
You will die. Get used to it. - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/You+will+die%2C+get+used+to+it.
======
rsaarelm
This seems to be all over the place with the stuff it tackles. As far as I
see, it makes at least the following assertions:

* Increasing the human lifespan past 130 using means anything resembling modern medicine seems pretty hard. Especially for keeping the brain going strong.

* People have a fixed identity point somewhere in their lifetime, and should they deviate too far from that later in their life, they shall be considered different persons and as good as dead.

* Going insane is going to be a big problem if the brain keeps going and changing state for centuries or millennia.

* People would go into decision-theoretic ruts if they knew they lived forever. Apparently people also want to go into permanent retirement after a while, regardless of how healthy they are.

* People living forever keep consuming resources. This is somehow worse than the current situation where people give birth to more resource-consuming people and then die.

* Unlimited lifespans would cause massive social stratification.

* Since we don't know exactly how minds work, they probably run on magic instead of atoms and electrons, so you can't get them in a computer.

* Although human minds are perfectly fine being trapped for decades in a dark liter-sized bone shell in nature, they would quickly go insane from claustrophobia in a similar computer substrate. I'm not entirely sure how this works, it might be related to the part about computers not running on magic again.

------
nawitus
It's not an article worth reading. Of course "immortality" doesn't actually
mean living for an infinite amount of years. The real goal is to live as long
as a person desires. Of course it has the usual points that it's difficult
(nobody is saying it's not).

The article also includes some non-physicalist ideas that simulated brains
can't feel emotion or feelings won't be "real" etc.

In essence it raises no new arguments or points of interest.

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you for your concise review.

The word 'bored' is not in the article so I don't know where you got that.

~~~
prawn
I think they're referencing the part about avoiding risk. i.e., "immortalists"
are not as concerned about accidental death, but having the chance to
(otherwise) live and die on their terms, when they have accomplished what they
wish to.

That said (in support of the grandparent comment), I did think it was an
interesting point to at least raise in your piece for those that might not
have previously considered it.

~~~
jacquesm
Living and dying with dignity is already possible in some parts of the world,
I'm happy to be living in one of them.

It's only decent to be able to say that enough is enough. The case of Terri
Schiavo shows that some parts of the world still have a long way to go in
this.

The 'pro life' movement is probably going to transform into a 'do not delete'
movement in the future :)

------
stellar678
This essay seem reasonably well-informed, but completely unwilling to tread
even close to, let alone outside, the possibilities of our current
technology/framework of thought. It seems to me a complete presumption that it
will forever be impossible to recreate a consciousness given a recorded set of
behavior. (Philosopher David Chalmers talks about this a bit:
<http://bit.ly/duFPOG>)

A relatively-recent example of how unexpected use can be made of pre-existing
data - look at how search engines worked in 1997. The state of the art didn't
know what signals were most important to look at, so they paid attention to
things like keyword density. Then Google came along and illuminated a way more
important signal, blowing away the state of the art for search engine ranking.
Who's to say there is no analog for any kind of 'consciousness recording' that
we have right now? Is it entirely implausible that a recording of my thoughts
today won't provide significantly more information 50 years from now than it
does today?

The problem seems akin to compressed sensing
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing>), posted in a few articles
on HN about a month ago.

~~~
jacquesm
I think that to record a given intelligence is a _harder_ problem than to
create an AI, and imho an AI is still very far away, in spite of some very
interesting work in that field working in the direction of developing one.

Not only would you have to perform a 'near perfect' programming of such an
intelligence, you'd also have to record it, so that is two big problems to
solve.

The '50 years from now' has been around just about forever, make that 50
years. But in reality, in spite of all our amazing computer power we are not
much closer to being able to do this than we were 20 years ago, and I don't
expect it to be much different 20 years from now.

The article is addressed to those alive today, and it is possible that 100,
200 or 1,000 years in to the future the situation will be dramatically
different. It's hard to imagine that it would not. But barring a 'singularity'
or the development of something _really_ technologically advanced (say large
scale quantum computing) I have a hard time seeing how it could be sooner than
that. So that's where the premise comes from, not that it is a complete
impossibility, just that it probably is an impossibility in the lifetime of
those alive today.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Not only would you have to perform a 'near perfect' programming of such an
intelligence,_

No you don't. You need to perform a near perfect simulation of the physics of
a brain. It's not nearly as difficult as intelligence, since you only need a
low level understanding of what is going on.

We are considerably closer to this than we were in the past. We can already
simulate nerve clusters and some parts of vision processing.

~~~
jacquesm
You make that sound so easy.

We can't even simulate a single drop of water with any chance of fidelity, and
we probably won't be able to do so in the near future.

These problems are _hard_ , very hard. Hundreds of millions have been spent,
and many billions more will be spent before 'a low level understanding' of
what is going on will be available. And then you can begin to solve these
problems.

A famous scientist is on the record for having said that within a decade
they'd have a working simulacrum of a human brain, meanwhile they are slogging
it out with others that claim to be simulating the brain of a cat:
([http://news.techworld.com/personal-tech/3207325/scientist-
ca...](http://news.techworld.com/personal-tech/3207325/scientist-calls-ibm-
cat-brain-simulator-a-hoax/) and
[http://www.brainmaya.com/neuroscience/neuroscience-
videos/su...](http://www.brainmaya.com/neuroscience/neuroscience-
videos/supercomputing-the-brains-secret-modelin.html)) but meanwhile we can't
even vat-grow a cockroach from scratch.

I'm all with Dijkstra on this one, whether computers can think is just as
meaningless as asking whether a submarine can swim.

A molecular simulation of a brain is extremely interesting but I doubt that
that is the shortest route to AI, especially a simplified simulation.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm not claiming full brain simulation is _easy_ , I'm claiming it is much
_easier_ than understanding intelligence. Similarly, understanding statistical
mechanics of a gas is hard. Solving newton's law of motion for a few million
gas molecules is not nearly as hard [1].

Also, you can probably get away with neuron-level simulation rather than
molecular simulation. As far as I know, most nerve cluster simulations do
this.

[1] I learned stat mech as a senior undergrad, and didn't really get it until
grad school. On the other hand, I built newton solvers when I was 13.

------
nopassrecover
I disagree with a lot of this.

"Almost everybody that is past the age of 50 has had one or more life-
extending operations"

Is this an American thing? In Australia it is pretty rare to have had _any_
operation, yet alone a life-extending one, by the age of 50.

"But, let's assume that somehow - unlikely, but maybe it's possible - we
manage to tweak these mechanism enough that we manage to survive and keep our
bodies in the state of say a healthy 30 year old, forever. What are you going
to do ? Sit indoors all day long ?"

The options open to someone who only faces accidental mortality are beyond our
imagining. Imagine what a Jefferson or an Edison would achieve in 500 years.
Imagine if Einstein had a 100 more to work on unified theories. Besides, with
all that time to master knowledge I'm sure some bright spark could come up
with a way to heal stab victims.

"The human brain has limited storage capacity, and even though we're fairly
sure that we do not use all of it we also can't fill it up forever"

I'm not sure this is proven. Even if that's the case, I have a lot of useless
knowledge about the maps of Quake 3 levels or the characters in obscure TV
shows that could be jettisoned without great loss.

"That seems to be the problem with most of these far fetched ideas.
'Uploading' your mind, means measuring in great detail the state of your mind.
And we do not even know what 'mind' is"

We have preliminary technology that can read thoughts and imperatives. Doesn't
seem that far-fetched to map the brain given time. Besides, you seem to rule
out human/brain interfaces - why can't I have a constant link between brain
and computer and in a worse case death scenario I simply lose the experiences
since my last link time.

However, you do raise some interesting societal issues. Nevertheless, "how
will people deal with it" hardly seems a valid reason to prevent research that
could let people live healthily to 500+. The alternative is we are saying
people deserve to die because they are old.

~~~
jacquesm
> I disagree with a lot of this.

That's ok, PG disagrees with me too, so you're in good company :)

> Is this an American thing?

No, just statistics. Most people have one operation in their lifetime,
sometimes more than one, usually those are to treat conditions that would
otherwise cause a substantial decrease in lifespan.

Appendicitis, gal bladder removal, heart stents and so on. I'm Dutch by the
way, not American.

> The options open to someone who only faces accidental mortality are beyond
> our imagining. Imagine what a Jefferson or an Edison would achieve in 500
> years. Imagine if Einstein had a 100 more to work on unified theories.
> Besides, with all that time to master knowledge I'm sure some bright spark
> could come up with a way to heal stab victims.

That would have been great, but it presumes that you can keep the brain
functioning for that long as well, and in 'top shape'. As it is most
'brilliant' work has been done by scientists when they are relatively young,
late bloomers are the exception.

And Einstein was pretty much stuck in a rut at the end of his days, no
disrespect there, it's fairly well documented, he was such a formidable force
to oppose that he managed to hold back black hole research until 10 years
after his death.

> I'm not sure this is proven. Even if that's the case, I have a lot of
> useless knowledge about the maps of Quake 3 levels or the characters in
> obscure TV shows that could be jettisoned without great loss.

But how to tell those apart from the ones that make up your identity ? A
'garbage collection' algorithm would have to be pretty precise! Do you want to
compress your memory Yes / No is probably best answered with 'No'.

> We have preliminary technology that can read thoughts and imperatives.

True

> Doesn't seem that far-fetched to map the brain given time.

Also true, but _how much_ time. There are plenty of people that seem to
believe this will happen in our lifetime and I think that's not even close.

> Besides, you seem to rule out human/brain interfaces - why can't I have a
> constant link between brain and computer and in a worse case death scenario
> I simply lose the experiences since my last link time.

Interesting possibility, but it combines _all_ of the problems associated with
AI, recording and programming through a 'link' the structure of some new
brain. And where does that come from ? (that new brain, not the link)

> However, you do raise some interesting societal issues. Nevertheless, "how
> will people deal with it" hardly seems a valid reason to prevent research
> that could let people live healthily to 500+.

No, I'm all for the research. I just have an issue with the belief that this
is just around the corner.

> The alternative is we are saying people deserve to die because they are old.

For the time being, that's the way it will be. Research is to be encouraged,
taking in to account the social consequences in parallel. But this - if it
ever comes to pass - will upset our society like nothing else ever has. But it
won't be our worry. I think :)

~~~
nopassrecover
Thanks for the reply. I think if we focused we could reach enough stop gaps
within our lifetime such that some people alive today lived to ~250 years but
I think without focus this is beyond our reach, particularly when Christians
would rather see people die of disease than benefit from the use of discarded
cells.

~~~
jacquesm
A 'manhattan' like project with this as a focus would be an amazing thing,
just something like that targeted at creating an AI would be quite something.
But with everybody turning over their dimes and no 'enemy' to justify the
expense against I doubt that will happen.

------
yummyfajitas
Summary: you can't live for an _infinite_ amount of time, since the universe
will eventually end. You might even fall down a well before that.

Also, all those proposed new technologies to make you live a long (but finite)
time sound really complicated.

------
barrkel
You lost me the moment you mentioned Penrose. I've seldom read a more tedious
fumbling for mysteries, all but Luddite in their hope for some deep mysterious
law of the universe that would prevent computers (machines working in the
universe) from emulating brains (machines working in the universe) than
Shadows Of The Mind. I haven't discarded it only out of having respect for
books, but I have too much respect for my fellow man to risk having it sold in
a second-hand bookshop.

I don't think that there is a difference between a simulation of a brain and a
simulation of the mechanics of a brain. I believe that's the whole point of
the Turing Test thought experiment. If it talks like a mind then it is a mind.

Actually, you're argument seemed pretty weak up until then, but Penrose was
the last straw. The only thing worse you could have done is brought up the
Chinese Room. Re continuity of the self, that's an interesting problem for
philosophers, but it isn't a practical problem. You aren't your memories; more
than your memories, you are your patterns and habits. But those also change,
though not all at once. At 30, I am not the same person I was at 25, much less
20. For identity, there is just an apparent continuity of existence.

Personally, I think cryogenics is the key, as I don't think the technology for
proper life extension will appear within my immediate lifetime.

~~~
jacquesm
> I don't think the technology for proper life extension will appear within my
> immediate lifetime.

Looks like we agree after all then.

Penrose's point is that the brain _might_ be quantum mechanical in nature.

------
indrax
What will we do with all that time?
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/wx/complex_novelty/>

TL;DR: The smarter you get, the more interesting things you can work on. We're
already smart enough to do interesting things for a long long time.

------
swombat
This is a very superficial article. Yes, immortality will be hard to achieve.
Yes, it'll have all sorts of issues. Yes, we'll have to rethink a lot of
things about how we view life and the purpose of life. That doesn't mean we
won't resolve those issues.

Are you suggesting the current system is flawless? I think we're pretty good
at dealing with systems with problems.

I'd say it's a miracle it works even as is. I don't see how tweaking the
miracle is any less realistic than the miracle itself.

------
m_eiman
A pretty good book related to the subject:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon>

~~~
jacquesm
Interesting, thanks ! I'll order it and read it.

------
dublinclontarf
This was issue was tackled with the movie "Death Becomes Her".

~~~
chasingsparks
And on the short-lived SciFi series Lexx, at least the what to do with
immortality aspect. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunnen-G>)

------
DanielBMarkham
Next week Jacques tells us there is no Easter Bunny and that Santa was really
a communist.

:)

Best point in this article is the one about working memory. This is something
I didn't understand at 20 but know too well at 40. The human mind is made to
forget things -- lots of things. In fact, the ability to forget things is
probably what keeps us sane and able to focus. Otherwise one thing would
trigger another and we would just spin off on tangents all the time.

Having read the article, and agreeing with the points and sentiments, I still
think the Great Singularity Cometh. Just nowhere near 20 years. More like 500.
And I think by that time we will have a _much_ different idea of what is human
and what is not. So it all works out.

I've been meaning to set up getting frozen when I die. Not for immortality --
I think the problems Jacques mentions will work out but take a while -- but
simply for life extension. I think the definition of "die" is a lot more
flexible than we currently imagine and I think there's a chance that sometime
in my lifetime we'll work out cryogenics to the point where there's a shot at
getting another 20-40 years at some point in the distant future after you die
the first time. (Although coming back to life with everybody else you know
gone for hundreds of years has to be a very sobering thing.)

But the main, critical point here is that yes, you will die. And, apologies
for the existentialist plug, but how you deal with your impending death, in a
real and immediate fashion, is what separates you from a lawn slug. The denial
of one's death through whatever fashion is a great travesty on what it means
to be human.

And I'm almost certain the Easter Bunny isn't coming for somebody here, but
I'm not going to mention any names. Starts with a J, though.

------
DanielBMarkham
Meta: The interesting thing about this piece is that Jacques is taking on 2
aspects near and dear to hacker culture: 1) the mechanistic nature of reality.
Everything to some degree is a machine and 2) the magic of technology. That
technology will one day, perhaps sooner than we think, solve whatever problems
we might imagine.

To some degree, both of these beliefs are true. But in other important ways
they are not. However as hackers we have subconsciously and deeply bought into
these two beliefs as part of our worldview, so in our hearts we "know" Jacques
is just a sourpussed Luddite -- even if we can't exactly work out why.

I'll go a step further and say that our natural response to being confronted
with the limits of our belief system is to thrash around quite a bit. Kind of
like a bug getting pinned in a display book.

That makes the comments here very interesting reading!

------
sailormoon
_But bodies, like all machines, really do wear, and eventually they wear out._

Wow - imagine if we could repair machines! We could have vintage cars that
were actually drivable instead of mounds of rust. We could have planes from
WWII that, if anything, fly better today than the day they were built. We
wouldn't have to throw things away the first instant they exhibited any sign
of trouble.

Oh, wait. We do have all those things.

Sarcasm aside, you know what, give me the indefinite lifespan and I'll take my
chances with the boredom and accidental death and brain overflow and
collapsing society. Cause I'm sure all those things are bad but guess what,
it's better than being _dead_.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, we can repair machines. And to some extent - and in the future to a
further extent - we will be able to repair our bodies. But that's not the near
future.

> give me the indefinite lifespan and I'll take my chances with the boredom
> and accidental death and brain overflow and collapsing society. Cause I'm
> sure all those things are bad but guess what, it's better than being dead.

The reality is though, that chances are much better than even that those
things will not come to pass in our lifetimes, or even in our grandchildrens
lifetimes.

So in spite of it being 'better' than being dead, chances are that you will
die. What's so hard about it?

There are billions of data points (all the creatures that ever lived have
died, with the exception of those that have not yet lived long enough to
outlive their natural life span) and there isn't a single one that lived
longer than 1500 years (an Olive tree, if I'm not mistaken).

~~~
sailormoon
_But that's not the near future._

Well, I think you're underestimating the pace of technological progress. Yes,
I might not personally live to see the day, but I don't think it will be that
far away. There are a lot of rapidly aging rich people. Research is increasing
in pace, not decreasing, and efforts like SENS are only just getting started.

Those billions of data points are largely irrelevant on a timeline where
technology only increases in potency. Historical death rates offer almost no
guidance to a future where the causes of those billions of deaths are being
isolated and eliminated faster than ever. You do know that according to
Moore's law, computers will overtake the human brain in the 2020s, right?
Where's the historical precedent for that?

You might have a point that immortality boosters are motivated somewhat by
hope and self-interest, but you seem to be biased in the other direction, for
no reason I can discern.

It is rational for any living being to seek to extend their life. Admitting it
is possible and desirable is merely the first step. Why not considering taking
it? There's still space in the 300.
[http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=mj_donations_t...](http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=mj_donations_the300)

~~~
ks
_Well, I think you're underestimating the pace of technological progress. Yes,
I might not personally live to see the day, but I don't think it will be that
far away._

I think you have the possibility to see it. We may not discover how to stop
death in the next 30 years, but I'm sure we will have found a way to extend it
enough so that we are alive when someone does.

