Several very important to me people whom I love told me that they would rather die than live even a few hundred years or indefinitely, that they would not choose cryopreservation if life extension capabilities aren’t advanced enough by their “natural time”, and so on, when I asked them how they felt about immortality (scenario was: imagine that humanity figures out how to be immortal and there are no restrictions, anyone can have it if they want it, do you take it yes or no?).
There’s too much deathism in this world, aahhhhhhhhh. I’ve already started to mourn those people, and it hurts so fucking much, it literally is keeping me awake tonight...I was meditating then trying to sleep and reminders of their choice bubbled up and now here I am, typing away. Crying about and mourning the loss of loved ones who haven’t died yet, but ultimately said that that was their preference over life extension / immortality.
It hurts so bad.
Writing this felt helpful somewhat, at least I’ve channeled those feelings and temporarily diminished their intensity, somewhat...well, back to trying to sleep.
On average, as you grow older, your health gets worse. I suspect that many people make an interpolation of this process, and their idea of a 1000 years old person is kind of a zombie in a wheelchair screaming in pain. Arguably, a fate worse than death. (And if you are religious, or unable to talk, then choosing death is not even an option here.) So perhaps it would be better to talk about “more decades of youth” rather than extension of life-as-we-know-it.
Another possible fear is of waking up in a bad future. (Which again may be worse than death, and suicide may not be an option.) I have no idea what are the actual probabilities here.
I suspect that a good deal of people make that assumption too, about what living past a certain age would be like. Or the bad future scenario. I’ve encountered people who believe either or both things, but once I frame the question and scenario as immortality with perpetual youth then the first concern almost always disappears. The majority of people I ask the question / scenario to, keep bringing up concerns about population and where all these immortality people are going to live. That’s not really something I’m worried about, because the universe is very large and an assumption I make is that humanity would spread throughout the stars if immortal, but I don’t have a great specific answer regarding the population concerns people have mentioned.
Actually, religious people with strong faith in their religion’s conception of an afterlife are the most likely to choose eventual death over immortality in my experience, because they believe that one their time is up on Earth, they simply die and go to their religion’s afterlife, and they find that very strongly preferable to living perpetually in the material world.
For the religious ones, perhaps a good frame would be “young for 1000 years”, so that they can still enjoy the afterlife. More time to do the earthly stuff, and the afterlife is supposed to be infinite anyway.
Population… the best case would be something like “people are young forever, but they can only have kids during the first few decades”. Anyway, with exponential growth we would run out of resources even without immortality. And if there is ever a law against exponential growth, like “only 2 kids per a pair of adults”, then immortality would mean a linearly growing population, which should be doable somehow. But yeah, this is difficult to explain, and requires some faith in either space travel or linear increases in food production.
I made the following claim in reply to wunan’s comment below:
“I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the “mortal plane” and go to their faith’s afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time].”
I think there would be variation even amongst individuals with strong faith in the afterlife of their religion regarding how long they may wish to keep living when restored to youth, but I do think more often they would eventually prefer to die instead of living indefinitely. I think your point “More time to do the earthly stuff, and the afterlife is supposed to be infinite anyway” is a good one, and agree that it’d likely motivate some such individuals to keep living some amount longer, though for how long I’m not sure. I do think there would be some such individuals who would not choose life extension past humanity’s current “natural” (scare quotes for a reason) lifespan though.
As I mentioned in my reply to wunan, I don’t want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it, so I’ll look for some research on this topic and see if anyone has researched the sorts of questions one would expect for this topic and if so, what they found.
I have a reactionary knee-jerk reaction against controlling peoples’ reproductive capabilities / rights / choices, in addition to finding that idea pretty awful and horrifying, and would like to find a way for humanity to get immortality yet not have to place any sort of reproductive restrictions on anyone: I don’t want to live in a world where there are such restrictions, because I think that’s wrong and goes against some essential aspect of being human. But I do understand that figuring out resources for a potentially exponentially growing population is an exceptionally hard problem, that just means we should have people working on that now and sooner rather than later.
I’m not so worried about the population problem if we as a species can get into space, improve food growing technologies, and do a lot with nuclear energy generation + renewables and batteries. Plus, truly having to worry about that problem seems so far out from now timewise compared to worrying about life extension and preservation and the imminent mortality we all still possess, so maybe I’ll care about the problem in 500-5000 years once everyone who wants to be immortal truly is in all senses of the word, but until then I’d rather focus on more immediate concerns like I mentioned.
I know some will, but that’s too optimistic and ignores the preferences / experiences of a huge amount of people, because there are categories of people who prefer death over immortality for whom the aging process doesn’t factor in to their choice on that matter. Especially people with strong faith in their religion’s afterlife.
What I mean is that they haven’t really considered it. As I’m sure you’re aware, your mind does not work like most people’s. When most people consider the question of whether they’d like to die someday, they’re not really thinking about it as if it were a real option. Even if they give detailed, logically coherent explanations for why they’d like to die someday, they haven’t considered it in in near mode.
I am very confident of this—once they have the option, they will not choose to die. Right now they see it as just an abstract philosophical conversation, so they’ll just say whatever sounds nice to them. For a variety of reasons, “I’d like to die someday; being immortal doesn’t appeal to me” sounds wise to a lot of people. But once they have the actual option to not die? Who’s going to choose to die? Only people who are suicidally depressed or who are in very extreme cults will choose that.
I wonder what the research area for “finding out whether people with strong beliefs in a religious afterlife of some kind change their minds near death regarding wanting to die vs wanting to go to that afterlife” is called?
I do think you underestimate the strength of religious individual’s convictions and the impact of that on their decisionmaking especially near death if they have significant faith in their religion’s conception of an afterlife (assuming it has one). Still...staring imminent death in the face does spur many changes whenever an individual experiences that, so maybe that does shake things up...but, I’m not sure how much hope I place in that idea without seeing some research around the topic.
I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the “mortal plane” and go to their faith’s afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time].
I make that claim because of my experiences interacting with individuals who have very strong faith in their religious beliefs, including interacting with such individuals when they are near death.
I need to figure out what kind of research people have already done that points in the direction of that claim and see what others have found, then I can pursue this inquiry further. I don’t want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it!
Talk is cheap. Someone who says “I want to die eventually” isn’t actually invested in the answer—it’s just them justifying to themselves why they’re not exercising, eating right, and otherwise planning for a long future.
This is very uncharitable. For many people, living forever is simply not a realistic option. Heck, many rationalists give it a chance around 10%, and that already involves a lot of belief in progress, which many people don’t have.
Also, people are not automatically strategic. For example, religious people believe that sin can bring them eternity in hell, and they still keep sinning.
You’re assuming a lot about other peoples’ experiences and motivations, the internal experience that my aforementioned love ones have described to me looks not at all similar to what you said. While their internal experiences and their desire for eventual death are alien thought processes, emotions, and experiences to me, I do notice that the people-space of people who prefer eventual death to immortality contains a pretty wide variety of reasonings and internal experiences for why they prefer that eventual death...including surprisingly well thought out and sophisticated and logically coherent answers. Some people genuinely want to die eventually rather than live indefinitely, and that mindset / preference is so alien to mine own that it’s a struggle to accept that people believe such things and have such preferences, but I keep encountering people who do so it seems to be true.
However, I can see how what you said might be an internal experience for some people within people-space, it does check out and pass my anecdotal experience test at least (I’ve encountered some people who, per their description of internal experience, are likely similar to the mindset you described).
I like to ask people their preferences on this matter, so I’ve heard a lot different answers to the “death vs immortality” questions, and while I’ve encountered some people who have a strong or neutral preference for immortality, I’ve encountered a surprisingly high amount of people who would prefer death, and that sucks.
Several very important to me people whom I love told me that they would rather die than live even a few hundred years or indefinitely, that they would not choose cryopreservation if life extension capabilities aren’t advanced enough by their “natural time”, and so on, when I asked them how they felt about immortality (scenario was: imagine that humanity figures out how to be immortal and there are no restrictions, anyone can have it if they want it, do you take it yes or no?).
There’s too much deathism in this world, aahhhhhhhhh. I’ve already started to mourn those people, and it hurts so fucking much, it literally is keeping me awake tonight...I was meditating then trying to sleep and reminders of their choice bubbled up and now here I am, typing away. Crying about and mourning the loss of loved ones who haven’t died yet, but ultimately said that that was their preference over life extension / immortality.
It hurts so bad.
Writing this felt helpful somewhat, at least I’ve channeled those feelings and temporarily diminished their intensity, somewhat...well, back to trying to sleep.
On average, as you grow older, your health gets worse. I suspect that many people make an interpolation of this process, and their idea of a 1000 years old person is kind of a zombie in a wheelchair screaming in pain. Arguably, a fate worse than death. (And if you are religious, or unable to talk, then choosing death is not even an option here.) So perhaps it would be better to talk about “more decades of youth” rather than extension of life-as-we-know-it.
Another possible fear is of waking up in a bad future. (Which again may be worse than death, and suicide may not be an option.) I have no idea what are the actual probabilities here.
I suspect that a good deal of people make that assumption too, about what living past a certain age would be like. Or the bad future scenario. I’ve encountered people who believe either or both things, but once I frame the question and scenario as immortality with perpetual youth then the first concern almost always disappears. The majority of people I ask the question / scenario to, keep bringing up concerns about population and where all these immortality people are going to live. That’s not really something I’m worried about, because the universe is very large and an assumption I make is that humanity would spread throughout the stars if immortal, but I don’t have a great specific answer regarding the population concerns people have mentioned.
Actually, religious people with strong faith in their religion’s conception of an afterlife are the most likely to choose eventual death over immortality in my experience, because they believe that one their time is up on Earth, they simply die and go to their religion’s afterlife, and they find that very strongly preferable to living perpetually in the material world.
For the religious ones, perhaps a good frame would be “young for 1000 years”, so that they can still enjoy the afterlife. More time to do the earthly stuff, and the afterlife is supposed to be infinite anyway.
Population… the best case would be something like “people are young forever, but they can only have kids during the first few decades”. Anyway, with exponential growth we would run out of resources even without immortality. And if there is ever a law against exponential growth, like “only 2 kids per a pair of adults”, then immortality would mean a linearly growing population, which should be doable somehow. But yeah, this is difficult to explain, and requires some faith in either space travel or linear increases in food production.
I made the following claim in reply to wunan’s comment below: “I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the “mortal plane” and go to their faith’s afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time].”
I think there would be variation even amongst individuals with strong faith in the afterlife of their religion regarding how long they may wish to keep living when restored to youth, but I do think more often they would eventually prefer to die instead of living indefinitely. I think your point “More time to do the earthly stuff, and the afterlife is supposed to be infinite anyway” is a good one, and agree that it’d likely motivate some such individuals to keep living some amount longer, though for how long I’m not sure. I do think there would be some such individuals who would not choose life extension past humanity’s current “natural” (scare quotes for a reason) lifespan though.
As I mentioned in my reply to wunan, I don’t want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it, so I’ll look for some research on this topic and see if anyone has researched the sorts of questions one would expect for this topic and if so, what they found.
I have a reactionary knee-jerk reaction against controlling peoples’ reproductive capabilities / rights / choices, in addition to finding that idea pretty awful and horrifying, and would like to find a way for humanity to get immortality yet not have to place any sort of reproductive restrictions on anyone: I don’t want to live in a world where there are such restrictions, because I think that’s wrong and goes against some essential aspect of being human. But I do understand that figuring out resources for a potentially exponentially growing population is an exceptionally hard problem, that just means we should have people working on that now and sooner rather than later.
I’m not so worried about the population problem if we as a species can get into space, improve food growing technologies, and do a lot with nuclear energy generation + renewables and batteries. Plus, truly having to worry about that problem seems so far out from now timewise compared to worrying about life extension and preservation and the imminent mortality we all still possess, so maybe I’ll care about the problem in 500-5000 years once everyone who wants to be immortal truly is in all senses of the word, but until then I’d rather focus on more immediate concerns like I mentioned.
Arguably, self modification might be different from continuing to exist (comparatively) unchanged.
They’ll almost definitely change their minds once we have good treatments for aging.
I know some will, but that’s too optimistic and ignores the preferences / experiences of a huge amount of people, because there are categories of people who prefer death over immortality for whom the aging process doesn’t factor in to their choice on that matter. Especially people with strong faith in their religion’s afterlife.
What I mean is that they haven’t really considered it. As I’m sure you’re aware, your mind does not work like most people’s. When most people consider the question of whether they’d like to die someday, they’re not really thinking about it as if it were a real option. Even if they give detailed, logically coherent explanations for why they’d like to die someday, they haven’t considered it in in near mode.
I am very confident of this—once they have the option, they will not choose to die. Right now they see it as just an abstract philosophical conversation, so they’ll just say whatever sounds nice to them. For a variety of reasons, “I’d like to die someday; being immortal doesn’t appeal to me” sounds wise to a lot of people. But once they have the actual option to not die? Who’s going to choose to die? Only people who are suicidally depressed or who are in very extreme cults will choose that.
I wonder what the research area for “finding out whether people with strong beliefs in a religious afterlife of some kind change their minds near death regarding wanting to die vs wanting to go to that afterlife” is called?
I do think you underestimate the strength of religious individual’s convictions and the impact of that on their decisionmaking especially near death if they have significant faith in their religion’s conception of an afterlife (assuming it has one). Still...staring imminent death in the face does spur many changes whenever an individual experiences that, so maybe that does shake things up...but, I’m not sure how much hope I place in that idea without seeing some research around the topic.
I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the “mortal plane” and go to their faith’s afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time].
I make that claim because of my experiences interacting with individuals who have very strong faith in their religious beliefs, including interacting with such individuals when they are near death.
I need to figure out what kind of research people have already done that points in the direction of that claim and see what others have found, then I can pursue this inquiry further. I don’t want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it!
Talk is cheap. Someone who says “I want to die eventually” isn’t actually invested in the answer—it’s just them justifying to themselves why they’re not exercising, eating right, and otherwise planning for a long future.
This is very uncharitable. For many people, living forever is simply not a realistic option. Heck, many rationalists give it a chance around 10%, and that already involves a lot of belief in progress, which many people don’t have.
Also, people are not automatically strategic. For example, religious people believe that sin can bring them eternity in hell, and they still keep sinning.
Arguably that’s internal conflict. (Or, alternatively, what point is there in the religion if religious people are perfect?)
Believing in hell is the strategy against sinning.
You’re assuming a lot about other peoples’ experiences and motivations, the internal experience that my aforementioned love ones have described to me looks not at all similar to what you said. While their internal experiences and their desire for eventual death are alien thought processes, emotions, and experiences to me, I do notice that the people-space of people who prefer eventual death to immortality contains a pretty wide variety of reasonings and internal experiences for why they prefer that eventual death...including surprisingly well thought out and sophisticated and logically coherent answers. Some people genuinely want to die eventually rather than live indefinitely, and that mindset / preference is so alien to mine own that it’s a struggle to accept that people believe such things and have such preferences, but I keep encountering people who do so it seems to be true.
However, I can see how what you said might be an internal experience for some people within people-space, it does check out and pass my anecdotal experience test at least (I’ve encountered some people who, per their description of internal experience, are likely similar to the mindset you described).
I like to ask people their preferences on this matter, so I’ve heard a lot different answers to the “death vs immortality” questions, and while I’ve encountered some people who have a strong or neutral preference for immortality, I’ve encountered a surprisingly high amount of people who would prefer death, and that sucks.