Seems like there are a lot of possibilities, some of them good, and I have little time to think about them. It just feels like a red flag for everything in your life to be swapped for other things by very powerful processes beyond your control while you are focused on not dying. Like, if lesser changes were upcoming in people’s lives such that they landed in near mode, I think they would be way less sanguine—e.g. being forced to move to New York City.
I agree it’s very jarring. Everything you know is going to stop and a ton of new things will be happening instead. I can see being upset over the things that ended (friendships and other joys) and it hurting to learn the new ways that life is just harder now.
That said, I note I don’t feel bothered by your example. In the current era of video calls and shared slacks and LW dialogues I don’t think I’d personally much mind being forced to move to New York and I might actually be excited to explore that place and its culture (acknowledging there will be a lot of friction costs as I adjust to a new environment).
Even without that, if I was basically going to live more than a trillion lifetimes, then being forced to move cities would just be a new adventure!
I have a possibly-related not-bothered attitude in that I am not especially bothered about the possibility of my own death, as long as civilization lives is to live on.[1] I am excited for many more stories to be lived out, whether I’m a character in them or not. This is part of why I am so against extinction.
Seems like there are a lot of possibilities, some of them good, and I have little time to think about them. It just feels like a red flag for everything in your life to be swapped for other things by very powerful processes beyond your control while you are focused on not dying. Like, if lesser changes were upcoming in people’s lives such that they landed in near mode, I think they would be way less sanguine—e.g. being forced to move to New York City.
I agree it’s very jarring. Everything you know is going to stop and a ton of new things will be happening instead. I can see being upset over the things that ended (friendships and other joys) and it hurting to learn the new ways that life is just harder now.
That said, I note I don’t feel bothered by your example. In the current era of video calls and shared slacks and LW dialogues I don’t think I’d personally much mind being forced to move to New York and I might actually be excited to explore that place and its culture (acknowledging there will be a lot of friction costs as I adjust to a new environment).
Even without that, if I was basically going to live more than a trillion lifetimes, then being forced to move cities would just be a new adventure!
I have a possibly-related not-bothered attitude in that I am not especially bothered about the possibility of my own death, as long as civilization lives is to live on.[1] I am excited for many more stories to be lived out, whether I’m a character in them or not. This is part of why I am so against extinction.
Not that I wouldn’t leap on the ability to solve aging and diseases.