On Being Not Dead

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/opinion/on-being-not-dead.html?ref=global&_r=0

by rosser • 14 years ago

73 65 14 years ago

davros• 14 years ago

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.

lalc• 14 years ago

Compelling piece about simple, ephemeral beauty.

Only one thing sticks out. Beethoven's Great Fugue is not a miracle of the universe.

pav3l• 14 years ago

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

No, but our ability to enjoy it is.

AnthonBerg• 14 years ago

That it is is.

_feda_3• 14 years ago

Do you mean to imply that work of art generally are less 'miraculous' than that of nature, are you speaking exclusively about beethoven?

reasonattlm2• 14 years ago

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.

vividmind• 14 years ago

> Based on my discussions over the years, a majority of people want to be dead - just not right now.

WOW! This really struck me now... Imagine how your behaviour would change if you didn't have this expectation!

barrkel• 14 years ago

Probably for the negative, given the human propensity for procrastination.

kiba• 14 years ago

Come with me!

Let the deathists buries their dead.

graeme4• 14 years ago

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)

Wingman4l7• 14 years ago

A good examination of radical life extension and its repercussions on society, life, and memory is examined in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

reasonattlm2• 14 years ago

What is the cost of 100,000 lives lost every day? [1]

If you have objections to agelessness through medicine, and many do, then it is probably a good idea to first consider the question above, and then consider your objection in the same terms.

[1] http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra...

guylhem• 14 years ago

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.

brianchu• 14 years ago

All else being equal, immortality could very well be a bad thing - overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, massive unemployment, etc.

But the problem is that in the real world immortality obviously will not be achieved alone. If society makes the technological leap towards immortality, almost certainly society will have undergone other technological transformations. By the time we achieve immortality, maybe computer-brain interfaces would allow us to live in a virtual reality, maybe capitalism will be dead and automation will be complete, maybe we will have colonized other planets, the list goes on. These changes may obviate the negative effects of immortality on society.

The fact remains that technological progress is inexorable and inescapable. Contrast this against people's attitudes towards changing trends in technology, and people are remarkably stubborn. That people today by and large want to eventually die does not mean that people living in a future society where immortality is taken for granted will also wish to die eventually. Just compare attitudes towards social networking between people who are in their teens, and people who are in their 60s.

Lost_BiomedE• 14 years ago

'overpopulation, over-consumption of resources, massive unemployment, etc.'

We are going to have to face these things with or without immortality, likely this century.

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

What people profess and what people believe can differ wildly. Right now, most people don't see any obvious route towards living forever, and haven't even given that idea much thought; furthermore, most people likely don't see any benefit to their personally professing a belief otherwise, and professing such a belief goes contrary to social norms. On the other hand, many people gain (perceived or actual) social benefits from professing various religious, quasi-religious/spiritual, or otherwise socially acceptable beliefs regarding death. Combine that with the usual fear of any change to the status quo, and you end up with a society of people that by and large professes a desire to be dead at some distant point in the future.

On the other hand, if you had a practical implementation of immortality, today, with no major drawbacks, what subset of the population would actually refuse? I suspect far fewer people would profess a desire to die at that point.

pebb2• 14 years ago

I also noticed that most people actually want to be dead. It really surprised me...

But then, most people live crap lives.

Riesling• 14 years ago

> But then, most people live crap lives.

And this is the really sad part.

If one does not believe in another life or an afterlife, life itself might be the most precious thing there ever was.

Just think about the astounding circumstances that have brought your or my specific mind into existence.

Given the uniqueness of every mind on this planet we all should feel honored to be alive with them at the same time.

But what do we do? We make people lives miserable. We waste lives in wars. We let children starve before they even have to chance to use this ordinary gift.

I think future generations will judge us for this.

Edit: Phrasing

gwern• 14 years ago

I am reminded of http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/27/would-you-like-a... or http://lesswrong.com/lw/6vq/on_the_unpopularity_of_cryonics_...

meric• 14 years ago

Perhaps some people imagine, if they didn't die, they'd grow old; If imagine someone imagining being old and stuck with maximum walking speed of 2km/h seeing and hearing ability continuing to deteriorate. It's not hard to imagine they won't want to live forever in that state; There's a difference between being young forever and living forever.

Also if you were indeed young forever but everyone else wasn't, it's also not hard to imagine your life would be carefully scrutinised by everyone else for research; which not everyone might like.

icebraining3• 14 years ago

The section of Gulliver's Travels on the Struldbrugs has permanently changed my view of immortality: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jswift/bl-jswi...

nnq2• 14 years ago

People like FINITE things, "BOUND" things and things that seem UNDERSTANDABLE and that have a PURPOSE that doesn't lie in the thing itself and most people HATE open ended things (I know, for future oriented technologists like us it's hard to understand this, but ask you... mom). The "fear of immortality" (even if it's more professed than truly believed actually) is FEAR OF INFINITY and fear of being part of something whose purpose is itself.

An infinite life would be:

1. infinite (obviously)

2. not "understandable" - your mind will evolve infinitely and your future personality/self might end up so different of you present self that you might disagree even on the most basic questions of morality and what's "good" and "bad" (you have to accept that you're actually different persons and the same thing will apply if you "cloned" your mind now and the two minds will meet each other in 1000 years time), and your present self can't even imagine what the future self might become, the actual "self" becomes "not understandable" potentially

3. open ended

4. there's no "final", imaginable "purpose" - because you're future life is beyond the edges of you present imagination, you can't imagine a purpose for life itself (like "be good and go to heaven")), so the purpose of life has to be life itself

...and most people (I call them "un-open minds", to not be superior or mean and to state that I think they have the potential to be "opened") are AFRAID of (1) to (4)... it's against the way they've been brought up and it takes away their "shield" for other fears... imagine convincing a frightened little girl to so skydiving or maybe closer to getting her join the army and become a paratrooper.

icebraining3• 14 years ago

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

#passive-aggressive

lmm2• 14 years ago

I don't allow myself to want that which is impossible. Doing so would only frustrate me.

You have a plan for extending human life by ten years? Sure, that seems awesome; if the details are good enough I'd be willing to donate to fund that.

You have a plan for extending human life indefinitely? That's so implausible I'm not going to even look at what it is. Chasing that dream looks a lot like gambling away your savings - worse, your lifetime - chasing after that one big win that's never going to come.

icebraining3• 14 years ago

Who said anything about a plan? It's just an hypothetical question.

rpm4321• 14 years ago

"You have a plan for human flight? That's so implausible I'm not going to even look at what it is. Chasing that dream looks a lot like gambling away your savings - worse, your lifetime - chasing after that one big win that's never going to come." - lmm's great-grandfather, 1902.

Nursie8• 14 years ago

I never want to be dead. Ever.

I know that at some time I have to die. Perhaps it's easier for some people to fool themselves that they accept death because they know it's inevitable. I find it hard to imagine that if actually given the choice all that many people would choose to have a limited lifespan. I'm not saying that they wouldn't, I'm saying I find it hard to believe or understand.

To me death is the greatest injustice of existence.

pretoriusB3• 14 years ago

>I never want to be dead. Ever.

Sure, everybody says that at some point. But when you're too old, sick and aching, and with your friends/family gone, do you really believe you'll think exactly the same?

frenchman_in_ny• 14 years ago

I think of death almost as a requirement to give meaning to our lives -- an element of temporality that defines what you've done, and what to be proud of (or not).

See [1] for a philosophical discussion on the topic.

[1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending...

yason• 14 years ago

They're right. Inside of themselves they realize, consciously or subconsciously, that death is the great motivator.

Death is, if anything, what forces people to break out of living other peoples' lives and start living their own. Even death can not do it for all people but without death and the sense of our mortality during our limited days alive hardly more than a few people would face things in their lives and go forward. Theoretically, a majority would probably just opt for postponing things "till tomorrow" for hundreds of years.

pretoriusB3• 14 years ago

>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.

I don't think this is so. People cling to life to extreme measures. What they don't like is the actual process of aging, losing relatives and friends, their health, and so on.

That affects what they respond to even if you ask them about "extending the healthy human life span" even if it comes with good health all the way, because the pain of aging is real, whereas the "good health all the way" thing they know to be a pipe-dream.

If you could demonstrably show them the "extension + good health all the way" they would JUMP at it. Especially if it could include their loved ones too (people don't merely want to live, like some primitive organism, they want to live with a certain quality and in certain company).

_feda_3• 14 years ago

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.

pestaa• 14 years ago

I cannot imagine how difficult it could have been for you to comment on this article.

I am sorry for your loss.

rfrey• 14 years ago

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

_feda_3• 14 years ago

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

pebb2• 14 years ago

No it won't. Cure destroys income and profit, while ineffective "treatment" brings massive profit. It literally is sick care.

Checkout lef.org

Tloewald3• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

It's nice --

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

mbetter• 14 years ago

Listening to a Petersen Quartett performance right now, quite brilliant.

ctdonath• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

jason_adleberg• 14 years ago

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

lloeki• 14 years ago

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.

hakaaak• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

simonh3• 14 years ago

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.

Nursie8• 14 years ago

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'.

simonh3• 14 years ago

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?

tobydownton• 14 years ago

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!

On Being Not Dead

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