
Ask HN: Is mortality a bug, a feature, or a hardware limitation? - classicsnoot
I am sitting in Hospice with a family member and i cannot decide. If you feel the need to make a defense of your answer, please be objective and respectful.
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mrcold
Neither. It's bad design riddled with technical debt. The body is inefficient
and a resource hog. It was built fast and in harsh conditions. Nothing was
planned or structured, it just went with whatever was needed at the moment.

This is why your life is like the bell curve of a company. Start. Gain
traction. Adapt and grow. Solidify your position. Admire the view from the top
for a while. Start losing touch with reality. Start going on a downwards
spiral. Become irrelevant. And then have a sad and lonely death.

Mortality is the inevitable result of our actions. We could fix it. But we're
too busy thinking like a business.

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onion2k
Interesting question.

Not really sure a bug is even possible in a system that wasn't designed. Any
'bugs' would have resulted in iterations that failed. Death has been there in
every iteration including the ones that were successful. So I don't believe
it's a bug.

It could be a feature because there could well be an evolutionary advantage
for iterations of a species where the older, frailer generations die more
quickly, thus leaving more resources for the younger generations.

It could also be a hardware limitation but everything we've learned so far
about how we die gives us hope to being able to overcome the problems, so in
that regard it isn't really a hard limit but more of a natural limit that we
might be able to work around.

To that end, I'm going to go with 'feature'. But it's an old feature, and one
we won't necessarily use in the future.

Thoughts are with you.

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olalonde
Age related/involuntary death is a bug like any other disease. I suspect
people who think otherwise are just rationalising. If it's any consolation,
dead people can't suffer. What distinction do you make between bug and
hardware limitation? I believe that the only real limitation is the "heat
death of the Universe" and anything else scientists will eventually fix
(barring an extinction event).

~~~
classicsnoot
I guess, and i have limited understanding of software philosophy, that i
perceive a 'bug' as an unintended flaw or occurence that flows from the
interconnectedness of different systems.

Hardware limitation, to me, is like limited rack space or ports.

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tobylane
Telemores. It's a feature which may be a necessary arbitrary limitation. Or it
saves us from a much uglier ending that would risk the lives of people who
care for us. Maybe we shouldn't read anything into species that don't have
telemore limited lives, like lobsters.

------
classicsnoot
I know i am a stranger, and i realize i am probably alone ITT, but she has
begun to slide inexorably towards the cliff. She looked in my eyes and did not
recognize me.

I know i am supposed to be sad, or angry, but i feel excited. This is such a
special thing that is happening. I guess this is why i will always be on The
Fringe. Everyone else is questioning god or questioning fate. I just wish i
could question her; get back as much data before she slips into the
singularity. I am sure this all seems pretty fucking insensitive, but i guess
i just dont care anymore how it seems.

I want answers. I want data. But i guess I'll just have to wait until it is my
turn to jump.

To anyone here, to anyone that may read this: what an epic fucking ride. What
a gift life is. What an adventure death must be.

What a wonderful world.

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Vaskivo
IMO it's a feature.

My reasoning takes into account mortality and reproduction (and is totally
simplistic.)

If there is no mortality but there is reproduction, we would soon reach a
point where our environment wouldn't be able to support us (not enough
resources). This could lead to a catastrophic collapse of the population.

If there is no mortality and no reproduction, we, as a species, would lose our
adaptability to changes in the environment. We would "stop evolving" and it
would be a matter of time until we got extinct.

If there is mortality and no reproduction, well... There would be only a
single generation of individuals.

This way, we can conclude that for "life", the best characteristics would be
mortality and reproduction.

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dzdt
Mortality is a feature: without it evolution wouldn't work and we wouldn't be
here. Evolution requires offspring which are not identical to parents, and
with a bias where more the more fit are more likely to survive and reproduce.
Without death you have no selection, and no passing to the next generation to
keep ratchetting the process forward.

~~~
DanBC
> without death you have no selection

Hang on. Birds that have evolved ludicrous tails aren't doing that because it
helps them not die, but because it helps them breed.

~~~
dozzie
But without death you wouldn't need breeding at all.

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armored
Father: What ... what seems to be the problem.

Son: Death.

Father: Death, well I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction.

Son: I want more life, fucker.

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brudgers
Death is all those things and more and atomicly less. It is part of any
healthy life and how we handle it, in those cases where we have time to handle
it, will reflect who each of chooses to be.

Cheri spent more than 20 years as a hospice social worker helping people cope
with quality of life by discussing death, and what I know I know mostly
through osmosis as "a hospice spouse." Hospice is usually better than the
alternatives. Too many people in the US are discouraged from enrolling until
the last ounce has been squeezed from their insurer. This means that
palliative pain treatment is weighed against the textbook possibility of
addiction and other long term effects as well as the risk of an audit for
prescribing opiates. Hospice doesn't prevent suffering but it does prevent a
lot of needless suffering.

Yesterday I was thinking about my friend Ryan who endured the four horsemen of
the oncology apocalypse for just a few extra moments with his son. I am
saddened to learn of your grief.

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dudul
"Feature". It is the fear of death that has pushed humanity forward.

