Yet how much more valuable is our consciousness than our accrued digital data? I don't understand how people can simultaneously understand that it is extremely unwise to leave their data to the fate of mechanical failure and yet not only accepting death but actually perceiving it as superior in many cases.

Defeating death is a worthy project. Embedding consciousness in a digital substrate or backup to genetically engineered bodies, or nanotech / biotech strategies for preserving existing bodies beyond what is natural are worthy pursuits.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason that this is not accepted is because of religious people in the world who feel like accepting that death is the end of their consciousness would be betraying their faith.

I'm entirely in favor of research into extending human lifespan and maximizing the quality of human life. But this "circuits will save us all" stuff is not materially different than all the people who believe Santa-in-the-sky will let them live forever in happy-shiny-fluffy land. It's pure wish fulfillment, with no significant evidence.

With regards to possibility; it's the difference between hard science fiction and simple fiction, there's nothing ruling out that any of these things as possible, and in light of that fact I think pursuing them is an undeniably good idea.

We know the origins of Santa, we know the origins of god and religion, we understand why they're false and why that's a waste of time. Theoretical future advances in technology allowing fundamentally new paradigm shifts are something completely different.

I surely doubt that we know the origins of religion. And they surely are not a waste of time. Something that has been part of the human culture for as long as we know is bound to have some meaning. And pleas, take a look at some of the proofs for gods existence and nonexistence, some of them are quit elegant.

As I said before, extending lifespan is worth pursuing. Living longer is technically achievable. But eternal life is pure fantasy. Death comes for us all, and unless we face that fact squarely, we won't use what time we have as well as we could.

The only benefit death will bring is when everyone who has this ridiculous view point is gone and out of the way.

If you took away the ticking clock and each person had thousands of years to write his novel, prove his theorem, or complete his masterpiece, would we continue to advance--or would we stagnate?

You also assume that a 1000 year old Einstein would still be Einstein. We have no idea what the impact on the brain of living that long would be. More than likely at some point previous memories would begin to fade away, and at some point you've replaced so many parts (memories) that there's nothing of the original left.

Additionally, society changes in large part because the people who make up society change. Would slavery have ever ended if older people hadn't passed away and younger ones with new ideas taken their place? Would we still be ruled by a thousand year old tyrant with a medieval morality?

Look, if you were designing a society and were trying to make the tradeoff of whether people should die or not, how would you weigh the arguments for and against death? "Hmm, on one hand, old ideas die off, so society might progress faster. On the other hand, we will snuff every conscious being out permanently, and they and their family go through years of suffering. Which should we choose?" Are you seriously arguing we would choose the former?

"travelling faster than 40 miles an hour is impossible" "communicate with someone on the other side of the world instantly? Impossible!" "fly to the moon?" "end death?"

I'm sure that if we sat down, we could come up with thirty things that we have daily today, but were 'impossible' a hundred years ago.

The entire frame of your questions shows the fallacy because you explicitly abandon all other notions to just come up with things that were thought impossible but are now mundane.

It's true that we don't know everything, but implying that because we don't know everything we know nothing is absolutely ridiculous. All current knowledge of physics points towards entropy, and moreover the second law of thermodynamics, as being one of the most important and consistent laws of physics. It's so important that one of the most well-known physicists in the world is so well-known because he created a theory of black holes that meshes with our existing theory of entropy, proving that the second law still holds. The idea that we should abandon this knowledge because, well, it's inconvenient strikes me as being disingenuous in the highest order.

Anyone can say, "Well, you don't know everything, so you may be wrong." That doesn't make it an informed or useful comment.

In my defense, I was not saying "since we achieved all these awesome things, we'll surely eventually avoid the heat death of the universe". Instead, I was claiming that right now, we're probably still to ignorant to know that with confidence. Perhaps we will find a way to escape into a different universe.

Thanks for the reminder (and good username!)

And also because it's true. The best science we have tells us that everything decays in the end. If you're going to start ignoring facts just because you don't like them, where do you stop?

But what you're describing sees no meaning in anything ever. Simply because you can say that eventually the sun will burn out and we'll all die anyway doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things as good as we can while we are here.

>If you're going to start ignoring facts just because you don't like them, where do you stop?

No, I'm ignoring facts that have no relevance or no useful action to take. If everything is going to end in a trillion years, what should I do about that exactly? Does that mean I should try to cure aging now?

Do you have a job? Why, the universe will end in some billions of years. Oh, you want to have as nice a life as you can while you are here? So do I.

Which is exactly what this article illustrates. Death comes for us all, and not facing that yields waste and suffering. Not in some abstract sense, either. As the author writes, "At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture." And the amount spent on futile end-of-life care is staggering.

As things stand today, of course it doesn't make sense to hang on when you're only going to get a few more years of agony. But more research could be done in eliminating the effects of aging, etc. We've already lost many great minds but if we can stop this trend or even slow it down then it's worth persuing.

I don't think this is an issue of point of view, entropy and thermodynamics are very real and as of now, the best models of reality point to it being a certainty.

imply that absolutely everything is completely without a point

I personally don't subscribe to that philosophical position, I brought up the topic of the eventual end or the universe as a thought experiment about the acceptance of death and at that point all relevance will be gone, but in saying that, I personally feel that, even if nature is temporal, things can have a point and have meaning now even if they don't have permanent meaning in this nature. Further we cannot rule out the existence of a higher natural order in which there is further purpose. That being said, meaning, point and the eventual lack of both have little to do with the reality that this nature will end, until it does end. Even if purpose is absolutely temporal it is significant in that temporal space, which is enough to give it a point. Acknowledging that a temporal space will end, does nothing to minimize the point of that temporal space and the actors within it. Rather it is a realization that it is a self contained system and that the point or meaning exists within that system, the value is within the system not external to it. Once the system is gone it has no value, but that does nothing to diminish the value inside of the system.

Who told you there was "a point?"

And why did he tell you that?

We live in a universe where all things decay. There is no known exception. Species go extinct. Stars die. As best we know, the universe itself will die: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

You and I will die as well, and pretending otherwise causes a lot of harm. The best we know how to do now is to extend life a little; but we don't even do that as well as we could because we waste fantastic sums on futile end-of-life care. And that money also doesn't make it to the medical research that could help the next generation, or the one after that.

But I think the harm is deeper than that. Who do you think is more likely to be fully aware of how short life is? The next Einstein now toiling in a lab? Or somebody watching their third hour in a row of reality TV?

Don't throw out the Einsteins because of people like this. People who throw their lives away will end up killing themselves anyway (e.g. through horrible eating habits, smoking, etc.), and even if they don't, they'll be in their living room out of our way.

I find it highly amusing (if sad) that people who argue pro-death always like to point at people they don't think deserve to live...

In the coming decades, We may or may not be able to significantly extend life, but it's not clear why it's unlikely, or why it causes harm to even think about.

The point is that fantasizing about "curing" death is harmful to people making difficult decisions about their life and that of their loved ones. People need to face the fact that death is inevitable and part of life, and like everything else unpleasant that is part of life, they must handle it like an adult.

Because what I see people objecting to is not the raising of a possibility. It's the indulging of a fantasy that lets people avoid thinking about an empirical certainty.

The belief that personal death cannot be good for society is just as ridiculous as the belief that it always is.

Or is this a world where only nice people get to live forever?

Neither Hitler nor McCarthy were still 'dictating' when they died. Lack of death doesn't mean that everything would remain the same forever.

Stalin's death lead to a good change.

When somebody stay in power for too long it leads to stagnation.

Human civilization has other measures against such stagnation (such as 2 terms limit for presidential position).

However limited life span still adds extra protection against society stagnation.

It's not obvious if benefits of unlimited lifespan outweight potential problems.

I think that doubling life span would probably be beneficial overall, but it's hard to say if further life span increase would.

No, I'm talking about the elimination of aging and natural death. People would still be able to kill themselves and others.

The legions of true believers would be able to dictate terms to enlightened society with the mere threat of violence.

I really don't think you've thought this through.

Think about what you're saying here. You think no one in Germany was rational? They would have had the same risk of dying we would. Hitler was only powerful because there were people willing to follow his orders.

And there was no shortage of true believers on the Allied side either (think patriotism), in any case.

You would have to be pretty damn patriotic to want to give your life to preserve a nation-state you expect to outlive anyway. If I'm going to die anyway, it doesn't make much difference; it makes sense to risk my life for some things. If my life is eternal, what principle could I possibly, rationally put ahead of my survival?

Eternal life gives the insane an advantage over the sane, and the idea that the insane are as likely to be good as evil seems like a risky bet to me.

That people are starting to view death as a medical failure is one of the best things that could happen. I personally don't expect to die of old age.

Something said, I suspect, by every young person since the time of Hammurabi. I suppose that expecting to live forever in this world is no more irrational than expecting eternal life in another world.

Feel free to die then

Do you honestly think that was my point? That I'm looking forward to dying?

The current state of affairs is certainly abysmal. Some live over a century, while others die in their childhood. We age before we die. I'd rather die at 75 with a healthy body rather than dying at 75 with 10 years of senescence behind me.

So, a better system (should it be possible), would be to get rid of senescence. Even better, we could get egalitarian about death: no involuntary death before age X, at which point you die instantly. Sounds horrible? But it would be much better than the current system, where we let chance decide on the number of years we can live. Plus, you can actually make preparations for your departure.

So, what value would you chose for X? And of course, it would apply to you as well.

I agree that a world without aging would be better. I also think it would be a better world if the moon were made of cheese and I could get there by building a tall enough ladder. But if I spend all my life building ladders in service of that desire I'm a fool.

We don't live in a world where people live forever or can avoid old age except by dying young. All composite things decay. There are so far no exceptions, and no solid theory that suggests otherwise.

I am entirely in favor of medical research that seeks to improve and extend human life. But by not coming to grips with our impending deaths, we aren't living as well as we could. Take the guy upthread who thinks he will live forever. People like that check into hospitals every day unprepared for the reality they face. As the article makes clear, that wastes a lot of money and causes a lot of suffering.

Shakespeare's sonnets are artfully composed, and I'd say we've done a decent job of keeping them around and finding uses for them.

I agree that few people imagining they can have eternal life think that they will suffer. But that's exactly the problem. They haven't thought it through. They don't yet understand what life is. Which is why they are so woefully unprepared to handle the parts that don't match their fictions.

The bit about Shakespeare's sonnets I take to be a counterargument to "all composite things decay". That we have managed to keep 100k of text around for less than half a millennium seems like poor evidence that immortality will soon be ours. People die. Species die. Planets and suns die.

It's a long way to go, or at least a very long shot, but a long life is possible in principle. Things decay, but they can be fixed or replaced (even the brain: current physics says that copy-paste transportation actually works —in principle). We just don't know how to do that yet. Now, about my personal immortality, I see little hope short of Friendly AI or cryonics, and even those are a long shot.

I also agree with you that the various theoretically possible techno-miracles likely won't mean much for us than a modestly longer old age. So I think everybody should really come to grips with what dying means. E.g., by filling out a living will and discussing end-of-life issues with family. If it turns out that preparation is wasted, I don't think anybody will complain too much.

The first part of this sentence seems strange.

If you assume your healthy 75yr young body doesn't die of external forces (drowning, fall off cliff, etc.), which you don't seem to be implying, isn't this a contradiction?

In this context, the "senescence" is a precondition for death, right?

Being able to get rid of senescence might be nice, but making everyone die at age X does not make sense.

> Something said, I suspect, by every young person since the time of Hammurabi. I suppose that expecting to live forever in this world is no more irrational than expecting eternal life in another world.

One could argue that this is the crux of the world's oldest story, "The Epic of Gilgamesh".

You cannot escape true death. Nothing you could say, do or know will ever change the fact that your life will end. You need to come to terms with that before the inevitable happens. Once you are aware that you will die it becomes easier to really live.

I agree we should try to improve human lives, now and in the future, and extending healthy lifespan is certainly part of that. But there is plenty of reason to face the fact that we will all eventually die.

Well, I hate to use Wikipedia for that, but current observations seem to disagree with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms

You'll see in that post that there are several species for which we find that mortality does not increase with age, i.e. they do not appear to age.

Now, I am not a specialist on the subject, so I will not be able to go into debate whether this is truth or fiction, but I have heard/seen this mentioned in several sources.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4357829/Immortal-j...

It is inevitable that a time will come where it will be possible for humans to stave off aging to a significant degree. Whether this is in 100 years or 10,000 years, it is difficult to tell. What measures should be taken because of this is for the future to decide.