341 replies to this topic

[caliban]

Obviously, the focus of these forums will make this poll far from representative. )

But I would encourage and challenge everyone -especially those who do not want to live forever- to state your reasons.  

[ocsrazor]

I'm immediately skewing the curve to the right ;^)

There is just way too much cool stuff that humanity and its decendants will do.  I want to be there for all of it and be personally involved in making it happen.

Best,
Ocsrazor

[Cyto]

Ah yes, forever.  Plenty of time to continue research.

[Bruce Klein]

Four for Four! So far so good... ok.. so who's going to rock the boat?  As the Asian expression goes, Who's going to be the nail that sticks up.. and gets.. [ph34r]

[caliban]

Quote

As the Asian expression goes, Who's going to be the nail that sticks up.. and gets..  

Is that an Asian expression?   Does not seem to be a fortunate one in this context.  
But as I suspect many here would rather identify with the nail than with the hammerperson, let me have the honour:

I do not EXPECT to want to live forever.  I DO think, that there might well come the time where, for all my love of life, for all my belief that there is no "afterworld" that matters I might well be to fed up with life to bother continue it.

If I survive that stage (possibly by apathy) there will definitely come the time where I will have a choice to throw my life away to make a point, to defy someone or something that is threatening me.  

If I survive that one (possibly by sheer luck)  there will likely come a time, where the world that I live I will seem alien to me, not "Mine" anymore and unless I become a different person not worth my while.

If I survive that one (possibly because of fear or lust or destiny)  there will come a time, when I will see that there is a proper time for everything. There is a proper time for life and all the wonderful things that it entails. And there is a time to die, to end a story that could never be great if it never got finished. This one, I do not expect to survive.

Do I thus go gentle into that good night?  
no!
I do RAGE against the dying of my light as much as any of you claim to.  A hundred years are NOT enough for me, nor would a billion be, if that was the final offer.  But when you (in this case I) ask me what I expect to be wanting?  
A couple of thousand years would be reaally nice.

[Lazarus Long]

You forgot the Randian option:

Till I would choose to die...

Or not.

Next thing you governmental types would have is compulsory Imortality and again try to take choice away fromIndividuals.  Are some Reasons worth dying for?

[fruitimmortal]

Until Immortality is here to enchant all of us and other life forms I voted for life as long as my body and mind enjoys the experiance of living.
I would not want to live forever in misery. [unsure]

[planetp]

Asking how long I want to live is always fun, because it depends on so many factors.  But I can say this, I want to live forever, as long as there is an endless choice of novelty, fun, bliss and love to sustain me.  And if there is not, then I would like the option of suspending consciousness until then.  I can imagine that along the path to forever, various external constraints would require that from time to time I "die" in order to be reborn under new better circumstances.  Either way, as long as there is hope of always increasing more positive pathways to live, experience and enjoy, then I can never imagine an end to ecsatatic living.

[Elohim]

I want to see every advancement in the future; once we get to the point where we can advance no further, I see no reason to continue living. I read all the time about all these amazing things we will be able to accomplish in the future, and the anticipation of these furtherments is what draws me to the hope that I can live to see them.

[Bruce Klein]

Quote

once we get to the point where we can advance no further, I see no reason to continue living

How do you come to grips with the real possibility that nothing exists after death?

[Elohim]

BJKlein said:

How do you come to grips with the real possibility that nothing exists after death?

I feel that if there is nothing left to live for, then that is something to die for. If I have lived life to the full and experienced everything there is to experience, why continue in the drull of a monotonous life?

[Aegist]

I want the option of living forever, and with it, the end of my life being dictated by me deciding when I want to die. (I can't see that happening, but I like the option)

[Dynastius]

At this point in my life (I'm 36) I feel that I want to live forever. I can see why some people think that they might tire of life eventually, but its hard for me to imagine that. Because although it might be possible to learn and experience everything in the universe (I personally doubt this), as long as new individuals continue to come into existence and new ideas for art, entertainment and so forth are though of, you will have new things to do. Every person I have ever met is unique. This would be true even if I met all 6.2 billion humans in the world. This would continue to be true regardless of how many people there may be in the future. Additionally, saying that once you have done everything there is to do and know everything there is to know, life would lose its meaning implies that only new experiences make life worth living. This is obviously far from the truth. Uniqueness is exciting and adds immeasurably to life, but even something not so new usually has to be experienced multiple times before it becomes "old hat". And even considering that, there are many things that you never tire of, like holding someone you love, watching a beautiful sunset, or the feeling of water between your toes as the waves wash over them.

Humanity takes pleasure from both the old and the new. Comfort from familiarity, and excitement from novelty. We will have both in nearly endless supply for many aeons. And after that??? Only time will tell.

Edited by Dynastius, 01 March 2003 - 10:13 PM.

[advancedatheist]

Dynastius said:

Every person I have ever met is unique.

I don't have that sense. I'm 43, and the older I get, the more I meet people who remind me of people I've met before. I'm beginning to suspect that there's a lot less individuality in the world than we like to believe. That's why psychological profiling is possible. The range of human behavioral characteristics can be exhaustively catalogued, which means that the number of distinct combinations is finite. We could already be well into diminishing returns on variety with the population we have now.

This doesn't bear directly on the need for immortality as such. Maybe a million immortal guys with personality X are better in some utilitarian sense than just specimen of personality X.

[Mind]

If I could only live within my organic body with my current abilities and my current memory capacity then I could maybe, possibly, remotely imagine a point in the future where I might choose to die (very remote possiblilty).

However, if humanity makes it through the next decade or 2, I fully expect to transhumanize into a cyborg and then eventually become a coherent yet transformable pattern of energy/information. I cannot predict what life will be like in a different "form" but I expect it will allow for endless discovery and enjoyment of life as an individual or as a meta-mind, therefore no need to die. Also, in this "form" one could probably simulate death by going into some sort of stasis for a few thousand years. After re-awakening, I would expect different things to encounter and enjoy.

[Albiorix]

I want to live forever, and of course it would come with the option of choosing to live or die, that's just how the basics of life go. Living forever wouldn't be some fantasy like in films. You wouldn't have to get bitten by a vampire to live forever and be given immortality with a twitst of not being able to die unless you went into the sunlight or got stabbed in the heart with the traditional wooden stake and so on. But the reason I would never want to die because the only way I see life getting monotonous is if the human race died off and I didn't, then it would really suck. As long as the human race is around, I don't forsee the future becoming boring for an immortal. Think of it this way, this is a really big universe, and logically there must be other planets with life on them, and eventually we will make contact with them, or they will will make contact with us. So there will always be new things to do and explore, and all the fun stuff in life.

[advancedatheist]

Albiorix said:

You wouldn't have to get bitten by a vampire to live forever and be given immortality with a twitst of not being able to die unless you went into the sunlight or got stabbed in the heart with the traditional wooden stake and so on.

I can see it now: Buffy the Transhuman Slayer, the hit new series in the 2030's.

Quote

But the reason I would never want to die because the only way I see life getting monotonous is if the human race died off and I didn't, then it would really suck. As long as the human race is around, I don't forsee the future becoming boring for an immortal. Think of it this way, this is a really big universe, and logically there must be other planets with life on them, and eventually we will make contact with them, or they will will make contact with us. So there will always be new things to do and explore, and all the fun stuff in life.

It's possible that most technological civilizations can't handle the consequences of turning on the Krell Machine. We seem quite close to being able to push that button now. But I'm worried that the Machine will give what some evolutionary psychologists call our "Mating Minds," and the film Forbidden Planet the "Monsters from the Id,"  way too much power. It's bad enough that we're already living in the Matrix created by our evolutionary history of sexual selection. What are the Monsters in men's Id going to do to impress potential mates once they have the powers formerly attributed to gods at their disposal?

[Dynastius]

advancedatheist said:

I don't have that sense. I'm 43, and the older I get, the more I meet people who remind me of people I've met before. I'm beginning to suspect that there's a lot less individuality in the world than we like to believe. That's why psychological profiling is possible. The range of human behavioral characteristics can be exhaustively catalogued, which means that the number of distinct combinations is finite. We could already be well into diminishing returns on variety with the population we have now.

This doesn't bear directly on the need for immortality as such. Maybe a million immortal guys with personality X are better in some utilitarian sense than just specimen of personality X.

I agree that there are many people who might remind a person of someone else they have met, but that is quite different from someone who seems exactly like someone else you have met before. My wife has sisters who are maternal twins and they are very different even though their DNA is the same and they were raised in the same household. (This seems to be a good example of the nurture vs. nature argument in favor of nurture. Their experiences outside the home were different enough that they are very different from each other.)  And although there are undoubtedly a finite number of behavioral characteristics for humanity, it seems likely that the superset of behavior characteristics changes over time.

[Albiorix]

I would have to agree with Dynastius on this one. The reason everyone you meet reminds you of someone you have already met, is that the mind cross-references your past experiences with the ones that you are having. For example, you know how to open the door to your house, you turn the knob and push. When you go to someone else's house you see their door, it looks generally the same so you use your past knowledge and see if this works for this door. The point is, the doors may be shaped generally the same, but may be completely different colors, or one could have a window in it, the lock is not the same. The idea is that you relate new people to people you have met before, so you have a basis for comparison. There are many things that people can have in common, but there are many more that people don't. You have to find those aspects of people, that is what makes people unique.

[truth-love-simplicity]

I don't see how anyone could say that they would want to eventually die because of a potentially boring life.  Life is like a kaleidescope, you can never experience the same thing twice.  Even if you did it would still be different because you would have had other experiences between them and therefore have a different perspective.  I would definitely choose to live forever, even through the hard or boring times, knowing that better time await me.    -Brandi

[drago25]

For me, the reason I want to live forever is not so much that I want to experience everything like most have mentioned. I am an atheist, I believe there is nothing after death, so when I started thinking about that, I just could not imagine not living. I just don't want to at some point not exist anymore...I hope cryonics pulls through in the future, heres a good read on the subject btw: http://www.cryonics.org/book1.html

[MichaelAnissimov]

It seems to me that immortals will ultimately inherit the Earth. It's likely that those who live the longest will have the most experience, the most intelligence, and synch most closely with the foundations of future society. Even if it's eventually possible to create an experienced and wise entity immediately from scratch, I suspect that a faster and more efficient way would be to augment a preexisting being, negating the need for creating new beings, except insofar as the citizens of the future see moral value in the creation of new entities with discrete identities.

The words "new entity", in the context of a posthuman world, might be deceiving. In our world, one of the key ways to generate novel complexity and ascend to better ways of thinking is to create successors in the form of our children. Adults can lapse into thinking in ruts, irrational attachment to outdated paradigms, and a variety of other psychological weaknesses. This isn't to say that children don't suffer from psychological weaknesses too. It just seems plausible to me that future entities will be able to transcend the flaws of humans in this capacity, to make themselves as psychologically fluid as good sense demands, skipping the necessity of creating entirely "novel" entities.

The ethic of life is already ahead of death, memetically. In our diseased human society, there may be a greater net good to be achieved in death, when conditions are extreme and alternatives are non-existent. But in the typical Kevorkian-esque case, the individual who makes the decision of death is unaware of deep trends in our society, and the future opportunity of indefinite existence and happiness. When these opportunities turn to reality, they will create a powerful "memetic halo", decreasing acceptance of personal death in those who are familiar with the arguments for their feasibility, or have first-hand experience with their application.

We might think it's odd or unnatural to imagine entities completely satisfied with life. When things take a turn for the worst, we feel (in some cases) morally or philosophically obligated to start feeling like crap. I argue that this is a cruel, temporary constraint imposed by an evolution-designed biology on unwilling consciousness. When consciousness begins to take complete control of its own foundations and surroundings, it will create a world of experiences and structures highly compatible with conscious beings of all types. People with boredom or depression-prone brains and philosophies will progressively die out or fail to create copies of themelves, until there are none of them left. We might mourn their passing, but I feel that in the long run, they will become a mere footnote in the history of the universe, an embarrassing and sad phenomenon which occured only at the historical threshold of consciousness (life) and nonconsciousness (death).

Also, there is evidence that the number of fun things to do increases combinatorally with increased intelligence.  Check out the opportunities we have for fun relative to apes, or even relative to the denizens of the 19th century.

Anyway, I voted that I want to live forever.

[kyle65uk]

I guess its pretty hard for anyone to really know how they'd feel after a couple of million years, so I dont promise Ill say the same next millenia

If every possible advancement was achieved, then logically the world should be perfect, and surely the aim of creating a perfect world would for it to be a nice place to live.  So wouldnt there be little point in perfecting everthing, only to die.  I'd just want to sit back and enjoy After all it would take so long to talk to someone about everything that had ever happened in the universe, that by the time you got to the end you could happily start over again.  There would also life carrying on as normal, so Im sure there would be plenty of petty things to discuss even if there wern't life changing discoveries to experiance.  After all most of what 'we' talk about isnt very important anyway, Im certainly not making a scientific breakthrough a day, and Im not getting bored

Actually in my list of advancements would be something that would stop me ever getting bored, and if I got that then I wouldnt get bored, and if I didnt I could spend my time trying to get/make it.

Edited by kyle65uk, 04 May 2003 - 03:28 PM.

[John Galt]

MichaelAnissimov said:

We might think it's odd or unnatural to imagine entities completely satisfied with life. When things take a turn for the worst, we feel (in some cases) morally or philosophically obligated to start feeling like crap. I argue that this is a cruel, temporary constraint imposed by an evolution-designed biology on unwilling consciousness. When consciousness begins to take complete control of its own foundations and surroundings, it will create a world of experiences and structures highly compatible with conscious beings of all types. People with boredom or depression-prone brains and philosophies will progressively die out or fail to create copies of themelves, until there are none of them left. We might mourn their passing, but I feel that in the long run, they will become a mere footnote in the history of the universe, an embarrassing and sad phenomenon which occured only at the historical threshold of consciousness (life) and nonconsciousness (death).

Michael;

You might be interested in "The Lucifer Principle" by Howard Bloom.  Therein, he describes the various self-destructive neurochemicals which are released by "losers" in the Animal Kingdom (of which Man is unfortunately a member).  Linked with depression, these chemicals can eventually lead to death.  Apparently, one's self image of his/her place in the social pecking order corresponds with the release of beneficial or detrimental neurochemicals.

Within the next decade or so, we should be able to figure out how the brain works to the extent of chemically altering the neurochemical releases and at least maintaining the optimal balance of healthy chemicals.  I forsee a growth in Transhumanist psychologists & psychiatrists who are specialized in balancing the brain's neurochemicals and reprogramming the neural connections for increased efficiency and performance (sort of like defrag'ing a hard drive).

[Lazarus Long]

Cute is that a World Wrestling Federation Jesus or just the typical plastic kind  [?]

Hell fire and brimstone or heaven above, either way you seem in hurry. Why don't you work with the real issue? It is to give life meaning and preserve its sacredness not as an immutable icon but as a process over which we not only have control but responsibility.

Something tells me you wouldn't know an angel if she sat on your face.  [ggg]

By the way you signed an aggreement markvanstee on the limits for the "character of speech" when you came in here so either clean up your act and edit yourself or get an "Ashcroft" done to your post.  I am reluctant to alter your post but I do see it as perhaps offending others by your crass and vulgar inability to be articulate.  I suggest you can try again and make your point with less profanity and the obvious hipocrisy, especially as such a "self-righteous" zealot. You are however entitled to your opinion and feel free to mention it on your way through your imaginary gates to your keeper.

Edited by Lazarus Long, 07 May 2003 - 09:35 PM.

[Damaeus]

I want to live forever, and I don't mean reincarnating.  I mean I would like to think that having been born, I will never lose consciousness from this point onward.

In my lifetime, I've constructed various ideas about what I would want to be as an immortal being.  If we reincarnate, that is not physical immortality.  And all I learned and constructed in this lifetime would be gone in the next one.  That is not acceptable to me unless we have an energy consciousness that never changes from one life to the next.  For example, at my core being, I would be the same from one life to the next.  My ultimate hopes and wishes would be the same, though my social situation might affect how I behave toward others, or even what I think of myself and my own ideas.  Because of that possibility, the best option is to simply never die, and in fact, reach a point where we are able to consciously choose how our bodies evolve: conscious evolution.  Instead of being subject to biological chance, we have control over how it affects us personally.

I think we may have the dormant ability to alter our own genetic structure with simple mental power alone.  People are always resorting to plastic surgery and implants to attain the appearance they want, or to at least get something closer to their personal tastes.  Imagine what we could be like if we could do this ourselves by flexing the muscles of our own immortal consciousness.

I don't think implants, augmentations or drugs will be the ultimate answer to become immortal.  I think these technologies are simply conduits to longevity.  Even if you're pumped with drugs, have a mechanical heart and a computerized brain, if your trip and fall into a wood chipper, you're dead, and were therefore never immortal to begin with.  Immortality is, by definition, endless life.  A life that has ended in a wood chipper accident was never immortal or he would have come out of the woodchipper unscathed.

IMHO,
Damaeus

[Cyto]

markvanstee
If you want to make a point try and put some actual effort into it.  Your constitutive insults only reflect your own religion and soil anything that may be salvageable.

(A.K.A. Try Again Please.)

Edited by XxDoubleHelixX, 07 May 2003 - 09:56 PM.

[Cyto]

Damaeus

The "Immortal goal" would be reaching a state where you are unable to be "discontinued" - we both agree on this.

Now the problem is we would need to have a predictable environment (controlled) to do so along with a predictable soma (clean containers, point mutations etc).

Using your wood chipper example: Would we make the openings for wood chippers all ubiquitously a size that wouldn't allow a body to enter?(Controlling environment)  Or what is the body made with at the time, something soft or something hard? (predictable soma).  Which would cause discontinuation damage or damage that can be repaired.

As for reaching a state of perfection I doubt anyone can do this since we will always have potential threats to our existence unless we stagnate the environment.  So Immortality is a constant if you can fix or evade constant threats.  What I’m getting at is Immortality is never absolute unless, like in evolution, you have the adaptations, which can withstand mainstream occurrences.

Some good examples are Borrelia Burdorferi (Lyme Disease).  Bb has heat shock protein (help proteins fold if the temperature is too high) and it can make a ton of these protein chaperones - so when it makes the leap from tick (refrigerator) to white-tailed deer (burning beach) - it already has the molecular biology to deal with this extreme.  Now with this mainstream occurance of heat problem it opens the doors to other hosts, like the humans.

Overall, it is prevalent in nature that if you improve something that fends off common problems then it should be able to withstand specific attacks.

Example:
Radiation Damage - Upregulate and increase sensitivity in Nucleo-Excision Repair = can deal with sun and other sources of large dose radiation.

Edited by XxDoubleHelixX, 07 May 2003 - 11:00 PM.

[Damaeus]

XxDoubleHelixX:

I think we're approaching this from two different perspectives.  I know that many discussions of this type take place in the newsgroup sci.life-extension, and I've had many long and heated debates in the newsgroup alt.immortal.  My "opponent" comes from the standpoint of scientific and biological steps toward immortality.  I come from the standpoint of, and I know people hate this word, "spiritual" steps toward true, independent immortality.  Now I'm not talking about praising some god and begging for eternal life.  I'm talking about self-empowerment.  "Dependent immortality" requires, as you say, an environment that's controled to the point that all chances for voluntary or involuntary discontinuation of life are removed.  "Independent immortality" is what I advocate and it is my ultimate goal.  Independent immortality is a type of immortality which allows one to live under any circumstance, without a lapse in consciousness.  Even jumping head-first into a boiling volcano would not result in a break in consciousness.  I know it sounds fantastic and as carbon-based life forms, it's impossible for our current bodies to withstand such physical stresses.  Therefore it becomes necessary to actually change what we're made of, but not through implants and replacement parts.  I imagine that most anything we can build on Earth would be melted if we decided to float naked into a white-hot star.  Dependent immortality would not make this possible.  Independent immortality would.

Attaining independent immortality would require a shift in consciousness, but it also requires many suppositions which have not yet been proven conclusively, that being the existence of a body which exists on a different plane than the physical, three-dimensional plane we all live and work in.  And I think that's why I'm chastised to no end in debates with this one fellow in alt.immortal.  He sees no point in seriously discussing any notion of physical immortality attained via simple consciousness.  I can see his point, but I don't necessarily agree with it.  Lack of proof doesn't mean something doesn't exist or that something isn't possible.  I would hate to think that the purpose for living my physical life is to construct what I wish to be once I shed this physical shell, and then I squander that opportunity to chase technological means of immortality insted.  I then grow old and feel my physical life start to slip away, while at the same time gaining some other type of awareness that I had not seriously considered before -- an awareness more vivid than anything I had known on Earth.  And it would be at that time I realize I was wrong -- that the time I could have spent preparing for a shift of consciousness from the physical to a higher form more real than what I know now, I instead spent it debunking all notions of it.

I'm certainly not suggesting time shouldn't be spent on technological advancements toward life extension, but I don't think methods using our own human consciousness as a catalyst should be completely ignored.

Damaeus

[immortalitysystems.com]

Damaeus,

i feel that our human consciousness is the catalyst that drives our persuit of physical immortality.

Up till very recently we have pojected our need for immortality (survival instinct) on to the varius god/s we have created. We then used religions that cater to these god/s to govern our social behaivier.

I have noticed that to many people live is basicly an investment in a "good death", because that will then lead to some form of immortality, depending on the god/s they have served.

I think the most practical way to now avoid old age and death is via Gene Engineering.

BEAMUSED
Alfred