What if I miss out on eternal life?
Posted on: July 26, 2007 - 11:29pm
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What if I miss out on eternal life?
What if science cures death after I die? Doesn't the possiblity of that just make you sad and a little pissed off- and scared?
Most people are lucky enough to not know that science might cure death someday, so they're like 'death is inevitable, just live life to the fullest.' But I'm not so lucky, and I won't be living life to the 'fullest' b/c I need to survive long enough to partake of scientific immortality.
This sucks. I call it the Missing Out Fear.
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We are nowhere near eternal life.
I've thought about that before, its the one thing I'll miss when I'm gone (I love learning, I'd love to see a thousand years of history or more unfold in front of my eyes.) but what are you going to do? Worry about things you may or may not be missing out on, or enjoy the life that you've been given?
I don't think Thomas Jefferson is too concerned that he didn't get an iPhone.
what do you mean 'the one thing i'll miss when i'm gone?' huh?
Well if you are still existing after death you can worry about it then, but I think the whole point of trying to extend life is to continue to exist. If you exist problem solved, if you don't nothing to worry about as it would be just like before you were alive.
What I meant was that the thing I value most about my life is my love for learning. When conscious thought stops I cant really learn any more about the universe I'm a part of. Though I did mis speak, I won't actually /miss/ it when I'm gone, I won't actually miss anything really.
A better way to put it would be that I would not get to see what the future holds anymore.
Unless the future holds eternal life, it doesn't matter, b/c you already know how it ends- all life in the universe ends.
When I'm on my deathbed, the last thing I want to be thinking about is how I wasted my whole life obsessing about all the things that might happen after I'm gone. I'd much rather have the life passing before my eyes thing be full of great memories, adventures, joy, and so on, and I'd like to think that I lived it up the best a person could and will be remembered for a long time to come.
Ultimately I'd like to look back and think that I made a measurable impact on the world for the better, and not that I was so fixated on death and self-induced misery that I never got to live.
xkcd, first you post thread about how much life sucks, and if you could you would wipe out all life on earth. Now you're bitching about not having eternal life. What do you want? An eternal life that sucks? Of all people, shouldn't you be glad that your life is finite?
What makes you think that you would be included in 'scientific immortality'? I'm sure scientists would love to hear "It's all going to end, there's no point to any of this." for billions of years.
"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."--Stephen F. Roberts
I agree. In fact, long before science gets to the point of creating eternal life, humans will cease to exist.
There are over 30,000 nuclear warheads still in existence today. Do any of us really believe none of them will ever be used? And there's also hundreds of chemical and biological weapons out there. Not to mention the potential threat of disaters caused by global warming.
And even if by some odd chance we survive ourselves, a natural disaster is sure to get us. Look at the moon. It's covered with craters from asteroids and comets. So why doesn't the earth have thousands of craters too? It does....they've just been worn away. Asteroids and comets are hitting earth just as frequently as they're hitting the moon. And it's only a matter of time before another big one slams into us.
We humans are only here for a very short period of time. In fact, we are extremely lucky to be here at all. That's what makes life so precious. And it's also what makes this period of time so unique.
We are living in the best of times, especially here in the United States in the early 21st century. Most of us have few real problems or hardships. We spend our spare time typing words onto a computer screen or partying with our friends or renting the latest movie dvd. We act as though this is normal and that life on earth will go on like this forever.
It won't. Sooner or later our luck will run out.
That's why it's sad to see so many thesists wasting this precious time by working to get into heaven. It's as if they're missing this great party here on earth by busily getting ready for an even better party somewhere else, even though there's absolutely no proof that a better party exists. They don't realize that this is all we get. There aint no more.
Life is short. Times are good. Love yourself and others. And enjoy the party.
Frosty's coming back someday. Will you be ready?
Sorry to sound like a nerd, but watch Highlander. Think of all the things that take a "lifetime" to master. If you had a thousand years to live, then it would be no problem to master them all.
People who worry about eternal life are kind of missing the point of this one.
There's no cure for death because it's not a disease. It's structural to being an embodied, sentient being.
Temporality (finitude) is the basis for all meaning in life. Anything experienced forever would be alien and intolerable.
The game's possible only because it ends.
I've got a Christian fundamentalist friend that told me a year ago that he's looking forward to his death because then he'll go to heaven and sit at the feet of Jesus. Sitting at the feet of Jesus might be cool for an hour or so but I sure wouldn't want to sit at Jesus's feet for eternity. I hope he takes a magazine along.
Seriously, I think eternity might eventually get a little boring after a while. Even if you're in total ecstacy while you're having wild sex with 72 virgins, that might get a little monotonous after the first hundred billion years. I think you'd finally tell the virgins to fuck off.
Instead of enjoying the great things about being alive here on earth, I'm afraid my fundamentalist friend is only biding his time until something better comes along.
I think he's fucking up big time.
Frosty's coming back someday. Will you be ready?
What if we miss out on something really nice today, that we ourselves could have initiated, if we had not been too busy sleeping in?
Hey! There is what is! And there is what we make of it.
And, what if I miss out on some eternal buzz, cuz I did not get in touch with the right dealer today?
Hey, it's all about you and what you do, isn't it, after all? Get a grip, honey, and get some good drugs, okay already?
Therefore, the here and now is what matters. Go for it. Get on board.
That works out to 1 virgin every 1,388,888,888.9 years.
Curing death would be foolish from the evolutionary point of view. The individuals in a population would be the same all the time and therefore human race would not evolve anymore. There would be no more biological adaptation.
Also curing death would require people to stop reproducing. We already have problems with the population, take away death and we would run out of resources very soon.
There is no form of eternal life that would not eventually become intolerable while you remained a human being.
You can only be a human being if you die
Frankly, just the thought of eternal life is exhausting to me. I definitely would not want to live forever. The idea of sitting in a cubicle working for the next 800 years or so is horrifying to me. I mean, if you live forever, do you get to retire? At what age?
If god takes life he's an indian giver
AAaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
At least 800 more years? I can hardly stand the thought of 5 or 10 as it is.
They'd never let me retire then, either, because then Y3K would almost be upon us and there would still be COBOL code to fix.
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