Neslit

Are there Bayesian interpretations of these results?

I don't know if you were including me, but either way I'm sorry and I'll stop now (just saw this).

For the record: I sincerely am not trying to annoy or provoke anyone; I've been concerned about derailing the thread, but a discussion of other emotions around death didn't seem too inappropriate. I sincerely think death is painful and difficult to think about, but that it is worth thinking about sanely, and that death is obviously a bad thing in this world. I am sincerely angry when conscious human minds are prevented by Death from exploring, creating, and loving as much as they want.

The point there is that, say humans were largely the same but instead we naturally lived a very long time, e.g. a thousand years. Then someone comes to you and says, "Hey I have this great idea with lots of societal benefits: Why not kill each person before they reach 100 years?"

We would say no, that is insane and pointless, why would we sacrifice hundreds of beautiful years off of everyone's life? Indeed, consider that environmental improvements and medical technology have more than doubled the human lifespan. Would you voluntarily choose for your children to live until they're at most 35, rather than their current "natural" lifespan?

Whether or not death is "natural" doesn't seem like it ought to have much bearing on whether or not we want it. If life is good, then loss of life is bad. A beautiful mind that ceases to shine, is something I'd just as soon untruncate.

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” --Woody Allen

Some small parts of a person can be transmitted to the outside world, but this leaves out the vast, rich internal world each mind carries with it. If I picture a loved one dying, I feel pretty concerned with the part where they don't keep being alive, keep pursuing their goals and having rich experiences and exploring and loving and being loved and creating and etc. How does this compare with your thoughts?

This may be painful to think about in detail. But I think it is actually important to think about anyway, because there are actual important decisions we have to make (whether to do research in to life extension, whether to sign up for cryonics, etc.), and we seem to be making the wrong decisions when we don't have everything in view; including the most painful parts, which happen to be the most important!

I'm also pretty confused why people bring up supposed benefits of society; to be frank, it sounds to me like people are suggesting "we should kill (let die) all the old and sick people to free up floor space" or "we should kill (let die) all the old and sick people so we don't have to spend any time dealing with their backwards ideas".

>Except we're not machines.

I only mean that we're machines enough so that medical techniques work. We are made of parts that break and can be fixed. This is on extremely solid empirical footing.

>Some might say the next logical step isn't to wish to live forever, but to die, and hope your genes and ideas live on. We're not the eternal ones in this universe, no matter how big our capacity to wish for that.

Do you say that? I wish to live a very long time, and I wish the same for my loved ones and anyone who wants. I would keep wishing this even if it were an impossible wish. Also, it happens to probably not be impossible.

>Life and death are complementary

Hm, I hear people say this a lot, but I genuinely can't empathize with where they are coming from. This is a blank spot in my map. Could you say more about the intuition behind this statement, and why this makes death seems desirable or less bad?

To illustrate how I emotionally parse the statement "Life and death are complementary", I want to make a possibly distressing analogy, so apologies in advance, and:

TRIGGER WARNING...

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TRIGGER WARNING: abstract discussion of rape

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That statement reads to me like:

"Being raped and not being raped are complementary. Members of higher animal species rape each other in the natural course of life, and humans have committed rape throughout history. Rape is a part of nature, so it is foolish to think that we humans could or should eliminate rape forever."

This is an obviously abhorrent position, and I genuinely don't see much of a difference talking about death instead. Clearly horrible thing is clearly horrible.

Again, I am absolutely not trying to imply you are evil, or thinking inside my head that you are evil, or anything remotely like that; I am just trying to convey how I kneejerk-emotionally react to your statement about life and death, in case it helps you say things to me that will cause me to understand where you are coming from.

>filled with a total dread of death

I'm not sure I've successfully communicated my feeling about this. It's less like a total dread of death and more like a total dread of losing life, if that makes any sense.

Do you have any close loved ones---a younger brother, a daughter, a close friend? Anyone for whom you might consider sacrificing yourself; anyone who you believe to be a shining light unto the world. Say that person is eaten by cancer. Once they are dead, they feel no pain; this is clear to me, and is not central in my judgement.

What is central is the lost blossoming of a mind. A rich internal experience, a reflective world with joy, dreams, and curiosity, is not a thing that should be destroyed. A mind that wishes to continue seeing the world and its people, and other minds wishing that mind to continue shining its light, annihilated---don't look away from the pain! If you look away from the pain, you lose your already slim opportunity to fight back.

This is genuinely not obvious to me. What convinced you of this? Or, what do you think the world would look like if there were people who actually had a strong, reasonable, non-insane suspicion that they could do the things that cryonics people claim to be able to? To me, it looks like we are living in that world. Have you e.g. looked through the information, studies, and arguments on the Alcor website?

Uh, there's a whole lot of mass in the universe; this isn't really a limiting factor, and won't be for quite a long time.

>we would be better off if no one died

(Clarification: I think we'd obviously be better off if no one involuntarily died.)

I don't think I've been hasty in my thinking. What is the most central concern that you have about life as a good thing?

There are deep unsolved problems around long life. E.g., how do you grow as a mind that has existed for 4,000 years? A normal human mind would probably not be able to handle this, so we'd need some way to expand without losing the parts of ourselves that we value. Similarly, I don't know how to grow as a community of huge, ancient minds.

But, as the saying goes, those are very difficult problems, and I intend to work on solving them for as many centuries as it takes! Of course I can't literally claim to possess an absolute truth, but I think there is a very strong argument---or rather, I think most people would simply agree if they thought longer and more sanely about the question---that life can be awesome given some work, and it is precious, and we don't want to just give up on our vast adventure because, like, medicine is hard to figure out, or cryonics seems like something weird people do, or whatever.

But, do you agree that the part where the whole human mind (not just some cells) has to die---a soul annihilated permanently---is not really a good thing, even if it happens to be the state we find nature in?

Ha :/ Too real.

> we're all screwed and you were born a few hundred years too early.

It's not a great option, but cryonics seems way better than nothing. (Under the assumptions that the preservation is reasonably high-quality, the storage facilities stay operational, humanity doesn't destroy itself, and advanced medical technology gets developed; see waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html )

An example of someone who wanted to live a long time but was genuinely screwed and was born a couple hundred years too early:

The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity, and give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labor and double its Produce; all Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity! -Benjamin Franklin

Um? Sorry for being frank, but: are you saying you would commit suicide if the world were more confusing? In any case, I doubt that our future civilization would be at a total loss to help "anachronisms" transition into a surprising world.

>Bring a formerly healthy rat back, then we'll talk.

As the saying goes: That is like a terminal ill patient refusing to get into the ambulance because "I don't want to be in an ambulance here, I want to be in the hospital; call me when the ambulance is at the hospital, then maybe I'll get in."

>Yes, I think it is extremely unlikely people will figure out thousand-year lifespans.

Why? Do you think this would withstand a thousand years of human ingenuity? I'm confused where you're getting this very confident prediction.

It also still seems to me that long lifespans are extremely desirable, albeit difficult to obtain, and I'm not sure whether you agree. This is relevant because if we want to decide e.g. where to put research effort, it's useful to know what we want.

The article you linked is kind of long, and looks like it mainly consists of sneering at various people; could you point to the part that's relevant? All I saw was some stuff about Alcor messing up a preservation, which is pretty unfortunate, but not really strong evidence that they have bad motivations.

Well, yeah :P This is a strong argument for trying to prevent fatal accidents!