5 replies to this topic

[Infinity Lover]

Hello; I'm new to this board.

I'll be honest to admit straight away I'm not 'down with the immortality thing', but willing to go along with it as a hypothetical scenario.

I think that the contributions I might make to this BB will mostly be general food for thought. Leaving it up to others to elaborate on those thoughts, and bring specifics to the discussion. On that note, here's a first taster.

On the one hand there's our limited lifespan. On the other hand there's what we make of our lifes within the (relatively undetermined) timeframe we're given. Quantity and quality.

Which importance would you ascribe to pursuing immortality, compared to improving the quality of the limited lives we have today? Not only on a personal level, but also the general quality of life worldwide, and how it differs regionally. What kind of world we're leaving behind for future (immortal?) generations... I'm sure you can come up with plenty of other relevant factors.

Living longer is one thing. What kind of longer life you'd end up living is another.
Who'd want to spend an eternity in 'hell on earth'? Would we ever get around to colonizing the galaxy, when we're too busy bashing each other's brains in?

Marcel.

[Bruce Klein]

Marcel,
Welcome to the forum.... I suspect we'll have many good debates spawned from your seemingly fertile mind.

Let me point out my position on immortality, just to be clear from the beginning. I believe there is nothing after death, therefore this presents me with only one clear choice... physical immortality. How I achieve immortality is one of the reason for the creation of this forum. We're hashing out the first tentative steps toward a successful world without death.

On your question of "Quality of Life".. I totally agree that we need to end the suffering, pain, abuse, war, tragedy and death in this world. Now, what can we do to bring about real change? Well, maybe your right, posting silly messages to a forum may not be the most effective choice. Then again, what should we do? Run off and join the Peach Corps.... Volunteer at the local Humanin society? This is an individual decision. For me, learning as much as I can about the prospect of immortality may actually be the best choice for my time.

All I need to learn is one little tid bit of information and that may push it over the top for me into the physically immortal world. It may be that one silly little forum post sparks the seed of idea that actually saves more lives than 10,000 Peace Corps workers. It's all about information, or am I wrong?

Thanks again for your post.
BJK

[Utnapishtim]

Hey Marcel!

Your comments regarding the quantity/quality aspect of life are interesting.
As I have indicated elsewhere on this forum I don't think there is really one correct answer to this question. Instead it is an issue which each individual needs to decide for themselves. Some people take measures I would consider excessive, such as caloric restriction, or limiting their amount of travel, in the interests of living a safer/longer life. To me the cost vs return ratio of such measures make them singularly unappealing. However I realise that these are personal choices. The great temptation is to generalise and attempt to formulate an "optimal strategy" which everyone should adopt. But this is impossible. As in investing everybody assesses the potential gains and risks differently, and there is no inherently "wrong" way to do so.


Ultimately I believe that both quantity and quality of life can be increased beyond anything we are even capable of imagining at this point. At the same time I don't believe in guarantees. A car can hit me tommorow. Game Over. That's why it is important to suck the marrow out life while you exist, and appreciate living, your capacity to think, feel and experience the world around you.

I want to experience as much as I can, while I can. It is because I love life, that I will fight to continue existing for as long as I can!

[Infinity Lover]

THX for your comments.

I guess the main issue is, that if one ponders the notion of living longer, or even 'for ever', it would become pretty damn relevant to also think about the sircumstances one would be living under, and the world one would be living in.

Chances are my contributions to this board will be mainly about adressing issues in that catagory. And I hope people here will appreciate that.

Marcel.

[Chip]

Hi Marcel

Welcome.

I greatly enjoy your to the point posts. I have a tendency to attempt to rephrase my terminology all the time in order to view possible inconsistencies and maybe find new corollaries to other thoughts and knowledge. I guess it makes me seem like a wind bag at times, like the concept of the internet troll who attempts to fill a forum or chat area so completely that no one else can get a word in edgewise. Got to bite my tongue and my typing fingers more. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t wear toxic nail polish.

My opinion is that if we seek improvement of the quality of all lives and life in general, we will invoke ever-greater possibility of facilitating apparent immortality of ourselves. In fact I find those who would seek immortality at the expense of the quality of life of others to not be worthy and besides having a tendency to defeat their own potentials through guilt, others would probably not appreciate being trod upon and they might take efforts to stop the immortal quest of their suppressors (I can’t help but think of the so-called war on terror. I begin to surmise that it might be a war of the most wealthy against the poorest). I can empathize with Utnapishtim’s comments. I have to admit that I’ve had an exciting life so far and I expect to place myself in enthralling circumstances for the foreseeable future. I don’t see quantity vs. quality as being necessarily mutually exclusive. In a cosmological sense I believe we already are experiencing immortality and I outline my ideas in this regard in the first few posts I made at the conference on free will. In general though I have to agree that your questions are excellent.

Here’s one who appreciates your posts so far and I hope to see more of your insight as time goes by.

Chip.

[caliban]

Hi Marcel

In mant ways, your question is a political one. If we had unlimited ressources, the question would not arise. (In a practical sense, it might still arise in a philosophical sense of course) It is only when we have alternative choices to investing limited ressources in life extention, that we need to make allotments and set quantity/quality priorities:

This is something I wrote recently on the topic

Some appliances have little relation to life extension but represent alternative values for the individual. Entertainment, culture, knowledge, games, information and freedom fall within this category. It might be argued, that the pursuit and partaking of these goods is essentially tied to an underlying factor: being alive. Without life, these goods become meaningless as they are intrinsically bound to activities conditions of the living. A dead person cannot be happy or wise or free to pursue her own fate. This argument is countered with the assertion that, if we are not able to benefit from what is good in life, we might just as well be dead. “Man does not live by bread alone” as the saying goes. If we equate ‘bread’ with being alive, the statement is dialectically false. One might rather say “Man cannot bear to live by bread alone.” This too could be disputed. Some have proven to be able bear living for a very long time in the absence of anything other than ‘bread’ as long as there is hope for something more than ‘bread’ to come. We might therefore settle more safely for “Man does not want to live by bread alone.” While this seems to be a rather universal truth (not only for ‘Man’ but for ‘higher’ animals as well) the assessment of what is above and beyond the necessities of live differs from person to person. In relation to the above goods individuals and cultures have expressed vastly different interests in one or the other. There are as many ‘drinks’ to go with your bread, as there are urges, desires and dreams. All these have only one thing in common: death puts an end to the entire meal. We have seen, that death is utterly profound in this regard. It not only deprives one of the extra ‘drink’ that makes life worthwhile, it destroys any hope of ever attaining that or any other value ever again. Therefore, any strategy of resource allocation would need to do two things: Firstly it needs to provide for the achievability of the extra goods that it endorses. (this might be different from culture to culture). It would not be necessary -albeit preferable- to provide the extra value itself, merely providing the reasonable hope of achievability would be sufficient. Secondly, it needs to ward of death as far as possible. This holds especially true for a pluralistic society, where very different values may coexist. In such a society providing for the fundamental basis of pursuit will often prove more efficient that trying to cater for each individual value. What now is the correct distribution in resource allocation? This decision would have do be made and continuously adjusted to the stat of technology, healthcare and individual expectations. Considering the reasoning above, distributors and administrator of resources would do well to keep give credit to Marx on this one: “three quarter of our happiness are based on our health.”

caliban