for as long as there is negentropy left for us to consume.
I want to see the future, not just because I think living has positive value, but because I anticipate that value might increase in the more technologically advanced future.
I don’t think I could ever run out of things to explore, but if I did, and I eventually wanted to not live anymore, I would rather make that choice myself when I reached that point, and not have it forced upon me too soon because of accumulated damage to my mitochondrial dna, loss of telomeres, accumulation of mutations, and/or whatever else is the cause of the aging process.