Which is more traumatic, birth or death?

Xuenay · Post by **Xuenay** » 2005-07-15 06:42pm

Young forever, of course, is an impossibility - I was a bit careless with my language. Young until the heat-death of the universe, or even just a couple of billion years, doesn't seem impossible, on the other hand. There's even research suggesting it could be easily in reach within our lifetimes.

As for there being a chance of not getting revived at all, sure, it's a possibility - after all, we never know what'll happen in the future. But even a 5% chance of being revived is better than zero - and I don't see any reason why the probability would be anywhere that low. The structure of your brain is preserved when you're frozen, it's only the safe thawing out that's a problem - and assuming science keeps progressing at the rate it has, it seems inevitable that nanotech capable of solving that problem will become available at some point in the future - K. Eric Drexler's work Nanosystems, showing much of the theoretical feasibility of nanotechnology hasn't, AFAIK, been seriously challenged so far.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-07-15 06:53pm

The world has enough people, and many of us want children someday. Currently, I'm only 16, and can't make any specific claims about my future in that reguard, but I still would prefer to have children sometime in the future. I also understand that if this kind of technology existed, death would be rare enough that overpopulation would be a HUGE problem. Either way, most people, when they got to a certain age, WOULD realize that living for more then a millenia or so is just incredibly tedious, even if their bodies didn't age.

Justforfun000 · Post by **Justforfun000** » 2005-07-15 07:11pm

Ah I say screw having children. They'll just grow up to be another adult that will die too. What's the difference?

Seriously, if we had the ability to extend life, I would definitely say go for it and if it means we have to slow DOWN our reproductive rate, so be it. People will still die, it will just be a lot less at a time. I think most people if given the choice between living to 500 years old or procreating and being damn lucky to make 80, I think if they were honest with themself they would choose the former.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-07-15 07:18pm

Justforfun000 wrote:Ah I say screw having children. They'll just grow up to be another adult that will die too. What's the difference?

Seriously, if we had the ability to extend life, I would definitely say go for it and if it means we have to slow DOWN our reproductive rate, so be it. People will still die, it will just be a lot less at a time. I think most people if given the choice between living to 500 years old or procreating and being damn lucky to make 80, I think if they were honest with themself they would choose the former.

The trouble is, both positions affect everybody. If I can have children and live to be 80, that's good for me.. good enough, certainly. If I have to live for 500 years, and can't have any children, that sucks for me. Both of us have a preference in this matter, and both of our preferences will have ramifications on everybody, and thus can't be a personal choice... that's annoying.

Xuenay · Post by **Xuenay** » 2005-07-15 07:36pm

You might want to have children, but I know plenty of people who don't. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know more people who don't want to have children than who do. Add in the amount of people killed by accidents and such, and I'm guessing that those who really do want children can do so. And instead of having just a couple of children, you could, say, have a few children every couple of decades until you'd had several hundred of them (or just gotten bored of the whole thing).

As for getting bored of life, well, you could always kill yourself. Much better to be capable of living "forever" and killing yourself when you didn't feel like life anymore than being sentenced to die around 80 whether you liked it or not.

Though we might want to start our town topic about this before we threadjack this discussion entirely...

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-07-15 07:42pm

Xuenay wrote:You might want to have children, but I know plenty of people who don't. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know more people who don't want to have children than who do. Add in the amount of people killed by accidents and such, and I'm guessing that those who really do want children can do so. And instead of having just a couple of children, you could, say, have a few children every couple of decades until you'd had several hundred of them (or just gotten bored of the whole thing).

As for getting bored of life, well, you could always kill yourself. Much better to be capable of living "forever" and killing yourself when you didn't feel like life anymore than being sentenced to die around 80 whether you liked it or not.

Though we might want to start our town topic about this before we threadjack this discussion entirely...

It was already pretty much dead, but either way, neither of us could have anything more then personal accounts (this is wrong, probably. I bet there are polls out there of who would rather have children, but meh) to support either of our statements or positions. The way I see it, both of our positions are equally viable, but it doesn't matter. This thread is dead, and I doubt either of us would have a real argument left.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-07-15 09:03pm

Zero132132 wrote:Once you've had enough experience, the whole thing gets tiring, and troublesome more then enjoyable. Lazarus Long once said that there wasn't a thing he hadn't done.

Well no one would want to live forever, especially past the heat-death of the universe, but 100 earth-years isn't hardly enough to experience the entire known universe. Even a thousand would mean nothing, when one takes that perspective. To me, only ignorant people think they know it all and have done it all.

Zero132132 wrote:Personally, I can understand contentment with death better then contentment with heaven. If heaven is eternity, then if there's any chance at all of something happening, it will happen infinite times, over and over and over and over and over and over and over... everything would get repititious, pointless.. the same is true of living forever. Everything gets old, repititious, boring. Life is no fun if it isn't limited.

Oh come on, you know the deeply religious don't even consider things like that. For example, they don't think you get used to the pain in hell.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-07-15 09:14pm

wolveraptor wrote: Well no one would want to live forever, especially past the heat-death of the universe, but 100 earth-years isn't hardly enough to experience the entire known universe. Even a thousand would mean nothing, when one takes that perspective. To me, only ignorant people think they know it all and have done it all.

I don't. Most experiences come down to quite similar patterns when it all gets down to it. Even new things can be pretty similar to old things. Life is quite predictable, to a point. That's why I'm glad I'm growing older... being young forever seems like it would be such a waste. Of course, not all agree, and I understand that.

wolveraptor wrote: Oh come on, you know the deeply religious don't even consider things like that. For example, they don't think you get used to the pain in hell.

You could get used to happiness in heaven as well. They don't consider that either. But that doesn't seem relevant to me at all... did I miss something?

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-07-15 10:23pm

You said you would get used to heaven, and it would become boring. I said that the deeply religious don't even consider such things.

Back on topic: So you're saying that you would get tired not of specific experience, but of experience itself. Am I right?

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-07-16 10:10am

wolveraptor wrote:You said you would get used to heaven, and it would become boring. I said that the deeply religious don't even consider such things.

Back on topic: So you're saying that you would get tired not of specific experience, but of experience itself. Am I right?

I think anyone would, but there's no real way to back this up. Either way, based on a link posted above, the average lifespan would, without aging, still be about 1000 years based on the current rate of youngsters dying from carelessness.

If I can be honest, the only real reason that I believe people would get tired of experience is the fact that most of the elderly that I've met aren't afraid of death at all. My great-grandma, age 97, seems to almost welcome the thought. She's already tired of experience, it seems, but this may have much more to do with how old her body's gotten, and the effects of aging on the brain. Either way, she doesn't seem miserable, she just seems to accept that she's had quite a life, and is fine leaving it as it is.