Cure For Death?

[ecnarf]

I can only speak for myself when I think my death is necessary, and that is when I cease to be a functioning human being. Obviously I would never deny someone health care because they're unlikely to recover or because they're old and their time has come, but when I'm incapable of productive work, thought and not even remotely self-sufficient, well, what benefit will there be in dragging out my existence by several decades? If I ever got to that point, I would rather that all the money, medication, equipment, staff and man-hours that are merely prolonging the inevitable be used for the benefit of the young who are capable of living independently and productively.

 

Death is necessary because we are mortal. Without death we would still be single-celled prokaryotic bacteria. More to the point, without death, we would not exist because there would be no space for us in the world. Without death, we could not live. We eat dead animal for a reason. Mushrooms decay dead animal matter and plants live off of the detritus. Death is an essential part of ecology.

Edited June 21, 2007 by ecnarf

[Lauren]

so the difference between you wanting to live today - and being alright with death in 80 years - is only a difference of however-many-years

if you were to make a graph that plotted age vs. usefulness of being a live (i don't know exactly how to phrase that) i think it would be a pretty interesting parabola. if i statistics on it and if i could remember math, i don't think it would take much to prove that with old age comes uselessness. maybe you're right... maybe a 75 year old could benefit for another 10 years. but i think said graph would say the average person is really only useful for x many years. but people would exceed this and we'd get into problems... when is a brain too old to support the rest of the body? etc.

[ecnarf]

Parabolas aren't interesting. For serious.

 

P.S. Heyrabbit you are tripping me the fuck out with that avatar.

[Lauren]

maybe the parabola itself won't be interesting but what it would show us would be, in regards to the topic at hand (not that we can't figure out what it would look like without actually seeing he graph).

[heyrabbit]

what benefit will there be in dragging out my existence by several decades?

 

what's the point of living right now?

 

once life is not worth living, it's not worth living. but there is a chance that it will be worth living. if that's the case, it wouldn't make any sense to not live it.

 

I understand what you're saying lauren. I wouldn't want to live a useless life either. but again, why wouldn't you want to live a life worth living (exist)?

 

you have to keep it in perspective. if you'd shown a microwave to someone 100 years ago, it would blow their minds away. ( or a pocket calculator)

 

hahah, what's trippy about my avatar.

Edited June 21, 2007 by heyrabbit

[Sparq]

Who wants to be physically 50 years old, on their second body, with the deteriorating reflexes and mind of a typical 120 year old person? Sooner or later you're going to end up with a legion of able-bodied, youthful people rapidly regressing towards intellectual infancy. Then what? 24 hour care and life support for 60 years?

Edited June 21, 2007 by Sparq

[ecnarf]

what's the point of living right now?

 

once life is not worth living, it's not worth living. but there is a chance that it will be worth living. if that's the case, it wouldn't make any sense to not live it.

 

I understand what you're saying lauren. I wouldn't want to live a useless life either. but again, why wouldn't you want to life a life worth living (exist)?

 

hahah, what's trippy about my avatar.

Well, from a utilitarian point of view, I have something to contribute to society. I'm able-bodied, intelligent, good looking and white. But seriously, though. I can get a job and contribute to the economy. Multiply by the millions of people my age and we have a further continuance of our society. In 100 years, even if I'm alive, I won't be able to do any of that.

 

I don't think that the "What's the point of being alive now?" argument holds any water in this case. Keeping people alive that long will be a huge drain on the society that the young are continuing on. If we were to all collectively commit suicide, there would simply be no society. Big difference.

 

Also, I keep thinking you're supercanuk with that avatar.

[heyrabbit]

Who wants to be physically 50 years old, on their second body, with the deteriorating reflexes and mind of a typical 120 year old person? Sooner or later you're going to end up with a legion of able-bodied, youthful people rapidly regressing towards intellectual infancy. Then what? 24 hour care and life support for 60 years?

 

that's assuming that you know where technology will be in 100 years.

 

 

 

Well, from a utilitarian point of view, I have something to contribute to society. I'm able-bodied, intelligent, good looking and white. But seriously, though. I can get a job and contribute to the economy. Multiply by the millions of people my age and we have a further continuance of our society. In 100 years, even if I'm alive, I won't be able to do any of that.

 

I don't think that the "What's the point of being alive now?" argument holds any water in this case. Keeping people alive that long will be a huge drain on the society that the young are continuing on. If we were to all collectively commit suicide, there would simply be no society. Big difference.

 

EDIT - you're too smart to base your life's purpose on utilitarian ideals. what does society have to contribute to your well being when you're dead? nothing

Edited June 21, 2007 by heyrabbit

[ecnarf]

I don't think that the entire purpose of my life is to be a worker bee. Although I'm at a loss as to what you were trying to say with the second sentence.

[RicardoObviouso]

our lives will probably look like an outhouse to those people

speak for yourself. the architect who designed my house created a timeless masterpiece

[heyrabbit]

honest question: how does society contribute to your well being when your dead? i.e. it's only possible for you to care about contributing to society when your alive, and it's only possible for that to be reasonable insofar as you receive something back frm society

Edited June 21, 2007 by heyrabbit

[ecnarf]

honest question: how does society contribute to your well being when your dead?

Conversely, when you're the living dead, how much do you take away from society?

[heyrabbit]

nothing, because nobody owes anybody a living.

[ecnarf]

Dude, you're not following. It's selfish to hold on to your own life as long as possible to the detriment of others. When old and feeble and dependent on others to perform the most basic functions, you take away money and man-hours from other pursuits. Society as a whole would suffer keeping people alive two or three generations beyond their ability to function independently. Would you really want to be alive that long having to rely on others?

[heyrabbit]

well you're right if the conditions you described came to be. but if you're inferring that it's unselfish to let yourself die to the benefit of others, it's not

[ecnarf]

...how exactly is that?

[Sparq]

that's assuming that you know where technology will be in 100 years.

This whole thread is based on the assumption that we will at some point be able wedge a developed brain into a cloned, growth-accellerated body. At this point, this is entirely science fiction. And you have to make one hell of alot of assumptions about the future state of the world, not just technology, in order to even begin to imagine that this is a viable idea, let alone a good one.

[heyrabbit]

because there is no such thing as unselfishness. there's only rational or irrational selfishness. killing yourself is irrationally selfish because it's impossible to be happy when you're dead

 

 

 

This whole thread is based on the assumption that we will at some point be able wedge a developed brain into a cloned, growth-accellerated body. At this point, this is entirely science fiction. And you have to make one hell of alot of assumptions about the future state of the world, not just technology, in order to even begin to imagine that this is a viable idea, let alone a good one.

 

I'm not assuming anything, just thinking and theorizing (which is what you do to gain knowledge) . everything in science fiction until it's created or discovered

 

it's thinking romantically ( thinking about how the future state of the world should be or ought to be). not many people here understand cause most of us are naturalists in an artistically degenerate culture. "that's not the way the world is!"

Edited June 21, 2007 by heyrabbit

[ecnarf]

because there is no such thing as unselfishness. there's only rational or irrational selfishness. killing yourself is irrationally selfish because it's impossible to be happy when you're dead

I couldn't disagree more. Do those who sacrifice their lives so that others can live not count as heroes?

 

Secondly, thinking and theorizing really only works in maths. The natural sciences require experimentation and evidence to corroborate theories.

[bishopx]

Rabbit that was deep.

[heyrabbit]

thanks bishop

 

killing yourself for someone else doesn't automatically make you a hero. on the contrary, many people who kill themselves for others are among the most worthless egoists who ever lived (ghandi)

 

whether or not a person is a hero depends on your personal view on what a hero is.

 

but I will say that killing yourself for " society" is evil

 

 

it's not a matter of whether or not theorizing works, but whether or not its pointless. everyone here is acting like its pointless which doesn't make any sense because that's like saying that thinking is pointless. (thinking=integrating abstract ideas). that's what makes us human

 

and I don't understand how anyone can think that theorizing is pointless. einstein didn't find relativity under a rock.

Edited June 21, 2007 by heyrabbit

[ecnarf]

What? Ghandi was assassinated. Completely different.

 

Think of military or police situations. Or that accident on the 400 a couple of days ago - the trucker ran himself off the road and died, saving many others in the process. How is it not heroic to sacrifice yourself so that other people can live?

 

I think you're corrupting the argument slightly by saying that we die "for society". Living for an incredibly long time will invariably turn you into a drain on society for a longer time. People are currently extremely frail and dependent when they hit 80. If people start living to 150, and we generously extend the usefulness of their life to 100, that's a 50 year gap where resources are being put in to people and none are going out, a third of their life, and approximately one third of the population (although realistically it will represent much more than one third due to the current trend of people having fewer and fewer kids, and the inevitable necessity of having less kids as the total population increases). It simply has economic unfeasibility written all over it. And of what value is life when you have to rely on other people to simply exist?

 

The whole thing runs counter to evolution. The fitness of the species as a whole trumps, by far, the unfit individual simply being alive.

[Lauren]

i think he was attributing the quote to ghandi

[heyrabbit]

what's heroic about suicide?

 

how many random people do you have to give your life to in order to be considered a hero?

 

ghandi put himself in the situation to be assassinated. the truck driver likely made a split second decision, so it's hard to judge his intentions there.

 

let's assume that he knew that driving off the road , or whatever he did, would kill him and save others. if that's the case, then he's not unselfish. he did it because he would rather die than live with the pain of knowing he killed someone. that's not unselfish because that's what he WANTED to do. i.e. it would be rationally selfish.

 

if he did it because society expects him to be a "hero", then that's irrationally selfish. i.e. he traded something of high value for a non-value, or maybe something of less value. (maybe the person whose life he saved was a jerk)

 

your highest value is usually your own life, or possibly the lives of very close family members or friends, not random people

Edited June 21, 2007 by heyrabbit

[ecnarf]

The driver very much knew what he was doing; truckers are acutely aware that they are driving death machines and trained as such. I was told by my driving instructor that they usually teach truckers to not be afraid to smash into the car in front of them if it means that they take it easy on the brakes and avoid jack knifing, killing more and closing down several lanes.

 

I don't know where you're getting this "he's not unselfish" deal from. You're positing that no matter what anyone does, they're being selfish. That's pretty transparently false to me. I don't know who you're getting these ideas from, but you'd be wise to lay off of them. In the situation the trucker was in, the objectively right thing to do would be to drive his rig off the road and save the lives of several other people. That's what he did. He had a wife and kids; selfish would have been to inflict the pain of losing family members on dozens of other people as long as his own family was taken care of.