
On Being Not Dead - rosser
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/on-being-not-dead.html?ref=global&_r=0
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reasonattlm
Based on my discussions over the years, a majority of people want to be dead -
just not right now. Or rather, to be more precise, they either hold or find it
convenient to pretend to hold the belief that they want to be dead at some
point in the future that roughly corresponds with other people's similarly
declared desire to be dead at some point in the future.

It's pretty easy to turn up this complex of beliefs and signaling and ideas:
just talk to people about greatly extending the healthy human life span. Your
average fellow will disavow such an idea, even if it comes with good health
all the way. Oh no, they will say, why would anyone want to live for such a
time. I'll be glad to go.

So, in general, people want to be dead. Just not right now this minute.

As to this: some days I talk about it, some days I throw up my hands, and some
days I wonder whether or not it is the most insane thing in the mad world.
Possibly, possibly not. From a utilitarian perspective, sure, yes, as a
widespread belief it has effects going forward (in this age of biotechnology
in which we might largely remove involuntary death if we actually cared enough
to do that, but the signs so far are that not so many people do) that are
worse than war, worse than poverty, worse than all the disasters of a century
rolled into one. From the perspective of a metric of craziness of what is
believed or adhered to, possibly not as bad as religions, either civic or
devotional.

~~~
graeme
You sound very confident that immortality would be a good thing.

Maybe.

We've never experienced it, so how can you be sure?

To be clear, I THINK _my own_ immortality would be nice, but I can't even be
sure about that. Immortality for EVERYONE would fundamentally change our
societies. Every human institution is affected by death. Removing it would
change everything, unpredictably.

If you can find an English version (or read Spanish), the Immortal by Borges
is a good partial exploration of this theme, for an individual.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_(short_story)>

~~~
guylhem
_You sound very confident that immortality would be a bad thing. Maybe. We've
never experienced it, so how can you be sure?_

See, I just changed "good" to "bad" for you, because the question the way it
is phrased suggests an opinion.

Personally, I see death as the equivalent of erasing hard drive full of
valuable and interesting data. It's a shame people individual knowledge and
experience are lost forever.

If as a society we can never come to agreement about immortality being good or
bad, it would good to develop a technology to "save" knowledge and "load" it
at will.

So when say an Einstein or a Feyman dies, their understand of the theories and
technologies would become available for everyone to "download" in their brain
- which hopefully would reduce wasted knowledge to a minimum.

Likewise, the same technology could free 15 year+ of a good life quality,
currently spent on "education". It seems wasteful to me. Just load the
knowledge in your brain, and skip school. Load "experience" too if you believe
it is necessary.

A marked of "ideas" and "knowledge" ready to download in a brain. Wow. That
would be a dream come true - even if immortality can't be achieved due to lack
of consensus.

~~~
graeme
I phrased the opinion that way for two reasons:

1\. We already know what our society looks like with death. 2\. It's easy to
imagine the good things that come from a lack of death. We're more likely to
underestimate downsides.

When dealing with a complex system, I'm skeptical of change. Following Nassim
Taleb's ideas, the onus is on someone proposing a change to show that it will
improve the system.

That said, the 'download' idea sounds neat.

~~~
Tloewald
I don't want to die of cancer. I don't think anyone does. How far do I need to
go to argue in favor of proposing a change in the form of cancer prevention
and/or treatment?

I think I can inductively argue that given a set of possible ways of dying or
becoming incapable there will always be one or more candidates which everyone
would be happy to see eliminated.

There are going to be downsides to increased lifespans, but it's hard to
imagine anyone convincingly arguing at any given point in the future "we need
to stop increasing lifespans because it's just too hard to get parking
spots/nice beachfront land/tenure". Let's suppose hard limits are placed on
procreation to offset increasing lifespan, would that be enough? Any
restriction which allows people to have one or fewer children each (let's call
having a child the old-fashioned way counts as each person making 0.5
children) will cap population — advanced countries drop below replacement
without legal enforcement already.

~~~
graeme
That's a different argument. I think it's the likeliest route to immortality,
if we ever get there. There wouldn't ever be a 'immortality, yes or no'
referendum.

~~~
Tloewald
My point is that you can demonstrate the yes/no argument is winnable by
induction.

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ctdonath
Having been dead, I'd say it's nice being not dead. Relaxing even, knowing
that things can't get much worse than what I've already been thru.

A CPR instructor once was adamant "your heart stops, you're dead." I pressed
him on various edge cases, but he did not relent - and the notion suck with
me. Twelve years later, a nurse in the waiting room told my wife "your husband
is doing fine; they're stopping his heart now." An hour or so later it was
restarted, and a few hours thereafter awoke.

Over the next few years, if not for modern medical technology I'd be dead some
four times over. Not such dramatic brushes with the other side, but more
reminders that not being dead is, as life progresses, ever more unusual and
precious.

Like most things, there is much fear of something until you've been there -
and sometimes greater appreciation of not going there. As I stand here writing
this and discussing turtles with my toddler, how precious every tiny moment is
being here - and how calm the knowledge that, in short order after any moment,
I might not be. Nothing bothers me now - except perhaps when someone is
unappreciative of the little time we have.

~~~
jacquesm
That's quite a story. Nothing brings out a persons ability to appreciate the
moment and focus on the things that really matter in life than a close call.
Suddenly what side of the wash-stand the toothbrushes are on seems to be not
worth making a fuss over.

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_feda_
my 16 yo sister died two weeks ago tommorow. when i saw her dead just minutes
after she had died, the first corpse i'd ever seen, one the things that popped
into my head was how happy i should be to be alive. she died from cystic
fibrosis, a disease that will most likely be eradicated completely in coming
years by gene therapy &c. We should be thankful to live into old age,
nevermind immortality, although I'd be surprised of anyone to refuse it
considering our standard of life in the developed world.

~~~
rfrey
My heart goes out to you. Your response to your grief is an inspiration.

~~~
_feda_
much appreciated. At the moment, being happy feels like the natural thing to
do.

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Tloewald
The main thing I got out of this article, aside from the distinction between
being glad to be alive vs. not dead, which seems to me to be a fine one, is
that I simply must check out Beethoven's Opus 133 "Große Fuge" (there's only
one option in iTunes and it's album only).

~~~
lionhearted
It's nice --

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s0Mp7LFI-k>

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hakaaak
Life is about action. Being "not dead" to me suggests not being done with what
you do. To live without action is not living, but I guess you are "not dead".
However, to fully embrace being "not dead" means you still need to do
something.

Why in the hell philosophy is being so heavily considered here is beyond me
though. If hackers really think about life too much, they stop hacking and
start living. Hacking is doing but in a way that really isn't changing
anything truly permanently. Having kids and providing them with a good
environment that they then pass on to their kids and their kids... that is
permanent. They won't remember your crappy webapp or your nifty tech startup
nor will they give a shit about your talk circuit or the books you wrote on
some aspect of some framework that no one will use 10 years from now.

Helping others and raising a family can do real and permanent good. That is
being "not dead".

~~~
connortomas
Agreed in general, though I'd dispute your point that hacking can't do
permanent good. Sure, in fifty years, you likely won't care about the web app
you built, but maybe that app helped somebody achieve their goals or inspired
somebody else in some way, and _that_ is what you'll remember. The work itself
is never important in the long run... it's how that work helped others in some
way.

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lalc
Compelling piece about simple, ephemeral beauty.

Only one thing sticks out. Beethoven's Great Fugue is _not_ a miracle of the
universe.

~~~
pav3l
>Beethoven's Great Fugue is not a miracle of the universe.

No, but our ability to enjoy it is.

------
simonh
People display apparently contrarian behaviour all the time for perfectly
rational reasons. Nobody 'wants' to pay taxes, yet we often vote for
governments that raise taxes because we agree with what they intend to spend
it on. We agree with the national speed limits becaus ethey improve road
safety, then break the speed limit with embarrasing frequency.

I think this is another similar case. Hardly anyone really wants to die, but
most of us can appreciate that eliminating death would rapidly lead to
appalling resource crises, so I can easily see a majority choosing to ban such
a technology unless the fairly obvious potential negative consequences can be
shown to be resolvable.

~~~
Nursie
And it's that thought pattern that will mean that if we find a key to
immortality, those of us that would rather try to manage the fallout rather
than be consigned to the earth will be denied the opportunity.

Well that and the inevitable 'OMG unnatural, stop playing god'.

~~~
simonh
Here's the last part of my comment again: "..unless the fairly obvious
potential negative consequences can be shown to be resolvable"

Demonstrate that you have a credible strategy for managing the fallout and I'd
back you up myself. What you don't get to do is just charge ahead on a wish
and a prayer that maybe you can mitigate the consequences. Show some
responsibility and actually address the issues, and who knows?

~~~
Nursie
'What you don't get to do is just charge ahead on a wish and a prayer that
maybe you can mitigate the consequences.'

Why should you get to say whether I can live forever? You don't want to, go
ahead and die.

That came across as more confrontational than I intended. There will _never_
be a credible strategy until the situation is faced, humanity does not seem to
work the other way (with actual foresight).

~~~
simonh
I didn't take that as confrontational, just direct and to the point given the
context of what we're talking about.

Our society has laws and I don't know where you live, but I'm a Brit and live
in a democracy. The majority will get to decide. There will be ways round it -
going to other countries, etc but as a society that's just how we do things.
There are things that are more important (to some of us) than one person, or
even a group of people, or even everyone living for ever and those things are
worth protecting.

~~~
Nursie
You can take it that I disagree with the idea that a democracy should be able
to get anywhere close to ruling on whether or not the individuals within said
democracy get to live or die.

Your post does make an amusing (and very sci-fi) idea pop into my head though,
that of fugitive, criminal immortals. The idea of an immortal hiding what they
are isn't new - it's usually because they don't know how people will react, or
they wouldn't be able to fit into society, or they might get experimented upon
to find the secret. It seems at least a little novel to have a situation in
which it is known that some people will live forever, and by the very nature
of having taken on immortality they are necessarily fugitive.

I suppose it's not too dissimilar from some of Asimov's robot stuff.

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davros
Lovely essay, its great to be reminded. The more aware (dare I say mindful)
you are of the joy of life, the more joy you experience.

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tobydownton
This was the line that really grabbed me: "I’ve come to believe that a good
cry is like a carwash for the soul." Beautiful!

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jason_adleberg
Did anyone else expect one of the characters to immediately tragically die at
some point in the story... or is it just me

~~~
lloeki
Not until just before they enjoyed the traffic lights, where I thought his
friend might just die of a heart attack any minute. I guess this tells us the
message has been passed, that life is fragile and worthy of enjoyment.

